![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Why are people such assholes?
Sep. 1st, 2005 11:10 amThere is some wag running around LJ mocking people caught in Hurricane Katrina.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
I've never been in a hurricane. I live on the west coast of the US, so it's very unlikely I ever will be. I have, however, been evacuated for a natural disaster. One year when I lived in northern California, a bit north of Sacramento, we had record rainfall, and the rivers started to flood. My diary from that era is packed now, so I can't read through it and dredge up details, but I did find an online journal entry I wrote a few years after the flood, that talks about it.
It was 1997. Mom and I had just moved north, and our apartment wasn't even ready yet, so all our stuff was hanging out in a friend's garage. I don't think it stopped raining at all the first week we were there. Anyway, the rivers started to rise, and they started talking on the news about voluntary evacuations. We left then, because we could and we had a place to go- our friends' relatives- and because we knew how bad the traffic would be once the mandatory evacuations came.
We were lucky. Our friends' house was on the far side of the freeway from the nearest river, so when we were able to go back, things were alright. I didn't know enough local geography then to know that, though, so I spent most of the time we were out of town freaked out about how we might lose everything.
We were also lucky in that we were able to go anywhere at all. I lived in northern California for years, long enough to figure out that there was a pretty high poverty level in the area I lived in, that there were very poor areas of the county that always flooded, even when nothing else did, and that a lot of people couldn't afford to live anywhere else. A lot of those people stayed in the '97 evacuation, because they had no way to get anywhere, nowhere to go, and very little money. Most if not all of the deaths in our area from the '97 flood were in those areas.
Those people weren't stupid, and they sure as hell don't deserve to be mocked now that they're dead. Darwin awards? I don't think so. That's not even fucking funny. The people who stayed in New Orleans stayed because they didn't have a choice. They did the best they could, and not all of them made it. And the next person I hear say that they were stupid, or that they got what they deserved, or anything like that, is going to get kicked in the teeth, because they just don't get it.
Turn on your TVs, you assholes. Take a look at the news, shut the fuck up for five minutes if you can, and take a moment to realize that most of the people who stayed would have left if they could have, only they couldn't. Realize that even the lucky ones who are still alive may have lost everything they own, many of their loved ones, and whatever place they called home. Realize you're damn lucky, and stop mocking the people who aren't, or weren't. Stop making fun of that guy on the roof with his cell phone asking for rescue, because if Katrina had hit where you lived, and you couldn't get away, you would be that guy.
You'd be scared too.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
I've never been in a hurricane. I live on the west coast of the US, so it's very unlikely I ever will be. I have, however, been evacuated for a natural disaster. One year when I lived in northern California, a bit north of Sacramento, we had record rainfall, and the rivers started to flood. My diary from that era is packed now, so I can't read through it and dredge up details, but I did find an online journal entry I wrote a few years after the flood, that talks about it.
It was 1997. Mom and I had just moved north, and our apartment wasn't even ready yet, so all our stuff was hanging out in a friend's garage. I don't think it stopped raining at all the first week we were there. Anyway, the rivers started to rise, and they started talking on the news about voluntary evacuations. We left then, because we could and we had a place to go- our friends' relatives- and because we knew how bad the traffic would be once the mandatory evacuations came.
We were lucky. Our friends' house was on the far side of the freeway from the nearest river, so when we were able to go back, things were alright. I didn't know enough local geography then to know that, though, so I spent most of the time we were out of town freaked out about how we might lose everything.
We were also lucky in that we were able to go anywhere at all. I lived in northern California for years, long enough to figure out that there was a pretty high poverty level in the area I lived in, that there were very poor areas of the county that always flooded, even when nothing else did, and that a lot of people couldn't afford to live anywhere else. A lot of those people stayed in the '97 evacuation, because they had no way to get anywhere, nowhere to go, and very little money. Most if not all of the deaths in our area from the '97 flood were in those areas.
Those people weren't stupid, and they sure as hell don't deserve to be mocked now that they're dead. Darwin awards? I don't think so. That's not even fucking funny. The people who stayed in New Orleans stayed because they didn't have a choice. They did the best they could, and not all of them made it. And the next person I hear say that they were stupid, or that they got what they deserved, or anything like that, is going to get kicked in the teeth, because they just don't get it.
Turn on your TVs, you assholes. Take a look at the news, shut the fuck up for five minutes if you can, and take a moment to realize that most of the people who stayed would have left if they could have, only they couldn't. Realize that even the lucky ones who are still alive may have lost everything they own, many of their loved ones, and whatever place they called home. Realize you're damn lucky, and stop mocking the people who aren't, or weren't. Stop making fun of that guy on the roof with his cell phone asking for rescue, because if Katrina had hit where you lived, and you couldn't get away, you would be that guy.
You'd be scared too.
