Follow-up

Knowing that at some points even police were being turned back from angry crowds and some were turning in their badges because of the situation in New Orleans, and that rescue workers were sometimes being shot at, and the extensive damage cut off most, if not all, routes into many areas destroyed by Katrina, I'm trying not to be too quick to assign blame. But it's clear that relief efforts did not go as they should have and tough questions will have to be answered at some point.

I thought the most moving example of the needless deaths was given by Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, who spoke Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" about the elderly mother of a city employee trapped in a nursing home and waiting for rescue:

"Every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you.' 'Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday.' 'Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday.' 'Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday.' 'Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night. And she drowned Friday night." At that point, he broke into uncontrollable sobs. He later said, "It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area."

A clip of the interview, which has other shocking examples of refused aid, is up on iFilm, as is an emotional and angry segment on Fox News by, surprisingly, Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith, who seem completely baffled and distressed by the conditions that people are in almost a week after the hurricane hit.

Incidentally, for those that argue there was no way to see this sort of thing coming, the Times Picayune did a series (up on their Web site) three years ago about the sort of catastrophe a a major hurricane could cause. It is eerily prescient now.

In closing, I thought this was an interesting opinion piece about the relief efforts and the media.