From CNN’s NewsNight With Aaron Brown:
BROWN (voice over): Through sheets of rain it is the slow exodus of the lucky ones, those who are getting out.
TIM SHEER, NEW ORLEANS EVACUEE: We walked, probably 200 people, about a two-hour trek. We got to the top of the bridge, they stopped us with shotguns.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police were shooting guns to keep people from crossing the bridge getting out of the city.
BROWN: They were tourists trapped in a hotel in New Orleans. They thought they’d arranged a bus ride out of town.
This didn’t get nearly the comment that you’d have thought it might, particularly considering every member of the administration has been complaining that people were too stupid to get out of town. Now people who couldn’t leave before (their rented buses were apparently commandeered by the military) are shot at by cops to keep them penned in.
As an added note, Jamie McIntyre, CNN’s Pentagon correspondent reported that FEMA director Michael Brown said that relief efforts were going “relatively well” compared to those after last year’s tsunami. Geez, ya think? The US can handle rescue efforts within its own borders better than Sri Lanka and Indonesia can? I feel a lot better now.