Five years ago today Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast of the United States leaving 1,836 dead and another 705 missing. New Orleans, of course, was the hardest hit and garnered the lion’s share of publicity from the people trapped in the Superdome.
While the people of New Orleans were about to be imprinted on the world’s stage this was going on 150 miles to the east…
In Mobile, Alabama
Almost immediately after the skies had cleared and images of the people stranded in the Dome and on rooftops started to hit the airwaves “compassionate conservatives” started to criticize the people who were trapped. But how do you evacuate when you’re in an ICU unit in Charity Hospital or Touro Infirmary? How do you evacuate when you’re bed ridden in a nursing home? How do you evacuate if you’re a doctor or nurse caring for those people? How do you evacuate when you’re poor and don’t own a car? How do you evacuate when you’re an infant and your parents are poor and don’t have transportation? How do you evacuate if your owners don’t take you?
And the people who DID evacuate? Their lives, too, were forever changed because they had nothing left to come back to.
And NEVER forget this idiot and his pal.
I loved New Orleans. I haven’t been there since Katrina and I never will. There are still large areas that haven’t recovered and I couldn’t bear to see that. It would break my heart.
One More Good Adventure 
Thank you for remembering Mississippi and Alabama, too. By the time Katrina was “gone” and I’d made trips through those areas, I didn’t hate New Orleans but I hated the media who let their love of spectacle (i.e. the Superdome and such situations) overcome the need to cover the whole story.
I will say this. Houston and Galveston don’t have perfect plans now, but post-Katrina and especially post-Rita, there are much better plans for evacuation. Simply instituting contraflow lanes – well, DUH – has improved things tremendously. We found that out in Ike. And now there are lists of those who need help evacuating, and people charged with making sure every, single person who needs to be on that list is on that list.
I hope you go back to NOLA sometime. Slow recovery is still recovery, and different isn’t always bad 😉 But I understand staying away, too. I have other friends who take the same position.
I will NEVER go back to NOLA. It’s hard enough looking at pictures of the places still standing desolate. I don’t need to see them in 3-D. I rarely go back to places where I used to live. I spent three summers in Chicago when I first started working on boats. Last time I was there was in ’76. I loved that stretch of the Riviera between Cannes and the Italian border, but will never see it again. Sort of a “been there, done that” mindset. Fewer years ahead than behind and there’s lots of new things I want to see rather than revisiting places I already know.
“…lots of new things I want to see…”
I understand that, especially now that I’ve been to three eye doctors in the past week and learned I have a form of glaucoma that’s a bit faster moving than some of it and my left eye is already affected.
Bummer, to say the least.
So, I go back next week and we discuss treatments. Needless to say, it’s started me thinking about those things I still want to see!
In my younger days I heavily self-medicated against the dangers of glaucoma.