Silver Lining
Sure, I am normally cynical and sarcastic, possibly even abrassive, but in the wake of the events unfolding on the Gulf Coast I think its time to be a little more optomistic.
What is going on now is tragic, but at the same time why were these people still there? They had a minimum of 72 hours to leave...the loss of life could have been significantly less, but the property damage would have been the same. I feel really bad for the kids that got caught up in this, especially the ones who weren't evacuated for whatever reasons.
The silver lining here is that, like a forest fire, when the water subsides the cities of New Orleans and Biloxi will experience a rebirth. New architecture, infastructure and hopefully new, stronger levees. They'll get insurance money and FEMA aid to re-build and a nation of private citizens will open its wallet to lend some aid to help out. The New Orleans of 10 years from now will still have its history, though some old buildings will probably need restoration...but nothing motivates Americans to save something that we never cared or thought about before, like a tragedy.
What is going on now is tragic, but at the same time why were these people still there? They had a minimum of 72 hours to leave...the loss of life could have been significantly less, but the property damage would have been the same. I feel really bad for the kids that got caught up in this, especially the ones who weren't evacuated for whatever reasons.
The silver lining here is that, like a forest fire, when the water subsides the cities of New Orleans and Biloxi will experience a rebirth. New architecture, infastructure and hopefully new, stronger levees. They'll get insurance money and FEMA aid to re-build and a nation of private citizens will open its wallet to lend some aid to help out. The New Orleans of 10 years from now will still have its history, though some old buildings will probably need restoration...but nothing motivates Americans to save something that we never cared or thought about before, like a tragedy.
2 Comments:
There are two reasons people don't evacuate when they are told to.
First, they are told 20 times to evacuate when nothing happens. The same thing happened around here during Hurricane Floyd.
Next, they can't afford to pick up and leave. Imagine living so poorly that you can't afford health care, or food, and being asked to get in a car (wait, can you afford a car?) and gas up (at $5 a gallon?) to evacuate (to where?)
It’s easy to imagine people are as capable as we are. But that’s just not true. That’s why we must help, and why federal aid must come through, which has been almsot non-existant to date.
Good post on this at huffington
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