‘Lisa Moore tells the story of her cousin Denise - instead of the ‘rioting looters’ depicted by the bourgeois media, she saw desparate people doing their utmost to help each other.’
Still in Tampa and still in the state otherwise known as The Giant Whang or LimpDick. I live in the mini wang hanging off the backside of it.
We have similar problems to NOLA, being only second behind them in terms of evac problems and likely death and destruction. Do we have enough shelters? Hell naw! We need shelter spaces for 370,000 people, but we only have shelter space for 140,000.
Last year, people couldn’t even get off work in time to buy supplies. Their employers’ wouldn’t let them go. By the time they got to the store, the shelves were emptied. You want to talk about looting? Just watch a bunch of people with cash and credit cards _before_ a hurricane.
If you haven’t seen it, this series (by fellow LBOster Steve Perry) is excellent.
Well, Tampa should rightly be ignored at this time. But, then again, it shouldn’t be, I suppose because, for those of who are politically progressive here, the whole thing is quite infuriating.
Living here, through last year’s crazy quadruple header season, I am acutely aware of just how ordinary and expected was what happened in New Orleans and the rest of the region.
Even after that season, there wasn’t the political will to change anything. And what is surely most disgusting, to me, in all of it is that 99% of mainstream discussion ignores the role business plays in the situation.
Local businesses threated to sue New Orleans if Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation, for instance.
Or, as with my friends here in the Tampa Bay area, who couldn’t get the time off, or get their paychecks early, who must endure lengthy commutes, and who, when they can get to the stores, find them empty. A friend of mine has a second job delivery pizza. When Charley missed us and demolished Punta Gorda, to our South, she went into work. She had people flagging her down to order a pizza. They were hungry because, living pay check to paycheck, they didn’t have food in the house and, when they had time to buy it, there wasn’t any to buy.
The role of local businesses in putting pressure on local governments not to evacuate is enormous.
My own personal view is that there’s no need to fully evacuate anyway. Sure, the situation could be used to push for better public transporation. That would be great and I’ve been asked to do so. However, I really don’t feel right about it since the issues aren’t that simple.
When people evacuate, after seeing what happened in the Gulf region, they will want to bring their pets, a roomful of photo albums, computer equipment, valuables, etc. We would never be able to evacuate people and all their stuff. We’d have to place a limit on how much they could take. People wouldn’t take kindly to that, without a policy promising to reimurse them, since afterall, whatever they take on that train or bus might just be all they’ll have left after the hurricane.
So, in the end, the people with the wherewithal aren’t going to avail themselves of PT to begin with. They are going to stick to using one or both or three of their cars in order to evacuate. (And that is what people do, they use all their cars, which clogs up the transporation routes even more.)
In which case, the strain on the highway system will not lighten as intended.
It takes 56 hours just to evacuate Greater Tampa Bay. IIRC, it would have taken 78 hours to evacuate New Orleans. That’s not counting the coastal regions to the South of NOLA. Ditto Tampa, were the big one to hit, you’d evacuate the entire West coastal region. Given the geography, it would take 108 hours to evac Tampa Bay and the region to the South. And they’d all be heading the same way on the same limited highways.
The problem is, where was Katrina 78 hours prior? It was a category 1 or a tropical storm around that time. Thus, that many hours in advance, you don’t really know if you should evacuate a region anyway. When you have a better idea, you’re usually talking 24-36 hours of advance warning.
Last year, as the killer hurricane Ivan loomed, we were still wondering if we should shut down the schools on a Monday, when the storm was predicted to make landfall on Tuesday. This is how precarious prediction is.
So, when people scream about the failure to call a mandatory evacuation any sooner than 24 hours, I just shake my head.
Logistically, full evacuation is really nearly impossible, just because of the prediction problems. Politically, you surely can’t: businesses, especially in a tourist area, won’t tolerate evacuating people 3-5 days in advance when our ability to predict where the storm will hit is still so imprecise.
So, public transporation is a great solution, but taking into account US culture, individualism, habits, ideology, etc., it’s still going to be mainly for the poor. And, thus, you won’t change the evac problems on the highway.
