A must-read post by some nice folks who decided to donate food and supplies to Katrina victims.
He then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and “a sum of money” and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.
I’d like to live in a world where I could dismiss such a story as too unbelievable to be true, but unfortunately I think it probably is true. Read the whole thing. Hat-tip to Bean and to Media Girl.
OK, this is seriously strange. I read the whole post, and I was bothered by two things: 1) the basic cluelessness of the author (didn’t it occur to him to call ahead? Even Salvation Army and Goodwill have rules for what they accept, for Pete’s sake); and 2) the obviously overboard concern for fairness and peacekeeping at an amazingly petty level on the part of the staff at the camp. For instance, why do they get FEMA identification cards and money if they have to stay inside the camp for 5 months? I could understand a rule that once they move out they can’t come back, but are TPTB just assuming that these former residents of New Orleans will get lost out on the open prairie if they leave the fenced-in area, or what? The fire hazard thing I can almost get, since it’s possible that these cabins don’t have electrical facilities up to code, but then you get an inspector in and fix the problems, not prohibit people from using the kitchens! And not letting people get shuttled to church services – has someone decided that the good Baptists of Oklahoma are going to try to convert the good Catholics of Louisiana to Protestantism? I’m baffled.
the basic cluelessness of the author (didn’t it occur to him to call ahead? Even Salvation Army and Goodwill have rules for what they accept, for Pete’s sake);
Eh, that doesn’t surprise me. I worked for a charity for a year and people would just show up with stuff they wanted to donate far more often than they’d think to call ahead.
the obviously overboard concern for fairness and peacekeeping at an amazingly petty level on the part of the staff at the camp.
There seems to have been a meme running round the media – which is being happily adopted by FEMA as an excuse for why the feds were so late responding to the crowds at the Superdome and the Convention Centre – that the people there were all bad, evil people. Violent, riotous mobs. The expectation is evidently that these people need to be kept isolated and dependent…
Yeah, this sounds to me a lot like the construction workers and other (very well-meaning) people who showed up in New york in the weeks after September 11th and were actually “pissed off” (I heard one of them use that exact term) to find that – horrors! – the city had contracted with a company to do the debris removal and recovery operations and were no longer letting volunteers into the site to help. Large scale disasters need large scale responses, and to coordinate a large scale response you need procedures for sorting, cataloguing, and distributing supplies, and having individual people drive cars full of clothes directly to a relief camp is incredibly inefficient and in most cases counter-productive.
The question of whether the procedures are helping or hindering is a separate issue, but to suggest that having procedures at all that you ask people to follow somehow implies something sinister about your operations is silly and, in my opinion, more than a little naive.
I’m sorry that the original poster’s mother was disappointed that they couldn’t accept her apples. But, as a previous commenter has said, if she’d called ahead, she could have done something more useful.
One of the people at work posited the idea that they might quarentine some people for a period of time, due to all the horrible bacteria, etc in the water and surrounding areas?
But five months?
From the comments made by the folks at the camp, it seems pretty clear that they’re designating this particular camp as being one for troublesome individuals – folks who they’re pretty sure are going to be very difficult to handle. Out of hundreds of thousands of refugees, I would expect there to be quite a number of people with poor social or self-control skills. They can’t pre-emptively put them in jail, but it would be nuts to stick them en masse in a more ordinary camp environment.
I’m sure the authorities did an extensive analysis to determine which individuals of the hundreds of thousands being evacuated had “poor social or self-control” skills. From some of the stories I’ve read by people coming out of the areas being evacuated, that could describe many of the people in law enforcement there. I think your assumptions are ludicrous.
Wait, is there a source for this other than a message board devoted to fans of conspiracy theories? Because I sure would hate to get all outraged without a reliable source to back up my righteous indignation.
I’m as ready as anyone else to reject this as a conspiracy theory, or an isolated instance, or a single camp devoted to more troublesome evacuees. But check this out: there’s at least one more isolated instance.
I too would love to think these are anomalous cases and/or a conspiracy nut and a reporter run amok, and I’m reserving judgment for the moment.
