"Natural" disasters have unnatural effect on poor

"Rising floodwaters in New Orleans prompted the state's governor to order the Superdome and the city abandoned. She said that all evacuees in New Orleans would have to be moved out of the city."

So how does one go about evacuating an entire city?  Can you imagine the scale of this operation?  The Astrodome will be converted into a long term shelter for those are/were in the Superdome because they say it'll be at least a month before the city is habitable again. 

One aspect of this disaster that I'd like to see get more coverage is the social side of the issue.  Natural disasters impact the poor so much harder as we saw with Hurricane Mitch in Central America.  The NCDC estimated that 11,000 people died during Hurricane Mitch.  Eleven thousand!  When natural disasters hit developing countries, the death tolls are higher, the damage even more devastating.  As bad as Katrina was, we won't reach anything like that kind of death toll but of all the hurricanes that hit the US, I wonder if this one will probably will come the closest.  Why?  Because of the poverty of the area it hit. 

"New Orleans is ...a city of stark contradictions. In contrast to its popular image of decadence and heedless consumption, the city has the highest child poverty rate in the nation, a moribund public education system and a failed public housing program" (from an article by Lance P. Martin in Salon.com)

"...a lot of the people who stayed did so because they didn't have the money to leave. An estimated hundred thousand had no cars. Many didn't have jobs in the first place, and now they don't have homes, and there's plenty of stored-up resentment to go around" (from an article by Anya Kamenetz in the Village Voice)

So even in the US, the poor, like many of those in the Superdrome right now, suffer the most and there's nothing at all natural about that.

Comments

[Shawn]

The recent events are just an absolute shame. I'm worried that most folks who couldn't afford automobiles or transportation were left behind. It's sad.

[Limey]

Sitting in the pub at lunch time both my father and I agreed that the scenes from new orleans were very similar to the poverty and destitution we have seen in parts of west africa; i think its something that the media has picked up on here..the hurricane has exposed shocking levels of poverty in a country we always thought off as wealthy. There is hardly a white face amonsgt the poor buggers stuck in the city.

[L]

The aftermath has really made me angry... it would have been a different outcome if the victims were mainly middle class and white