Anon,

Consider doing a bit more reading than the propaganda spewed by the
Rove disinformation machine. Perhaps you could then comprehend that
the events in Chicago are quite different.

Even a cursory search will find a book written by Eric Klinenberg.
It's pretty clear that the events are VERY different from those in New
Orleans.

Heat Wave : A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago



"On Thursday, July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in
which the temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index, which
measures how the temperature actually feels on the body, would hit 126
degrees by the time the day was over. Meteorologists had been warning
residents about a two-day heat wave, but these temperatures did not
end that soon. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had
buckled; the records for electrical use were shattered; and power
grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two
days. And by July 20, over seven hundred people had perished-more than
twice the number that died in the Chicago Fire of 1871, twenty times
the number of those struck by Hurricane Andrew in 1992--in the great
Chicago heat wave, one of the deadliest in American history.

Heat waves in the United States kill more people during a typical year
than all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could
explain either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of
the deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists
and medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of
the trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of
the city's vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us
inside the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a
"social autopsy," examining the social, political, and institutional
organs of the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it
ought to have been.

Starting with the question of why so many people died at home alone,
Klinenberg investigates why some neighborhoods experienced greater
mortality than others, how the city government responded to the
crisis, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials reported
on and explained these events. Through a combination of years of
fieldwork, extensive interviews, and archival research, Klinenberg
uncovers how a number of surprising and unsettling forms of social
breakdown--including the literal and social isolation of seniors, the
institutional abandonment of poor neighborhoods, and the retrenchment
of public assistance programs--contributed to the high fatality rates.
The human catastrophe, he argues, cannot simply be blamed on the
failures of any particular individuals or organizations. For when
hundreds of people die behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of
contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies,
everyone is implicated in their demise.

As Klinenberg demonstrates in this incisive and gripping account of
the contemporary urban condition, the widening cracks in the social
foundations of American cities that the 1995 Chicago heat wave made
visible have by no means subsided as the temperatures returned to
normal. The forces that affected Chicago so disastrously remain in
play in America's cities, and we ignore them at our peril."






On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:58:35 GMT, "Gideon" wrote:

Tom,

I've found the following quote on the Internet via Google:
"In July 1995, a Heat wave in Chicago led to approximately
739 heat-related deaths." Of course, this tragedy occurred
under a Clinton-led FEMA organization which failed to act
quickly and decisively to prevent those many deaths. Of
course, I have NOT been able to use Google and locate any
newsgroup quotes of yours criticizing Clinton and "his" FEMA
for this major **** up.

Gideon



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold