cop with shotgun. AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Matt Rouke It's hard to tell what's going on when I'm not in the US, but from what I've read and seen New Orleans sounds like a horrorshow. Not just the flooding and the evacuation, but the looting and the deaths and the thousands of people living in a closed sports arena with no toilets or fresh air.
Police were asking residents to give up any firearms before they evacuated neighborhoods because officers desperately needed the firepower: Some officers who had been stranded on the roof of a hotel said they were shot at.

Police said their first priority remained saving lives, and mostly just stood by and watched the looting. But Nagin later said the looting had gotten so bad that stopping the thieves became the top priority for the police department. "They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas - hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said in a statement to The Associated Press.

I don't normally think of this kind of disaster and consequent chaos happening in the US. Because you know, we're civilized and technological and all that. A whole city is going to be gone, for two months, and the people left behind are going nuts. It makes me shudder to think what would happen if a serious earthquake damaged the bridges out of San Francisco.

life
  2005-09-01 08:46 Z