enthalpy

Saturday, September 03, 2005


Houston, Texas 77230
A brand new city has arisen inside the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, population 15,000. Not the best address in America - they gave it its own postal code, 77230 - but it offers some benefits to its residents. It is almost clean, more or less safe and entirely dry. No longer are these people clinging to the roofs of houses above swirling waters or squatting on elevated roadways in the sun unsure if they will live or die.

And, happily, they are no longer cowering in the New Orleans Superdome, a place that turned mad with murders, rapes, suicide, abortions and the ammonia fumes of human waste. Or imprisoned in the convention centre without food or water, in the company of corpses. Those two places of sanctuary became hell-holes of a kind unthinkable in the United States of America. Until last week.
These people are never going to leave. Would you? Why the hell would anyone go back to New Orleans? It was under sea level before, it's under water now. Why go back?



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