I love Jon Stewart

Openly and unabashedly.

New Orleans vs. Mumbai

My flag-waving cousin from India emailed me a shocking comparison between hurricane Katrina and the recent flooding in Mumbai. I have not validated the numbers, nor do I think that the two disasters or cities are necessarily comparable...

• disasters: class 4-5 hurricane + breach in levees vs. 24 hours (and thensome) of continuous downpour
• cities: New Orleans is a small, impoverished, mostly blue collar city; Mumbai is the New York City of India

So, take this with a grain of salt...
--

inches of rain in new orleans due to hurricane katrina: 18
inches of rain in mumbai (July 27th): 37.1

population of new orleans: 484,674
population of mumbai: 12,622,500

deaths in new orleans within 48 hours of katrina: 100
deaths in mumbai within 48hours of rain: 37

number of people to be evacuated in new orleans: entire city
number of people evacuated in mumbai: 10,000

cases of shooting and violence in new orleans: countless
cases of shooting and violence in mumbai: none

time taken for US army to reach new orleans: 48hours
time taken for Indian army and navy to reach mumbai: 12hours

new orleans status 48 hours later: still waiting for relief, army and electricity
mumbai status 48hours later: back on its feet and business as usual

USA: world's most developed nation
India: third world country

The Terror of Negligence

Sunday, Labor Day Weekend, and I'm laying in my bed blogging. A perfectly wasted 3-day weekend because I let the weekend sneak up on me... and by the time it hit, I had no plan. So far my weekend amounts to two days of running errands, cleaning, eating, reading, watching movies, and blogging. Eh. Negligence on my part.

Thinking back, I did make very loose plans with Suj (bro) to visit him this weekend. Incidentally, he bought a condo a month ago and thought he might need the long weekend to finish moving in. So, that didn't really pan out. I guess it wouldn't have anyway... he lives in New Orleans and that charming, warm, and welcoming city came under attack a week ago.

Let's blame the terrorists. If it weren't for Osama and Al Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center, the US would not have waged war on Iraq (surely the logic is in there somewhere?). And if those terrorists didn't play such a mean game of hide and seek, the greatest world power would've found Osama and the WoMaDs by now... and we would be out of Iraq? And, if we were not still funding a war in Iraq, the f'ing levees may have held up after Katrina grazed by. Whoa there... ridiculous leap? Check this blog entry by Lakshmi Chaudhry (referenced on NPR's Left Right and Center): Call it Lake George. Terrorist bastards.

Why is George W. Bunk not taking more heat for this? Is it leftist spin or has his reaction to the aftermath been nothing short of heartless? Instead of providing order and infrastructure, the fundamental responsibility of government, our current administration has plagued us with a foolhardy foreign policy and domestic ineptitude. What about FEMA? When a class 5 hurricane is sneering at your Gulf Coast, shouldn't you plan something? Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but is there nothing to be said about foresight? How about calculated predictions? Check out this article from the Times Picayune, published in 2002: Washing Away. (For more of the same, check out Wikipedia.)

The way I see it, they knew it was coming... but they let it sneak up on them. And when it hit, they had no plan... amounting to complete anarchy and chaos, loss of countless lives, $ billions in property damage, thousands of homeless refugees (including my brother), and a world of onlookers questioning the competence of the world's greatest super power. Negligence on their part?