I think that like most people, I’ve spent the last week or so watching the news in complete and utter disbelief.
It began on the Bank Holiday as the storm came ashore, and I must admit that I watched both the news channels over here as well as some of the streams from local TV stations in the New Orleans area.
There was the usual footage of reporters being blown around in the wild storms, and the eye of the storm passed over.
Then the real tragedy unfolded. I won’t detail that here. Let’s just say that I’ve watch a lot of news footage this week. It quickly became apparent to me as a viewer, and a user of the internet, that people were in trouble and little if anything was happening.
It’s very early days, but several conclusions must already be obvious:
* The evacuation plan was abysmal and didn’t take account of anyone who wasn’t able to evacuate themselves. Compare and contrast with Cuba who recently shifted a million people successfully.
* Those in charge of organisations in place to help after natural disasters such as this are practically criminally negligent. Help was so slow as to be completely unbelievable.
* That it was the poor, and in particular the black population that have suffered the most. White and black have lost homes – but it’s the African-Americans who’ve lost more lives and had to endure unbelievable squalour.
* That Bush, whatever you thought of him before, has misread the situation to an unbelievable degree.
* That the US simply doesn’t get the environmental impact that it’s having on the world. And that this was an expected tragedy.
What are the solutions to all this? I don’t know, but in the short term it’s going to take people and money to get Gulf shore citizens back on their feet. In the medium term, as fuel prices continue to rise, Americans are going to have to drastically change their lives and their attitudes to energy. And in the medium to long term, real changes are going to have to be made in the ways that Americans live in their environment.
And the biggest change of all needs to be social. Caring for your fellow citizens is not some kind of weakness. Providing and caring for others is the greatest sign of civilisation and a country and world that’s grown up.