Let’s assume, however, that Robert’s guess is correct and that the people coming to the Oklahoma camp are considered “troublemakers.” Robert, please go back to high school and take remedial civics. If the facts are as reported, they’re still being detained without due process. In this country, no matter what John Ashcroft and friends may think, we’re not supposed to lock people up first and sort out the facts afterwards.
The quarantine theory might be closest to the truth. I talked to a friend last night who lived in India for many years, and she said that the government there would have loved to quarantine people who were flooded out but didn’t have the backbone and resources to make it stick.
The Oklahoma people may be set up to receive the last holdouts, who almost certainly are carrying a lot of nasty communicable diseases from the water and are very likely contagious.
Lee: For instance, why do they get FEMA identification cards and money if they have to stay inside the camp for 5 months?
FEMA identification cards to monitor their movements inside the camp?
Money so that they can be charged for services inside the camp? I can visualise all too easily a situation where they get their three meals per day provided – but anyone who wants more, or who can’t stomach what they’re given, must buy provisions at a “company store”. Since they aren’t permitted to use kitchens, this will presumably be nothing but ready-meals and snacks – and who will be overseeing to make sure there’s no mark-up?
Will they be “allowed” to work and earn money inside the camp? Who will they be working for? What will they be paid? At what rate?
I hope it’s a false report. But with this White House, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s true.
Good morning all,
I read Amp’s link and offer a different theory ~ prisoners.
Lost in most media reports were the more than 7600 prisoners detained in Orleans Parish Prison (just down the road from the Superdome) as well as another prison in Jefferson Parish (I think).
The prisoners were not evacuated until September 1, 2005. After Katrina and after the flood walls broke.
The Department of Corrections in LA claims all prisoners were transported to prisons in other parts of LA. But as of today I have six people who have posted to my blog seeking any information about loved ones evacuated from on OPP. One of them is a Detective in the Atlanta Police Department. If he can’t get professional courtesy the other people seeking information certainly cannot. (I don’t have time to link to all this info. Go to my blog, where I have most of these links.)
If the people housed in the church buildings in OK are indeed prisoners then they may be called detainees in an effort to not scare local citizens. It may also explain the heavy guns, so to speak. It would also explain the gender segregation.
Given the absolutely shitty way we treat prisoners in America (and witness the left blogging world missing them as well) I offer the following theory: the DOC in LA moved the prisoners whereever they could. They are not obligated to share anything with family members, and who cares anyway? They’re prisoners after all.
LA prisoners remain overcrowded and OPP was one of the worst (google Orleans Parish Prison and you’ll see what I mean) in terms of treatment of its prisoners. I’m not sure the others prisons could house the additional “detainees.”
If any of you reading this post could direct me to other blogs/websites/charity organizations that may know ANYTHING about the whereabouts of these prisoners, I have six people who would be eternally grateful. Make that seven, as my mind will be put to rest as well.
As I will be deployed next week by the Red Cross to the Gulf Coast, others will be blogging for me. But they are ready to continue the hunt for the missing prisoners.
Thanks all.
Kind regards.
Jay (blog: http://www.jaysennett.typepad.com)
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/4761.php
Jay, I emailed this to you as well, just in case it has some new info.
Alsis39,
Thanks!!
Jay
The thing that bothers me most is the obvious lack of communication between all the people involved. Every person this woman talks has brings up some different restriction that no one else seems to know about – I’m specifically thinking of the point where the one “host” (which, by the way, comes from the Latin word for victim) starts asking them “No, HOW did you get in here?” How did she get in? Who’s running the show there?
I realize that on one level this is part of the SNAFU that is any natural disaster (and even moreso for Katrina). But keeping certain other facts in mind (the head of FEMA learning via a TV interview that thousands were stuck at the NO Convention Center without any food or water at least an entire day after the media knew, a MS small town mayor saying on NPR that he’d seen no FEMA agents and in fact hadn’t even been able to get through on their phone, rumors of FEMA not returning phone calls of some group or company with loads of fuel to bring to the area from Texas, and authorities cursing or weeping uncontrollably in full media view about being told one thing by FEMA regarding relief, and then being told something else the next day), this smells real bad, to the point where I wonder if Jon Stewart is right, and this will be Bush’s Monica Lewinski.
I do have to say, though, that I’m afraid I agree that the woman is displaying a certain degree of cluelessness, in that, after she’s been told some pretty amazing things about evacuees not being allowed to use the kitchen, and not being allowed to leave behind most of the food they brought, she still goes right ahead trying to leave the stuff they brought for women, without stopping to think that maybe she should ask someone what is going on. It’s quite obvious to me that if just anyone were able to march in and leave necessaries for evacuees in these cabins, soon there’d be a huge chaotic pile of things and no room for the people. As a software geek, I’d say she doesn’t realize that her particular relief strategy scales horribly.
And then I’d also say the son, talking about FEMA running through “billions” by getting cell phones when walkie-talkies would do just fine, doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Seems likely to me that the FEMA people already had the phones, and the only expense would have been setting up the new tower. And even if FEMA paid retail for that tower (and it is an assumption that FEMA has paid for it at all), the son misses the painfully obvious advantage of having cell phones over walkie-talkies: the FEMA agents can call anywhere. Once evacuees are there, if they get cell phones they too will be able to call family or friends somewhere else in the country.
And actually, on a second reading of some of the post, frankly, it looks to me like the author and her family have actually gone to the camp with the assumption that the authorities there want to hinder relief efforts, and not just organize them. My two bits: despite the apparent disorganization of FEMA at this location, the author is quite clearly overly alarmist. I recommend two grains of salt, and further investigation, if possible.
I’m old enough to know to not believe half of what I hear and even less of what I read.
Take that to heart.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
Robert, please go back to high school and take remedial civics. If the facts are as reported, they’re still being detained without due process.
No they aren’t. “If you leave, we’re not going to take care of you any more” is not detention.
I’m actually glad about the post and the tone. Remember these are Bush’s core constituents, the ones who will pardon him every time he and his administration bungle things. If even they are taking a jaundice eye when viewing recovery and how displaced citizens then this has even more the potential of “W” Monica.
If a governmental authority has taken responsibility for these people, then they have the right to make some reasonable rules. I can think of rational reasons for at least some of these rules: you can’t come back after you leave, because you might not be a real displaced person-just some local ne’er-do-well who wants the free support of the camp. You need internal ID for the same reason. The money is for incidentals you might be able to get access to that aren’t part of a charitable distribution, and also so you have some when you leave (if you decide to).
If they didn’t make rules, and the system was abused, there would rightfully be accusations and investigations of the abuse.
WTF!?!?!
Robert, you got me: according to the article, they are allowed to leave, but if they do they aren’t allowed to come back. Apologies for the snide.
However — let’s accept either the “troublemakers” or the “prisoners” hypothesis, and let’s say some of them do leave and are not allowed back in. We then have known troublemakers, suspected or convicted criminals, wandering the wilds of Oklahoma, in unfamiliar country and with nothing to live on. If the various law-enforcement types there are trying to protect the surrounding community from these lowlifes, why would they permit such a scenario? A similar question applies if decontamination is the issue.
If OTOH these are just plain folks, why all the precautions such as sex segregation and prohibition of cooking?
I would say either this woman has her facts wrong or there is a whole other side to this story, undreamt of in any of our philosophies. I also tend to agree with Sparkane that turning away donations seems heartless and pointless until you think “what if everyone just showed up and dumped off random stuff?”
How anyone can compare the behavior of our elected and appointed leaders in the last two weeks to what happened with Clinton and Monica Lewinski is beyond me. I don’t admire Clinton’s behavior in that situation, but let’s get real. Nobody died. Even seeing it mentioned in the scope and context of this disaster and our government’s performance is deeply insulting, as far as I’m concerned.
It’s not surprising that there’s rules and regulations, but this strikes me as much more restrictive and isolationist than the usual refugee camp. Is there anyone here who can comment on what it’s usually like in an overseas camp? Someone who works for UNICEF or another refugee agency?
