I hear that an additional 10,000 National Guard troops are being sent to the affected areas, and that a Navy hospital ship is being activated and will be there within the week. My question: why the delay?
A couple of days before the hurricane everyone knew that the storm could have an apocalyptic effect on the area in question, even to the point of speculation that the hurricane could bring about the end of New Orleans as we know it. If the states in question felt that the risk was so great as to order the mandatory evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, why didn't the U.S. military spring into action THEN? Why weren't hospital ships activated at that point? Why weren't 10,000 National Guard troops ready to be deployed into New Orleans the day after the hurricane? I mean, FEMA is great, but it seems to me that the magnitude of the storm and the known risk that it posed would have been sufficient to justify a much larger and earlier response.
Personally, I think we're going to end up with hundreds of thousands of people living in refugee camps around the country for months. The devastation is such that even after the water is pumped out -- whenever that is -- it will take a very long time to bring the area back to life.
Let's say that you have a house in New Orleans. The water finally goes and you return to your house. This assumes that you and your family could afford to live in a hotel for two or three months.
You return to find a structure that is probably uninhabitable or close to it. There is probably a foot or more of mud on the floor. The furniture is ruined. The walls have buckled. The applicances are ruined. In the best case you would have to gut the entire house and rebuild virtually from scratch. And that presumes that you have an insurance check in your pocket.
But even in the best case, how long will it take even to get a contractor to do the work? How long will it take to get materials to rebuild? Meanwhile, what do you do for a living? The company you worked for might be completely gone. When will they start up? How are you going to live for months? Where will you live? Are you going to live in the shell of your sewage-soaked house? Even the best case looks extremely grim to me.
That's why I think that we're either going to have large numbers of people in refugee camps, or have some kind of program in which people can relocate to other parts of the country, either permanently or temporarily. If we go the refugee camp route, then we'll have to provide medical care for these people. We'll need extraordinary mental health services. We'll have to set up schools to educate children. And we'll have to provide reasonably nice living conditions so that these people don't go crazy over the months. Of course the cost of all this will be staggering.
Maybe I'm wrong, but if I'm not then the country has a monumental task ahead of it. But I haven't heard of anyone in the government talking about a relief effort of this scale. I don't want to trivialize 9/11, but I think when the final human and financial bill comes in we'll find Katrina to have been far more expensive.