New Orleans

[Hardy]

But it didn't happen. This was saturation (sorry) coverage of a weather forecast that was wrong.

[Gabriel_Hurl]

Write a letter to RTE complaining then

[Hardy]

Gabriel - do you have an opinion or do you just do recommendations?

[corn02]

Surely the extra coverage was devoted thanks to Katrina? I for one would have more interest in this because of the City being destroyed. It is important news.

[spectator]

This was a forecast of a storm. Not even news until it happens. We got fifteen minutes on the lunchtime news, ANTICIPATING the f****n thing"! And, as it happened, well it didn't.

I'm sure this wasn't the only major hurricane/typhoon that will threaten a heavily populated area this year. Will we get week-long previews of Pakistan's annual flooding that kills thousands every year but usually gets two lines in the news after it happens?

I see where you're coming from, by way of background;

The mayor of New Orleans ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city last week, a couple of days prior to Gustav reaching landfall. He predicted "The Mother of All Hurricanes."

On a human level, 1800 people died as a result of Hurricane Katrina 3 years ago, leaving  grief, misery and devastion in its wake. People had their houses swept away while they were still inside them. Others were trapped inside their attics, as rapidly rising flood waters deluged areas during the night when levees gave way. Some had implements at hand to smash their way out onto their roofs, others weren't so fortunate. Those who managed to escape were evacuated to other cities & many haven't yet been able to return, mostly due to goverment bureaucracy, notwithstanding the sheer enormity of the task of reconstruction.

On a political level, the incompetence, mismanagement and absence of leadership by the Bush government in anticipating and responding to Katrina - despite sufficient prior notice of at least two days beforehand - are huge issues for ordinary americans, which lead many to lose faith in Dubya and his administration. Bush is the leader of the most powerful country in the world, his policies impact on the world in a huge way. Fact was, he couldn't handle an internal natural disaster. The Department of Homeland Affairs failed miserably to deal with the disaster and there was systemic failure amongst specialist federal, state and city agencies which ought to have been able to respond at the very least competently. America is a country of weather extremes;  earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, hurricanes etc and people there expect these agencies to be prepared for such eventualities. Survivors in N.O. were left to run the gauntlet of rioters and marauding gangs in the Superdome refugee centre for several days before law and order personnel turned up, that was unbelieveable for americans. N.O. is on the whole a poor, black city. When ordinary americans  tried to rationalise the lack of a coherent goverment response to the Katrina disaster, the spectre of racial discrimination on the part of the Republicans invariably surfaced. It's not an issue anyone wants to see the lid raised on. Dubya was damned from a whole host of angles over his handling of Katrina, by his own people.

Regarding irish media coverage, the above are sufficiently interesting reasons to inform an Irish audience of the latest developments, given our close links with the US, western way of life etc,  imho. Even if we only take a very narrow view of it, N.O. has a strong  Irish diaspora, who settled there after fleeing persecution and famine, as synopsized in the link below;

http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/multicultural/multiculturalhistory/irish.html

These are a few of the reasons, why Gustav was such a big story here and in the western world from the very start, imo. Everything was under a media microscope for the watching world this time, to ensure the shameful mistakes of Katrina weren't repeated by the Bush Administration.

I won't try and speak for the broadcast media, but we just don't have the same links with Pakistan, although we have a presence through relief and development agencies. While it's located in a part of the world which we don't have strong cultural or family ties with, this doesn't lessen our ability to empathise with suffering Pakistanis on a human level, or stop us supporting relief agencies working there, imho.

[mannix]

When i was in the car one wet cold evening I was listening to the news , sports news came on telling me how srilanka and pakistan had a break in play because of rain.
Honestly how many irish people care about cricket 14000 miles away, between two countries we know little about?
Knowing everyones business can often lead to not knowing your own well enough.

[donalmac99]

And really who gives a shit?
do they give a damn what happens outside louisiana?
Do they care if Ireland was washed into the sea?
No. We must have little to worry about when a kip in the usa is our headline story.

i give a shit and am delighted new orleans seems to have got away with it, i'm pretty sure may people in louisiana also give a shit about what happens outside louisiana. finally i was there a few years ago and it aint a kip

amazing how all of a sudden when a disaster looms certain types  crawl from under their rocks expressing their false sense of solidairty with a city, and its people, that were probably glad to see the back of yet another illegal irish immigrant ;

that is assuming that this type of person is not telling porkies and that they really were there



anyhow, ive never been there and tbh the whole episode is as intresting and relevant to ireland as the 1966 world cup win by 'in ger lund'. therefore why did RTE spend so much time on it?