In any event, this seems extra-nasty. It makes me think of the Japanese detainment camps of WWII. except here, it’s for the poor.
I’m much, much more cynical about your government, guys: I’m assuming they are going to be isolated until the story dies down and no-one is interested in their story anymore. Their suffering is embarrassing to the administration: I’ve already heard tales of appalling mistreatment and neglect from Candian tourists who’ve come home. I assume these guys can tell their stories and the govenerment doesn’t want them to.
A smart, ambious reporter/ blogger would be able to sneak a digicam with an uplink into these places and get a hellava story. They’d never be able to sell it to the US media, but the BBC or the CBC might buy it.
The theory that the people in question are being isolated because they are from prisons or because of infectious disease risk doesn’t make sense: why allow them to leave (but not come back) if either of those were true? I’m afraid I suspect that the authorities in charge made the assumption that, because the people being placed there are largely poor and black they are likely to be violent or otherwise out of control. Sigh.
This is true because if you read the post again you will see that there are families and children. So unless they are isolating families with the prison population there goes that reason.
Infectious disease? That’s reason is so sad, it’s laughable. Why would these people be singled out? Why wouldn’t those police and reporters, etc. who trudged through the waters, who are more likely to have contracted something from the water be put there if they are concerned about infectious disease? What you are suggesting is “Tuskegeesque.”
According to various news articles, no evacuees have been sent to Falls Creek at all. FEMA’s plans to move displaced people out of Texas have apparently been suspended, at least partly due to evacuees not wanting to be scattered too far from home. Let’s hope all those clothes, hygiene products, and perishable foods can find a new home.
Next thing you know, they’ll have lawyers advertising on TV:
“Hurricane Katrina Victims call now: We’ll help you sue the ass off of any and all government agencies that caused you any harm.
You’ll be able to make millions with some simple lawsuits.”
My point is, that the regulatory bodies feel they need to have some controls in place, otherwise they can be sued for any number of reasons. Americans love to sue.
[snort]Right. It’s an even bigger spectator sport than football. And, of course, only the lower orders in society “love” it. Following this theory, I submit that Americans “love” root canals, too, even more than they “love” not having to have root canals. [rolleyes]
It’s a lot harder than it used to be to bring class-action lawsuits, thanks to the “bipartisan” dipshits in D.C. However, I wouldn’t find it outlandish at all if the survivors of this catastrophe wanted to sue those who callously let the levies go unenhanced.
To put it mildly, I think it sets rather a bad precedent to imply that it’s fine to strip basic rights from the citizenry for fear that they might sue. What’s next ? Shall we confine post-surgical patients for a year or two after hospital discharge, just to make sure they don’t get any funny ideas about suing ? How about folks who walk away from fender-benders ? Should we toss ’em in the clink in case the insurance companies balk at paying and they want to go to civil court over the matter ?
Please.
Bean,
I guess from the tone of your posts that my prisoner theory either offended you, or you have written me off as a ridiculous loser.
Either one is fine.
I guess I see the way we treat prisoners (including “children” who are routinely detained in “youth” detention centers) as horrible. In addition to adult prisoners removed from OPP all the “youth” detention centers in stricken areas were removed as well.
Given FEMA’s disorganization and LA’s DOC callousness combined with a general cultural disregard for prisoners all ages, I can fathom a scenario where prisoners could be moved out to the very place described in your link. Disorganized, without barricades and walls, etc., I can still imagine it.
Given that other survivors of Katrina appear to have greater movement (albeit I’m relying on CNN and NPR for these impressions) I thought they might be prisoners.
Your remarks, but the tone with which they seem to be delivered, suggest you think I am out of my mind.
I am. I think we treat prisoners as worse and more than what is described in your link.
I am however, willing to be proven wrong. Whether they are prisoners or not, no one deserves to be treated the way these people appear to be treated.
Finding out the truth is only one of many values. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth. (As opposed to the opposite of a fact).