And the lack of fuel that seemed to shock everyone? Lawdy! This is _normal_ before a hurricane. Everyone thinks it’s just the unusual situation this year. It wasn’t. It’s normal to run out of fuel in the region the day before the storm. It’s happened through every hurricane I’ve been through since 1997, and that was without any massive evacuation, let alone a mandatory evacuation. Because, if it wasn’t clear, it’s quite normal to merely encourage voluntary evacuations first, then order a mandatory evacuation a day or so before the storm is expected to make landfall.)
What you really need is decent evacuation centers within a region. Even in the city that’s sinking there were such spaces. No one wanted to build them. Just as we haven’t built them here. Our evac. centers are only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. We learned last year, that sometimes they can’t withstand a tropical force winds!
And stocking them with supplies or having adequate alternative sewage/waste systems? This is a joke. What happened in New Orleans is normal, at least around here. Heck, on of our evac system flooded during Ivan, and the storm passed 100 miles to our West.
Obviously, I could go on. :)
If anyone’s interested, I’ll point them at the essays I’ve written on the topic, complete with links to relevant research and articles.
I’ve been clicking the gooleads and the results always crack me up. I look forward to a dissertation on them. If you know anything about advertising with google (as a vendor) and using them on a site, you have a clue just what key words people are buying. It would make vastly interesting dissertation fodder — but then, I’m weird. Needless to say, of course, it would simply be used to figure out ever new ways to advertise more effectively. Not unlike the way Google begain as a dissertation.
looting
Update: thanks to s0metim3s, a link to “Get Off the Fucking Freeway”, from MetaMute.
Posthegemonic Musings [September 8, 2005 @ 2:45 am]
More on Katrina etc. here.
dearkitty [September 8, 2005 @ 8:41 pm]
Of course, when I posted this item to an IT list, a few folks quickly discovered that it was written by SOCIALISTS!
K (from LBO — thanks to Eric B. for alerting us to your blog. I’ve been wondering where you’ve been!)
Kelley [September 8, 2005 @ 8:56 pm]
Hey Kelley. How’s Tampa, if you’re still there?
s0metim3s [September 9, 2005 @ 12:23 am]
There’s also this - http://cpgb.org.uk/worker/591/hurricane-survivor.htm
Weekly Worker 591 Thursday September 8 2005
A survivor’s story
‘Lisa Moore tells the story of her cousin Denise - instead of the ‘rioting looters’ depicted by the bourgeois media, she saw desparate people doing their utmost to help each other.’
Steve [September 9, 2005 @ 6:57 am]
Still in Tampa and still in the state otherwise known as The Giant Whang or LimpDick. I live in the mini wang hanging off the backside of it.
We have similar problems to NOLA, being only second behind them in terms of evac problems and likely death and destruction. Do we have enough shelters? Hell naw! We need shelter spaces for 370,000 people, but we only have shelter space for 140,000.
Last year, people couldn’t even get off work in time to buy supplies. Their employers’ wouldn’t let them go. By the time they got to the store, the shelves were emptied. You want to talk about looting? Just watch a bunch of people with cash and credit cards _before_ a hurricane.
If you haven’t seen it, this series (by fellow LBOster Steve Perry) is excellent.
http://citypages.com/databank/26/1294/article13694.asp
Kelley [September 23, 2005 @ 4:08 am]
That sounds like so much awful Kelley. I hope you’re doing ok.
And thanks for that, about Tampa (which has figured nowhere that I can see from this part of the world) and the link.
s0metim3s [September 24, 2005 @ 12:21 am]
Hi Ang,
Well, Tampa should rightly be ignored at this time. But, then again, it shouldn’t be, I suppose because, for those of who are politically progressive here, the whole thing is quite infuriating.
Living here, through last year’s crazy quadruple header season, I am acutely aware of just how ordinary and expected was what happened in New Orleans and the rest of the region.
Even after that season, there wasn’t the political will to change anything. And what is surely most disgusting, to me, in all of it is that 99% of mainstream discussion ignores the role business plays in the situation.
Local businesses threated to sue New Orleans if Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation, for instance.
Or, as with my friends here in the Tampa Bay area, who couldn’t get the time off, or get their paychecks early, who must endure lengthy commutes, and who, when they can get to the stores, find them empty. A friend of mine has a second job delivery pizza. When Charley missed us and demolished Punta Gorda, to our South, she went into work. She had people flagging her down to order a pizza. They were hungry because, living pay check to paycheck, they didn’t have food in the house and, when they had time to buy it, there wasn’t any to buy.
