I would have commented there, but that thread's been dead since mid-February.
Andrew did not hit Miami directly. It hit Homestead, FL, which is significantly south of Miami. Although Miami did sustain a great deal of damage, neither it, nor Homestead, nor any other part of South Florida is built below sea level. At sea level? Sure, absolutely! But below? Not at all. The water table is too high. Storm surge sucks when most of your community is only a few feet above sea level, but there wasn't the same kind of "bathtub" effect that New Orleans had when the levees broke.
Combine that with the fact that there was actual, competent leadership at FEMA in 1992 and you have a better agency responding to a significant, but still lesser disaster. There's no need to ascribe to racism that which can be easily be ascribed to a combination of incompetence and poor urban planning.
I wasn't too sure about the information regarding Andrew/Miami, but I think he brings up some other interesting things that bear discussion & research.
I can't help but feel that racism made incompetence and poor urban planning that much easier to occur in the case of New Orleans.
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Andrew did not hit Miami directly. It hit Homestead, FL, which is significantly south of Miami. Although Miami did sustain a great deal of damage, neither it, nor Homestead, nor any other part of South Florida is built below sea level. At sea level? Sure, absolutely! But below? Not at all. The water table is too high. Storm surge sucks when most of your community is only a few feet above sea level, but there wasn't the same kind of "bathtub" effect that New Orleans had when the levees broke.
Combine that with the fact that there was actual, competent leadership at FEMA in 1992 and you have a better agency responding to a significant, but still lesser disaster. There's no need to ascribe to racism that which can be easily be ascribed to a combination of incompetence and poor urban planning.
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I can't help but feel that racism made incompetence and poor urban planning that much easier to occur in the case of New Orleans.
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