Katrina

Like so many oth­ers, I feel com­pelled to add to the blog­flood of words about Hur­ricane Kat­rina (and I pity any child of that name!). My own words seem inad­equate; I don’t have Shel­ley’s lyr­i­cism, or Cecily’s per­spect­ive, or con­sist­ency. I’ve nev­er even been to New Orleans, so I have no pho­tos to add to the store of what was there. I have no idea wheth­er New Orleans will be rebuilt, although it’s obvi­ous it will nev­er be the same again. I appre­ci­ate people who say that now build­ing codes can be developed and enforced to with­stand hur­ricanes, but worry about what the costs of those build­ings will do to the poor who already can­’t afford reas­on­able accomodation. 

It seems large parts of the dam­age and destruc­tion were pre­vent­able, much of the pain and hor­ror could have been ameli­or­ated. What does this do to the people who have seen it, exper­i­enced it? What sort of night­mares will they relive in their dreams and pass on to their chil­dren? And what sort of les­sons will be drawn? Will the sys­tems to hold back the water be designed and built with the same determ­in­a­tion as in Hol­land after the massive floods in 1953 that killed almost 2000 people? (60% of the Dutch pop­u­la­tion lives on land that is under sea level). I can­’t help think­ing of that old song that some­how still seems to ask many of the right ques­tions — “The answers, my friend, are blow­ing in the wind, the answers are blow­ing in the wind”.