Squirtgunsquirter
Demi-God
My work schedule is going to be on the light side for a few weeks yet, so I have some idle time to wonder, and do some research.
I am wondering what the statistics are for crime during natural disasters, in this case a hurricane. So I posted this here. Mods, feel free to move, or delete if super boring.
I decided to look at Hurricane Katrina.
The first thing I found was an "after action report" by two paramedics who, without a vehicle for unexplained reasons, travelled with a group of people in an attempt to go somewhere to get food, water, and shelter.
Before I post some excerpts, I will say that ALL of the sites I found this story on were left-leaning. The full articles all cast this as a Socio-economic problem, and I am only interested in the end results. Did looting happen? What businesses/residences were looted? Did THIS group, in desperation, accost individuals? Did they try to go to the woods, and live off the land? Things like that.
"Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreens store at the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets in the city’s historic French Quarter remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the windows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing, and the milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers and prescriptions, and fled the city. Outside Walgreens’ windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized, and the windows at Walgreens gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices and bottled water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead, they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters."
The articles I found don't give much background to how or why these two paramedics were there or what they were doing.
My takeaway: People stay because they want to, or because they don't have transportation. Before they die of thirst, people start scavenging. Seems pretty obvious. 48 hours. If I am stuck in a city, I can either be prepared to wait things out on my own supplies, or start scavenging early and beat the crowd. Also, don't count on "aid" because it may come late, or never.
The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that “officials” had told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the city, we finally encountered the National Guard. The guard members told us we wouldn’t be allowed into the Superdome, as the city’s primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. They further told us that the city’s only other shelter—the convention center—was also descending into chaos and squalor, and that the police weren’t allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, “If we can’t go to the only two shelters in the city, what was our alternative?” The guards told us that this was our problem—and no, they didn’t have extra water to give to us…The police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge to the south side of the Mississippi, where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the city…We organized ourselves, and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group, and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings, and quickly, our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, as did people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and other people in wheelchairs. We marched the two to three miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the bridge…
My takeaways: Don't go where "Authority" tells me to go. The people in the Superdome were basically trapped there, for good or bad. I'm willing to bet anyone who scored a six pack of Gatorade was really popular for the few minutes it took to be gone. So, avoid large groups of people. And, they were ordered to cross a bridge, and that didn't work out too well...
As we approached the bridge, armed sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us that there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move. We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the six-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be no Superdomes in their city…All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away—some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot. (Bradshaw and Slonsky 2005)
Now this last paragraph I find pretty interesting. Chased away by gunfire.
Now, the "shooting over their heads" story is just that, a story. Maybe true, I wasn't there.
What I couldn't find, was the end of the story. All of the sites I looked at just ended it there. What happened to this group of people? I imagine that they received food and water from the National Guard right there at the bridge, but that wouldn't have made a very dramatic ending to the gripping story of these two paramedics. But I don't know. I WOULD THINK that if 200 plus people had died in a heap desperately running into the bullets of the National Guard, I would have heard about that.
Nothing was said about anyone in the group attacking individuals. I have no way of knowing if it happened, but I will ASSUME it did not. I am not assuming that means no criminal groups were looking for easy, well supplied targets.
As far as the Superdome, the last refugees? were evacuated on September 3rd, so if they started there during the storm, they spent 7 days stuck in there. I read some pretty bad stories, but they lived. They just had a really, really shitty experience.
Now, I am in no danger of hurricanes here, but it is still interesting to read about what actually goes down in a real, grid down emergency. How do I take some lessons from that, and apply them to where I live? I need to look at what could happen, and where people would go, and how long the event might last. That last is pretty hard to predict.
As always, I am not "living in fear" or looking to encourage it. I don't believe in that. I do think it is useful to try to take some lessons when I can. Also, I try to teach my kids to depend on themselves. On the rare occasions the subject matter comes up, it is nice to have stories like these to point to, and say, "Here's why you need to be able to take care of you".
I have been in hurricanes at sea, and been in several tropical storms in, well, the tropics. I always had a big ship to go back to though, or a military base. I was in Japan during the Great Hanshin Earthquake (Atsugi was a pretty long away though), but I wasn't assigned to go down there and help, I just saw some of the aftermath.
If anyone has a personal story they would share, please do. I would love to hear what specific items or preps really saved the day, during a real, honest to God emergency. I will search over some threads, so If you have posted them here before and are tired of telling the same story over and over, no problems, I will find it!
