Thinking about Hurricane Katrina

Monday and Tuesday, I watched "When the Levees Broke" on HBO. This is a documentary by Spike Lee about the victims of Katrina in New Orleans and includes interviews from local residents, state and city government officials. I want to say that I've never been so moved by anything I've seen on television ever. The documentary talks about things that weren't really talked about in the main stream media, like that New Orleans wasn't hit by Hurricane Katrina. It was missed by Hurricane Katrina. It was the levees breaking the day after Katrina that flooded and destroyed the city and killed so many people.

The documentary also interviewed professors at LSU who talked about a research study conducted by FEMA a year before the hurricane, called Hurricane Pam. The study used a computer model to see what would happen to New Orleans if it was hit by a Category 5 Hurricane. The study showed that the levees would fail, flooding New Orleans and yet Fema or the government did nothing about this. I've never been what you'd call fond of our present government, but I thought at least in a national disaster that they would do what needed to be done. But people in New Orleans still live in trailers, sometimes with no electricity or sewerage systems.

That the federal government has money for these people yet it's tied up in red tape is a mockery of our government and what it is supposed to stand for. That there are still houses that stand full of debris and who knows what else is ridiculous. The government should have people down there cleaning out people's houses and helping them rebuild.

New Orleans was called the City that Care forgot, but it's more like the city that the government lied to, forgot about, and then fucked over. It's beyond ridiculous that we live in America (a country that will go overseas to help out another country within 48 hours) but the federal government waits 5 days after a major national disaster to start helping our own people. The government waits 5 days while people are without food, water, and sit dying in the heat and filth of a city where all the sewers have backed up.

There are no words to describe how fucked up that is. After watching this documentary, I feel just like I felt after watching the news footage last year, but more angry and frustrated. I want to help but without money, I don't know where to start. Someone needs to help these people because the government isn't. And the national media has forgotten about New Orleans for the most part.

The crazy thing is that this didn't have to happen. Sure, Hurricane Katrina would have come and caused wind damage and some flooding, but if the government and the corps of engineers that built the levees had done there job, the major flooding that killed people and destroyed homes wouldn't have happened. That breaks my heart. To know that all the little kids who lost their Moms and Dads, all the parents who lost their children, could have been saved. No words can express that level of disappointment with our government, the organization that's supposed to help us.