03-28-2006, 12:45 AM
After typing all freakin day, looking at websites, resources, etc. I have completed my essay. It is so awesome, I had to post it. Anyone think there is anything I can do different or whatnot, please let me know before I turn this baby in tomorrow morning. ^_^
Why is the mature tag on here? Because this deals with mature issues. That is why.
Riders on the Storm
Hurricane Katrina: Effect and Aftermath
The Storm has only Begun
Introduction
It was almost a half year ago, and I was sitting on my couch flipping through the channels for that elusive Weather channel. Rain was coming down outside my Waverly, OH residence in torrents, and being in a flat area, I was worried about the effects this storm will have on my small home. The overflow of rain had already flooded enough in my front room, my floor, with its cobalt and dak blue stripes on dull gray industrial carpet, had a mellow tinge flowing from the door in a radius of about three feet beyond. Yeah, the water only made a puddle, before I stopped it with a long plank of wood nestled in my threshold.
When I finally came to the channel I was searching for, my worries about the weather outside melted away, as there on radar was a swirling mass of red and white, hurling closer and closer to the outcrop of land located in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Katrina was on her way.
It seems like a bitter memory that just over six months ago, this nation was struck by one of the biggest disaster?s in our history; lives were lost, families shattered, a city turned to near ruin, and yet, the former glory and glitter that had been bestowed upon the ?Dirty South? has begun to dull, opening a wound in the heart of the United States that is much deeper than first glance.
With all the chaos that has ensued since August 30, 2005, there are many now turning to point fingers, wondering who was to blame for all of this, how could this happen to them?
The spread of destruction this storm has caused goes beyond New Orleans, despite the media attention being centered on that area; Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and all of Louisiana have suffered the brunt of destruction, and all across, the scars can be seen everywhere, from the ballooning financial situation and Iraq, even to space satellite images captured by NASA. (Areas affected, satellite imagery, FEMA, <http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM>); the wounds are there, fresh, still hurting.
Indeed, a picture can be worth a thousand words, but the images here, speak of a horror one would think unimaginable, something torn from the pages of a fiction novel. But these are real.
How Could this Happen?
The Layout of the City and Its role.
"We actually live in a bowl. We live underwater," said Frank Hijuelos, director of New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Vulnerable Cities: New Orleans, LA By Julie Galle <http://www.weather.com/newscenter/specia...leans.html>
As families take refuge in hotels, rooms provided by FEMA, they come to contemplate how such a horrible atrocity could happen to them, every bit of their lives wiped out with the flow and ebb of the waves of the Gulf. There have been several theories, perhaps the one that holds the most sense is the fact that New Orleans was built below sea level.
Any area below sea level can irrupt chaos when the right conditions are met, and can mean the difference between life and death should the residents be prepared.. No one could have really foreseen the level of destruction a major category 5 hurricane could have wrought among the lives of millions of southerners.
On average, the city of New Orleans lays six feel below sea level, bordered by the Mississippi River and Lake PontChatraine. The two bodies flow directly into the Gulf of Mexico. Located less than 100 miles away, New Orleans was just waiting for that moment when the right storm came around and wiped everything out. No one knew it would be this soon.
The effects of the storm as it moved away from the south, folding away like a blanket to uncover the broken shards of lives left in ruin, caught the attention of a nation who held their breath, awaiting news on what had become of their friends and families. When the ugly truth became exposed, the nation was about to split.
Like Snowflakes Blowing from the Stone
Poverty?s role in the destruction and displacement.
?Such is the scale of this disaster that Mr. Bush would probably have been criticized however he had responded. ? Still, there is a widespread perception that the sheer scale of the problems reflects a shuffling of resources ? to pay for tax cuts and the Iraq adventure ? that has left the US far too vulnerable. It is all a brutal reminder that government policies, sometimes followed only in the small print of rows over obscure budget allocations, can have real ? and deadly ? consequences for real people. The words ?homeland security? now have a terribly hollow ring in the anarchic south: 35% of Louisiana?s National Guard is serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. And recruiting is down because people fear being sent to Iraq. The priority given to law and order seems a troubling inverse reflection of what happened after the fall of Baghdad. Is it really more important to use deadly force against looters than to deliver humanitarian aid effectively??
