Random news clippings after Katrina

I'm new to this, so I don't have any links to these stories, sorry. They are an assortment of stuff that caught my eye and I saved for one reason or another. Most of them are from NOLA.com if I remember correctly.

1----Early Wednesday, National guardsman and the police department's SWAT team swarmed the Algiers Fischer Housing Development, where someone fired on nearby technicians trying to restore cell phone service. Two men were arrested.

This just blows my mind. Why people would shoot at out of town workers trying to help the city is disgusting to me.

2----But their fears were based on actual experiences. The day after the hurricane, Pervel was carjacked as he tried to check on his other properties in the neighborhood. Two guys clubbed him on the head with a sledgehammer, grabbed his keys and stole his van, which he had filled with hurricane supplies, a full tank of fuel and his credit cards. The next afternoon, as Pervel and his mother, Harris and Stubbs stood on their porch, a gunfight between armed neighbors and "looters" erupted on the corner of Pelican and Valette streets, half a block away. The neighbors, whom Pervel would not identify, shot two of the men. "We screamed to Mrs. P., 'Hit the deck,' and she did," Harris said.

This is from an article published soon after Katrina about an event that happened in my neighborhood. I'm so glad I didn't stick around to see this. People that did stay have some pretty vicious stories of the aftermath. Thankfully the military set up their command post close to my house and peace and quiet were restored fairly quickly. It was still disturbing to see how jumpy my neighbor was almost two months afterwards though.

3---- Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner, said he too has been overwhelmed by the offers of help from his congressional colleagues, some of whom traveled to the state to personally deliver relief supplies like water and ice.
But he's also been able to personally attest to the breakdowns of bureaucracy that delayed the resolution of urgent requests for help, he wrote this week for the Wall Street Journal. Among his examples:
"A mayor in my district tried to get supplies for his constituents, who were hit directly by the hurricane. He called for help and was put on hold for 45 minutes. Eventually, a bureaucrat promised to write a memo to his supervisor."
"Evacuees on a boat from St. Bernard Parish could not find anyone to give them permission to dock along the Mississippi River. Security forces, they say, were prepared to turn them away at one port."
"A sheriff in my district office reported being told that he would not get the resources his office needed to do its job unless he e-mailed a request. The parish was flooded and without ."

typical NOLA bureaucracy at work. Need I say more?

4----The most bizarre such case, he said, came not from New Orleans but from farther west near the coastal town of Cameron, where Hurricane Rita left behind a casket. The dead man was from the Cameron graveyard, where he had been buried in the 1950s. In 1957, Hurricane Audrey had dug up the casket and carried it out of the cemetery. It had been sunk somewhere in a salt marsh east of town until Rita came ashore and resurrected it again.
"He'd been lost there underwater nearly 50 years," Yennie said. "There were barnacles on his coffin."

This one made me scratch my head. Life is just plain out weird sometimes.