Disasters, looting & America

[mongo]

In all the threads about looting yesterday, I heard a large faction of DU'ers accepting and apologizing for their behavior. The general consensus I found was that looting food for you and your family is OK, but looting a TV is not.

Here is a paraphrased cross section of responses I saw:

They were just trying to survive.

There was no help available to them.

Who cares about a few TVs?

What should they just DIE?

Paging inspector javert....

These people just lost everything they had. They deserve whatever they can get.

Anyone that condemns the looters is a corporatist tool.

Yes, some people were looting for items they desperately needed. Maybe the majority of people looting a grocery store are taking just what they need and not a single thing more - but I doubt it. The people that actually break the glass and are the first in the store are usually profiteers. People with a criminal mind looking for the things of the most value, that they think they can sell once they get back to their street. Oh and beer too. Must have beer during an emergency.

Not everyone in a neighborhood is going to loot and the ones that do are wrong, and maybe if you read to the end of this you will see why.

Here is an account of the looting I saw on tonight's (Tuesday) news in rough order of severity:

A woman with a half gallon of juice in each hand.

Various people with anything from just a grocery bag to a shopping cart or trash barrel full of food. One guy had a shopping cart with nothing but drinks.

Police scuffling with a looter in front of a downtown electronics store. People running wild on the street with arm-loads of clothes.

A Walmart being totally emptied, a person with a whole cart full of shoes. Even two cops wandering around with a shopping cart like they were shopping on a Sunday afternoon - and yes, there were some items in their cart.

Sorry to the looter apologists, but it is ALL wrong and here is why:

As a people, we should be coming together in a time of disaster. Yes, these people may have been cut off from all information of the outside world, they didn't have the red cross or national guard immediately available to them, but how much brain power does it take to realize that they could not hold out forever, they need to find the help they need, or at least gather together to make it easier for help to find them - and to help each other.

That grocery store held enough food for a large amount of people for a couple of days. Instead of the guy with a cartload of drinks going back to his neighborhood to sell them for whatever amount he could, or trading them for whatever he wanted, shouldn't that resource be saved for all?

This grocery store was not flooded at this time. They showed people leaving and going back into floodwaters with full grocery carts.

What if instead of everyone fending for themselves, those that shloshed through waist deep water to loot what they could carry, they found the following scenario:

The grocery store was being guarded by volunteers. Fact is once you got there you were a volunteer. When you arrived, you were told that this store was being set up as an emergency staging area, and that you would be fed and given shelter. You were asked to go home and bring your family back to this area, and tell everyone you meet on the way to join you. The name of your party was taken and an approximate number of people you were coming back with was noted. If you needed assistance moving an injured person from where you came from, volunteers were dispatched to go with you with some sort of makeshift stretcher.

The stores next door were being cleared out to make space for people. Drinks and snacks were being delivered from the grocery store for people to eat. Diapers, formula and baby food were available instead of being one of the first things missing from the store due to individual profiteering.

A bathroom area (most likely 5 gallon buckets) and TOILET PAPER. The buckets were being periodically dumped by volunteers.

Special needs for items like over the counter medications were being addressed and brought to you - the best they can.

Minor medical treatment was being given by whatever skilled personnel were on hand. Injured people and their families were being kept together so that their needs could be met as soon as help arrived.

The roof of the grocery store was accessed and people stationed on the roof to watch for helicopters. Other nearby buildings were being investigated for use as shelter as more people arrived - and higher roofs being scoped out.

Volunteers were breaking into other stores in the neighborhood to find needed supplies such as batteries and flashlights.

More volunteers were finding metal barrels and breaking up burnable debris. A large area lit with fires in metal barrels for light was being set up in a parking lot. This will serve as a gathering place for those that weren't sleeping in the make-shift shelter(s). An outdoor wood fired cooking area was being set up for soup (yes there are plenty of pots and pans in the back of most grocery stores - and disposable cups can be used as bowls. You would want people to hang on to whatever containers/plastic silverware they were issued, and that they should be cleaned out with paper towels.

Would this scenario not be preferable to what was occurring? And to those that say there was no help yesterday - the number I had heard was that by Tuesday night 40,000 had already been taken to shelters by the national guard. When help arrives, would it not be easier if they knew how many were injured and where they were? If people gathered together instead of their houses, would they not be easier to rescue? Would diapers be available to everyone that needs one, if given out one at a time instead of the first few people grabbing packs of them and then a profiteer grabbing the last 20 packs and rolling out with a cart? What if every grocery store - a valuable resource in any disaster was being managed by the people, for the people?

If that Walmart I saw being looted was managed like I described above, it could have met the needs of several hundred people for over a week. Supplies and people could be moved to the roof as necessary. In the mean time, the parking lot would have made a good area for people to gather under firelight, and the other strip stores in your typical Walmart complex cleared out for sleeping space/burnable materials.

