Iowa vs. Louisiana
69charger
Posts: 1,045
Just a personal observation...as I watched the news coverage of the massive flooding in the Midwest with over 100 blocks of the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa under water, levees breaking, and the attention now turned downstream for when this massive amount of water hits the Mississippi, what amazed me is not what we saw, but what we didn't see...
1. We don't see looting.
2. We don't see street violence.
3. We don't see people sitting on their rooftops waiting for the government to come and save them.
4. We don't see people waiting on the government to do anything.
5. We don't see Hollywood organizing benefits to raise money for people to rebuild.
6. We don't see people blaming President Bush.
7. We don't see people ignoring evacuation orders.
8. We don't see people blaming a government conspiracy to blow up the levees as the reason some have not held.
9. We don't see the US Senators or the Governor of Iowa crying on TV.
10. We don't see the Mayors of any of these cities complaining about the lack of state or federal response.
11. We don't see or hear reports of the police going around confiscating personal firearms so only the criminal will be armed.
12. We don't see gangs of people going around and randomly shooting at the rescue workers.
13. You don't see some leaders in this country blaming the bad behavior of the Iowa flood victims on 'society' (of course there is no wide spread reports of lawlessness to require excuses).
Re: Iowa vs. Louisiana:
Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for
help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?
Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal
government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and
trailers) are?
Why isn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels
in Chicago?
When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees
that failed in Des Moines?
Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?
Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen
television sets?
When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a
'vanilla' Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?
Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of
cannibalism?
Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural
people?
How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever
again?
1. We don't see looting.
2. We don't see street violence.
3. We don't see people sitting on their rooftops waiting for the government to come and save them.
4. We don't see people waiting on the government to do anything.
5. We don't see Hollywood organizing benefits to raise money for people to rebuild.
6. We don't see people blaming President Bush.
7. We don't see people ignoring evacuation orders.
8. We don't see people blaming a government conspiracy to blow up the levees as the reason some have not held.
9. We don't see the US Senators or the Governor of Iowa crying on TV.
10. We don't see the Mayors of any of these cities complaining about the lack of state or federal response.
11. We don't see or hear reports of the police going around confiscating personal firearms so only the criminal will be armed.
12. We don't see gangs of people going around and randomly shooting at the rescue workers.
13. You don't see some leaders in this country blaming the bad behavior of the Iowa flood victims on 'society' (of course there is no wide spread reports of lawlessness to require excuses).
Re: Iowa vs. Louisiana:
Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for
help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?
Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal
government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and
trailers) are?
Why isn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels
in Chicago?
When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees
that failed in Des Moines?
Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?
Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen
television sets?
When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a
'vanilla' Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?
Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of
cannibalism?
Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural
people?
How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever
again?
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Gibson Amphitheatre (Los Angeles): 10/7/09
The floods have devestated a lot of people's lives. It's been unbelievable to watch. Thankfully, my family has only had to deal with traffic jams from closed roads and didn't experience any loss.
You are right though, I only heard of 1 report of looting, too many people are too busy helping their neighbors and friends to go steal stuff. The other difference, Iowans began to prepare for the worst early...unfortunately their efforts mostly didn;t work (sandbagging was breached, etc.). But it was an entirely different attitude. The attitude was...something's going to happen and I better take care of myself, my family and help whoever I can.
My company sent people out of the plant to help sandbag, they are helping their employees effective recover, with paying for hotels, interest free loans, etc. It's really a community loss and the community is helping itself. That appears to be the Midwest way of life.
Oh, and I've seen ads on TV about contacting FEMA, but I've not seen anyone from FEMA or anything at all.
As far as celebrities go...they hate white people.
And you're not leaving here without me, I don't wanna be without
My best... friend. Wake up, to see you could have it all
14. We didn't see a disaster in any way comparable to the scope and scale of Katrina.
End of story.
That maybe true...but it doesn't discount the sense of community that Iowans have...trust me, I don't want to stay here for ever for my own personal reasons, but the people here are very nice and always willign to help. It's something special, and not something I ever experienced in Ohio.
Really? NO is under threat every hurricane season and you are freakin' below sea level. The folks down there should know better by now.
The Iowa floods were a once in 500 year anomaly yet the communities affected reacted to a similar set of circumstances in drastically different ways to that of the people affected by Katrina.
Other than the fact that both disasters involve water, there is no real comparison.
Certainly, great people live everywhere...but, I'll just put it this way...
If I ever have to experience personal hardship from a national disaster...so far, in MY expereince, I hope I'm in Iowa at the time.
I would say that the damage done in Iowa is comparable to the damage done in the lower ninth ward in New Orleans. However, the worst of the damage done during Katrina was along the Mississippi coast because that's where the wall of the storm hit the hardest. I grew up in Mississippi three hours north of the coastal cities of Biloxi, Gulfport, Ocean Springs, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, and Pascagoula. My mom still lives in Mississippi and even her city of Meridian was hard hit by Katrina's winds. One of my ex-girlfriends's mom's and dad's house in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was one of those homes that was completely swept away in the hurricane. An $800,000 home gone in the blink of an eye.
The Mississippi leadership was very proactive and determined after the storm. Iowa's response under Culver has been virtually identical to Haley Barbour's was in Mississippi. The Louisiana/New Orleans leadership (or lack thereof) was vitually non-existent and they did nothing but put blame on others rather than taking responsibility for how they handled the pre-storm preparations and aftermath.
Gibson Amphitheatre (Los Angeles): 10/7/09
Anyhow, I wasn't trying to compare...just giving my account of what I've witnessed...and that is a great deal of community bonding to help each other deal with a very difficult situation.
