Notes from Inside New Orleans
Jordan Flaherty | 03.09.2005 11:29 | Analysis | Anti-racism | World
The following is a short report and background piece about the situation in New Orleans from the perspective of a radical union organiser who is based there.
Notes From Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
Friday, September 2, 2005
I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I
was staying in by boat to a
helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of
federal and state officials
towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the
refugee camps.
In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway,
thousands of people (at least 90%
black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades,
under an unforgiving
sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would
come through, it
would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the
barricades, and people
would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was
going. Once inside (we
were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton
Rouge, Houston,
Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus
bound for Arkansas (for
example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would
not be allowed to get
out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to
go to the shelter in
Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up,
they could not come
within 17 miles of the camp.
I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation
Army workers, National
Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give
me any details on when
buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other
information. I spoke to the
several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able
to get any information
from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of
them, from Australian tv to local
Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One
cameraman told me “as
someone who’s been here in this camp for two days, the only information I
can give you is this: get
out by nightfall. You don’t want to be here at night.”
There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up
any sort of transparent
and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to
register contact information or find
family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone
services, treatment for
possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.
To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New
Orleans itself.
For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible,
glorious, vital, city. A
place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70%
African-American city
where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and
unique culture of
vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras
Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz
Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of
art and music and
dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.
It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can
take two hours because you
stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls
together when someone is in
need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the
gaps left by city, state and federal
governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare.
It is a city where someone
you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an
answer.
It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New
Orleans has a population of
just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them
centered on just a few,
overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that
they don’t need to
search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting,
the attacker is shot in
revenge.
There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of
Black New Orleans and the
N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of
everything from drug
running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans
police officers were recently
charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high
profile police killings of
unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired
ongoing weekly protests
for several months.
The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will
not graduate in four years.
Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child’s education and ranks 48th in
the country for lowest
teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people
drop out of Louisiana
schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any
given day. Far too
many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a
former slave
plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates
eventually die in the
prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are
are low-paying, transient,
insecure jobs in the service economy.
Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster
is one that was
constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. Hurricane Katrina was
the inevitable spark
igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods
left most at risk, to the
treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this
disaster is shaped by race.
Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week
our political leaders have
defined a new level of incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our
Governor urged us to
“Pray the hurricane down” to a level two. Trapped in a building two days
after the hurricane, we
tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations, hoping
for vital news, and were told
that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors and panic began
to rule, they was no
source of solid dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and
reporters said the water level
would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors spread like
wildfire, and the politicians and
media only made it worse.
While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to
get there were left
behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent
the last week demonizing
those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it,
this is the part of this
tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.
No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely
closed stores in a
desperate, starving city as a “looter,” but that's just what the media did
over and over again. Sheriffs
and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform
rescue operations.
Images of New Orleans’ hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into
black, out-of-control,
criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured
against loss is a greater crime
than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars
of damage and
destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus
on “welfare queens” and
“super-predators” obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the
Savings and Loan
scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being
used as a scapegoat
to cover up much larger crimes.
City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at
least the mid-1800s, its been
widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of
1927, which, like this
week’s events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural
disaster, illustrated
exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently
refused to spend the money to
protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city. While FEMA and others warned
of the urgent impending
danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and
protect the city, the
Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund
New Orleans flood control,
and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of
global warming. And, as the
dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response
dramatized vividly the callous
disregard of our elected leaders.
The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US
President and a
Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.
In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New
Orleans. This money can either be
spent to usher in a “New Deal” for the city, with public investment,
creation of stable union jobs, new
schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be
“rebuilt and revitalized” to a
shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain
stores and theme parks
replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.
Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism,
disinvestment,
deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from this pre-Katrina
hurricane will take
billions to repair.
Now that the money is flowing in, and the world’s eyes are focused on
Katrina, its vital that
progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding
with justice. New Orleans is
a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.
-----------------------------------------------
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine
(www.leftturn.org). He is not
planning on moving out of New Orleans.
-----------------------------------------------
Below are some small, grassroots and New Orleans-based resources,
organizations and institutions
that will need your support in the coming months.
