Hurricane Pride

Happy Anniversary Gulf Coast! Katrina sends all her love with Isaac as he blasts through town on the Seventh Anniversary of one of the greatest catastrophes in American History.

So today I'm flipping stations and come across CNN or FoxNews or something and they are talking about Hurricane Isaac. By now it's far enough over land that it has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but the storm is only moving 5mph. That is so slow. And all the while it just keeps raining and raining and raining. After Katrina, the Army Corp of Engineers rebuilt and refit levees all around New Orleans. But levees and flood gates and pump stations are still tricky things and when a storm is dumping feet of rain every couple hours, there's no telling what will happen.

In  Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans right along the Gulf Coast, levees were breached and whole neighborhoods were completely overrun with flood waters today. But here's my beef. The parish was under mandatory evacuation. Yet, as the water rushed over the levee walls bringing houses under 5' of water in a matter of minutes, there were still over 100 people in the cities. WHY? ARROGANCE! IGNORANCE! POVERTY! Now that I've lived in New Orleans, it's clear that everyone in the Gulf Coast has experienced or at least heard chilling tales of the threats brought by hurricane season. I know many of these people are incredibly impoverished and evacuating is an incredibly challenging and costly task. But I know too that churches, community organizations, parish governments and the National Guard are there to provide evacuation assitance BEFORE the hurricane hits. Mid-Hurricane rescues are incredibly dangerous. It's not fair to ask good men and women to risk their lives naviagating flooded streets, wild and domestic animals and slashing, thrashing rain. Hurricanes can be very unpredictable, but so far Isaac has done exactly what we thought it would do. Some people are in a situation where they can, forseeably "ride out" a storm. They live in higher neighborhoods or cities further inland, but it blows my mind that we have people running with their family up to the roof with chainsaw so they don't drown in their own house.

Right now, I'm not facing overwhelming flood waters from a slow moving hurricane, but what am I facing? What can I do to prepare for disasters (emotional, spiritual, physical, etc.) that if I don't care for now, will put others in jeopardy later as they are left to try and save me? We must keep our own lives and affairs in order. I know this won't happen for anyone over night, but at the very least, listen, watch, act, when given warnings of caution and a hand of assistance that can save you and those there to protect you.

Be safe, be smart, stay calm. And always look for ways to better prepare for whatever life may throw at you. We can do this. We must do this. Go to work. 

P.S. The Army Corp of Engineers did have one awesome success today. Since Katrina, they built a water pump that can drain an olympic pool full of water every 4 seconds! That's cool.