I loved NOLAREX's post at Humid City:
In New Orleans, it wasn’t just the hurricane, but the resulting failures of the burdened and aging levee system and the subsequent failures of leadership. It was the emotional duress we endured internally and the apathy we experienced from externally.
There is something we can all do now, though. Every time we read someone who writes online or hear someone saying at a party that New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt, that those people deserved what they got for living below sea level, that this sort of thing could never happen here, to us, we should arm oursleves with facts and prove them wrong until no one writes those things and no one says those things ever again.
Sometimes it's hard to distinguish the lies from the facts, but it can be done. Start with this current evaluation of the Katrina Pain Index. Pay attention to the companies that have since been determined by Congress to have taken advantage of residents of the Gulf Coast during and after Hurricane Katrina.
Most importantly, learn the difference between Hurricane Katrina, which made its landfalls on 8/29/05, huge and powerful and devastated the Mississippi coastline (virtually all of it), and The Flood that occurred in New Orleans when the the city fell victim to the greatest civil engineering failure in our nation's history. Watch this interactive graphic from NOLA.com to see how the levees failed. Then read the Executive Summary of the Independent Levee Investigation Team Final Report.
If you're feeling particularly ambitious, then read John Barry's Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America. This has added benefits. In addition to clearly explaining how New Orleans has come be vulnerable so folks in the Mississippi Basin, which covers a full one third of our nation, can buy and sell goods, so Tulsa can be a port, so Pittsburgh can be a port, so folks in Kansas and Ohio can be protected from flooding, Barry also shows us how the Federal Government became responsible for disaster relief, how FEMA came into being, even how Herbert Hoover was elected President. It reads like a mystery novel, fast and riveting. Then make your kids read it.
There are easier things to do too. Follow the more than 300 NOLA Bloggers and resolve now to attend next year's Rising Tide Conference. Read the Rising Tide Conference Blog or follow RisingTide on Twitter. Also, Crystal Kile's Vimeo post of a segment of Harry Shearer's 2009 Rising Tide Conference Keynote is well worth the easy watch.
Finally, in an effort to explain why this should matter so much to the rest of us, and forgive me for going so long, I'll quote Scout Prime's recent farewell post at First Draft:
I am just an American who felt strongly about the necessity of this country to right the wrong that had been done to the Gulf Coast and in particular New Orleans. I believed and still do believe that it is a moral imperative and that in not doing so we, as a country, as a community, risk losing our soul. I would submit that as a society we lost our moral compass when bodies were allowed to remain in the streets of N.O. for days and weeks, or in homes for months and even a year in some cases, as the powers that be argued over who would foot the bill to recover the remains of the victims of the flooding of New Orleans. There is something very wrong when such a thing can occur in a great nation.
Peace, y'all.
No comments:
Post a Comment