what a mess

what a mess

I took a trip to Louisiana this week. The trip was on Greyhound, which is always the best way to see the country; one gets to meet lots of interesting people too.

Louisiana is in an uproar. The bus stations and every bus are just packed with people. Many of those are refugees from New Orleans; they have been living in shelters, in campers, in tents for over a week, and are mostly just trying to get someplace with a more or less permanent roof over their heads.

Baton Rouge has been absorbing lots of these people, and the roads there just can't handle the sudden doubling in population. Traffic jams stretch for miles.

Other towns throughout the state have been absorbing people too. If anyone has property for sale, it gets snapped up right away, generally the day it is listed. Often people are buying property sight-unseen. The neighboring states are also absorbing refugees from the gulf coast.

Just to give a sense of the scale of this disaster for people back in Alberta: it is as though Calgary has been rendered uninhabitable for the next several months, and every town from Airdrie to Leduc simply wiped off the map. Now, take the million and a half people in that Calgary plus highway 2 corridor, and force them into Lethbridge, Edmonton, Rocky Mountain House, Whitecourt, and Fort MacMurray. Have many of them travel through Saskatchewan, northern Alberta, the Peace district of BC, and back into central Alberta before finding them a place to live. Have thousands upon thousands living in what amounts to prison camps.

There are so many lives turned upside down by this; so many homeless, so many now jobless. The jobs will return though, particularly in construction. They will need every trade, and lots and lots of material. They will also need money, lots of it. and doctors and medicines.

Alberta has a huge surplus this year; the provincial government ought to seriously consider sending a billion dollars to split between the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. The people of Louisiana will not forget it, and they need it now more than anyone.

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