The role of local businesses in putting pressure on local governments not to evacuate is enormous.
My own personal view is that there’s no need to fully evacuate anyway. Sure, the situation could be used to push for better public transporation. That would be great and I’ve been asked to do so. However, I really don’t feel right about it since the issues aren’t that simple.
When people evacuate, after seeing what happened in the Gulf region, they will want to bring their pets, a roomful of photo albums, computer equipment, valuables, etc. We would never be able to evacuate people and all their stuff. We’d have to place a limit on how much they could take. People wouldn’t take kindly to that, without a policy promising to reimurse them, since afterall, whatever they take on that train or bus might just be all they’ll have left after the hurricane.
So, in the end, the people with the wherewithal aren’t going to avail themselves of PT to begin with. They are going to stick to using one or both or three of their cars in order to evacuate. (And that is what people do, they use all their cars, which clogs up the transporation routes even more.)
In which case, the strain on the highway system will not lighten as intended.
It takes 56 hours just to evacuate Greater Tampa Bay. IIRC, it would have taken 78 hours to evacuate New Orleans. That’s not counting the coastal regions to the South of NOLA. Ditto Tampa, were the big one to hit, you’d evacuate the entire West coastal region. Given the geography, it would take 108 hours to evac Tampa Bay and the region to the South. And they’d all be heading the same way on the same limited highways.
The problem is, where was Katrina 78 hours prior? It was a category 1 or a tropical storm around that time. Thus, that many hours in advance, you don’t really know if you should evacuate a region anyway. When you have a better idea, you’re usually talking 24-36 hours of advance warning.
Last year, as the killer hurricane Ivan loomed, we were still wondering if we should shut down the schools on a Monday, when the storm was predicted to make landfall on Tuesday. This is how precarious prediction is.
So, when people scream about the failure to call a mandatory evacuation any sooner than 24 hours, I just shake my head.
Logistically, full evacuation is really nearly impossible, just because of the prediction problems. Politically, you surely can’t: businesses, especially in a tourist area, won’t tolerate evacuating people 3-5 days in advance when our ability to predict where the storm will hit is still so imprecise.
So, public transporation is a great solution, but taking into account US culture, individualism, habits, ideology, etc., it’s still going to be mainly for the poor. And, thus, you won’t change the evac problems on the highway.
And the lack of fuel that seemed to shock everyone? Lawdy! This is _normal_ before a hurricane. Everyone thinks it’s just the unusual situation this year. It wasn’t. It’s normal to run out of fuel in the region the day before the storm. It’s happened through every hurricane I’ve been through since 1997, and that was without any massive evacuation, let alone a mandatory evacuation. Because, if it wasn’t clear, it’s quite normal to merely encourage voluntary evacuations first, then order a mandatory evacuation a day or so before the storm is expected to make landfall.)
What you really need is decent evacuation centers within a region. Even in the city that’s sinking there were such spaces. No one wanted to build them. Just as we haven’t built them here. Our evac. centers are only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. We learned last year, that sometimes they can’t withstand a tropical force winds!
And stocking them with supplies or having adequate alternative sewage/waste systems? This is a joke. What happened in New Orleans is normal, at least around here. Heck, on of our evac system flooded during Ivan, and the storm passed 100 miles to our West.
Obviously, I could go on. :)
If anyone’s interested, I’ll point them at the essays I’ve written on the topic, complete with links to relevant research and articles.
Kelley
Kelley [October 3, 2005 @ 9:55 am]
Yikes! I guess that was waaaaaaaaaay too long. Sorry! I got carried away.
Kelley [October 3, 2005 @ 9:55 am]
I’ve been clicking the gooleads and the results always crack me up. I look forward to a dissertation on them. If you know anything about advertising with google (as a vendor) and using them on a site, you have a clue just what key words people are buying. It would make vastly interesting dissertation fodder — but then, I’m weird. Needless to say, of course, it would simply be used to figure out ever new ways to advertise more effectively. Not unlike the way Google begain as a dissertation.
Bitch [November 2, 2005 @ 6:46 am]