Iowa Floods As Devastating As Katrina ?

Re: Iowa Floods As Devastating Than Katrina ?

Katrina's bill was $89 billion.

The 1993 flood did $15 billion worth of damage.

I'd say this flood will fall short of Katrina, but the cost will be well above the $15 billion price tag of 1993 - mostly due to food and fuel prices.

 

I was down at the river earlier today. No Sean Penn, no Spike Lee.

Missed my chance to go out on a USGS survey boat with one of our photogs.

 

Any sign of Robert Gallery? The Raiders are looking for the real one.

 

He blocked the levee like he blocks on the offensive line. And all the water went past him.

 

Classic - lol

 

I just returned from a vacation, but I haven't heard (or read) a lot of good about FEMA so far. It's still somewhat early in the process, but the vibe is get is mainly negative.

I have to say, even several days after the worst, I was really blown away by some of the damage where I am. Iowa is getting it worse and on a larger scale, but my area was hit pretty hard too.

 

From the "We Work As Hard As They Do and Don't Get Coverage" file:

A letter to the editor to our paper from a woman in Illinois is wondering why the national news networks are not over in Illinois covering the flood. Essentially, in one sentence she said they are working as hard as the Iowa people, and deserve similar coverage.

 

Ok, rarely do I attack people on this board. But this seriously could be the stupidest post I've ever read on this board. And, yes, I know that's saying something. Seriously, if you actually got your degree from Mizzou, you should ask for your money back.

I have friends in New Orleans. When Katrina happened, they had to evacuate for weeks. The entire city was basically shut down for a month.

I live in Southern California. When the wildfires were going on last year, they were obviously devestating in certain areas. (I'm not trying to make light of people losing their homes.) Other areas in the region, however, functioned almost normally. Stores were open (with some limited hours because of staffing issues,) and shelves were mostly stocked. You could go about to many areas of the region and almost not know that there was a major disaster happening.

I'm not very familiar with all that's going on in Iowa. But to say the only difference between Katrina and the wildfires is that people left for the wildfires is just plain stupid.

 

Dammit JB! Don't you know it's for her scrapbook!

 

I will grant you there is something to the rural, self-reliant, help-your-neighbor mentality.

However, one thing that has always irked my about Katrina coverage/commentary is how people always say that Mississipi and Alabama did a better job of handling things than New Orleans. I have family/friends throughout the region.

Yes, Mississippi did get the brunt of the actual hurricane. Once the storm passed though, they could get to cleaning things up and recovering much like after a "usual" hurricane. (Granted this was a really bad storm, and I'm not trying to minimize that)

In New Orleans, once the hurricane passed initially, people thought they had dodged the brunt of the storm and took a sigh of relief. Only then though did the really problems begin with the flooding. And, of course, that's when the real problems began.

It's pretty hard to be self-reliant when the city you live in is a bowl, and you wake up to flood water up to your roofline. What are you supposed to do? Bail water? Ride a mattress out of town?

Yes, maybe some people should have done a better job getting out of town. But, as someone mentioned in an earlier post, if you live in a hurricane zone, evacuating year after year can get costly. And New Orleans is a poor city. Not everybody has cars. I'll concede that maybe people could have done a better job getting rides with friends and the local government could have done a better job getting people out of town.

The main point of this post though was to try to explain that it wasn't just that victims in Mississippi and Alabama reacted differently and were more self-reliant than victims in New Orleans, it was that victims in New Orleans faced a completely different set of circumstances than victims in Mississippi and Alabama.

As for those taking thinly veiled racist potshots at the victims of Katrina, which of course is disgusting on its own, maybe you should try learning something about who all of the victims of Katrina were. They weren't just African-Americans living in the projects or the ninth ward. There were many people of all races who lived throughout the region, some in affluent areas. There were sick and/or elderly people who evacuated and were away from their medicine/care/familiar routine - some for much longer than they had initially planned - and hence passed away. And then there were people who died after returning to the area due to stress and other complications.

 

Before reading this thread, I didn't know sandbagging could stop a Category 4 hurricane. Who knew?