I know, I know, it's way too much to ask of our society to act like civilized adults in absence of authority. Guys with AK47's are shooting up a police station as I write this. It's too much for people to follow anything more than their desire for their next meal, or for others to step to the plate and lead when the need arises.

Perhaps we need to revisit our civil defense system, and re-purpose it so that multiple people on every block were trained in some rudimentary way on what to do in a disaster. Plans made on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis to take care of the needs of ALL the people in a disaster.

I guess my problem is that I expect too much from my fellow Americans. Without a badge or a hat to listen to, we degenerate into savages that only care about what they can get for themselves. We are a nation of greedy bastards. I don't judge the people who were stealing food to survive, but if we were a more civilized nation, this disaster could have been handled so much better.

[expatriot]

1. I think the debate over the "morality" of looting has become moot

in the face of a larger debate:

Should police and NG be assigned to chasing looters around flooded streets when the severely undermanned rescue efforts are cutting people out of their roofs who only had minutes to live before they suffocated or drowned. If these police and Gaurd were assigned to search and rescue , how many more lives could be saved?

I would say that it is a shame that property protection is being prioritized over protection of life but I can't because they aren't PROTECTING any property because by definition, property has value. My wife said she saw footage of these cops running around pointing guns at looters and telling them to "drop it." And of course they would and run away. One of the looters clearly had a grocery bag full of HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS (disinfectant, first aid shit perhaps?) and the other looked like they had clothes. So is the Rite-Aid really expecting to go down there and reclaim all their merchandise, wash it off and place it back on the shelves in their Little Rock, Ark. stores?


I think a lot of the anti-looting vigilante law enforcement down there looks like a classic polic riot, police taking matters into their own hands because of a leadership/mission vaccum.

[mongo]

3. You make a valid point

and I don't think the police should have been protecting a downtown electronics store.

But I don't think that we should be apologizing or accepting the behavior of *most* of the looters either - which is what a bunch of DU'ers are saying - it's alright because civilization has broken down and they are poor people.

[KittyWampus]

9. should the police be there to stop potential violent behavior?

cause that's the next stop after looting.

Rage has to escape somehow.

think Lord of the Flies.

[MercutioATC]

2. Thanks. You said that well.

I'm appalled by the apologists here who seem to believe that a natural disaster absolves everybody of personal responsibility. In that situation, I'd have been prepared. Had my preparations been undone by circumstance (everything washed away) I might, in an extreme circumstance, break into a store to feed my family.

That's not what some of those reports seem to indicate.

Survival is one thing, and you gave a great example of how to handle it intelligently. Profiteering is another. Some don't draw a distinction. I do.

[mongo]

4. Yeah, the question is what do we do to fix it?

Because with some of the violence directed at the police, I'd hate to be a single policeman dispatched to a grocery store to organize neighborhood relief efforts. I'd probably be killed.

I hope that we as a nation try to look at what is happening in N.O. on a deeper level and come up with some plan to mitigate the next disaster.

[MercutioATC]

6. The key is preparedness, I think.

Some of this will always happen, but, despite NOLA rescue workers being organized before the hurricane, there was marginal federal support.

Had the National Guard been in NOLA on Saturday and Sunday en masse evacuating people to pre-established emergency shelters, much of this could have been averted, IMO.

[demigoddess]

5. You have an excellent point. Nobody seems to realize that

all those foodstuffs are probably needed desperately and anything else they can use , toilet paper, shampoo, bleach. A few drops of bleach will purify water if you are desperate. And all of those things will just degrade and go to waste if left where they are. Also the guys taking tvs may be trying to get information, thinking they may find a place to plug them in. Even so those things will degrade just being close to water for an extended period of time. If they can be salvaged, so much the better. I also heard reports of gunfire that were hinted at as being sinister. When I was close to a hurricane in that area, men used their guns to shoot snakes and gators brought out of the bayous into the neighborhoods.
If big stores would do as you suggested instead of posting guards, they would gain so much customer, community loyalty, that it would more than repay them

[Pithlet]

7. But, what no one in this thread seems to realize

is that all of the rational, sane and obviously reasonable things being said in this thread are being said by people who are very definitely NOT in New Orleans right now.

All that us evil, hated "looter apologists" are saying is that maybe, just maybe, it might be a little bit harder for them to come to the same rational conclusions that we are. Being one of those horrible, immoral looter apologist, I will concur that much of what those people are doing doesn't make a lick of sense. But, what makes MY position different is that I'm completely aware of my intact surroundings and how it makes it VERY easy for me to be little miss perfect goody two shoes, and all rational and stuff.

[mongo]

14. Some of the behavior was understandable

and a lot of it was not. Should we condone their behavior?

