My goodness.
What will happen to all the fair people stranded on the highway, out hard earned money, and waiting for gas trucks to fill up stations so folks can make the return trip home.
This is labor day weekend, one clearly not about the majority of working people in New Orleans and surrounding parishes.
There will be analysis, meta analysis, counter analysis about the government's reactionary response to this storm.
What is the probability of a Category 4 storm and/or higher, with catastrophic impact hit the same area as Katrina. Nature is unpredictable, but untested modeling of storm patterns are also far from reliable.
One can only hedge a bet, there will be plenty of angry working people who left their homes, with the fear of tragedy in mind as the Mayor orders mandatory evacuations by a specific time. And for those who remained with bad taste in their mouths about imposed dusk to dawn curfew, loss wages, and threaten jail/incarceration for looters. Is that a way to rebuild faith and gain trust of those adversely affected by a disaster only 3 years ago?
For poor people who are already disenfranchised, believe government and corporations are corrupt, this incident further fuels persistent distrust and diminishing expectations about who will have their backs.
It can not be understated how the local, state and federal government was ill prepared and continue to be reactive while the region and the city of New Orleans slowly and painfully tries to rebuild the neighborhoods and communities loss.
Someone please ask where the aid has gone? What happened to the well intended charitable donations designated for New Orleans and surrounding areas. Walk the streets of the 7th ward, you will notice how many homes are occupied, an easier number to tally.
People have moved on and settled elsewhere. The fabric of communities, neighborhoods, family ties dating generations, and local rituals are lost. Much of what I've seen informs me, new buildings will be raised sometime in the foreseeable future, new people will settle in due time, but the ties that bound those communities will be only a memory recounted by the few who experienced it and decided to stay and share the new folk aka strangers.
I am thankful that the predicted Gustav scenario did not play out.
My friends and I prepared for it as best we could and stayed.
Now we will sleep easier, wait for the rain and gusting winds, perhaps when most of it has passed, time and light permitting have a barbecue, make sangria and smile at one another for the decision and effort.
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