SURREALITY TELEVISION

By now we’ve all seen the pictures. Rooftops that appear to be floating on a bed of chocolate soup. Emergency rescue teams hammering though shingles to reach people trapped in attics. Hundreds of homeless wading through the canals of downtown New Orleans with pilfered goods. How can we even begin to imagine, from the dry comfort of our modest homes, what these people are going through?

Hurricane Katrina turned out to be even worse than expected. It is now officially the single worst natural disaster to ever hit the United States. Worse than any other storm, earthquake, drought, or wildfire outbreak. There’s no electricity. There’s no plumbing. There’s no way in or out of town in some areas. As was feared, it has proven a disaster of Biblical proportions. The entire region has been rendered inhabitable. And the water is still RISING. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people with absolutely nothing left and nowhere to go. How does a group of people this large sustain itself? They have nothing. What do they eat? When your slate is wiped clean, how do you just begin again? They need help – lots of it, and fast. At what point do we stop sending prayers and start sending money?

Survivors are finding they are not alone. There are alligators, snakes, bugs, and rats – all trying to survive in the aftermath. What had been a teeming metropolis on the gulf, attractive tourist destination, and historic hot spot has become a murky modern-day Atlantis.

So where are these people going to go for now? They can’t stay in the Superdome. Many are being shipped to Houston in buses. According to one AP report, someone even had the stroke of genius to suggest bringing in cruise ships – those massive, man-made islands of floating decadence. Only now they’ll be used to house American refugees. Think about how strange THAT sounds to say: American refugees. At least there the homeless will have a place to sleep. At least there they can be safe from infection and wildlife. At least there relief missions can dispense food and water. At least there people can be accounted for. But for how long? And then what?

Meanwhile, in the streets, there is widespread looting. And they’re not just taking the essentials. They’re stealing shit they’ll never be able to use. Plasma televisions they can’t watch. Computers they can’t surf the web on. Compact Discs they can’t listen to. One of my co-workers today suggested, and not in jest, that looters be shot on sight.

“Looting?” she responded to a television report, “I don’t care how they want to soften it – it’s stealing. They ought to just shoot these people.”

I asked her to imagine for one moment standing in the middle of a city underwater. There’s no tomorrow or next week when you’re wading hip deep in sewage, surrounded by wildlife, with nothing to eat, no place to go, and no information. These people aren’t thinking about what they’re doing. They’re in survival mode. They’re not thinking about what they’re taking. It’s complete anarchy down there – and in a state of anarchy, you grab anything that has any value at all – the standard currency of chaos. A stolen DVD player is worth something to someone somewhere…better to have that than nothing at all.

I agreed with her that stealing is not right. But there’s a big difference between the opportunistic window smashers who take to the streets during protests and demonstrations, and the thousands of displaced souls paddling through the canals of the Crescent City. The difference is in context. In one situation you have people stealing to steal. In the other you have people foraging to live. I imagine some of the looters are simply up to no good – profiteers perhaps, hoping to score valuable consumer goods and electronics for resale on the black market. But let’s not ignore the life-threatening context of the situation. Faced with the same horrific conditions, you and I might resort to the very same behavior.

Whose cars are these? And why are they still here? Submerged evidence that no one expected the levees would break, the pumps would fail, and the geographical bowl to fill with swamp.










One official in Louisiana articulated an important point. The people who are in New Orleans right now aren’t there because they WANT to be there. They’re there because they’re stuck there. Trapped. Take a good look at the people who couldn’t get out. The poor. The unemployed. The people who had it rough to begin with. Many didn’t have the resources to just pick up and go. They didn’t have any disposable cash. They didn’t have cars. They were forced to hope for the best, and the lucky ones lived through the nightmare of Katrina – only to find it is a recurring one, fraught with dangers we can only imagine. Wait until the waters recede and the breadth of the graveyard is revealed. It is now estimated thousands may have died – many drowning in their own attics. A suffocating fate as surreal as it is horrifying.

80% of New Orleans is now underwater – as much as 20 feet in places. This is not a rural area we’re talking about – this is a massive city home to nearly half a million people. Our very own tsunami, minus the global outpouring of support. Many believe its time to recall resources from our War on Terror so we can declare a War on Water.

Now is a good time to go through my closet and find the clothes I haven’t worn in a long time. Hundreds of thousands of people could use them.