Let me walk you through the facts here.
The poverty line for a family of four is $20,444 per year. That's $393 a week, before taxes, rent, food, etc. Around 100,000 people displaced by Katrina were below the poverty line (source), so one would assume a sizable portion of New Orleans was making less than $400 a week.
Assuming, say, an evacuation to Baton Rouge, which was closer than most, evacuees would travel around eighty miles one way, spending about $30 on gas for a round trip- assuming they even had a car. Riding the bus is more expensive. A hotel room for four costs at least $50 a night (usually more, you know), and considering a stay of at least two nights, a hotel stay would cost at least $120 with taxes.
That's $150 just to evacuate and find a place to stay. Do you seriously think that a family can easily afford to make such a sudden payment when they make less than $400 a week? If so, you are hopelessly disillusioned.
Well put.
A city-wide, or even region-wide evacuation is such a huge thing that "personal responsibility" does not apply. There needs to be a uniform way to get all of those that cannot leave out of harms way and they need to be put up in shelters until the threat has passed.
For people living below the poverty line, evacuating or moving out of a hurricane-threatened region is almost impossible without some assistance.
And besides, it was not the hurricane itself that caused the vast majority of the damage. It was the negligence by the federal government to provide proper protection to one of our most vital ports. Sure, it's a bad place to build a city, but you can't blame people for living there any more than you can blame today's white children for the institution of slavery.
Having a car is irrelevant if you can't afford the gas to get to safety, as Bacon has already pointed out.
And Dead0man, what would you have it be? From everything you've said, you're just pointing fingers at the people and bitching. Would you have them just die or resort to homelessness because their pre-existing poverty forced them to make poor decisions? Your contempt for the poor is hard to believe.