LONDON ? The Guardian (Liberal), Sept. 3 <http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2142.cfm>
As the waters from Lake PontChatraine broke through the weak levees dotted about its shores, in a futile attempt to protect the city from the damaging effects of its cold waters, the citizens of New Orleans scrambled helplessly to escape its ever rising tide. There was only so much they could do to flee its wrathful grasp, as many Louisianans were without the necessities, like access to automobiles, boats, busses. Daily things like clean clothing and food were just out of the question, and their only means of escape had billowed away with the swelling waters. Many were poor residents living in the now defunct 9th ward, which even today, is just a flat wasteland where the fist of Katrina had smashed down, obliterating everything within her powerful grip.
?The truth is that the New Orleans disaster is far worse than 9/11, and dwarfs anything seen in the West in modern times save for the Etna eruption and the San Francisco earthquake. In that sense it only tells us how vulnerable we are. Well, not all of us equally. When disasters or fires or bombings happen, you discover just who was traveling on your trains, who was crammed into your hostels or who was living in the low-lying areas. It isn?t the failure to act in New Orleans that is the story here, it?s the sheer, uninsured, uncared for, self-disenfranchised scale of the poverty that lies revealed. It looks like a scene from the Third World because that?s the truth. It?s a quiet disaster that?s been going on for years ? a pudding-basin-full-of-poverty situation.?
David Aaronovitch, London, The Times (Conservative), Sept. 3, 2005 <http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2142.cfm>
The truth is, the areas affected by this disaster just were not financially ready for this storm. Well with Louisiana, ranking second worst poverty stricken area, with 19.4% of the population earning less than $35,110, and Mississippi, ranked worst in poverty stricken areas, and a 21.6% poverty rate, it is no wonder why so many people were left homeless, and so many dead.
FEMA: The Weakest Link?
FEMA?s involvement with the recovery efforts and controversies.
In the months after the storm, it seemed all of Washington was pointing fingers at each other of who was to blame for the level of chaos in the south. During the research for this paper, I came across a transcript of an interview with Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, sitting down to discuss his role in the disaster preparedness and recovery effort.<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11697806/> In this interview, he discusses the different things that went on before the hurricane hit.
Chris MATTHEWS: Would you have called up Nagin and said Mayor Nagin I don't want to talk to you, I want to give you some orders? These are the orders from the federal government. Get those bus drivers, if you have got to hire them off the street corner. Get those buses gassed up and get those people out of town. Could you have done that?
Michael BROWN: Well, I did better than that. I called the president and said Mr. President I want you to call Nagin and Blanco and tell them. As the president of the United States do a mandatory evacuation now. This is on Saturday.
MATTHEWS: And what did he say?
BROWN: He was astonished. He said you really want me to call them? And I said yes, sir, I do. And he did. He called them and said, look guys, you have got to do it mandatory.
MATTHEWS: So they ignored him?
BROWN: I think they ignored him. I think they waited too long. I think they waited way too long.
MATTHEWS: What kind of an order was it? The president says I am using my executive authority here. This is an imminent domain kind of thing. You are going to do it.
BROWN: He has no authority in that regard. He has no authority.
Federalism still lives in this country.
Excerpted fr. Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC, Mar. 6, 2006 <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11697806/>
If the president has no domain, then, what is the point? Is it not true that the president can override state rulings? Who?s fault is it really, that people were not notified well in advance so even the poor could evacuate? Perhaps the litanies of the government, plastered all over the evening news, was a cover-up for hiding the true blame. It is no one?s fault that the storm happened, but it was someone?s fault for not forewarning the innocent residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and even more the fault of a defunct government who could not even patch the order through for the evacuations. If these precautions were taken, perhaps more people would have survived.
