I'm speechless!

So I decided to blog. Just read on cnn.com that a New Orleans police officer committed suicide because he couldn’t deal with the chaos any longer. What a waste of life! How desperate & frustrated he must have been – a police office who is used to bringing chaotic situations under control – to take his own life. He was just 36!! He lost his own home in the flood.

I must confess, much as I would like to, I haven’t had much exposure to the news regarding New Orleans flood situation. Partly because I have been very busy to even pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV. And let’s face it, reading the newspaper doesn’t do anyone any good because they don’t cover much of non-local news. And now they are even making this out to be a racist issue. Trust the journalists to take the focus away from the real crisis (danger to the lives of so many people) and put it on their own agenda (inefficiency of George W. Bush govt. or racism) because that is what gets people’s attention!

Anyway, I heard that even after a mandatory evacuation order, many people chose to stay back. Maybe fear of loss of property and valuables made them stay back. Many of them must have stayed because they had no means of getting out. But some definitely stayed because they had no plans of leaving. That made me wonder about human nature. How materialistic can we get that even a threat to our lives would make us take such foolish decisions? Why did these people stay back? And now they are blaming the authorities for the “misfortune” that fell on them? I even read that one man refused to evacuate even after a rescue team found him and his family (if it was a “rescue” team, it must have been after the flooding, I am assuming). The rescue teams decided not to take any food or water to any such “victims” in order to force them to evacuate. Can you blame them? I don’t!!

The mayor could have put in more efforts to evacuate the city before all this happened. I didn’t hear anyone placing an iota of blame on his administration. He should have known how much of the city’s population will need transportation and help in getting out. Why weren’t people forced to evacuate? I read about visitors flying into the city just before the disaster. Why weren’t they stopped from entering? Preventive efforts like this would have made the after-effects of this calamity less severe.

In my opinion, this situation has two faces to it. On one side is the inefficient local administration who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) evacuate people even after a state of emergency was declared. On the other side are people who refused to heed the evacuation warning. No government or administration can help people if they don’t want to be helped. But, to me, it seems very unfair to place the blame squarely on one person’s administration for all this.

People had adequate prior warning. They could have left before all this started. Many did. Granted, not everyone is well prepared (or even slightly prepared) for a situation like this. But in times of crises one needs to make decisions, and fast! There has to be a priority to everything. In my books, life of my loved ones (and my own – of course) has a priority over everything else – be it money, property, house or anything else.

All said and done, even in the worst of situations, people always have choices. I have been hearing/reading stories about choices people have made all these days. I have been hearing about those who made matters worse for everyone around (rescuers and “rescuees”) by looting, shooting and creating a havoc, in general. What was their motive or reasoning? I dunno. Where will they go with those plasma TVs and loads of jeans they looted?? (For the record, I am not against people who looted food and water to help sustain their families). And then there are people who are still trying their best to help others. Heard a story on today’s news about a man who went around in his boat rescuing people. Amy Henry, the woman who distributed food and water in front of a restaurant after being rescued, and sang in an impromptu church service. These are the stories that lift my spirits up. In my opinion, journalists should stop shouting “Racist!” and highlight the work of these people – if they won’t do anything else to help the victims.