Social Justice:
www.jjpl.org
www.iftheycanlearn.org
www.nolaps.org
www.thepeoplesinstitute.org/
www.criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=crno_home
Cultural Resources:
www.backstreetculturalmuseum.com
www.ashecac.org/
http://198.66.50.128/gallery/
www.nolahumanrights.org
http://www.freewebs.com/ironrail/
http://www.girlgangproductions.com/
Current Info and Resources:
http://neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html
by Jordan Flaherty
Friday, September 2, 2005
I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I
was staying in by boat to a
helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of
federal and state officials
towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the
refugee camps.
In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway,
thousands of people (at least 90%
black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades,
under an unforgiving
sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would
come through, it
would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the
barricades, and people
would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was
going. Once inside (we
were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton
Rouge, Houston,
Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus
bound for Arkansas (for
example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would
not be allowed to get
out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to
go to the shelter in
Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up,
they could not come
within 17 miles of the camp.
I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation
Army workers, National
Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give
me any details on when
buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other
information. I spoke to the
several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able
to get any information
from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of
them, from Australian tv to local
Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One
cameraman told me “as
someone who’s been here in this camp for two days, the only information I
can give you is this: get
out by nightfall. You don’t want to be here at night.”
There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up
any sort of transparent
and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to
register contact information or find
family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone
services, treatment for
possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.
To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New
Orleans itself.
For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible,
glorious, vital, city. A
place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70%
African-American city
where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and
unique culture of
vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras
Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz
Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of
art and music and
dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.
It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can
take two hours because you
stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls
together when someone is in
need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the
gaps left by city, state and federal
governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare.
It is a city where someone
you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an
answer.
It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New
Orleans has a population of
just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them
centered on just a few,
overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that
they don’t need to
search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting,
the attacker is shot in
revenge.
There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of
Black New Orleans and the
N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of
everything from drug
running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans
police officers were recently
charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high
profile police killings of
unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired
ongoing weekly protests
for several months.
The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will
not graduate in four years.
Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child’s education and ranks 48th in
the country for lowest
teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people
drop out of Louisiana
schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any
given day. Far too
many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a
former slave
plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates
eventually die in the
prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are
are low-paying, transient,
insecure jobs in the service economy.
Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster
is one that was
constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. Hurricane Katrina was
the inevitable spark
igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods
left most at risk, to the
treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this
disaster is shaped by race.
Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week
our political leaders have
defined a new level of incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our
Governor urged us to
“Pray the hurricane down” to a level two. Trapped in a building two days
after the hurricane, we
tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations, hoping
for vital news, and were told
that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors and panic began
to rule, they was no
source of solid dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and
reporters said the water level
would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors spread like
wildfire, and the politicians and
media only made it worse.
While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to
get there were left
behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent
the last week demonizing
those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it,
this is the part of this
tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.
No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely
closed stores in a
desperate, starving city as a “looter,” but that's just what the media did
over and over again. Sheriffs
and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform
rescue operations.
Images of New Orleans’ hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into
black, out-of-control,
criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured
against loss is a greater crime
than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars
of damage and
destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus
on “welfare queens” and
“super-predators” obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the
Savings and Loan
scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being
used as a scapegoat
to cover up much larger crimes.
City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at
least the mid-1800s, its been
widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of
1927, which, like this
week’s events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural
disaster, illustrated
exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently
refused to spend the money to
protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city. While FEMA and others warned
of the urgent impending
danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and
protect the city, the
Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund
New Orleans flood control,
and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of
global warming. And, as the
dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response
dramatized vividly the callous
disregard of our elected leaders.
The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US
President and a
Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.
In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New
Orleans. This money can either be
spent to usher in a “New Deal” for the city, with public investment,
creation of stable union jobs, new
schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be
“rebuilt and revitalized” to a
shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain
stores and theme parks
replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.
Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism,
disinvestment,
deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from this pre-Katrina
hurricane will take
billions to repair.
Now that the money is flowing in, and the world’s eyes are focused on
Katrina, its vital that
progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding
with justice. New Orleans is
a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.