I figure, we are good for 72 hours no problem whatsoever, and really longer than that but the daughter would start complaining about eating canned goods lol.
I am wondering what the statistics are for crime during natural disasters, in this case a hurricane. So I posted this here. Mods, feel free to move, or delete if super boring.
I decided to look at Hurricane Katrina.
The first thing I found was an "after action report" by two paramedics who, without a vehicle for unexplained reasons, travelled with a group of people in an attempt to go somewhere to get food, water, and shelter.
Before I post some excerpts, I will say that ALL of the sites I found this story on were left-leaning. The full articles all cast this as a Socio-economic problem, and I am only interested in the end results. Did looting happen? What businesses/residences were looted? Did THIS group, in desperation, accost individuals? Did they try to go to the woods, and live off the land? Things like that.
"Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreens store at the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets in the city’s historic French Quarter remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the windows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing, and the milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers and prescriptions, and fled the city. Outside Walgreens’ windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized, and the windows at Walgreens gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices and bottled water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead, they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters."
The articles I found don't give much background to how or why these two paramedics were there or what they were doing.
My takeaway: People stay because they want to, or because they don't have transportation. Before they die of thirst, people start scavenging. Seems pretty obvious. 48 hours. If I am stuck in a city, I can either be prepared to wait things out on my own supplies, or start scavenging early and beat the crowd. Also, don't count on "aid" because it may come late, or never.
The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that “officials” had told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the city, we finally encountered the National Guard. The guard members told us we wouldn’t be allowed into the Superdome, as the city’s primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. They further told us that the city’s only other shelter—the convention center—was also descending into chaos and squalor, and that the police weren’t allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, “If we can’t go to the only two shelters in the city, what was our alternative?” The guards told us that this was our problem—and no, they didn’t have extra water to give to us…The police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge to the south side of the Mississippi, where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the city…We organized ourselves, and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group, and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings, and quickly, our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, as did people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and other people in wheelchairs. We marched the two to three miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the bridge…
My takeaways: Don't go where "Authority" tells me to go. The people in the Superdome were basically trapped there, for good or bad. I'm willing to bet anyone who scored a six pack of Gatorade was really popular for the few minutes it took to be gone. So, avoid large groups of people. And, they were ordered to cross a bridge, and that didn't work out too well...
As we approached the bridge, armed sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us that there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move. We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the six-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be no Superdomes in their city…All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away—some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot. (Bradshaw and Slonsky 2005)
Now this last paragraph I find pretty interesting. Chased away by gunfire.
Now, the "shooting over their heads" story is just that, a story. Maybe true, I wasn't there.
What I couldn't find, was the end of the story. All of the sites I looked at just ended it there. What happened to this group of people? I imagine that they received food and water from the National Guard right there at the bridge, but that wouldn't have made a very dramatic ending to the gripping story of these two paramedics. But I don't know. I WOULD THINK that if 200 plus people had died in a heap desperately running into the bullets of the National Guard, I would have heard about that.
Nothing was said about anyone in the group attacking individuals. I have no way of knowing if it happened, but I will ASSUME it did not. I am not assuming that means no criminal groups were looking for easy, well supplied targets.
As far as the Superdome, the last refugees? were evacuated on September 3rd, so if they started there during the storm, they spent 7 days stuck in there. I read some pretty bad stories, but they lived. They just had a really, really shitty experience.
Now, I am in no danger of hurricanes here, but it is still interesting to read about what actually goes down in a real, grid down emergency. How do I take some lessons from that, and apply them to where I live? I need to look at what could happen, and where people would go, and how long the event might last. That last is pretty hard to predict.
As always, I am not "living in fear" or looking to encourage it. I don't believe in that. I do think it is useful to try to take some lessons when I can. Also, I try to teach my kids to depend on themselves. On the rare occasions the subject matter comes up, it is nice to have stories like these to point to, and say, "Here's why you need to be able to take care of you".
I have been in hurricanes at sea, and been in several tropical storms in, well, the tropics. I always had a big ship to go back to though, or a military base. I was in Japan during the Great Hanshin Earthquake (Atsugi was a pretty long away though), but I wasn't assigned to go down there and help, I just saw some of the aftermath.
If anyone has a personal story they would share, please do. I would love to hear what specific items or preps really saved the day, during a real, honest to God emergency. I will search over some threads, so If you have posted them here before and are tired of telling the same story over and over, no problems, I will find it!
I figure, we are good for 72 hours no problem whatsoever, and really longer than that but the daughter would start complaining about eating canned goods lol.