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All during those days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was turning away volunteer rescuers, buses, truckloads of supplies, offers of help from powerful entities ranging from a huge military ship with a floating hospital, drinking water, and other crucial supplies to Amtrak (whose trains could have at any moment, and eventually did, move masses more effectively than buses). Often the excuse was that it was not safe to enter New Orleans.
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Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster)