I’ve been so caught up in the misery of Katrina
(WHY are those people still in the Convention Center? WHY? WHY? WHY did it take our President FIVE DAYS to get down there?)
that I forgot to post about being home.
I’m On Island today, in Victoria. I got here on Wednesday night, two hours ahead of schedule. I waltzed into the all-too-familiar Alaska Airlines gate area at LAX, and saw a flight to Vancouver leaving. It was the 2PM flight, delayed to a 3PM departure, and rather than wait for my 4:12 plane, I asked nicely to jump onto it. My pass was changed, I took the last seat, and arrived in Vancouver two hours early.
Then I had another stroke of luck in getting to the ferry terminal. I was hanging around, waiting for a taxi, when a limo driver asked me where I was going. I smiled, said, “Tsawassen” and expected it to be more than I could afford. But it turned out another woman was going out there as well, and was willing to split the limo cost. And to add coincidence into my day, her name was Gillian, she grew up within a half mile of me, had a Leo birthday, had gone to all the same local schools, AND graduated Oak Bay High at sixteen as well. “The ferries are full of coincidence,” I remarked, and let it at that.
So I’ve been here since, watching CNN, wandering Oak Bay and hanging out with my parents. And now my mom and I are going to the movies. Which means I have to stop watching Family Guy with my father & go. Night all!
Jillian's Blog 
(WHY are those people still in the Convention Center? WHY? WHY? WHY did it take our President FIVE DAYS to get down there?)
Logistics. You don’t put more people in a physically unstable place where you are going to end up with more people to rescue. They had to wait until the water quit rising in order to get more aid to these people. Yes, it sucks. Yes, these people had to suffer more. But is the intellenget thing to do. Now that the water has quit rising, there is now military personnel, more aid personnel, and yes, the President, too, is now in New Orleans.
I don’t like it anymore than you that these people are going through what they are, but you don’t want hundreds to thousands more people, who are supposed to be in the area to help, that you end up having to rescue or lose as well.
Oh, and one thing that the State government of Louisiana should have done…if they make evacuation manditory (which this one was) that should have bussed the indigent to safety BEFORE the storm, not after.
There should be carrier planes landing at MSY. There should be fleets of trucks and Greyhounds coming in. And I keep hearing the same thing, over and over, from all kinds of sources, from city officials, police, people on NOLA.com:
If we had the National Guard here, we would have had more people evacuated.
If we had the National Guard in, we could have stopped the looting.
If we had the resources that are off delivering aid to Iraq, we could have dropped more food and water into New Orleans.
My sign in DC in a month is going to read, “HOW MANY IN LOUISIANA DIED FOR IRAQ?” Because the resources that went to Iraq, the Lousiana National Guard, the troop transports and the humanitarian aid, all of it should have been here, helping the American citizens whose taxes paid for it.
Where were the National Guard when the looters made it unsafe for medical staff to leave the hospital? I’m pretty sure that the soldiers who should have been there to protect the Mercy Hospital staff are off in Iraq.
And Bush FLEW OVER the destroyed zones before he would set foot in them. If he was serious about helping, he would have sent Air Force One to land at MSY and pick people up, or sent it to drop supplies. Not flown over, and then spent the day today posing for photos.