It is amazing the way people are acting in the parts where Hurricane Katrina has hit... looting... gangraping.... deaths.... firing on rescue workers.... and much more.... here was a strange picture which I really think to see and read the writings on it and think what kind of world is that part being.......

Its time to put politics aside and help them. Thank God many countries have offered help. Hope Bush will realise this. Many of the looters are hungry people. All the stores are closed, how are these people supposed to feed themselves? I dunno what channel you guys are watching, but on CNN and BBC all I am seeing is people looting food items and clothing.

akiriti, the somalia similie fails on SO many levels, though many others feel like you do.

matrixrose, some good points. put politics aside and check out how other coverage looks in addition to bbc, cnn, etc.

all, i hope you remember the horrible 1993 floods in nepal, and the US air force c-130 aircraft that brought relief supplies. america's mississippi river also had devastating floods that summer, and still stood by nepal in her time of need.

contribute to hurricane relief however you can. every little bit counts, including prayers.

I'm pissed that Bush isn't doing anything, but it is not at all unexpected. There is a history, with him, of piss poor prior planning and inadequate initial responses. As usual, his only concern is the oil. God Damn!

What is up with the lack of response? It has been four days and basics like water and food are very rarely to be seen. I can somewhat understand the lack of control on the streets given the flooding and heavily armed gangs of looters. That said, where the hell are the airdrops of MREs and water? How about some leaflet drops with basic info for people so they don't feel like they've been utterly abandoned? Sure there are hairy logistical and security problems, but they should be able to manage it somehow - after all they are the United States, the premier f****** world power supposedly. grrrrrr

The fact that they as a nation can't get our shit together well enough to at least get some baseline necessities to these people is appalling. I am not going to get into whether or not Bush is to blame for cutting funding for the levees etc. etc., but he sure as hell IS to blame for not stepping the shit up to the plate and leading in a time of crisis.

Just goes to show the lack of leadership from the POtUS down to the local level. Sad thing is people a year from now will forget about all this and accept the same spew from the clueless politicians. Maybe by some miracle this is a wake up call for Americans in general because this is hitting everyone...

And the funny part is and what's with the quote about stopping criminals from price gauging on gas? Its so tough to be an independent in that country. Everyone is fighting each other for political points and what not... really frustrating.

Come on, Bush was quick to send troops just not the basic amenities. He sure loves to send troops everywhere.
And Americans waking up to realize what their government is made of, that will be a challenge. If Iraq war did not wake them up, I doubt New Orleans disaster would. But wait, it is the Americans who are suffering now and not the Iraqis. Well, I take my word back then.
I just wonder what the situation would have been had it been the rich and white that were stranded in New Orleans.
But Alas! poor and colored and less of humans.

He send troop chito re? It took him 4 days, longer then Iraq. From what I read a big part of the N.G. problem is equipment. Deep-water vehicles, 'copters, generators, etc. are in Iraq. Many of the remaining people lived in the area, obviously, and so have other stuff to concern themselves with right now.

The Clinton admin put a lot of effort into beefing up FEMA. During Andrew they were widely praised for being Johnny-on-the-spot. Yes the locals have to do the heavy lifting, but FEMA's job is to coordinate dozens or hundreds or thousands of resources that don't have any need to talk to each other except once a decade during a disaster. You can let the locals everywhere set up ten thousand disparate communication channels between thousands of departments and agencies or you can set up a national switchboard that specializes in disasters and can reach across state lines when whole swaths of the country are inundated. That's what FEMA was. Bush dismantled the switchboard and sold it to cronies for spare parts.

Bush is supposed to be the "war president" who makes "tough decisions" but he dithered badly on this and a lot of poor people are paying right now.

poor black people mostly.

The Killer Hurricane Katrina breaks my hurt, every pictures rip my soul....

I really dont understand president bush. When the other countries were in trouble, he really helped and served food/money and stuffs but why is he not stepping forward to help New Orleans for:S?


These stupid people gotta back off of this problem and stop saying such --Hurricane Katrina was God?s wrath on the United States because George W. Bush is President re??thing , like no point~




"poor black people mostly."
Was that like supposed to mean the African Americans lost the most or what?

Thank you all for all your are doing individually and collectively to help the hurricane victims! Bless your souls!

Guys, pl don't go only to look a snake's leg, you know a snake sees a snake's leg. If you are belong to democratic party, then you only criticize bush's actions whatever he has done. You ever appreciated the work that had significantly done by poor BUSH. Don't you read news paper or watch TV or listen to radio? He flew through there, he even requested his father and Bill Clinton to rise the fund for Kratina's victims. what do you guy think, do you think US president go himself there to boat to rescue people? Please try to learn appreciating too!

