Observations on 3 Anniversaries--Katrina, "I Have a Dream," and Mother Theresa

Observations on 3 Anniversaries--Katrina, "I Have a Dream," and Mother Theresa

This past weekend witnessed a trifecta of momentous anniversaries. Katrina happened 5 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” on the Washington Mall 47 years ago, and Mother Theresa was born a century ago.

It is already five years since August 29th, 2005, since the incredibly devastating Category 3 hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in our history, the deadliest storm to strike the United States in 83 years, all but wiped out much of the City of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward as well as laying waste to vast other areas of the Gulf Coast.

Testimony to the remarkable resilience of humankind and the human spirit, with the exception of that Ninth Ward, an area catastrophically flooded by Katrina’s storm surge, reinundated a month later by Hurricane Rita, and still largely devastated, most affected Gulf Coast communities have been rebuilt, if not fully recovered.

Much, perhaps too much, has been written about the failures surrounding Katrina: the failures of the levees, the failures of Michael Brown and FEMA, the failures of Democrat Governor Kathleen Blanco and the Republican President George W. Bush, the failures of the Superdome, the failures of government in general in not doing more to alert New Orleans of the impending disaster, to save more lives, to assist in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, to reconstruct the destroyed, and to console the afflicted.

That focus on failure may have been “too much” for three significant reasons, the first of which is a reason based on the common sense shared by ten year olds but not by politicians, city planners, and builders. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1869)