Looking Beyond the Glass
The outlook to the future of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
With employment and job availability scarce in the effected areas of Katrina?s path, and residents who were displaced to other cities slowly herd back to their homes, many wonder what exactly will happen now, with the hurricane behind them, and they steadily work on rebuilding their lives. FEMA obviously cannot handle the mass exodus flocking back to the south, and rebuild efforts are forever being compromised due to funding, with most of the nation?s dollars going to the war adventure, there is little to work with. The real question is, who can help our downtrodden? Who can give back the homes of thousands of families whose lives were washed away with a violent wave of water? Who can replace the mothers, fathers, children, whose lives were extinguished in that hurricane?
Its a slow future to come, and putting the pieces back together will be the challenge, but as we Americans know all too well, we will pull through, especially with the many organizations that had formed so quickly to aid these people when aid would have been but a far cry away.
As I sit here now, with the beads of Mardi Gras hanging like a reminder of the spirit of these people that will never die, graciously sent to me by a friend in Alabama who had attended the 2006 party, I lean my head back, clasp my hands behind my head and think. New Orleans will never be the same, but not even the forces of nature can drown the spirit of those survivors whose lives were tragically altered August 30, 2005.
It will be a day many Americans will not forget anytime soon. With the destruction, death and pandemonium that ensued since that day, many people still feel hopeless, but as each person must realize however, life goes on, and they can rebuild. It will never be the same, but many can use this chance to start again, and perhaps, become better, stronger than before.
No, as long as there is people, New Orleans and the south, will live on, no matter the outcome.
References
All sources were web sources, some transcripts of television shows, others newspapers.
Hurricane Katrina Information (March 2006)
<http://www.fema.gov/press/2005/resources_katrina.shtm>
Vulnerable Cities: New Orleans, LA By Julie Galle <http://www.weather.com/newscenter/specia...leans.html>
Hurricane Katrina- Viewpoints, various authors, September 3rd, 2005 <http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2142.cfm>
ESSENTIAL FACTS ABOUT THE VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA
By Arloc Sherman and Issac Shapiro
September 19, 2005 <http://www.cbpp.org/9-19-05pov.htm>
?Michael Brown defends his controversial role?, MSNBC, March 6, 2006
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11697806/>
NOTE: I could not find anything relative to my subject in the Kaplan Library.
Why is the mature tag on here? Because this deals with mature issues. That is why.
Riders on the Storm
Hurricane Katrina: Effect and Aftermath
The Storm has only Begun
Introduction
It was almost a half year ago, and I was sitting on my couch flipping through the channels for that elusive Weather channel. Rain was coming down outside my Waverly, OH residence in torrents, and being in a flat area, I was worried about the effects this storm will have on my small home. The overflow of rain had already flooded enough in my front room, my floor, with its cobalt and dak blue stripes on dull gray industrial carpet, had a mellow tinge flowing from the door in a radius of about three feet beyond. Yeah, the water only made a puddle, before I stopped it with a long plank of wood nestled in my threshold.
When I finally came to the channel I was searching for, my worries about the weather outside melted away, as there on radar was a swirling mass of red and white, hurling closer and closer to the outcrop of land located in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Katrina was on her way.
It seems like a bitter memory that just over six months ago, this nation was struck by one of the biggest disaster?s in our history; lives were lost, families shattered, a city turned to near ruin, and yet, the former glory and glitter that had been bestowed upon the ?Dirty South? has begun to dull, opening a wound in the heart of the United States that is much deeper than first glance.
With all the chaos that has ensued since August 30, 2005, there are many now turning to point fingers, wondering who was to blame for all of this, how could this happen to them?
The spread of destruction this storm has caused goes beyond New Orleans, despite the media attention being centered on that area; Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and all of Louisiana have suffered the brunt of destruction, and all across, the scars can be seen everywhere, from the ballooning financial situation and Iraq, even to space satellite images captured by NASA. (Areas affected, satellite imagery, FEMA, <http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM>); the wounds are there, fresh, still hurting.
Indeed, a picture can be worth a thousand words, but the images here, speak of a horror one would think unimaginable, something torn from the pages of a fiction novel. But these are real.
How Could this Happen?
The Layout of the City and Its role.
