When the history of the Katrina disaster is written, an entire chapter will be devoted to the mythology of mayhem in the Superdome and convention center -- the two places most of the poor and the infirm went to wait for federal help after evacuating their homes. Already, the Times Picayune is correcting some of the most egregious lies from that horrible few days: the tales of murder, bodies stacked in stairwells and strewn around the floors, anarchy and child rape that kept federal officials and others from entering the city ("too dangerous" FEMA said), that caused even the Louisiana governor to go wild and woolly, and that may have contributed to the outrageous acts of other parishes who refused to allow N.O. evacuees in. The stories defamed the Black residents of New Orleans, reducing them to animals not so worthy of saving. And for the most part, they weren't true.
There was horror inside those designated evacuation centers: the horror of waiting without food, water or hope for nearly four long days; the horrors of no sanitation, filthy conditions, people who died because they didn't have their medication, or from the heat. There was violence, too -- the good and the bad were thrown together by circumstance, and the bad surely preyed upon the weak. There were real looters wandering the streets -- not the people who went into empty stores to find food and milk -- the other kind, who eluded authorities in order to raid whatever homes were still standing. But the initial reports of what was happening in New Orleans were a collective smear on that city's residents. Thankfully, the accounts are being corrected. Tags: katrina, New Orleans, Politics, Hurricane Katrina, Bush, News, fema. |
