Hurricanes
Since I have family and friends on the east coast, I've been monitoring the progress of Irene.
(Yes, everyone I know is fine.)
My thoughts are with everyone who's still without power (so can't see this post.) I feel terrible for the people of Vermont, which looks like it's gotten slammed by the storm.
At the same time, it's been hard to watch all the media hype about Irene. While it was a big, dangerous storm that's done a lot of damage, it's still hard for me not to compare how the government responded to Irene--a storm that was tracking to hit a lot of east coast cities--to how the government responded to the approach of Katrina, one city on the Gulf Coast, esp. since the timing was so close.
I can't help but think that while the change in administration and the clusterfuck that Katrina became had something to do with how strongly governments responded to Irene, the different in part is that to a lot of decision makers, the people of New Orleans who lacked the resources to evacuate mattered a lot less when compared with the people who lacked the resources to evacuate from Irene's path.
Six years later, New Orleans and large swaths of the Gulf Coast look very, very different than they did six years and one month ago, and it's really hard for me not to wonder how the demographics of New Orleans would look if the governments involved had pushed harder and made resources available to the poor of that city in advance of the approach of Katrina.
(Yes, everyone I know is fine.)
My thoughts are with everyone who's still without power (so can't see this post.) I feel terrible for the people of Vermont, which looks like it's gotten slammed by the storm.
At the same time, it's been hard to watch all the media hype about Irene. While it was a big, dangerous storm that's done a lot of damage, it's still hard for me not to compare how the government responded to Irene--a storm that was tracking to hit a lot of east coast cities--to how the government responded to the approach of Katrina, one city on the Gulf Coast, esp. since the timing was so close.
I can't help but think that while the change in administration and the clusterfuck that Katrina became had something to do with how strongly governments responded to Irene, the different in part is that to a lot of decision makers, the people of New Orleans who lacked the resources to evacuate mattered a lot less when compared with the people who lacked the resources to evacuate from Irene's path.
Six years later, New Orleans and large swaths of the Gulf Coast look very, very different than they did six years and one month ago, and it's really hard for me not to wonder how the demographics of New Orleans would look if the governments involved had pushed harder and made resources available to the poor of that city in advance of the approach of Katrina.