For what it's worth, the only public school systems that currently rank lower than Louisiana are those of Mississippi and Alabama. Texas isn't in the bottom ten.
Yes, that's why I stated that Texas would be better than Orleans Parish school system even though it's not too great. I was thinking about the expose that was done by Molly Ivins a few years ago on how Texas "improved" their school system (basically by encouraging kids to quit and not counting underachievers, etc).
Anyways...update on the chaos:
Explosions at a chemical plant across the river. No further info at this point other than thick clouds of choking smoke affecting numerous people. Plant managers say there are no hazardous materials in the plant, so no hazmat teams are necessary.
Mayor was on WWL this morning, spouting curse words and extreme frustration (can you blame him?) at the lack of help. He says that they (higher ups) are "thinking too small" as they are trying to evacuate the city. He needs hundreds and hundreds of buses (I thought I heard something about getting trains as well to start to help transporting people as well) as I personally think that there are probably more than 75,000 people (at least) still in New Orleans.
Think about this, however (and something no one has mentioned thus far). How is anyone realistically going to completely empty the city? The gangs and the people snipering and looting aren't going to leave willingly I don't think. And there is a whole city for them to hide in! The thugs want to take the city over and make it their own. Are electricial and other workers going to want to go into the city (even after the water goes down) if they are subject to these people? I don't know how they solve this particular problem. Shoot to kill? Yikes. It's like some horror novel.
People in Jefferson and surrounding parishes are visibly frightened of what they see as "undesireables" invading their towns and houses. Yesterday I saw police officials saying that they will shoot on sight anyone attempting to come into their town (I'm thinking he might have meant black people). Mostly these stories are coming from Jefferson Parish, which adjoins Orleans Parish.
Oakland Mall has burned to the ground.
N.O. airport lobby has been turned into a triage area for determining which patients must be airlifted to area hospitals.
At least we get the president visiting the devestated areas today. I say we throw him into a Superdome bathroom and lock the door. His comments yesterday about people wanting things done "yesterday" (which would have been 2 days too late) were, to my mind unexcusable and of course Diane Sawyer let him get away with almost everything. I just thought of something. Now this gives him an excuse for the economy going (more) down the toilet. Whenever anyone asks him about the crappy economy from now on, all he has to say is "Katrina".
I agree with people's comments about being tired with the press conferences and glad handing and such. The people of New Orleans can't hear or understand any of it. If it takes them driving a bus or truck or whatever and helping to get people out then do it! People have been sitting on rooftops (!
for 4 days now.
I heard something on either CNN or MSNBC last night that because of the toxcity of the water (due to the amount of sewage, as well as gas and oil in the water) it could easily take up to 10 years for the city to be inhabitable again.
I'm not sure about that. New Orleans isn't known for it's cleanliness in the first place and it's certainly not an agricultural city. Most of the crap is going to be flushed into Lake Pontchatrain and the Gulf of Mexico (yay for the environment, but what else can you do?). After that, I would say that 80% of the buildings and homes that were underwater will have to be bulldozed.
I guess Tom Benson finally gets his new stadium. I think they are going to have to tear the Superdome down.