In the end, Bean, what will you do to end the suffering of these people, whether they are poor and black or poor and black and prisoners? Blogging and commenting does not do shit to aid anyone in a practical way. And I say this as a dedicated blogger.
Trying to get to the truth of a matter won’t allow them to cook a meal or go to church or sleep soundly. Neither will my comments to this blog nor yours feed them or ease their suffering minds. But those of us involved in self-righteous politicking sure do feel better when we trash each other in the comments and talk about what an dick-head X person is! Whoo-hoo we get to be right!!!
And while we are busy trying to be right the people in OK are still being treated like garbage.
So I’ve changed my mind, Bean. You are right. They aren’t prisoners. Just poor and black.
What are you going to do to end their physical suffering and mental anguish? What will you do, besides blogging and snidely commenting on opinions you don’t agree with, to water the seeds of these people’s happiness?
What matters to you most, Bean? Being right or being helpful?
Jay –
With all due respect – and I do respect you – helping people is great. Using “what are you doing to help people? What matters to you, being right or being helpful?” as ammunition to score cheap points in an internet debate is, frankly, sleazy. I think you’re above that.
The truth is, we don’t have to choose between being right or being helpful; it’s possible to try to do both. Furthermore, because I know Bean in real life, I know that Bean does far more to help people in desparate circumstances – in real, direct, non-bloggy ways – than anyone else I know. Far, far more than the vast majority of Americans ever well. And she does it all the time, not just when the media is covering a crisis.
But I’m not convinced you really care what Bean does or doesn’t do. If you were trying to do something beyond scoring points, it didn’t come across in what you wrote.
My thought on this is that it’s ridiculous and scary. The fact is, while rules on coming and going should be fine (just like a dorm system at a college, checking in and out and curfews – etc.), the fact that they are not being allowed to leave, and others are being refused enterance is abhorrent.
And Bean pointed it out already, but they don’t put children in prisons.
And finally, the likelyhood of diseases spreading are extremely thin, and if they are concerned with that all they need to do is to give physicals and put any unhealthy evacuee’s in the hospital for a few days observation.
I’m hopeful on the quarantine theory. You can always move a staff of docs and nurses in, a hospital’s not designed for that sort of long-term care.
The 5 months is what’s weirding me out. Is that the “max” time they can stay? The minimum time they have to stay? How do they look for jobs and housing etc. if they aren’t allowed to leave?
I too can see reasonable reasons for many of the rules, including the “no use of kitchens”… even if it seems concentration-camp like. I can’t see it being for “troublemakers” and actual inmates because they are obviously expecting children. I think Jesurgislac is probably spot on.
A lot of this grousing is really running in circles. What could be done differently but still be realistic? Is there anyone out there who has perhaps been involved in running/working for a refugee camp (and since they are taking refuge from a natural disaster, they are in a way refugees)? Is this “5 month” nonsense a way for FEMA to buy time to figure out what the long-term plan is for these people? Is what is being set up some eeeeevil conspiracy or a simple fact of what happens when you have to take care of thousands of people with no idea of what eventually will be done with them.
Although the most obvious explanation might be that the staff is just as clueless as the poster and misunderstood or misinterpreted their training. It also occurred to me that the camp kitchens might not be up to code – the rules are frequently different for camps run by nonprofits for use of members only versus camps where facilities are rented out for use by others. As far as quarantine goes, a friend who is working on her public health degree says that a quarantined population has to be isolated both ways – they can’t go out, but if someone does manage to leave, they should be held separately because of introducing new infectious agents to the isolated population.
I don’t mean to sound bad, but I am over all of the fuss about the refugees. I live in Houston, TX where the majority of refugees came, I have been unemployed for eight months, had to file bankruptcy and still have the possibility of loosing everything. I don’t agree with them giving jobs to the refugees that many Houstonians are well qualified for, when is someone going to give me 2000.00 to live on and to pay my bills. I think Louisiana should be responisible for the refugees. Houston needs to take care of it’s own. Make sure that we are employed before you give jobs away.