Mayor Ray Nagin: "Get off your asses"

[Q Classic]

The loger this takes the worse it gets. This is an obvious thing to say, but with temperatures well over 30C all the bodies will rotting very fast if they don't get recovered soon. It's a disease epidemic waiting to happen. Oh and standing water will no doubt breed mosquitoes, things like malaria, dengue or west nile might make an appearance as well.

Too true. What's worse is that those diseases and vectors can survive in some of the worst water around, which is what the flooding has caused--the Lake of New Orleans, now merged with Lake Pontchantrain (sp?) is non-potable, toxic, and still a perfect breeding ground for pathogens; still waters in and around the city are now havens for mosquito larvae.

It won't be the storm that killed people, but its aftereffects.

[Ted Striker]

Yep, and there are already hundreds of thousands of dead animals (chickens, fish) in that water, on top of the humans floating in it.

I think cholera was mentioned as a big risk.

[lightblue]

Cholera is always a risk when people have to resort to untreated water that is contaminated with human or animal feces (typing of which actually made me gag a little..).

[MOBIUS]

I don't think that disease will be much of a problem.

There certainly won't be an epidemic and anyone infected isn't likely to die - unless we are to believe that the US truly has become a 3rd world country after all...

Worst case IMO would be people forced to drink dirty water from thirst due to the fact that this country can't get its arse into gear and supply fresh water to people in less than 100 hours...

But then hundreds of millions of people if not billions around the world do that on a daily basis, and we're not exactly jumping to save them.

[lightblue]

Well they can't even get the survivors out, which means the dead will be rotting away for weeks to come. They'll have to keep bombing the city with anti-mosquito/fly chemicals until winter starts.

[Q Classic]

MOBIUS: It may not be from drinking the water, but from other vectors, such as mosquitoes, exposure to animals, and exposure to other people. Starvation and dehydration weaken the immune system, and there are probably a good number of small cuts and bruises; without sanitation, infection is easy to come by.

[MOBIUS]

And now that the authorities are finally getting their **** together, the vast majority of any cases that do occur are likely to be treated in time - I still think deaths will be minimal from disease.

Time will tell, and I for one hope I am proved right!

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Maybe Nagin should have got off his ass and ordered the evacuation of New Orleans more than 24 hours before the storm hit.

He did. He said on Friday, IIRC, that people should start leaving NOLA. I remember thinking at the time that I was rather impressed for that they were thinking that far ahead.

[Drake Tungsten]

I remember being surprised that he waited until Sunday morning to order the mandatory evacuation (an evacuation President Bush appealed for, apparently), when it was pretty clear Saturday night that New Orleans was going to get hit.

And I still don't understand how he can ***** at the Feds to get off their asses and commandeer buses when he didn't even make any use of New Orleans' fleets of school and city buses. He could have used those to get some of the people without cars out before the storm hit. At the very least, he could have had the buses moved to higher ground so that they would be of use now instead of victims of the flooding.

That said, I'm not pinning all the blame on Nagin. He made some mistakes, but so have a lot of other people. It is to be expected when dealing with a disaster of this magnitude.

[chequita guevara]

I'm not on Nagin's side. I think the city leaders bear a proportionate amount of blame.

[MOBIUS]

Yeah, even I don't think it's all Bush's fault...

[Imran Siddiqui]