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As
was the case with everyone else desperately
seeking some good news, one could see the tears
behind the eyes of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, the
daughter of former Mayor of New Orleans Moon
Landrieu, as she spoke to reporters last week. But
the pain wasn't just seeing those things that were
destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, those tens of
thousands left hurting at the Superdome or those
important life events forever missed. The tears
welled most at the shock of a failure to protect
the city, then a failure to rescue it and care
swiftly for its people.
It
has been a horrible and embarrassing week for
everyone from the poorest resident of the Ninth
Ward to President George W. Bush. The flood of
failure stands deep, whether measured in standing
water, losses of tens of billions of dollars or,
as is likely, thousands of unnecessary deaths. And
the failure should be a warning to other states
that will face other disasters. Katrina has turned
out to be, more than anything else, a shocking
loss of innocence about the power of nature, about
the interconnectedness of events, about the
incompetence of government when electoral politics
have been elevated to the highest measure of
success and about naive trust in neglected
systems. Tears continue to flood a sympathetic
America turning angry.
Presidential
flyovers complete with political spinmeister Karl
Rove, a bureaucratic Homeland Security Secretary
and political hack head of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) have served only to
showcase the lack of preparation, deliberate and
cold detachment and fixation on bureacracy at the
top of the U.S. government. Reporters and
photographers had travel and communications
networks up immediately. Private citizens and
companies hired buses and security guards,
distributed supplies and evacuated people long
before FEMA woke up. The heroic Coast Guard,
meanwhile, was the federal government for five
days. But we watched the Guard work as though the
U.S. had neither the resources nor leaders
competent enough to look for survivors, care for
the living and pull dead bodies out at the same
time.
The
last week should prompt plenty of questions from
John Warner, George Allen and other U.S. Senators
on the incompetence of our disaster planning,
emergency response organization and executive
branch leadership. Put gasoline prices aside. U.S.
Representative Tom Davis has a whole Government
Reform Committee to put to work investigating the
waste, fraud and abuse before and after Katrina.
Virginia
is doing its part. Though far from the scene, Gov.
Mark R. Warner dispatched Chief of Staff William
Leighty to assist Louisiana emergency responders
in Baton Rouge and readied state transportation,
health and education resources for further
assistance on everything from road clearing and
repair to hazardous materials mitigation and
mental health counseling. Virginia colleges and
universities offered enrollment chances for
students displaced. The governor announced a
Commonwealth Virginia Campaign for state workers
to contribute to charities, such as the American
Red Cross and Salvation Army. State workers gave
$75,000 to tsunami victims in Asia last year.
Other states are accepting hundreds of thousands
of refugees.
But
to one who grew up in New Orleans and lived
through many hurricane events, there is the
realization deep down that New Orleans will never
again be the same. How could it be? After the
months of drainage come the months of tearing down
and cleaning up, then years of rebuilding.
VMI
cadets or Virginia Tech's Highty Tighties marching
in Mardi Gras parades again is pretty hard to
imagine right now. Why should it be the same?
Environmental experts and local officials were
eloquent immediately in their discussions of how
the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina was
turned into a man-made disaster by the destruction
of surge-absorbing wetlands, the failure to
strengthen and modernize the levee defenses and
the lack of preparation to handle the emergency.
President
Bushand his press conference-happy administrators
remain content to play the blithe spirit, "We
will rebuild." Nary a thought on how to
mitigate the effects of pumping the polluted lake
that is now New Orleans back into Lake
Ponchartrain. Not a peep on whether President
Bush's original objections to creating a huge
Department of Homeland Security as unfocused and
bureaucratic might have been right. Only a hint --
the President was "disappointed" -- that
the wars in Iraq and on terror had diverted
resources and attention from things that kill
Americans here every day, every month, every year.
Thank
goodness, our family members who evacuated were
safe in western Louisiana or southeast Texas or
northern Mississippi when Katrina made landfall.
But by Tuesday, were a 108-year old great aunt and
a mother, who stayed behind in an assisted living
high rise, alright? Where was the brother, who
stayed put as a part of essential hospital
personnel? Where was the brother-in-law determined
to stay at his network system engineer job?
We
grasped at straws of information and studied faces
on the television news looking for old friends.
Harry Connick, Jr., whose father was a long-time
Sheriff of Orleans Parish, offered that Canal
Street looked like it was Ash Wednesday. Reported
lost, Fats Domino was found sleeping in a crowded
Baton Rouge apartment. As a part of a hastily
assembled cast to raise funds on television, Aaron
Neville crooned, "They're trying to wash us
away," from the Randy Newman song about the
1927 Mississippi River flood.
If
we could get our musicians up and performing
again, why couldn't FEMA bring portable toilets to
the Superdome or at least drop a couple of tents
to those people camping on that elevated
expressway?
In
my immediate family, one house is dry in Metairie
on the side away from the levee break. Another is
flooded to the roof in New Orleans and a third is
windblown and wet, but may be salvagable in
Slidell. The mother and the 108-year old great
aunt are safe near Lake Charles, because the
mother knew the right person to call at a national
nursing home association to arrange evacuation by
private bus just 11 blocks from the paralysis at
the Superdome. The brother helped oversee the
final evacuation of patients and was able to
join his family in Mississippi. And the
brother-in-law is safe in western Louisiana,
though all are ready to supplement the two or
three sets of clothes they grabbed as they left.
For
the extended family, there may be another six
houses lost. For the whole N'Awlins family, there
are tens of thousands of homes lost. And lost, too
are the jobs, the colleagues, the cars, the dinner
spots, the family photos, the heirlooms, even the
neighbors. Whole communities will never
reconstitute. This was the last hurricane party.
--
September 5, 2005
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