Let Them Eat Cake

All I can really say is that I’m beginning to understand the French Revolution in a way I never thought I would.

Buses taking Hurricane Katrina victims far from the squalor of the Superdome stopped rolling early Saturday. As many as 5,000 people remained in the stadium and could be there until Sunday, according to the Texas Air National Guard…

Those left behind early Saturday were orderly, sitting down after hearing news that evacuations were temporarily stalled…

Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air Force National Guard said 20,000 people were in the dome when evacuation efforts began. That number swelled as people poured into the Superdome because they believed it was the best place to get a ride out of town.

He estimated Saturday morning that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were left at the Superdome. But it remained a mystery why the buses stopped coming to pick up refugees and shuttle them away…

At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.

"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.

The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome.

The official explanation is that the hotel, which is situated across the street from city hall, was cleared with priority because the mayor has been using it as a base, and, once cleared, it could be used to house police, firefighters, etc. But I just don’t understand why, if as Texas Air National Guard Capt. Jean Clark says, “the buses had kept coming, we would have this whole place cleaned out already or pretty close to it,” the decision wasn’t made to just get the last of those poor people out of that filthy environment and then turn attention toward evacuating the hotel. Was situating officials in the hotel (and whatever other reasons have delayed the Superdome evacuation) so imperative that now some people are going to be stuck there until tomorrow? This is utter insanity.