Young Writers Society

areida07 wrote:Nate: Any more news?

None yet. But we are fairly sure now that my Uncle Bruce's home was destroyed as we've seen pictures from where he lives and not a single house is standing there. Looks like the apartment complex my Uncle Russell was staying in is gone too. In any case, won't hear from either of them for probably another few days... at least. Fortunately, my Uncle Clay is doing just fine and managed to get clean water, a hot meal, a shower, and gas today.



Anyhow, I keep on thinking the news from New Orleans will get better, but it just sounds worse and worse. Last night I was reading news articles about families who watched their love ones die. The worst one I read was of a family who heard their downstairs neighbors clawing and pounding at the ceiling for help as the flood waters rose.

Now there's talk of it taking months, if not years, to get New Orleans to some semblance of what it used to be. They're hoping the water will be pumped out within two months, but then they have to do a major environmental cleanup and repair any structural damage. Those latter two could take up to six months. Then once New Orleans is ready for people again, the water in the area is still going to be very polluted.

What I hope for is that there is an investigation into this so that we can figure out what went wrong. Also, I hope we find out why there was no backup electricity for the pumps, why buses were not used to evacuate the people in the poorer areas, and why there was no plan in place for this type of disaster, especially since they've been fretting about this for decades.

It says somethign that this situation can happen in the richest country in the world. The Levys broke because the government only had grade three bad quality levys and hadn't invested any money in them, owing to cheap deals to make them and favours for friends. This was a grade four moving on to grade five hurricane. Many of the poor population of New Orleans were left there because some couldn't afford the bus ride out or was so dosed up on Crack (because of its huge problem amongst the poor population) that they couldn't organise themselves to leave. And a lot of this poor population are black because it suits America's government to have this poor black population because they work in the lowest paid jobs that no one wants to do and clean the casinos, as gambling makes America a hell of a lot of money. While at the same time they can't get enough help out there because the homne guard is severly weakened by the number of people fighting in Iraq and they're stupid enough to think that 10pound bags of sand will help to stop water rushing through a hundred foot gap, when all structural engineers or geoligists know that only huge lumps of tarmac could possibly stop the flood, and now its been such a strong pressure of water for such a long time it won't stop till the waters levelled out (because everyone knows where theres a devy and the rivers above land level it has to level out) so most of New Orleans will be under seven foot of water. .

At the same time those left there are getting shot and raped by each other and commiting suicide. Largely because of the appaling situation and people think that the sudden loss of drugs that many people there are addicted to have helped cause this reaction. People are living with all thier possesions 7 foot under water full of mudsharks, alligators and dead corpses. WQhile their are thousands of refuggess from the city with no money and no where to go.

"The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two."

It's going to take years to sort out this mess, a couple of months is impossible. Some are even saying they might have to abandon New Orleans as a city altogeather.

It all makes me very very very sad and angry.

what the hell? how is this not getting talked about.