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[asheris]

Nick Coleman of the StarTribune hit it on the head

Guarding folks on the home front, then and now
Nick Coleman, Star Tribune
September 4, 2005

Floodwaters filled the streets while buildings burned. Many people fled. But others, too old, too broke or too stubborn, stayed, only to end up sleeping on cots and grumbling angrily about having to live like rats. I am not talking about New Orleans. I am talking about North Dakota.

The Big Freezy, not the Big Easy.

In April 1997, I waded through hip-high floodwaters in Grand Forks in the middle of the night as street lights shorted out and transformer stations blew up in arcs of blue light. The Red River of the North had burst through the dikes and smashed through the city, shattering homes and buildings and pouring inside.

I'll never forget the scene at a six-story senior citizen residence where a fiery red sun rose over a surreal disaster scene. The elevator shaft was filling with water and screeching fire alarms made an unceasing din while a handful of rescue workers carried old people in wheelchairs, trundling them down flights of stairs, sloshing through a lobby where the furniture was swirling around in a freezing vortex.

Thank God for the National Guard deuce-and-a-half, a vintage troop truck standing outside, its diesel engine rumbling, a 22-year-old kid with freckles at the wheel. After being loaded up with old folks, it moved off like a tour boat through the dark waters, ramming away a giant Dumpster floating down the street.

Praise the Lord and call up the National Guard.

That was the good old days, 1997, when Americans expected their government would assist them, and back before those who governed bragged that they wanted to drown government in a bathtub. Along with whoever was in the way.

Grand Forks was a picnic compared with what has been happening in New Orleans. But the pictures from New Orleans make me nostalgic for a time when college kids and grizzled military veterans signed up for service in the National Guard so they could be relied upon to help their neighbors get out of trouble in fires, floods, tornadoes and -- yes -- hurricanes.

Almost a week after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, there are supposed to be 7,000 National Guard troops in New Orleans, including 2,000 from states other than Louisiana.

Way too little, way too late.

In the Red River flood of 1997, Guard troops helped ward off a larger disaster. Thousands helped -- building dikes, rescuing the stranded, maintaining order. Some isolated towns like Hendrum, Minn., literally were saved by citizen soldiers to the rescue.

Some folks want to pretend that the crisis in New Orleans can be blamed on the people who were stuck in an abandoned, drowning city. Not many prosperous Norwegians, like up in Grand Forks, you know. But I am telling you there were a lot of unhappy Norwegians in North Dakota, and if they hadn't had food or water for four days, things might have gotten not so nice.

Human nature is human nature. But New Orleans didn't have to look like the end of the world. It could have looked like Grand Forks. The difference is Grand Forks had timely help, from neighbors in uniform.

Today, many citizen soldiers are far away, their boots and bodies being used as Hamburger Helper to stretch out the ranks of the regular Army in Iraq. All to make America safer while our cities fend for themselves and Army Corps of Engineer flood control programs are slashed.

There were at least 2,000 Guard and military personnel in or on their way to Grand Forks the day the flood hit. (Almost 4,000 troops ended up being called to flood duty that spring, just in Minnesota).

And some Guard units had equipment to make 65,000 gallons a day of potable water from contaminated flood water -- something that might have saved countless lives in New Orleans.

The New Orleans metro area has 13 times more people than the Grand Forks region, and maybe 25 or 50 times the number of poor and elderly people, the folks who are often unable or unwilling to evacuate during a natural disaster. So a comparable troop ratio for New Orleans would have meant 25,000 on hand before the disaster. And more now.

I know. We are at war, fighting "them" over there so we don't have to fight them here. But with 40 percent of our troops in Iraq coming from the ranks of Guard and Reserve forces (2,600 more Minnesota troops will soon be on their way), Katrina has made it clear: The home front is un-Guarded.

So don't blame the tragedy in New Orleans on the desperate poor left behind, hungry and abandoned. Maybe the problem isn't who was there.

Maybe it's who wasn't.