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Katrina

I watched Dateline Friday night. They did a special edition on Lindy Boggs Medical Center in New Orleans.

Now, let me preface this with...I KNOW, I'm Canadian so I have no right to criticize another country or government...but come on.

I've been to New Orleans. We had booked our trip six months before the hurricane hit. We didn't cancel anything or rebook. There was never any question of us going somewhere else. We (my hubby & my friends) decided that we would go regardless of what was going on. We would go and spend as much money as we could and in our own little way, help. We did that. And we brought two extra people with us.

Having said all that, I watched Dateline and heard about this hospital, Lindy Boggs that, of course, had some patients and some staff would did not evacuate and so were left to ride out the storm. That part went fine. It was the aftermath that caused the problem.

When the levees breached the hospital was surrounded by flood waters and when those flood waters seeped into the basement they lost their generator and their power. As a result, the hospital staff was trying to deal with kidney dialysis patients and people who needed ventilators with no power whatsoever.

And, on top of all that, they had no communication so they had no idea what help, if any, was coming.

For 3 days these people lived and worked in 104 degree temperature trying to save patients and no one came to help them.

And when finally help arrived in the form of firefighters from a different coutny, state, whatever, even that help was eventually ordered away before everyone could be evacuated.

Now here is my issue. How could the government allow this to happen?

Wake the fuck up, Dubya!

What you do is send in as much help as you can. If people had had help in the first days there would have been no, or at least less looting, lives would have been saved.

Allright you fumbled the ball there but in the aftermath...oh, I have no words.

Some of the patients and this one oh-so-dedicated doctor were air-lifted from Lindy Boggs and were thrilled to be out ... until they were deposited on a freeway underpass with hundreds of others.

A freakin' freeway underpass?
What the hell?

Oh, Dubya, your presidency is so gonna be judged by this and the war.

People, watch the specials that will be on this week and see what happened. And when you see it..ask questions, make your politicians think, make them answer.

That is EXACTLY what I would do if this happened here in Canada.

6:28 p.m. - 2006-08-27

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