Huricane Katrina a year later

One year hurricane Katrina came ashore and devastated the gulf coast region. I thought I take a moment to scribble a few of my thoughts regarding a Blogger who just doesn’t get it. We have sparred over many an occasion mainly over my assertion that society did indeed break down in the aftermath of the hurricane. The following post is not mine but come from gales in his name she is one of these neo Christians that just make my skin crawl. Her comments are regarding former residents of New Orleans that were evacuated after hurricane Katrina. I respect gale for her opinions but at the same time she demonstrates a lack of understanding towards a people that have lost not just their jobs and their homes, but these people lost something else that the good church people tend to overlook. What they lost is the one thing that most of us take for granted our day to day lives. In the time it took the state and federal governments to actually respond the citizens that became evacuees had lost everything that was familiar. She titled her post “do we all come from the same place” I found her lack of knowledge to be troubling for a woman who plans to pursue a career in social services and even more so she is a former resident of the big easy. Much of the conversations I have had with her revolve around her using labels to describe the hurricane survivors, such as those people, the refugees this is not how a logical person thinks of a victim of disaster. At a much deeper level she projects the image of a caring person when in fact the reason for her disdain is that she recognizes things in the evacuees at Gruber that she finds distasteful in herself. But what do I know I am just a grunt who had to help these so called refuges. It would be nice if people would stop kicking their fellow man when he (or she) is down but I have some to expect that type of behavior from the residents of Tulsa Oklahoma “gods’ country” as the Tulsans refer to it.

Sep 24 2005, 08:18 PM

I spent some time at Camp Gruber today with the last of the Katrina refugees that are still there. I was working in the clerical section, answering the phones, running messages to the people. They fed us breakfast and lunch and we ate the same food the people staying had. The food was not bad. The people that were there for the most part were the ones that were expecting the government to hand them their living. One lady came into the building I was in and asked about the red cross putting them in a hotel. The red cross gave $360 per person to each family there. The woman was told that she would have to pay for her hotel with her own money and she started going off about how she was educated and went to one of the best colleges in New Orleans, and that no one told her that she would have to use that money for that. She went off on the fact that the red cross should pay for her hotel and that she should not have to use that money they give her for that. It was explained over and over and over again that the money was for her to use as she felt she needed to use it. She insisted that no one ever told them how to use that money and she did not feel that she should have to pay for her own hotel. The churches that are picking up the people and taking them to their community find that the people trash out the vans and buses that are used to bring them to their new homes. The churches are getting tired of it. The people just throw paper, cups, cans and bottles all over the grounds and the army is just not used to that.