I don't know if you can imagine how sensitive the subject is for me. I lived in the New Orleans area when the storm hit. I had to leave my house and lived in a small hotel room for weeks. (I blogged occasionally during that time at the Port Allen public library.) After returning home, it was like living on the moon. Everything had changed and not for the better.
I read a blog that kind of set me off. The individual said, "Katrina was over the moment the storm passed." That person obviously didn't live in New Orleans. Let me tell you that Katrina LINGERED. It was like a noxious fog settled over the city and not for the couple of hours that the storm was hitting but after it passed, during the levee break, during the flood, during the violence, the looting, the death, the devastation it all happened DURING Katrina.
Believe me.
Post Script: I was fortunate. I came home to a house, to my family safe and sound (but even they have their stories: like my aunt, who lived in the 9th ward, having to get lifted from her roof top by a helicopter to saftey. Or my family who lived in Chalmette that literally lost every single possession: baby pictures, clothes, cars, etc... That's traumatic.) Not everyone was as lucky. People lost their homes, family members, schools, possessions, everything... I'm not trying to say that I had it the worst... That I suffered the worst. I didn't, but I was there. So it would give me a little more perspective than that idiot blogger who doesn't know the half of it.
Or the television commentators who mentioned that the police chief at that time was too busy exaggerating and spreading lies. Newsflash, people were being mugged, raped, and murdered. Katrina was more than just a storm that decimated a city. It's affects were widespread and long term. How can anyone say these things didn't happen and that they were rumors of over indulgent city officials. Maybe they should try asking the young girl who had been raped on top of a supermarket conveyor belt, or the D-Day Museum caretaker who was hiding in on the second level as gangs broke in...ask him how he felt listening to the scream of a young girl that he could do nothing to help. Katrina was more than a storm. POST STORM hospitals, miles away from new orleans opening up their doors to victims of "post" storm victims of not only the storm, but to the idiots that decided Katrina had made New Orleans an anarchy run state. Some people just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you posted this even though the people who need to read this won't bother, or are too busy laughing because they think you are delusional.
We know better, though, don't we.
Absolutely Alex, and I bet all those "post" storm victims, when asked would think back and consolidate the events together as a Katrina nightmare.
ReplyDeleteIts just so frustrating when people from the outside commentate and get things so incredibly wrong.