As another hurricane is battering the Caribbean this weekend, I received an e-mail from a regular commenter, which I’m going to put up as my first guest post. As the title makes clear it’s about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Just about all I heard here in Germany was about New Orleans, about mis-management, how George W. Bush was personally to blame because he hadn’t signed the Kyoto treaty and moronic preachers who were blaming it all upon God’s fury with the behaviour of the inhabitants of New Orleans. The following post and photographs are not from a man from New Orleans. He wasn’t in the area as it happened. It’s what he witnessed when he drove down to help his parents try to sort out their home, in the area he grew up. If you use Google Earth, the town of Pass Christian is/was here. Photographs are numbered in the text, or click on the thumbnails below for an enlargement in a new window.
After spending several days removing sheetrock, carpets and temporarily repairing the 5 holes in the roof of my parent’s house, I wanted to see what happened to the neighboring town of Pass Christian. My maternal family had lived in this beautiful place of oak trees and bayous for several generations and I was curious. I knew that the National Guard had put up razor wire along all access points and was monitoring who wanted in. I decided to use the back roads. I took interstate 10 west until I reached Delisle and made my way south to a checkpoint. I bluffed my way in by looking annoyed and reciting places and streets that I needed to get to. My first stop was along Bayou Potash (1) to visit one of our family’s cemeteries (2). Devastation is all I can say. Every house that was still there was flattened (3,4). People were sitting beside tents on the ground looking stunned. I then went to the center of town (2 blocks from the beach) to another cemetery (Live Oak) (5,6,7) beside the Pass Christian High School(8). Total devastation is all I can say. The cemetery looks like a dump and the grave of my great aunt is empty. She must have floated out to sea. This area was under 40 feet of water for several hours. I went down 2nd street to visit what was left of my grandmother’s old home (9) as well as several others (10). I kept remembering that a small child and his father had been killed one street over. The houses are still there, just removed from were they should be. The seafood factory is gone (11) as well as everything else. The town is asking people to sign waivers so the city can bulldoze everything bare……..
That’s it. Not drawing any wider meaning from it - not asking for donations, you know where to go if you want to. It just fits into this blog’s general attitude of one man saw/experienced this - make of it what you will. However, the next time I hear someone who has a lot to be grateful to America for, dismiss it and say, “Yeah, well I bet they all voted Republican anyway”, I’m probably not going to bite my tongue.
My neighbour had to fly to Mississippi a few weeks ago to attend his grandfather’s funeral (because of Katrina). On top of his own personal grief, he was hit by devastation that was far worse than he’d imagined - just as is described here. He took some photos, too, showing me where his uncle’s house used to be - and where it is now, for instance. Somehow the TV news (which I saw on the Internet) didn’t properly convey these things. Nor did it communicate one other thing that he noticed: that everyone seems to be incredibly depressed. I think it must have been a very difficult journey for him to make.
David: It’s photo 11 that gets me - it has that look of photos of HIroshima, after they’d cleared the streets and made grids again, but everything inbetween was gone.
Now I’m aware that awful things happen everywhere (I’m after someone to visit Kashmir in circa three weeks to continue this series), but this was in the USA - the world’s most powerful nation nation etc. and over an area quite a bit bigger than Yorkshire. Bearing in mind how gentle our climate is, it makes one wonder why the hell we talk about the weather so much……
AF,
I think your comments regarding hurricane coverage in the German press is more than a bit lopsided. Granted, you will always find a journalist or high-ranking administration member in this country who is more than willing to display lots of schadenfreude or patronising behaviour in print or on TV when the US is concerned. Most people I interact with on a daily basis here in Germany will hardly harbour this kind of sentiment given the hardship many victims had to endure.
I think it is fair, however, to carefully dissect the circumstances that led to problems not caused by the direct effect of the hurricane and the subsequent flodding. The NY Times did this, The Economist did this and other foreign media outlets have the right to do the same. It is clear that a natural catastrophe will cause tremendous damage, no matter how well one is prepared.
But as usual, many factors on local and federal level contributed to the organisational mess that closely followed Katrina. Blaming just President Bush might be very convenient, but is hardly appropriate. Local politicans in the South are reluctant to enforce strict building codes since it costs owners/voters a lot of money (NY Times). The administration in New Orleans has been long known for not being a model of efficiency (The Economist). Moreover, the nomination of a former horse afficinado to head FEMA was not a particular stroke of genius. And the list goes on and on. The true scandal lies in all these failures that contributed a lot to unnecessary suffering. The press, US or foreign, should carry out a careful analysis to prevent this from happening again.
I cannot imagine how it is to lose an entire home or even an entire neighbourhood. But my sympathy for the victims is certainly not depending on their party affiliation or their nationality. After the injured are taken care of and after the debris has been cleared off the streets, tough questions must be asked in order to improve prevention and future emergency responses.
JCS: It’s really not meant to be a look at the way German media handled this issue - the intro is my one-man view from someone who watches Tagesschau and reads Süddeutsche on Fridays and Saturdays (if you want real lob-sided criticism, try David’s Medienkritik, which sees anti-Americanism in everything, and in doing so, far weakens their case for when a real example comes along). As it happens - many of the news sources I had were UK or US based. Nor is it a look at the mismanagement behind it - there’s plenty of people looking at that.
It’s one guy, in a town that isn’t New Orleans (and N.Orleans really was all I saw on TV).
‘Hiroshima’ was one of the first words that he used to describe it, in fact. He felt uncomfortable using the word, as clearly some aspects of the devastation are not the same, but he said that ‘Hiroshima’ was the best way he could explain it - and that that was how he’d felt.
I think it’s always awkward knowing when to start setting out the blame after something like this. Too early is tasteless. Too late, and you’ve let them get away with it. Perhaps there is no perfect time. As for ‘God’s vengeance’ - America already has Bush as president. Isn’t that punishment enough?