"We actually live in a bowl. We live underwater," said Frank Hijuelos, director of New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Vulnerable Cities: New Orleans, LA By Julie Galle <http://www.weather.com/newscenter/specia...leans.html>
As families take refuge in hotels, rooms provided by FEMA, they come to contemplate how such a horrible atrocity could happen to them, every bit of their lives wiped out with the flow and ebb of the waves of the Gulf. There have been several theories, perhaps the one that holds the most sense is the fact that New Orleans was built below sea level.
Any area below sea level can irrupt chaos when the right conditions are met, and can mean the difference between life and death should the residents be prepared.. No one could have really foreseen the level of destruction a major category 5 hurricane could have wrought among the lives of millions of southerners.
On average, the city of New Orleans lays six feel below sea level, bordered by the Mississippi River and Lake PontChatraine. The two bodies flow directly into the Gulf of Mexico. Located less than 100 miles away, New Orleans was just waiting for that moment when the right storm came around and wiped everything out. No one knew it would be this soon.
The effects of the storm as it moved away from the south, folding away like a blanket to uncover the broken shards of lives left in ruin, caught the attention of a nation who held their breath, awaiting news on what had become of their friends and families. When the ugly truth became exposed, the nation was about to split.
Like Snowflakes Blowing from the Stone
Poverty?s role in the destruction and displacement.
?Such is the scale of this disaster that Mr. Bush would probably have been criticized however he had responded. ? Still, there is a widespread perception that the sheer scale of the problems reflects a shuffling of resources ? to pay for tax cuts and the Iraq adventure ? that has left the US far too vulnerable. It is all a brutal reminder that government policies, sometimes followed only in the small print of rows over obscure budget allocations, can have real ? and deadly ? consequences for real people. The words ?homeland security? now have a terribly hollow ring in the anarchic south: 35% of Louisiana?s National Guard is serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. And recruiting is down because people fear being sent to Iraq. The priority given to law and order seems a troubling inverse reflection of what happened after the fall of Baghdad. Is it really more important to use deadly force against looters than to deliver humanitarian aid effectively??
LONDON ? The Guardian (Liberal), Sept. 3 <http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2142.cfm>
As the waters from Lake PontChatraine broke through the weak levees dotted about its shores, in a futile attempt to protect the city from the damaging effects of its cold waters, the citizens of New Orleans scrambled helplessly to escape its ever rising tide. There was only so much they could do to flee its wrathful grasp, as many Louisianans were without the necessities, like access to automobiles, boats, busses. Daily things like clean clothing and food were just out of the question, and their only means of escape had billowed away with the swelling waters. Many were poor residents living in the now defunct 9th ward, which even today, is just a flat wasteland where the fist of Katrina had smashed down, obliterating everything within her powerful grip.
?The truth is that the New Orleans disaster is far worse than 9/11, and dwarfs anything seen in the West in modern times save for the Etna eruption and the San Francisco earthquake. In that sense it only tells us how vulnerable we are. Well, not all of us equally. When disasters or fires or bombings happen, you discover just who was traveling on your trains, who was crammed into your hostels or who was living in the low-lying areas. It isn?t the failure to act in New Orleans that is the story here, it?s the sheer, uninsured, uncared for, self-disenfranchised scale of the poverty that lies revealed. It looks like a scene from the Third World because that?s the truth. It?s a quiet disaster that?s been going on for years ? a pudding-basin-full-of-poverty situation.?
David Aaronovitch, London, The Times (Conservative), Sept. 3, 2005 <http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2142.cfm>
The truth is, the areas affected by this disaster just were not financially ready for this storm. Well with Louisiana, ranking second worst poverty stricken area, with 19.4% of the population earning less than $35,110, and Mississippi, ranked worst in poverty stricken areas, and a 21.6% poverty rate, it is no wonder why so many people were left homeless, and so many dead.
FEMA: The Weakest Link?
FEMA?s involvement with the recovery efforts and controversies.
In the months after the storm, it seemed all of Washington was pointing fingers at each other of who was to blame for the level of chaos in the south. During the research for this paper, I came across a transcript of an interview with Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, sitting down to discuss his role in the disaster preparedness and recovery effort.<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11697806/> In this interview, he discusses the different things that went on before the hurricane hit.
