« All You Can Be; In Other Words Raped | Main | The Crony Ways »
October 01, 2005
Lesser People
There seems to be two results of the widespread belief that the poorest black people of New Orleans were raping babies and shooting at one another almost at random. One is that everyone felt a little better, a little superior. It couldn't have been us because our community wouldn't have behaved like those animals.
The second is, of course, that it meant things were much worse during the crisis. Rescue workers stayed away after being told of a chaotic, unsafe scene of untold horrors.
What became clear is that the rumor of crime, as much as the reality of the public disorder, often played a powerful role in the emergency response. A team of paramedics was barred from entering Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, for nearly 10 hours based on a state trooper's report that a mob of armed, marauding people had commandeered boats. It turned out to be two men escaping from their flooded streets, said Farol Champlin, a paramedic with the Acadian Ambulance Company.On another occasion, the company's ambulances were locked down after word came that a firehouse in Covington had been looted by armed robbers of all its water - a report that proved totally untrue, said Aaron Labatt, another paramedic.
A contingent of National Guard troops was sent to rescue a St. Bernard Parish deputy sheriff who radioed for help, saying he was pinned down by a sniper. Accompanied by a SWAT team, the troops surrounded the area. The shots turned out to be the relief valve on a gas tank that popped open every few minutes, said Maj. Gen. Ron Mason of the 35th Infantry Division of the Kansas National Guard.
Even those "shots at rescue" helicopters have turned out to be false. Even if there had been one or two such shots, it should not have been reason for all flights to stay away. We drive everyday on highways where one or two accidents occur, surely rescue workers know better than to stop completely flying into a city because of an unsubstantiated rumour. But, it turns out, even that wasn't true:
For military officials, who flew rescue missions around the city, the reports that people were shooting at helicopters turned out to be mistaken. "We investigated one incident and it turned out to have been shooting on the ground, not at the helicopter," said Maj. Mike Young of the Air Force.
Again, it wasn't that nothing unseeming happened. About a million people were left behind in destitute conditions; I'm sure not everything was dandy. But the reports were so outrageous, so outside the sphere of the normal human experience. If we were a decent country, there would be deep soul-searching not just about how it is that we abandoned those people, but we believed --all of us, even they themselves-- the absolute worst about what they would do without strong external authority imposed upon them.
Posted by zeynep at October 1, 2005 09:52 AM