Martin Walker Quotes

The rebuilding of New Orleans is an important point in the history of the United States.

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

The Bush administration got a lot of things horribly wrong in its disaster response to the New Orleans flood, and it deserves almost all of the bitter recriminations hurled its way.

And if citizens of New Orleans who are really contemplating coming back heard that we're really intent upon making the place secure again - regardless of whether the levees held or not - then I think a rebuilding process would really take shape.

George W. Bush was good as his word. He visited the Gulf states 17 times; went 13 times to New Orleans. Laura Bush made 24 trips. Bush saw that $126 billion in aid was sent to the Gulf's residents, as some members of his own party in Congress balked.

The condition in New Orleans was changing every day. I said, why don't we appropriate another $10 billion, come back and look at the situation, and do another $10 billion every week, or every 10 days?

I actually happened to be in Haiti right before the earthquake in 2010. I was there already with the organization I work with now, Artists for Peace and Justice, visiting the primary school that I had adopted, the Academy for Peace and Justice in Port-au-Prince. I came back, and within days, the earthquake happened.

Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.

We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.

Of the 22 active conflicts in the world today, 20 involve Moslems verses someone else.

The Federal Government did not know about the people at the New Orleans Convention center until today.

Rebuilding New Orleans is going to challenge the New Orleans and Louisiana state government, neither or which has been known for its efficiency or its honesty.

The nation’s disaster mechanisms do not seem to be in the hands of those who know how to use them.

In the pandemonium of the crisis in New Orleans, somehow getting people on busses took priority over keeping them alive.

The first law of disaster relief could well read: every political decision has humanitarian consequences, and every humanitarian program has political implications.

Here in Idaho, we couldn't understand how people could sit around on the curbs waiting for the federal government to come and do something. We had a dam break in 1976, but we didn't whine about it. We got out our backhoes and we rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields and got on with our lives. That's the culture here. Not waiting for the federal government to bring you drinking water. In Idaho there would have been entrepreneurs selling the drinking water.

No one else will really care, but I missed the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Also the war in Chechnya.

As I was writing 'The Shock Doctrine', I was covering the Iraq War and profiteering from the war, and I started to see these patterns repeat in the aftermath of natural disasters, like the Asian tsunami and then Hurricane Katrina.

I worry a bit about the unknowns when it comes to travelers to the war zones in Syria and Iraq. Who don't I see? And I worry about the people who may be in their basements radicalizing that I can't see.

Hurricane Katrina was the storm of the 21st century. It devastated an area the size of Great Britain. More than 1,800 Americans died. Three hundred thousand homes were destroyed. There was $96 billion in property damage. I served on the Louisiana Recovery Authority. I saw Congress write one big check and then skip town.

In terms of Hurricane Sandy, I really do see some hopeful grassroots responses, particularly in the Rockaways, where people were very organized right from the beginning, where Occupy Sandy was very strong, where new networks emerged.

We cannot prevent hurricanes or earthquakes, floods or volcanic eruptions. But we can ensure that both people and communities are better prepared and more resilient.

I have worked in 60 countries, covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spent much of 2014 living inside West Africa's Ebola zone, a place gripped by fear and death.

Every year, we ask our donors to dig deeper. And every year, they gladly, generously comply. It is now up to us to find ways and means to forestall the day when they cannot - or will not. Or the consequences for people in war zones could be disastrous.

Since 1963, the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center has conducted nearly 700 field studies on floods and earthquakes, and on-site research reveals the same results every time: the vast majority of people stay calm and help each other.