Learn your shit, and stop with the disaster baiting. Other than water, the circumstances were not similar.
You need to "learn your shit"...the 2008 floods were a 500-year flood. If you actualyl know what that means, you might understand.
1993 the flooding was a 100 year flood.
2008 the water rose over 10 feet higher than recorded (I believe that is the number, though I may not have that 100% right).
I sure bet they had some hurricanes in New Orleans prior to Katrina, no?
More was destroyed in New Orleans than simply the 9th ward. Much more.
The ninth ward was the the area that was the most devastated. The area around Lakefront Arena/UNO was obviously hard hit. The downtown area, including the French Quarter came through quite nicely. The Garden District along Magazine Street where Archie and Olivia Manning live fared fairly well.
Mississippi's coastal area might as well have been hit with a nuclear bomb because that's what it looked like after the hurricane moved through.
Don't misinterpret what I'm saying about New Orleans. I love the city. Because I grew up in Mississippi, I made many trips down there over the years. The last time I was there was for the New Orleans Bowl in December 2006 and when driving toward downtown (from Slidell) it was hard to look at the devastation along the interstate. Even over a year later it still looked like the storm had just happened. A lot of pre-Katrina New Orleans residents now live in Meridian and in my current hometown of Montgomery, AL. I don't blame them for not wanting to go back because in many cases there's nothing to go back to and most of those folks don't have the means to rebuild or start over in New Orleans.
Gibson Amphitheatre (Los Angeles): 10/7/09
Which, perhaps, raises another interesting point as to why it may be completely ridiculous to compare these two situations. i'm no expert, and i may be off a little bit here, but the general socio-economics of Cedar Rapids Iowa and the hardest hit areas of New Orleans are not quite the same. Yeah?
Population density is also something i'm wondering about.
My point is, and again i may be wrong, but in New Orleans what you see is A LOT more devastation, to many, many, MORE people with A LOT less money. It really is stupid to compare.
One other thing, and i say this as an aside because i'm really not sure and its more of a question really. What is the difference in preparation time and time to react given the two separate situations? A massive huricane is much different than a series of thunderstorms is it not?
Why?
New Orleans was a city on the coast built below sea level...that's being set up to fail.
That's a good question...I will say that most people didn;t have any idea just how bad it would be until it was just about to be very bad in Iowa. They knew it would flood, but had no idea how bad. Business near where I am spent time constructing 2 foot walls of sandbags...in the end, the water ended up reaching the ROOFS of these buildings.
AS far as how much time they had for Katrina, I don't rememeber, but HUrricane doesn't exactly just al of a sudden touch ground. It was being tracked for sometime. BUt people never believe it's going to hit them until it gets there...that's just a normal human condition.
It's arguable that the 9th ward was more devastated than Lakeview. I believe It was certainly more of an impact on the individual the lives of those in the 9th ward, mainly because of their financial resources (poor area). Probably easier for the Lakeview residents to "pick themselves up" as it were.
The "bomb" allegory applies here as well. My first view of the devastation was of Lakeview, 3 a.m., about a month after the storm. We were driving in from Texas (job had relocated temporarily), and didn't make it to the city limits before the Midnight curfew (missed it by about 15 minutes). After an 8 hour drive, and desperate to see what happened to our home, we weren't about to listen to the police and hang out in our car until sunrise. It took a few hours of driving, being turned around at every checkpoint, before we found an unwatched road into Orleans Parish by the lakefront. What we saw was shocking, to say the least. Pitch black, line of sight confined to the halo of our headlights, everything covered in an ashen gray, collapsed houses in the middle of the street. In fact, we almost hit one - didn't see or expect it until we turned a corner. Same thing happened a little later, only that time it was a boat (and a big one at that). After wandering around lost in an area that I actually knew only a month before, we were pulled over by the cops for violating curfew. They let us go, saying we weren't the kind of people they were looking for (gee, I wonder what that meant), and pointed us to a road that would lead into downtown. Driving in, we were flanked by soldiers in Humvees like it was some kind of war zone. Finally, downtown, where the power was back on, everything began looking familiar again. When we got home, we were ecstatic that our only major problem was a partially blown off roof.
Well, that's enough wandering down memory lane (i.e. rambling). All I'm saying is that when you compare Iowa and Katrina, or even different areas affected by Katrina, you don't end up with similar circumstances.
This I agree with.
And the areas in Iowa are built on flood plains. Isn't that being set up to fail? The historical truth here is that humans tend to build near water. We drink it, we farm with it, we use it for transportation and shipping, we eat stuff out of it. And, we occasionally drown in it.
Are you seriously going to comapre building a city below sea level on the coast to being in the 500 year flood plain?
And when I used was, Katrina was in the past, so I used the past-tense.
I see it as similar...flood plain vs. below sea level...
basically both are problems waiting to happen...
I'm not comparing the areas themselves. I'm saying that humans have a love-hate relationship with water. New Orleans was built where it was built for economic reasons (that's where you can use "was" - the city "was" built in the past
What I'm saying is, it's never so simple as to say something shouldn't have been built where it was built. If we followed through with that, we wouldn't have much built at all (Manhattan is built on a sand bar, for example).
So let's see here...as I agree, we shoudln't compare Katrina to the Iowa Floods...but it's okay to say they are in a similar position because one is below sea level on the Gulf and the areas in Iowa were built within the 500 year flood plain? 500 year flood plain?
I seriously wonder about some of you sometime.
That's like saying, earthquakes sometimes happen in Ohio so it's the same as building a house along a fault i California.