New Orleans -- a foretaste of disaster

Chilling article by Ray Davies in The Times Online:

New Orleans - the ideal place to get shot
Away from the partying it was obvious to a dedicated follower of the city that disaster was around the corner

I spent the early part of last year in New Orleans recovering from gunshot wounds received as I was being robbed. It happened in the early evening as I walked down a quiet street with my girlfriend. There was a football game in town and the streets near the French Quarter were empty. The police presence was elsewhere. The incident itself was over in a flash but it plays over and over in my head and perhaps one day it will make sense to me.

I found out later that there were fewer than 2,000 police in New Orleans at that time and it reached such a point that there was talk of the city was importing officers from Cleveland. Anyway, thanks to someone�s mobile phone, the police eventually got to the scene.

Later, as I was carried into the emergency room at Charity hospital, a doctor reassured me that "New Orleans really is the best place to get shot". They had, he explained, had plenty of practice.

The same week I was shot, I read that three other tourists were killed near to where I was attacked. Tourists were urged not to fight back after being mugged (I was continually reminded of this by the district attorney�s officials, who were critical of the way I chased the man who robbed my girlfriend).

And the health-care system itself:

During my initial week-long stay in hospital and lengthy recuperation, I observed first-hand the bankruptcy of the New Orleans health system. Several doctors who treated me actually apologised for the low standard of healthcare in Louisiana. Even so, they gave me the best of what they did have, for which I am grateful.

I have just looked through some notes in the diary I made after I was operated on and one seems chillingly relevant. "How can the USA be expected to look after the whole world when it cannot even look after its own?" So it doesn�t surprise me to see the world reacting with shock to the "Third World" conditions in New Orleans "in this, the richest and most powerful country in the world". I could have told them that.

A view of New Orleans that one doesn't generally see. It has two industries, tourism and maritime/petroleum and little else.