Chris MATTHEWS: Would you have called up Nagin and said Mayor Nagin I don't want to talk to you, I want to give you some orders? These are the orders from the federal government. Get those bus drivers, if you have got to hire them off the street corner. Get those buses gassed up and get those people out of town. Could you have done that?
Michael BROWN: Well, I did better than that. I called the president and said Mr. President I want you to call Nagin and Blanco and tell them. As the president of the United States do a mandatory evacuation now. This is on Saturday.
MATTHEWS: And what did he say?
BROWN: He was astonished. He said you really want me to call them? And I said yes, sir, I do. And he did. He called them and said, look guys, you have got to do it mandatory.
MATTHEWS: So they ignored him?
BROWN: I think they ignored him. I think they waited too long. I think they waited way too long.
MATTHEWS: What kind of an order was it? The president says I am using my executive authority here. This is an imminent domain kind of thing. You are going to do it.
BROWN: He has no authority in that regard. He has no authority.
Federalism still lives in this country.
Excerpted fr. Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC, Mar. 6, 2006 <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11697806/>
If the president has no domain, then, what is the point? Is it not true that the president can override state rulings? Who?s fault is it really, that people were not notified well in advance so even the poor could evacuate? Perhaps the litanies of the government, plastered all over the evening news, was a cover-up for hiding the true blame. It is no one?s fault that the storm happened, but it was someone?s fault for not forewarning the innocent residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and even more the fault of a defunct government who could not even patch the order through for the evacuations. If these precautions were taken, perhaps more people would have survived.
Looking Beyond the Glass
The outlook to the future of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
With employment and job availability scarce in the effected areas of Katrina?s path, and residents who were displaced to other cities slowly herd back to their homes, many wonder what exactly will happen now, with the hurricane behind them, and they steadily work on rebuilding their lives. FEMA obviously cannot handle the mass exodus flocking back to the south, and rebuild efforts are forever being compromised due to funding, with most of the nation?s dollars going to the war adventure, there is little to work with. The real question is, who can help our downtrodden? Who can give back the homes of thousands of families whose lives were washed away with a violent wave of water? Who can replace the mothers, fathers, children, whose lives were extinguished in that hurricane?
Its a slow future to come, and putting the pieces back together will be the challenge, but as we Americans know all too well, we will pull through, especially with the many organizations that had formed so quickly to aid these people when aid would have been but a far cry away.
As I sit here now, with the beads of Mardi Gras hanging like a reminder of the spirit of these people that will never die, graciously sent to me by a friend in Alabama who had attended the 2006 party, I lean my head back, clasp my hands behind my head and think. New Orleans will never be the same, but not even the forces of nature can drown the spirit of those survivors whose lives were tragically altered August 30, 2005.
It will be a day many Americans will not forget anytime soon. With the destruction, death and pandemonium that ensued since that day, many people still feel hopeless, but as each person must realize however, life goes on, and they can rebuild. It will never be the same, but many can use this chance to start again, and perhaps, become better, stronger than before.
No, as long as there is people, New Orleans and the south, will live on, no matter the outcome.
References
All sources were web sources, some transcripts of television shows, others newspapers.
Hurricane Katrina Information (March 2006)
<http://www.fema.gov/press/2005/resources_katrina.shtm>
Vulnerable Cities: New Orleans, LA By Julie Galle <http://www.weather.com/newscenter/specia...leans.html>
Hurricane Katrina- Viewpoints, various authors, September 3rd, 2005 <http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2142.cfm>
ESSENTIAL FACTS ABOUT THE VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA
By Arloc Sherman and Issac Shapiro
September 19, 2005 <http://www.cbpp.org/9-19-05pov.htm>
?Michael Brown defends his controversial role?, MSNBC, March 6, 2006
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11697806/>
NOTE: I could not find anything relative to my subject in the Kaplan Library.
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Fuck you, Photobucket.
![[Image: hellfightersigcopy.png]](http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l17/brilovessah22805/hellfightersigcopy.png)
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