Oh yea poor him and so nice he flew there awwwww how sweet of him. Common he could have done lot more better, he waited for three days, just cause of media pressure he started to do what he is doing now. So far I know 60 nations have offered help and instead of selecting soon, those idiots are still taking their time. There is no way US can solve this alone. I have seen their military goodies pretty well and know how fit they are duhhh. Without these high tech stuffs they are nothing. (well most) The feds have never been quick, think about the logistics involved there. Assembling help, gathering supplies, shipping people and supplies. People seem to be missing why New Orleans was so big in the first place. It is one of the busiest (THE busiest?) and most important ports in the country.

Honestly, Katrina was seemingly written off when it missed Florida. I wasn't paying much attention, but I remember thinking, "How can they write off a Hurricane as it heads up into the warm water of the Gulf?" I'm not a hurricane expert, but I've watched enough Nova to know that hurricanes like warm water and it tends to make them stronger. Many people in that country have little to no respect for Mother Nature. They seem to do as much as they can to laugh in her face, and then don't seem to get it when it slaps them down.

Even US is no match when it comes to fighting natural force. Thats plain and simple and everyone should have this in mind before crticizing and crying foul...........

If I heard correctly, the affected area is large than Great Britain. Be thankful to the might of America that it wsa able to send in troops and food withing four days to those desparately needing. Well make that seven days.....so what???

When tsunami struck, the outside people reached some places as late as 1 month, if not later.

Its easy to criticize when things are going wrong. I can understand New Orlean's mayor (Nagin) being very harsh towards the ffederal govt. Its because of mental anxiety, he has been seeing dead bodies and floods in his beloved city. So, his rhetorics is understandable. But rest of the world, come on, give me a break. Its too soon to judge whether Bush and his administration is doing a good job or not. AFter all, its locking horns with mother nature, not iraq.

The blame game imo can be directed at .....at least a couple of past administations for not rebuilding and improving the levee system. And the current administration for reducing the budgets for natural disaster intervention and rescue. For diverting a good chunk of that budget to Iraq, for ignoring reports for the last 4-5 years about a hurricanes potential for destroying NO. For merging all the specific natural disaster /rescue branches into homeland security and obviously weakening them and their effectiveness in the process.

I think that local branches of government are resposible for their part as well but face it, the shit slides uphill as far as blame goes...The hurricane has also laid bare the ills of current society imo...it took three days to strip the veneer of civility from New Orleans.

Lets hope for the best....

Where the budget goes for what purpose is done as per the government's priorities. But who knew that Katrina was going to unleash this much hell? Noone knew. The sheer power of the hurricane was not imagined, as we see events unfold.

Lets look at it this way. The tsunami that struck last year had the potential to wreak havoc anywhere. Mostly asian countries suffered because the fu***** earthquake happened to strike near those unlucky asian countries. Does that mean that US and UK and other countries start focussing their budget towards building huge stone walls throughout their coastline?

Get your brains working and realize that the strength of the Katrina was much stronger than originally imagined. Who can do what about that? Now regarding the aftermath response by the US govt, as i said earlier, it is too early to judge whether the response is adequate or not. Even Nagin himself has been ?mollified? after Bush's visit.

Dont start any blame game just for the sake of it.

No one is blaming anyone but the funny thing is now they are blaming the mayor. Any ways as said time to respect the mother nature...and not get surprised when it hits.

Few links worth seeing:
-http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/KATRINA.shtml?
This is even better -http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/KATRINA_graphics.shtml

Well, there was a tabletop practise run of a hypothetical storm named "Hurricane Pam" (with 125 mph winds) at the beginning of this year. They were going through a detailed assessment of damages if such a disaster should occur. Unfortunately, they were sidetracked by financial issues when hurricane Katrina hit. However, "hurricane Pam" was nowhere as strong as Katrina although, they did take into account the breaking of levees in "Pam's" case. The Govt. however, has been late in their response. As someone in NPR (I forget who ) said in utter frustration: New Orleans should declare itself a separate country and ask for foreign aid!

Based on the study and partial posting of the NOAA archive of Katrina, I don't agree that Thursday was a reasonable time to start evacuating hospitals. The earliest I see the NOAA issuing a Hurricane watch for NO is 10AM Sat, CDT. So, tha''s the first objective basis upon which any local authority could have initiated the admittedly drastic action of moving hospital patients. Nonetheless, it was enough time to take action and get critical patients moved before Katrina struck in force a day and a half later. For that matter, it was also enough time to stage the idle portion of the bus fleet on a high ground path pointed out of town, coordinate a plan to open both sides of the interstate as soon as needed, rally the cops, etc. They should add other official terms, such as "GET THE HECK OUT ITS GOING TO KILL YOU" to their reports. To a layman, a "hurricane watch" sounds like people looking at one.

Putting a city under the sea level in a 50-year hurricane zone *IS* building in a stupid place.