I was wondering how long it would be before someone made the point that President Bush helped the people in California because they were wealthy not poor like New Orleans residents. October 25, at least that is the date for this article on alternet.org and this editorial on Associated Content which appeared Nov 1. The reason the response to the wildfires was better than Katrina was because the area of devastation was so much smaller and the infrastructure was not as damaged. It has nothing to do with race or socio-economic status, it is about the ability of supplies to reach the necessary locations. Martin Savidge explains this in his editorial on MSNBC. From the Beyond Katrina website we get these facts1,875 homes destroyed by the California wildfires vs. 300,000 homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by the storm.
In California, fires consumed roughly 475,000 acres; more than 52 million acres were affected in the Gulf Coast.
Early estimates for the California fires are about 2% of the damage wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita – 91 billion vs. 2 billion!
Death toll – 2, 000 for Katrina, 11 for the California fires
The two disasters do not compare.
But it’s so much more fun to play the race and economic status cards!
Oh, if the federal government would just get out of the business of providing disaster aid in the first place, and leave this kind of thing to the state and local governments … but hey, most people just think of the states (and commonwealths) that are a part of the United States as provinces anyway. So why not let the good old federal government take care of us?
Race and econimics are a means to power for people like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton. They know that they become irrelevant if they have no crisis so they create problems where ever they can.