Chrononautic Log: Stop trying to destroy my faith in human nature (updated)

Stop trying to destroy my faith in human nature (updated)

4 o'clock, August 31, 2005

From ArtsJournal’s ongoing hurricane coverage: A children’s hospital is reportedly under siege by looters. Not supposed to happen. Where’s the solidarity? Where’s the community spirit? Would this happen in New York?

(N.B.: I’ll cease to be freaked out by this if I find out there are not in fact any patients in the children’s hospital at this time. I’d be tempted to loot a hospital under the circumstances myself, I expect. I’d be one of the folks looting the Wal-Mart for sure, and what I’d be doing is trying to organize a community bucket brigade to loot all the bottled water, canned food, and first aid supplies. In the immortal words of Sigourney Weaver: They can bill me.)

Update: The Times-Picayune blog has the less Mad Max “Also, looters tried to break into Children’s Hospital, the governor’s office said”

Update: I take that back.

Late Tuesday, Gov. Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher described a disturbing scene unfolding in uptown New Orleans, where looters were trying to break into Children's Hospital.

Bottcher said the director of the hospital fears for the safety of the staff and the 100 kids inside the hospital. The director said the hospital is locked, but that the looters were trying to break in and had gathered outside the facility.

The director has sought help from the police, but, due to rising flood waters, police have not been able to respond.

Bottcher said Blanco has been told of the situation and has informed the National Guard. However, Bottcher said, the National Guard has also been unable to respond.

Though it’s still not the Assault on Precinct 13 scenario I was hearing in the word siege.

Update: It’s all a big lie, apparently:

Doug Mittelstaedt, vice-president of Human Resources for Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, said one of the biggest issues at the hospital on Wednesday was debunking the prevalent rumor that looters had stormed the hospital.

Mittelstaedt said things actually were operating smoothly at the hospital — the generator was running efficiently and efforts to relocate patients were going well — but fighting the rumor was a major issue.

Officials had to lock the doors of the hospital because people had arrived, apparently thinking there was a mob scene and they could get in on looting.

Nice. (Thanks for the link, Rob.)

(By the way, some of the permalinks on NOLA.com are broken, because the name attributes of the <a> tags have #s in them; you may need to double the # in the link if you want to post it somewhere.)

Someone on the LJ neworleans community pointed out that the Children's Hospital is on slightly higher ground than much of the city, and that those people may in fact have been seeking better shelter. Not sure if any of that's true, but it would be nice to believe it.

Honestly, for many people down there it must feel like Armageddon. Who knows what's really happening, on the streets or in their heads.

It certainly looks like actual panic on television and in some of the reports, which would make sense since practically none of these people have access to any information about anything going on other than what they get from each other or officials they happen to encounter. Terrible stuff.

I wonder how much the difference between post-Katrina New Orleans and post-9/11 New York has to do with the fact that cell phones and CNN were working in most of New York (right?). Once people could figure out that their immediate loved ones were okay, and the news allowed them to determine the scope of the threat, there was more of an opportunity not to panic.

(Not to mention that, after the initial attack, people weren't actively at physical risk (other than from contaminated air, but that was a low-level long term risk), whereas the risk in New Orleans is increasing at the moment).

And I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that so many people are gone in New Orleans -- social networks are decimated. The death toll from Katrina may turn out not to be much higher (God willing) than that of 9/11 -- but there's a difference between 10K people being unaccounted for in a city of many millions, and 80% of the people in a city being gone.

And, of course, as Mr Moles suggests, maybe a lot of the looting is sensible and community-spirited from a ground-eye view.

Who else has been thinking about Bellona? (Though Bellona was, of course, a much much gentler place).

Chrononautic Log

Stop trying to destroy my faith in human nature (updated)

4 o'clock, August 31, 2005

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