More on New Orleans DVD, Evacuate Thyself Plan
The Los Angeles Times answered at least some of my questions about the outcome of the city, state and federal non-plan plan for New Orleans that simply told the city’s poor, aged and infirm to evacuate themselves.
First I wrote an op-ed piece about it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Then I blogged a suggested story idea, which maybe because of me, but probably not, the Los Angeles Times wrote about on Tuesday.
The DVDs, 70,000 of them funded by FEMA, which apparently are sitting in a warehouse in Los Angeles, provide this message for the city’s poor:
Save yourself, and help your neighbors if you can.
“Don’t wait for the city, don’t wait for the state, don’t wait for the Red Cross,” the Rev. Marshall Truehill warns in the public service announcement.
That’s apparently what Rev. Truehill did. He boarded up his house and church and hit the road on Sunday morning before Katrina hit. But alas the Los Angeles Times story neglects to say if he helped his congregation or his less fortunate neighbors, as the DVD suggests be done.
As I had mentioned earlier, the real story here is just how much can the faith-based and the private, ownership society do in times of an emergency. Those with the means can hit the road, the rest are left in deep waters. Los Angeles Times, if you are listening, please do that story too.
Here again are my earlier citizen editor questions which I blogged here on August 6:
… telling people to be responsible for themselves is a good message, but you still need a backup plan for those who can’t find help. Apparently there was no backup plan. So as an citizen editor I see this as an important story. Not only do we have a story about a policy failure, but one with overtones of faith based and ownership society initiatives. Do both or either make sense?
How well did Reverend Truehill’s First United Baptist Church do at taking care of its own? Did all the people who took part in Operation Brother’s Keeper from the Red Cross to the National Weather Service, really think this was a great plan? Who in addition to Truehill was pushing this initiative and why? Was this initiative preventing other tried and true evacaution plans from being started? How much was the Homeland Security willing to invest in it? Might those funds have been better spent to develop a mass evacuation plan?
