The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of [the hurricane] looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond’s version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less — mainly Black — were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.
New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city’s poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean’s daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the “large group…mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods” who wanted to evacuate but couldn’t.
Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.
The date: September 24, 2004
The web site: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6292
Those in power have repeatedly said, and would have us believe, that most of those trapped in dire circumstances in New Orleans — up to 4/5 of them — are in their condition as a direct result of their unfortunate decision to remain in the city in the face of a Category 5 hurricane.
Their decision to remain, with no vehicle, no money, and no busses left in the city?
Spin and humbug.