"Swing Life Away" has been one of my favorite songs for a while. I always think of my friend Katie when I hear it because she sent it to me about a year ago. I didn't realize it was getting so popular until I saw the music video for it over the summer.
I went and saw Green Day in Montreal last night and they dedicated their song "When September Ends" to the victims of Katrina. I almost cried.
The other side of the helicopters thing is that people also use gunfire to signal "hey, I'm over here," and it's difficult to tell from a helicopter whether you're being fired-at or just that you're hearing gunfire in the area. Most pilots are trained to assume the unknown is potentially threatening and take appropriate action.
Add to that fact the several layers of hearsay and the media's lust for sensationalism, and god only knows whether they were really fired-upon. I once read a Navy helicopter aviator's account of his Persian Gulf encounter with a pair of vulturous boats aggressively competing to reap the reward for rescuing a vessel that struck a mine. By the time the press reported the story of the incident, his SH-2, an unarmed "Desert Duck" supply helicopter, had been transformed into a Navy Gunship which had subdued the two ships.
And you forget, some people are looting and living as present day pirates and don't want a helicopter to spot and report them.