-----------------------------------------------
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine
(www.leftturn.org). He is not
planning on moving out of New Orleans.
-----------------------------------------------
Below are some small, grassroots and New Orleans-based resources,
organizations and institutions
that will need your support in the coming months.
Social Justice:
www.jjpl.org
www.iftheycanlearn.org
www.nolaps.org
www.thepeoplesinstitute.org/
www.criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=crno_home
Cultural Resources:
www.backstreetculturalmuseum.com
www.ashecac.org/
http://198.66.50.128/gallery/ www.nolahumanrights.org
http://www.freewebs.com/ironrail/ http://www.girlgangproductions.com/ Current Info and Resources:
http://neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html
Jordan Flaherty
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Brits’ Hell Inside the Terror Dome
03.09.2005 13:33
Ryan Parry, Mirror (London), Sept. 2
British students told yesterday how they stepped out of the horror of Hurricane Katrina into the hell of their Superdome “shelter”.
A place of refuge became a terrifying trap, where knives and guns, crack cocaine use, threats of violence and racial abuse were rife.
Jamie Trout, 22, who kept a record of his four days there, said: “It was like something out of Lord of the Flies—one minute everything is calm and civil, the next it descends into chaos.”
In one diary entry, he said: “A man has been arrested for raping a seven-year-old in the toilet, this place is hell, I feel sick. The smell is horrendous, there are toilets overflowing and people everywhere.”
As the evacuation of the 70,000—capacity arena continued yesterday, the swamped city of New Orleans descended into near barbarism.
The looting and carjacking of recent days showed no sign of slowing. Gunfire was aimed at police and helicopters attempting to ferry the sick from hospitals, accompanied by shouts of: “You better come get my family.”
Ten thousand National Guardsmen were sent in from across the US to the flood-ravaged Gulf coast.
At least seven bodies lay unclaimed in the streets around the New Orleans Convention Centre—one a woman in a wheelchair covered by a blanket.
Daniel Edwards, 47, pointed at her and said: “I don’t treat my dog like that … I buried my dog.”
Amid criticism of government inaction, he added: “You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do nothing for your own people.
“You can go overseas with the military but you can’t get them down here.”
Thousands of storm refugees massed outside the convention building, waiting for buses that never came. They had no food, water or medicines.
The Rev Issac Clark, 68, said: “We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help.”
In what may be America’s worst natural disaster for a century, 80 per cent of a city of 500,000 people was under water up to 20ft deep. Thousands could be dead.
At the Superdome, at least 25,000 people were moved out yesterday as New Orleans Mayor Nagin vowed: “Come hell or high water we will evacuate people today, I’ll march them out if I have to.” Soldiers with M16 assault rifles and grenade launchers tried to control crowds desperate to get out.
At least one person died in the arms of a soldier. A National Guardsman was wounded in the leg by his own gun in a struggle with two men and a military helicopter was shot at while ferrying away a casualty.
Brit diary-writer Jamie had been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme.
Jamie, who was with two friends, said: “We were in Miami for three or four days when Katrina first hit.
“We rode that storm out and then decided to go to New Orleans. We didn’t realise the storm was heading that way.”
He said of his eventual Superdome refuge: “There was a lot of heat from the people in there, people shouting racial abuse about us being white.
“The army warned us to keep our bags close to us and to grip them tight.”
Jamie, an economics student from Sunderland, said he saw crack cocaine being used in the filthy toilets, youngsters breaking into soft drink machines and men brawling. Urine and excrement spilled into corridors where they were sleeping.
At one point, up to 30 British students gathered in the dome were so terrified of attack when the power went down that they set up a makeshift security cordon.
Zoe Smith, 21, from Hull, said: “All us girls sat in the middle while the boys sat on the outside, with chairs as protection.
“We were absolutely terrified, the situation had descended into chaos, people were very hostile and the living conditions were horrendous.
“We had to wash with tiny bottles of water, the sink was blocked and full of gunk. Even when we offered to help with the cleaning, the locals gave us abuse.”
Some students said they saw an 18-inch knife confiscated from one man and many others had guns and other weapons.
Marisa Haigh, 23, from Guildford, who is studying at Birmingham University, and Claire Watkins, 23, a student from Bradford, had arrived in New Orleans last Saturday after a trip across the US.
Claire said: “We went out drinking on Saturday night and had an awesome time.
“On Sunday we had hangovers and hadn’t heard or read anything about the hurricane coming in. We only realised there was something wrong when we went out in the street and no one was around, everywhere was shut or boarded up.”
They were in the Superdome when Katrina hit. Marisa said: “There was a series of almighty bangs when the roof went and a panel flew off.
“There was a woman screaming, ‘We’re gonna die, we’re all gonna die’.”
Eventually many of the students were moved to the nearby basketball arena, thanks to Sgt Garland Ogden, a full-timer with the National Guard.
Jane Wheeldon, 20, said: “He went against a lot of rules to get us moved.”
Yesterday Texas was ready to house 50,000 flood refugees—25,000 of them in the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away. The rest will go to San Antonio.
Rescue in some areas was suspended as looters ran amok.
Coast Guard Lt Cmdr Cheri Ben-Iesan said at emergency HQ: “Hospitals are trying to evacuate. At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them, telling them, ‘You better come get my family’. City leader Mitch Landrieu toured stricken areas and was besieged by rescued people begging him to pass information to their families.
His pocket was full of scraps of paper on which he had scribbled down their phone numbers.
He contacted a woman whose father had been saved and told her: “Your daddy’s alive, and he said to tell you he loves you.”
Landrieu added: “She just started crying. She said, ‘I thought he was dead’.”
In Britain, worried relatives of the Superdome students were told by the Mirror their loved ones were safe.
From details given to our reporters at the scene, we passed on messages to families nationwide.
Zoe Smith’s mother Sharon said in Hull: “That’s brilliant. It’s been horrendous not knowing what on earth has happened to her. I have barely slept.”
Fine art publisher Janet Murray, 55, from Frome, Somerset, whose daughter Hannah was stranded, said: “I had not heard anything, thanks so much for letting me know.”
Hurricane Aussies Fear for Safety
Australian Associated Press, Sept. 2
Australians trapped in flood-ravaged New Orleans are in fear of their lives as the city descends into lawlessness.
Tourists stranded in the US Gulf Coast city and sheltering in its huge Superdome sports stadium in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have told of shootings, rapes and looting, and are growing increasingly concerned for their safety.
More than 50 Australians are believed to be trapped in New Orleans and surrounding areas.
Brisbane man Peter McNeil said his 22-year-old son John was stranded in New Orleans but had now moved with other foreigners out of the Superdome for their own protection.
Violence and racist behaviour had forced the group, including about 10 Australians, to take refuge in a hotel lobby after seeing people raped and murdered, he said.
“It’s a real racist issue, apparently, between the locals, and they were segregated, and John said they would stab you as soon as look at you,” Mr McNeil told ABC radio.
“He’s never been so scared in his life. He just said they had to get out of the dark otherwise, another night, he said, they would have gone.
“He said the tension was just building so much it was impossible to stay in there.”
Tim and Joanne Miller, from Rockhampton in Queensland, have also made contact with their family in Australia. They said they were too scared to move.
“The violence there is escalating. There are shootings—they’ve now got three dead bodies at the bottom of the stairwell where they are,” their daughter Kelly-Rae Smith told ABC radio.
“There’s so much violence going on there. It shows you how much violence when the SWAT (police) team locked themselves in their building.”
Sharon Whyte of Victoria, whose mother Pamela and cousin Karen are in New Orleans, said the pair was at the convention centre near the Superdome, but did not know what was happening.
“(They’re) not too good at the moment, they’re not handling the situation very well,” Ms Whyte told the Nine Network.
“They haven’t had water since Tuesday. My mother’s on medication, I don’t know if she’s taken that.
“All the family here don’t know anything and they’re in a bad way.
“My cousin got through early this morning, it was only a quick call because the phone went dead.
“She said they’re just terrified. They’ve got no idea what’s going on whether there’s buses there.
“That don’t know how long they’ll be there, nothing at all.”
