After reading the article Storm Evacuees Frustrated as Return Is Blocked, in "The New York Times”, I can completely understand why many residents are left feeling helpless and upset. Due to hurricane Gustav in New Orleans many were forced to evacuate and are now left with no money, no food, and no place to sleep. The evacuation started off with great success by getting all residents out before Gustav hit. New Orleans was also very lucky in terms that the hurricane left minimum damage. Many anticipated Hurricane Gustav to be another huge disaster. “The mother of all storms,” is what Mr. Nagin, the city’s mayor, called the hurricane. However, although New Orleans escaped what they thought would be another Hurricane Katrina, many residents are left without a place to stay. Now that the storm has passed residents began returning to their homes to find roadblocks, this left people stranded in parking lots while running out of food and money. City officials claimed that they were not allowed to go back to their homes because the power was still down and there was a lack of medical care. Although the medical care is understandable to the resident’s safety, why is it taking so long for the city to pull themselves together after the storm? Some residents claimed that they do not think the city thought about what needed to be done after the storm was over. Many residents were very excited to be able to go home and start putting everything back together again and were crushed to learn that they cannot. Quiet a few residents did not seem to care that the power was out. Merlene Demourelle, a resident in New Orleans, claimed, “We’re tired, we’re hungry, we’re out of money, and we want to take a bath. Sleeping in darkness-we’re used to that in New Orleans. Our lights always go off.” A resident named Kim also stated, “We might not have lights, but we can light candles. We have canned goods. We don’t have anything out here. We’re dead broke.” Now many are left thinking why didn’t the city officials think about post storm procedures. They did such a great job getting everyone out, why didn’t they do a great job bringing residents back home? The city claims that they have over a thousand workers cleaning up debris, if things are getting done so quickly then why weren’t residents allowed back in? I really think that although the city of New Orleans did such an amazing job getting everyone out to safety before the storm hit they need to come together and make a plan of how to get their residents back in their city and homes as quickly as possible. It seems really unfair to these people that that they have to sleep in their cars and on the streets with none of their needs met when the storms is over and it is now safe to return home but cannot due to their cities lack of planning.
