Saturday, September 03, 2005
Dumb Brits
"The group really feared for their safety because they were being targeted because they were the only white people there."
I'm not sure that I buy that this was not true -- if there had been a small group of blacks among 20,000 trapped crackers, would anybody doubt it if they felt threatened? The truth of the matter may be beside the point, though. Lots of people were at risk in the Superdome. The only question was whether the Guard gave these tourists special treatment because they were white, or because they were uniquely at risk.
But the racism angle is not the most interesting part of this story. At least several of these British tourists were riding out Katrina for the second time:
Mr Trout, who was with two friends, said: "We were in Miami for three or four days when Katrina first hit.
"We rode that storm out and then decided to go to New Orleans. We didn't realise the storm was heading that way."
The Brits are our most loyal ally and all, and I confess no small Anglophilia. But these particular Brits followed Katrina from Miami to New Orleans by mistake, and then failed to evacuate when they had the chance. Suffice it to say that their rescue did not strengthen the gene pool.
CWCID: Ann Althouse.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Sep 04, 01:40:00 AM:
The asinine mandatory evacuation order by the Mayor specifically exempted hotels and tourists "because the planes have stopped flying here."
This is all so insanely outrageous.
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sun Sep 04, 07:14:00 AM:
The pre-hurricaine preparations certainly do appear to involve the stupid leading the braindead. But the fact that the evac order exempted tourists does not mean that people should not have tried to get out anyway.
By jaed, at
Sun Sep 04, 03:02:00 PM:
You're being too harsh. I've heard enough stories from tourists who did try to get out and either couldn't or barely made it (planes not flying, bus service shut down, rental cars all rented) that I'm completely willing to cut these people some slack. Not to mention that when they left Florida, no one was expecting Katrina to hit in the vicinity of NOLA yet; I don't think the NOAA started talking about that until Thursday.
Perhaps they should have been following the weather reports earlier, but tourists generally don't; they're busy doing tourist things. The mandatory evacuation is the first thing that generally will get their undivided attention. (It also would have helped if the mayor had issued the mandatory evac order WHILE THE BUSES WERE STILL RUNNING, for Christ's sake.)
By , at
Tue Sep 06, 12:47:00 PM:
jaed, as a hobby I track hurricanes on wunderground.com which ties into the national watchers. The hurricane Katrina landfall projections made at wunderground.com before the hurricane had exited southern Florida were that the hurricane would be at least a 2-3 and make landfall somewhere between the Florida panhandle and Galveston. These projections were updated daily as the hurricane gained strength and moved west with the New Orleans/Biloxi area pinpointed as soon as the hurricane turned north. The hurricane reached level 5 intensity with 160 - 210 mile winds long before it turned north. Only the dumb and the ignorant would want to be within a thousand miles of such a natural monster.
