Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

This is the time of the year that I hate that my girlfriend is living in Florida: hurricane season. Tallahassee isn't exactly the biggest target on the map, and luckily enough the last 6 years in a row the hurricanes didn't hit that area hard, but yesterday and today tropical storm Fay did hit. And this time Carrie didn't escape the effects of the storm: a huge tree fell in the backyard, hit the pool but missed the house by three yards. My girlfriend is taking shelter in the hallway of her own home: scary! Fay is on it's way to Louisiana but lot's of areas in Tallahassee are hit and even Lake Ella (less than a mile from Carrie's home) is flooded. Here in Holland we had our fair share of bad weather (even a small tornado) but nothing compares to a tropical storm. The Tallahassee area got hit with at least 30 inches of rain: that's a staggering 80cm! As you can imagine most damage is from the rain and not so much from the winds.

A year after Katrina struck the southern USA and New Orleans in particular, one can only conclude that almost no progress has been made rebuilding the hurricane struck city. The situation is still very bad. Indeed, one could say that one year after Katrina, New Orleans is the shame of a nation. The shame of a "super-power" that tries to justify pumping billions and billions into a war on the other side of the world, killing thousands in the name of 'democracy' and 'progress', but being utterly impotent and powerless at home when dealing with disaster. Millions of dollars disapeared into the back pockets of frauds or got wasted on the wrong stuff.

Still, Bush had the guts when he revisted the area to state he was seeing "a lot of progress". The thing was: he was visiting a rich, white neighboorhood. A couple of miles down the block he would have been standing on the same rubble and pile of debris that where there a year ago: in black neigboorhoods with the poor people.

Having witnessed the destruction first hand when me and my girlfriend Carrie made the mistake to visit Biloxi last Christmas, I can really say there are no words for the how bad it must be to people who live(d) there. Those who stayed or returned face a whole world of trouble. As Time Magazine reports:

Call it "Katrina stress" or the "Katrina funk", but it's all too real — and it has real implications for the future health of the city. While the physical devastation of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina has been well documented, the psychic toll is just becoming clear. The suicide rate has nearly tripled, depression is common, domestic abuse is on the rise, and self-medicating with booze is a favored method of forgetting.

Worse yet, the mental health care system needed to help deal with all this is in ruins. Private psychologists and psychiatrists are almost impossible to find. Emergency rooms outside New Orleans — those that survived the storm — are now packed with people from the city seeking mental health care. It's not just the pre-Katrina schizophrenics and crazies who have gone without meds for the year, but regular people who are stressed and depressed. "Life is just not easy in the Big Easy now," says Buras. "There's a lot of anxiety and deep depression."

The figures speak for themselves: half the population of New Orleans is still living somewhere else, over 60% of all the schools are still closed and only half the hospitals are open again. As always with bad situations, people are using humor to cope with everything. CNN reports that when you go downtown people are selling T-shirt with some funny texts:

"Make levees, not war," read one. Another: "FEMA evacuation plan: Run, motherfucker, run." And in a shot at the New Orleans police, some of whom were accused of abandoning their posts during the disaster: "NOPD: Not our problem dude."

In the meantime Florida gets the rain from tropical storm Ernesto. It's Nature's way of showing us there is just one real super-power in this world.

For those who missed the news: Associated Press has revealed that Bush was warned adequately about Katrina's potential destructive power although he denied this later, saying that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." In fact federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck in dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage. Bush didn't ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared." Off course we all know by now this is a blatant lie. What's worse is the fact that White House officials now try to completely downplay the meaning of the tapes. See a report on the video tape and the AP story below: Continue reading "Bush lied about Katrina" »

Since I wrote about Katrina's aftermath, the looting, raping, shootings etc. a lot has happened. For starters, Bush got of his ass and kicked everything into gear. Now the storm has passed, stories keep pouring out and videos from tourist that got trapped are also published on the net. It is mind-boggling that more than 1 million people were evacuated and at least half a million - if not more - are homeless, jobless and left to their own devices.

Amidst all this one photo that I saw on flickr struck me in particular. It shows the whole drama in a very clear way.

Dear Mr. President: New Orleans is angry

An open letter to the president from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, published Sunday

NEW ORLEANS - Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Continue reading "Katrina: An open letter from ... »

Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Continue reading "Katrina: An open letter from ... »

A few days before Katrina hit land, I told my girlfriend Carrie that I had a bad feeling about this storm. Not only was it one of the most powerfull in decades, it was heading straight for some heavily populated areas. But what is happening now, in the aftermath of it all, is really ridiculous. The situation is just completely out of control. CNN reports that people are literally dying in front of them. Where the hell is National Guard, the military the government? Where the hell is Bush? I am outraged by the situation. Continue reading "Out of control: Katrina's ... »