Rosie DiManno, in today's Toronto Star, writes a moving, highly critical
column that details the frustration many are feeling in New Orleans.
It is disgraceful that countless people are still stranded five days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf coastline, flattening communities and knocking a major metropolis on its ear
Rosie has never been one to bite her tongue. She calls them as she sees them and this article is no exception.
I've seen better disaster response efforts for earthquake victims in India and the ethnically cleansed exiles of Kosovo. Even the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay are surely being cared for better than this.
The world is watching. The world is seeing the deep class divides, the crumbling infrastructure, and the ill-preparedness for this foreseeable disaster.
Harrahs Casino, one of the largest and sturdiest buildings near the Riverwalk Palisade, barely damaged, has bolted its front doors, while scores of homeless families that might have taken temporary refuge therein are left to huddle on the torn-up grass, in the dripping humidity -- and, yesterday afternoon, the deluge of another thunderstorm -- waiting forlornly for promised evacuation buses that have yet to appear.
"We are a Third World city in a First World country," spat out one disgusted local as he propelled a grocery cart laden with personal possessions along Royal St., intent on getting the hell out of the city, out of the parish, even if he had to walk all the way to Baton Rouge, 130 kilometres northwest. Another frail fellow, a diabetic whose limbs are too swollen to walk -- he's been unable to obtain dialysis treatment for nearly a week -- was being pushed along in his wheelchair by an elderly friend. They had no specific destination -- just away from here. Out, out, out. But a speeding scout car almost ran them over in the middle of the street.
The column ends with the words of Carl Davis, a laborer who has lived in New Orleans all of his life.
"Man, I know we got us a disaster here. But how could they have been so ill-prepared? They knowed this was coming. There must be hundreds of public school buses in this city. Why can't they use those to get us out of here? What would it take to give a person two square meals a day?
"We're always sending food and doctors to people on the other side of the world. We have soldiers dying in Iraq. And they can't get help down to us poor people in New Orleans?
"I tell you, America has let us down."
The whole column is worth reading. Another voice wondering why the richest country in the world is so ill-prepared for this, wondering why people are left to feel like their country has let them down.