New Orleans ill-prepared for hurricane

9/17/2005

My belief is that the City of New Orleans has to take much of the fault for this failure.

First, the City of New Orleans had to know many of its citizens had no means to leave.

The mayor should have requested buses to move these people out of the city instead of cramming them into the Superdome.

Since they elected to keep them in the city and in harm s way, they never should have run out of food and water.

They should have had their shelters prepared with enough supplies to last them for at the least a week or until help could arrive.

They had plenty of advance notice and should have planned for the worst-case scenario.

Second, do the hospitals and nursing home facilities not have an evacuation plan? Everyone was ordered out of the city. Why did the hospitals and nursing homes not take responsibility for their patients and evacuate them prior to the storm? They would not have had to compromise their care.

I believe many people perished not because federal aid did not get to them on time but because the entire City of New Orleans was ill prepared.

A city set so far below sea level should take all hurricanes seriously.

SHANNA ARMITAGE

Whitehouse

Anyone who says New Orleans should not be rebuilt apparently has not visited this unique city. Some places are just sacred.

GLEN DEGELNOR

Maumee

Not being a left-wing wacko, bleeding-heart liberal admirer of Blade scribe Marilou Johanek, I thought she said a big mouthful when she opined, It is far better to believe a young man in the prime of his life died to advance a noble cause than the trumped up agenda of a White House cabal using 9/11 as an excuse to settle an old score.

Strong stuff.

Ms. Johanek is the epitome of what Rush Limbaugh calls a Left-Wing Wacko.

She calls Mr. Limbaugh a drug addict and chattering chicken hawk.

He has 20 million listeners per week. Not sure of her readership.

However, I m sure it s disrespectful to call the President of the United States Dubya instead of Mr. President, etc.

I couldn t find Dubya in my Franklin, zillion word pronouncing dictionary and thesaurus. Must be one of those literary privilege words that Cindy Sheehan s son died for in Iraq.

Charles Dersher

West Alexis Road

In light of the recent events on the Gulf Coast, perhaps we should reconfigure some of these military bases slated for closing into large-scale emergency shelters, especially if they are located near hurricane- and earthquake-prone areas or in densely populated sites.

I have a feeling we may need them in the future.

LOUIS VISI

North Wheeling Street