Accuracy and fairness are in the eye of the beholder who can (and does) emphasize and distort. (For some reason).
Most understood the fires were if not inevitable, highly likely.
-- > people have been going to the vacant homes of the evacuees and taking > stuff but none of the evacuees has done any reported crime.
If the evacuees were poor and black, Faux Noise would have found a way to report and distort.
Did they know for ten days *where* it would hit? And for *certain* how strong it would be?
This is a joke, right?
And completlely distorted by Faux Noise.
Thats right, on "time to prepare" you are not.
Surprise, skin color in economics make a life and death difference.
Population of San Diego fire evacuation zone: 500,000 Population of the New Orleans flood evacuation zone: 500,000
White folk as a % of evacuees, San Diego: 66% Black folk as % of evacuees, New Orleans: 67%
Evacuees in San Diego, in poverty: 9% Evacuees in New Orleans, in poverty: 27%
I think it would be fair to say that the poor in San Diego have better modes of transportation than the poor who were the main victims in New Orleans. Many in New Orleans had none and of course with a fire you don't have to travel so far. And the fire at no time interferred with the capacity to evacuate. Very significant differences. In New Orleans if you were late in realizing the danger you were stuck in the City. Some hurricanes change directions and some blow out, residents have experienced that. No so with fires.
Fifteen hours before the levees broke, the White House and FEMA knew the flood barriers were cracking, yet failed to inform the Governor and state police. San Diego who *knew* there were no near misses with fires had worked on a reverse 911 set up that saved lives.
Bush never mentions that his Department of Homeland Security?s FEMA trolls took away evacuation planning from the state and gave it to a crew of crony contractors who, for a million bucks, came up with a plan that came down to, "If a hurricane comes, get in your car and drive like hell."
Body count:
New Orleans flood deaths: 1,577. California fire deaths: 11?
Footnote:
In 2005, while the bodies were still being fished out of flooded homes in New Orleans, Republican Congressman Richard Baker praised The Lord for his mercy. "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn?t do it, but God did," he said about the removal of the poor from the project near the French Quarter much coveted by speculators.
In New Orleans, God?s covenant with real estate developers has been very profitable. Over 70,000 families remain, two years after the waters receded, in mobile home concentration centers far away from the N.O. re-building boom.