Yeah, it's easy being an armchair quarterback - and I'm not judging anyone who stole food for their family. I just wish there was a better way - and because of that, I can't condone their behavior.

[Pithlet]

15. I think the best time

to even worry about it is after the immediate needs of those poor people are being met. Until then, worrying about any of the looting just seems unnecessary to me. I'm not condoning taking advantage of the situation to steal valuables, and I'm sure there are crooks that are doing so, even if I'm not sure it's to the degree that many think. But, all I see right now is a big, desperate situation. Looting just isn't even on the radar blip for me, and it really bothers me to see people even making judgments at this point.

Even the non-essential stuff might just be people in a daze who aren't thinking clearly, people who are just like you and me and never fathomed they would do such a thing. Saying that isn't condoning it. And once recovery efforts are well underway, effort can be spared to deal with the looting.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. You make some great points, but some are conjecture

You assume the person with the cart full of drinks was going to sell them. How do you know that men weren't sent out to bring back drinks and whatever food for the more infirm?

I think the looting of TV's etc is pure stupidity and have not defended it, but I do place the responsibility at the feet of our federal government for the sheer lack of resources on the ground immediately following the hurricane.

They KNEW a category 5 hurricane was scheduled to touch down HOURS before it occurred. At best, that hurricane was only going to weaken so much before it touched.

They CHOSE to wait before mobilizing anything, KNOWING that the resources for cities and states was in decline and that durable equipment for the NG was overseas.

We've seen in thrid world nations the chaos that ensues when governments are corrupt and detached from the suffering of the people.

Much of this chaos COULD have been avoided had at least SOME resources been immediately earmarked to respond PRIOR to the disaster.

They were watching the same news as all of us from Saturday evening until Monday morning.

How hard would it have been to fly in supplies TO the Superdome on Sunday night?

[mongo]

12. Ok

I agree that the guy with the cart of drinks was conjecture on my part. Perhaps he was going to give it away on his block.

Disasters bring out both the best and worst in us, it seems.

I do believe there was some amount of supplies at the super dome before they opened on Sunday. And yes, they should have brought in more. There seems to be so many things here where planning should be better.

Why isn't there a safe place for a helicopter to land (a park maybe) - within 2 miles of every residence?

The low lying parish where they were rescuing people from rooftops. Why doesn't housing code mandate attic stairs and an escape hatch on the roof of every residence there? (my neighbors would describe that last sentence as "communist" - worse than having municipal trash service).

I don't really know how many resources you would want to deploy before the storm. How many rescuers do you want to put into harms way?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

16. They could have been standing by in East Texas or northern LA

I can often appreciate your posts and perspectives and I think the people saying "screw the man" are perhaps being a bit childish..but what we are seeing on the ground is the Stanford Experiment only people are trapped in water not jail.

Again, I would FAR MORE prefer to focus on the FORESIGHT that leadership requires. No one posting from their dry comfy homes knows what their breaking point is. None of us know the horrors of living on rooftops while dead bodies float past or waiting for what is now TWO DAYS after this disaster to be rescued.

Hell...a couple thousand seadoos could speed a lot of people out of that mess.

I also think the amount of looting has been relatively small to the amount of people simply trying to feed themselves.

Again..our government is a reflection of all that is fucked up about our culture and society.

[Cato1]

10. The thing I'm most worried...

...about is the fact that all the looters shown on TV appear to be black. The NO looting episode will be yet another setback for race relations.

[mongo]

11. Another valid point

But I think that the people who take it that way, would have already been predisposed too.

Personally, I saw people from our lower economic caste.

[Tomee450]

13. I'm also bothered

by the fact that all of the looters shown are black. New Orleans may be a majority black city, but it still has citizens of other races. This reminds me of the Rodney King riot when most of the looters shown were black. However, investigations later revealed that it was a multi-racial riots including Blacks, Whites, Hispanics and Asians. Most of those arrested were Hispanics.

[Wizard777]

17. Mother Ann said it Best.

The founder of the Shakers, Mother Ann was being interviewed by a reporter. She was asked what the secret to the Shakers bountiful harvests was. Her response is what I consider to be the pinnacle of Christian Charity. "We plant a extra for the crows and thieves. Because crows and thieves have to eat too." She wasn't going to allow people to sin by stealing from the Shakers. They planted extra just for those down on their luck to sneak into the Shakers fields at night and take with their blessings. She removed the sin of stealing with generosity. She didn't lead people into temptation to have an excuse to pass judgment on them and empower herself over them. She truly delivered them from evil with kindness. That is why I greatly admire this wise woman. Mother Ann was a Grate American and Spiritual Giant. Her huge heart proves that. I guess that is why the Angels talked to her. O8)