The other end of the bridge, another side to the story?

[major_clanger]

Regarding the recent controversy over the closure of the bridge from New Orleans to Gretna, someone who faxed the Mayor of Gretna to express his disapproval apparently got a response.

(An interesting note: it seems Rob got the call because he sent a fax rather than an email, and this was thus taken more seriously. This isn't the first case I've heard of this.)

Also, former NO resident bridget_coila (apparently an SF writer who's done some convention panels - anyone met her?) comments about the coverage of this issue.

I'm not saying I endorse these points of view. But I do have to be honest and say that whilst it sounds as if there was an awful screw-up and a lot of bad decision-making, I have been feeling increasingly uncomfortable about some of the assumptions about what went on that nobody seems to question. (In particular, a look at a map suggests that Gretna is in not on the way out of NO to anywhere other than further down the Mississippi delta - it's to the south-east of the city. From all the comments I'd seen, I'd been imagining it was on the mainland side.)

What we need is some sort of investigation into what the hell went on, and why someone was apparently telling people in NO that there were non-existent buses over that bridge. (The cynical part of me wonders if someone was trying to get people not so much to safety as to somewhere outside their area of responsibility). Here, we could have a judicial review of a local government decision; does anyone know if there is an equivalent US process.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Google Earth does a decent job of showing the boundaries, but can be less clear about some of the road-names that get used. Anyway, the particular road leaves central New Orleans at that pair of bridges to the SE, and then does a fairly sharp turn to roughly follow the river upstream. Both bridges pass briefly through Gretna and Jefferson Parish, with the rest of the bridges before the roads reach ground level, and a motorway-style junction, being in New Orleans Parish.

Apparently "west" and "east" are used in a sort of whole-river sense -- Gretna is SE of New Orleans but on the west bank.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

That makes more sense, then. It still seems though that FEMA (or various people supposedly in the command chain) were telling at least some people in NO that there was transport from Gretna, and were telling Gretna authorities that they weren't going to get any transport laid on because it was all going to NO. (The report that set all this off cited a case of buses being requisitioned and redirected to NO, for example.)

I think that what happened was shocking. But it does seem that there is at least the possibility that it came about through a badly judged response to a crisis created by FEMA mismanagement rather than purely through a 'keep the undesireables out' attitude.

We urgently need to know more.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Bridget's post was interesting, given that she lives there. But I endorse Jay Lake's point that seeing refugees turned away at gunpoint is always uneasy viewing.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I agree - for me, a lot of the problem stems from the apparent US inclination to view guns as an acceptable part of the solution to any situation. (Over here, security forces don't fire warning shots, because if you want to warn someone, discharging a firearm is not an acceptable way to do it.)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

And of course their alternative would have been to create a police escort through the town. Instead they tried to force people back.

[bridget-coila.livejournal.com]

The question here would be- through the town to where?

There were no buses or aid available on the Westbank at all. The evacuatioin buses were all going to the other side of the river, to New Orleans, to pick people up.
Would it have really been better to escort the people through Gretna and out into the swamps without food, water or shelter and leave them there?
My bet is, if they had done that, they would have been accused of "leaving people to die in the swamp."

B