The New Katrina?

The AP has a good story today contrasting the treatment of the Southern California wildfire evacuees who've been forced to take shelter at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium with the notorious conditions at the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005:

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Like Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years earlier in New Orleans, thousands of people rousted by natural disaster fled to the NFL stadium here, waiting out the calamity and worrying about their homes.

The similarities ended there, as an almost festive atmosphere reigned at Qualcomm Stadium.
Bands belted out rock 'n' roll, lavish buffets served gourmet entrees, and massage therapists helped relieve the stress for those forced to flee their homes because of wildfires.

How can this happen in America in 2007? There's no one answer. It does appear that -- even with the raging fires -- access to the San Diego football stadium is easier than getting into and around flood-ravaged New Orleans. But mainly the Superdome fiasco was a failure on every level of government, from the grossly unprepared and clueless FEMA to the local government that should have known the Superdome was no good and put more poor people on buses before the storm hit.

Still, I can't help but think that other nations must look at these things -- the treatment of evacuees in one of America's richest cities (at least by housing price), and in one of its poorest -- and conclude that we're some kind of barbarians. The contrast between the wealth of water and food at Qualcomm, pictured at top of this post, with the scarcity at the Superdome is outrageous.
My biggest quibble with this AP article is the headline about "civility" -- which implies the contrast is the fault of the evacuees. That myth was pretty much punctured after Katrina.

The vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees — mass murders, rapes and beatings — have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law-enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know. "I think 99 percent of it is [expletive]," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong — bad things happened. But I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything ... 99 percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

They just weren't given food or water...let alone massage therapists. You have to be haunted by these words from Superdome survivor Phyllis Johnson, written shortly after Katrina and well before yesterday's evacuation:

Johnson said many of the people she met inside the dome thought they were going to die there. But she didn't want to lay down and die. She escaped the shelter, slogged through chest-high water and finally caught a ride on a stolen truck. She ended up getting onto a bus headed for Houston.

Even though President Bush said today that race played no part in the botched evacuation efforts, Johnson strongly disagrees. She is sure that if the people who were stranded in New Orleans after the storm were white, they would have been rescued immediately and treated with dignity.

"They portrayed us as savages," she said.