Remembering Katrina

New Orleans' flooded Ninth Ward in August 2005.

 Hurricane Katrina was the most costly natural disaster in our country's history, and one of the deadliest.  The storm devastated the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, created damage throughout the rest of the southeast, destroyed the city of New Orleans, killed hundreds, and scattered the people of that city across the country as refugees.  It also laid bare a few basic truths that we, as Americans, needed to remember:

• Adverse events are going to happen.  They differ in their severity, and the more severe an event, the more widespread the damage and the more pronounced the threat to our survival becomes.
• A little forethought and planning - preparedness - goes a long way to mitigate the effects of disasters on you and your family. The plans and preparations you make now are the key to your survival.
• You cannot count on someone to come help you.   It took several days for emergency and disaster relief services to deploy into the New Orleans area.  Count on being on your own.
• When disaster strikes, a person's true character is revealed.   It took three days for New Orleans to descend into anarchy with widespread looting and theft pervading the area.   In contrast, others spent days on their fishing boats trolling through the flooded city to rescue survivors.  

Here, two days before the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast, let's hope our countrymen are more prepared and ready to take care of themselves.   I also wanted to share this web site, Listening to Katrina, published by a survivor of that storm.   It contains a lot of resources, and more than a hint of bitterness toward the state and federal government for the lack of preparedness each showed in confronting the challenges of the event.

Here's hoping our government and our neighbors have learned their lessons and applied them.