In Praise of Humans
Encouraging recent reports suggest that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina may be under a thousand, not up to ten thousand in New Orleans alone as had previously been feared. The destitute and dysfunctional of Louisiana were not crouching fearfully in their attics, slowly drowning as the flood waters crept up to the roof. Instead, they were leaving the city or had already left, uncounted and unmonitored, asking nothing, taking care of themselves.
A friend of mine was working in the South Tower on the morning of 11 September, 2001. When the North Tower was hit, his office was instructed to remain calm and not evacuate. He and his coworkers looked at each other, shook their heads, and headed for the stairs. Fifteen minutes later he was in Tribeca, walking north.
These are not the heroes of 9/11, but they are part of its story: the people who did not need saving, for whose sake no one had to die. In those first panicked days, the death toll was estimated at over 20,000. The reasoning used by the agencies to come up with these numbers was simply: If we didn't save them, then they must have died. But humans don't die quite that easily.
Many of the missing have suffered terribly, and some suffer still. Some have died in out-of-the-way places and will be found in time; some now alive will still die. Our protective systems have utterly failed these people, to our shame. They were not saved by Republicans or Democrats, by federalism or centralization, by big government or private enterprise. When all those ephemera failed, they were saved only by themselves, or by other humans operating below the clouded oversight of the agencies in which we foolishly placed our trust.
Let this be included in the story of Hurricane Katrina: human beings, with no resources but their own, enduring and surviving. Here's to humans.
A friend of mine was working in the South Tower on the morning of 11 September, 2001. When the North Tower was hit, his office was instructed to remain calm and not evacuate. He and his coworkers looked at each other, shook their heads, and headed for the stairs. Fifteen minutes later he was in Tribeca, walking north.
These are not the heroes of 9/11, but they are part of its story: the people who did not need saving, for whose sake no one had to die. In those first panicked days, the death toll was estimated at over 20,000. The reasoning used by the agencies to come up with these numbers was simply: If we didn't save them, then they must have died. But humans don't die quite that easily.
Many of the missing have suffered terribly, and some suffer still. Some have died in out-of-the-way places and will be found in time; some now alive will still die. Our protective systems have utterly failed these people, to our shame. They were not saved by Republicans or Democrats, by federalism or centralization, by big government or private enterprise. When all those ephemera failed, they were saved only by themselves, or by other humans operating below the clouded oversight of the agencies in which we foolishly placed our trust.
Let this be included in the story of Hurricane Katrina: human beings, with no resources but their own, enduring and surviving. Here's to humans.
posted by L. C. Staples at 2:31 AM
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