Australian officials, who have been blocked by US authorities from entering hurricane-damaged areas, estimate there are “more than 50” Australians in New Orleans and the surrounding hurricane-damaged areas.
No Australians are missing and there are no reports of Australian deaths or injuries. Those stranded will be taken by bus to Houston, Texas.
“Our advice for people in the region is to follow the lead and guidance of the local authorities and we are doing everything we can to monitor the events,” Matt Francis, a spokesman for the Australian embassy in Washington, told AAP.
However, Australia’s diplomatic effort has come under fire from relatives.
The mother and boyfriend of Australian tourist Vanessa Cullington are flying to the US this morning to try to find her after losing contact with her three days ago.
The 22-year-old, of Castlereagh in Sydney, last contacted her family on Tuesday from New Orleans after arriving in the city by train in the aftermath of the hurricane.
Vanessa’s mother, Sharon Cullington, said she was desperate for information about her daughter but had received a less than sympathetic response from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
“They actually did get back to me at midnight on Wednesday night with an attitude of ‘well, what was she doing there’,” she said.
“There was even a bit of a scoff in (the official’s) voice.”
Mr and Mrs Miller’s daughter Ms Smith criticised DFAT, saying they had been unhelpful in their responses.
DFAT defended its efforts, saying it was difficult to get information on Australians because the US government had banned foreign consular officials from entering the disaster zone.
“We are aware of a number of Australians awaiting evacuation and others who may be in the affected area,” a DFAT spokesman said.
“We understand the frustration but we’re doing what we can in the circumstances.”
news
thank you
03.09.2005 13:44
so just to say we're thinking of y'all, lots and lots of love and luck to everyone there and how about this idea I've heard bandied about of mobilising the disposessed (once they've had a meal, a bath and a night or two in a bed of course) to march on DC and demand a changed set of national priorities?
wondering
thank you
05.09.2005 02:10
It is so difficult for us outsiders and me being in Australia, to comprehend what it is and has been like in New Orleans the past few days.
Many many comparisons have been made to the Tsunami last December in Asia where it seemed to go so smoothly and with seemingly so little disorder and choas.
I think the world is stunned, and has a lot to say about how this has been handled. it saddens and sickens so many to see that in a time of great need and devastation and hopelessness that rape, murder and gun toting prevailed.
The looting is questionable. There were many who took what I agree with necessary survival items, like people who stocked up on long life items, power bars etc.
But what made journalists and the media comment was the fact that people were taking electrical items, plants and things that were just plain looting! People were/are desperate and I guess in terms of survival, people got desperate.
The news has been focusing on the looting aspect, the lawlessness and people who are not there and like myself do not have a real understanding of New Orlean's culture are focusing on a city full of chaos.
I think many many people associate crisis and acting in crisis as a time when people band together and do things to survive and make things work. I think inside all of us is a hope that when people are in a situation like this , that it brings out the best in people.
And it has, there are stories pouring out now of the help people received, rescuing, sharing food & water, protecting each other and giving the support.
But sadly there are always a few people who ruin things for the rest and that is unfortunately newsworthy. Australian news has been full of the rape & murder stories, the looting and lawlessness.
I think that New Orleans has a history and culture and spirit that will rebuild itself, there are people like you whose hearts belong there and they will rebuild and return, the places that made New Orleans special like the jazz bars, the cheap food nights, the jazz funerals, the alleyways and all that New Orleans is is in the hearts of the people. Part or most of the refusal not to leave at first is because it must be sheer hell to leave your home, your heart, your familiarity with a place and a time.
I do believe that all of us, feel a sense of loss, a sense of displacement, a sense of shame. I cried watching the media press and photos and stories and death.
It is so easy for me to say all this at a desk in Sydney, safe that it has not happened to us, but there are no guarentees and who knows how people will behave and react.
I understand that people do judge the black and the poor, and that the majority of the black people I am sure in new Orleans have huge hearts and a sense of culture & spirit and have no connection with the murderers and rapists and that most of the people in New Orleans are good and hard working and full of compassion. hopefully when the stories start unravelling we will see them.
e
e-mail:
bksbront@bigpond.net.au