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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
On Saturday, a cry for help from Franklinton, La.: "We are panicking!" More reader tales of heroism and despair.
Sep 3, 2005 | Franklinton, La., in Washington Parish is without any federal assistance, and there is only a small Red Cross office open. The entire parish is without food, water and electricity. We are panicking. The citizens here are wondering why no one is helping us. From what we can pick up, FEMA and the rest of the government didn't know we were in need because no one called them and told them. Hello!
There is no land-line phone service, radio service or cellphone service. The lines are down and electricity runs the cell towers. Hello! We need electricity at least for critical areas so there can be communications. Why didn't FEMA send in people to survey the damage and needs of people in a 100-mile arc north of the area where the hurricane came ashore?
We have been told that power will be restored sometime in December! From all indications the parish itself received damage. There was little loss of life from the hurricane, but there will be loss of life from starvation and dehydration if conditions continue. Please send us help!
And they are saying that once electricity is restored, the schools can reopen in December!
I am relaying this from my dad's computer. He had the presence of mind to get a generator from Home Depot.
Not all food stores have power, and the ones that are open are only taking cash. People aren't working, so they can't get paid, and no could cash paychecks even if they were, since the banks are closed. So cash is in short supply. I had to travel 40 miles to get gasoline, and only got enough to get home. I have no money now; we spent it on food and gasoline. I am limited in where I can go until my father can send me cash.
A neighbor raises pigs. He is going to start butchering one in a few days and have a barbecue to feed the neighborhood. His pigs will eventually starve and die. My horses will eventually starve and die. There are no jobs because there is no power and limited gasoline.
The federal government has got its priorities skewed. Electricity brings the ability to work and clean up. Water and food bring the ability to live. People can clean up their own streets temporarily if they have gasoline, but they have to drive great distances to buy gasoline in places where the electricity is still on. They are spending what little money they have on gasoline to get to stores and buy what limited food is available. Where is FEMA?
We are now living in a community that feels like the 18th century, with no electricity, or water, or natural gas, or gasoline, but at least in those days they had food or a means of getting it. I cry for the poor people in New Orleans, Gulf Shores, Biloxi and Mobile who have lost everything.
It is tremendously worse in other communities -- areas where bodies float in the streets and lawlessness runs rampant, because Bush sent the National Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Guard could be here now, but my brother, William B. Wheeler IV, is in the Georgia Reserves and is at a camp in New Jersey waiting to go to Iraq. He should be down here helping Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi. I'm sure he's feeling terrible.
We don't get much news except from battery radios and people who happen to stop who are themselves lost. I had to travel a great distance to get this message out.
Where is FEMA, where is the National Guard, where is the Red Cross? Where is help? I have three boys. I need food; I need dog food if anyone could send it; I am going to soon need horse food. I have 12 horses that I had just moved down to our property from Georgia. But I have no way of caring for them unless we get electricity. And I have no way of selling them.
A large number of residents around rural Franklinton have wells that are pumped by electricity. If we just had electricity we could begin to get our life back. Gasoline could be pumped and distributed -- what little there is available.
And the horrible thing is, I'm sure my story is being duplicated in hundreds of communities from Franklinton to Mobile, Ala., and beyond because of poor planning on the part of the federal government, which is supposed to have the resources to help. Planning: "You plan for the worst situation and hope for the best." They didn't do that. My fear is that we are only in the beginning of the hurricane season and we might see this happen again in a few months!
Doesn't the federal government know how to plan? I am a housewife and I could have planned for disaster assistance better than FEMA did. I heard that when it came to disaster assistance money for FEMA and Army Corps of Engineers money to strengthen the levees in New Orleans, Bush denied the items because it "wasn't in the budget." It was more important to stay the course in Iraq than to prepare for Katrina. It is more important to help his oil buddies make billions than it is to help the citizens of the United States.
I voted Republican in the last election. I will vote Democratic in the next one. Bush and his Republican friends have been exposed for the incompetent, uncaring, uncompassionate people they really are. They are not compassionate and they certainly aren't Christian. Everyone down here feels the same.
I am also sending this cry for help to other countries' embassies that we have helped in the past. Maybe they can help us, since our own government seems unable to.
-- Alicia Crider
