Aussie spends hurricane in jail

[Lisa Simpson]

http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050910/NEWS01/509100317/1002

I thought this was interesting if only because I hadn't ever thought about the people who were in jail at the time Katrina struck. According to this young man, there were riots:

For three days, McDonald went without food, clean water or access to a telephone. Some of the inmates started rioting, he said — "smashing windows with broomsticks and buckets and lighting things on fire."

"There were death row inmates in there with the misdemeanor offenders," he said. "Murderers and rapists — all kinds. Some of (the inmates) managed to escape."

Clarksville is in Tennessee, BTW.

 

[a_unique_person]

I think it illustrates a good point, the 'total' evacuation of NO was never possible.

What this article fails to mention, but which is implied, is that the guards just ran off.

That the guards just run off, leaving the inmates locked up is simply unnacceptable.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world...pped-australian/2005/09/10/1125772732559.html

AUSTRALIAN Ashley McDonald has revealed how he was "left for dead" for four days in a flooded New Orleans prison after the guards locked inmates in and fled the oncoming hurricane.

Forced to drink contaminated water to stay alive, the 30-year- old Melbourne man had no food for three days — and was then moved to another prison and forced to share a small space with murderers.

"People on death row were in with us, murderers and rapists were all there, " he said. "A lot of the younger kids spent all day making home-made knives. All night all I could hear was scraping on concrete sharpening up little bits of steel to make a knife. People had screwdrivers."

At one point, he was threatened with one and had to hand over his T-shirt.

Mr McDonald shared his small prison cell in New Orleans with two other men, all of them using a bucket for a toilet. After a while, they put a blanket over it in an attempt to reduce the stench. "We got virtually left for dead."

He had only just arrived in the city for a holiday when he was arrested for refusing to leave a bar. He was due to appear in court the next day, but hurricane Katrina changed his plans — and exposed him to a nightmare.

A nursing home was much worse, the bed ridden residents just drowned in their beds.

If a city cannot be really evacuated, should it be occupied?

 

[Lisa Simpson]

If a city cannot be really evacuated, should it be occupied?

Is total (or near-total) evacuation ever really possible in a large city? The greater Los Angeles area has over 17 million people living here. Even if it wasn't necessary to evacuate the people living in the inland areas, that's still a whole lot of people to move.

 

[geni]

Is total (or near-total) evacuation ever really possible in a large city?

Define large. And I suspect it is starlin managed to "evacuate" entire countires.