Author Rice Sharply Rebukes Procedures

Novelist Anne Rice harshly criticized the response to Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in her old hometown of New Orleans.

“Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That’s my question,” Rice wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece. Rice, who now lives in the San Diego area, said those who stayed behind “didn’t have any place to go.”

“They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do -- they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn,” she wrote.