Katrina Victims
Suffer like the Poor of the Third World
By Dr. Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
Before its destruction by
Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was one of the
loveliest and oldest cities of North America.
Founded by the French in 1718 on the shores of
the Mississippi river and the Gulf of Mexico,
it served for many years as the capital of French
Louisiana. This vast territory was bought by US
President Thomas Jefferson from the French in
1803 for a paltry sum of 15 million dollars. Often
referred to as the “Crescent City,”
New Orleans retained a strong French flavor in
its architecture, food, language and culture.
The French Quarter section of the city, where
tourist congregated, displayed the strongest influence
of French as well as Spanish culture, blended
in a unique style of metal windows, balconies,
flat tiled roofs, white-washed houses and secluded
gardens. The city gave birth to the style of music
called jazz, its restaurants offered the finest
Cajun cuisine and at night it came alive with
glitzy shows. It became the favorite haunt of
artists, performers, musicians and all those who
did not fit well in their own communities. Once
a year in February, New Orleans threw a huge carnival,
an unceasing party for thousands who came to participate
in the celebrations, watch the parades of colorfully
embellished floats or simply to have some fun.
There was something for everyone. The tropical
swamps just beyond the city limits abounded with
alligators and a variety of wild life unique to
the regions that attracted serious naturalists
as well as ordinary tourists. The city had at
one time been the center of slave trade and, within
a hundred miles, one could visit imposing plantation
houses, where once the slave owners lived in comfort
while the slaves toiled in oppressive heat.
Hidden behind all the glamour and ostentation,
however, was another New Orleans, mostly poor
and almost entirely black, the ethnic group that
constituted two-thirds of the city population.
The state of Louisiana is one of the poorest in
the nation and New Orleans had one of the highest
murder rates in the country.
Violence was not the only problem. The city existed
precariously, its greater part situated below
sea level. It was reclaimed from swamps and marshes
and made habitable by complicated engineering
feats, consisting of embankments, called levees,
flood walls and powerful pumping machines that
kept the sea water away from the city. The levees
and other defensive structures were built in 1965
and had not been updated in years despite warnings
that a powerful hurricane would overwhelm the
defenses of the city, spawning a catastrophe.
According to a report in the New York Times, the
Army Core of Engineers just last year requested
a budget of 105 million dollars from the US Congress
for upgrading the hurricane and flood programs
for the city, but a much reduced budget of 40
million dollars was allocated. The country’s
resources were tied up in fighting the perceived
threat of terrorism, while the real threat of
hurricanes received little consideration.
The waters of the Gulf of Mexico during the months
of August and September are notorious for breeding
hurricanes. The Gulf waters are still warm while
the landmass is progressively cooling, promoting
the generation of weather disturbances. In the
last week of August, the meteorologists who had
been following an incipient hurricane -- soon
to be named Katrina -- predicted that it would
gain strength to become a category 4 or 5, the
most powerful on the scale, and would strike the
southern coastal states. It became clear fairly
quickly that it was aiming almost directly for
New Orleans. Fearing major devastation, the mayor
of New Orleans ordered a mandatory evacuation
of the city. While mostly affluent whites and
Asians promptly abandoned the city, nearly a hundred-thousand
mostly poor blacks had no means of transportation
of their own and nowhere to go. They stayed put.
With hammering winds of 160 miles an hour and
bearing torrential rains, Katrina struck the city
on Monday, August 29, with great fury.
At first the dykes holding the water back from
the city seemed to be holding and flooding was
minimal. But sometime on Tuesday a wall that enclosed
a drainage canal was breached and the water from
Lake Pontchartrain gushed into the city streets,
drowning dwellings, shops and other business centers
and causing havoc. The power failed, plunging
the city into total darkness, immobilizing all
surface transportation, and cutting people off
from sanctuary, food and water. The three main
universities, Tulane, Universities of New Orleans
and Xavier, have cancelled all fall semester classes,
while most of their researchers have lost irreplaceable
medical specimens.
As the whole world and the American public watched
in horror the victims were left for days to fend
for themselves. Thousands sought shelter in the
football stadium called the Superdome, but its
roof was breached by the storm. Many others found
refuge in the city’s convention center,
where there was no water, food, medical assistance
or sanitation facilities available. Children and
old people endured stifling heat and humidity.
Those who died were left by the roadside unattended.
The nightmarish scene was redolent of the destruction
and squalor encountered under such circumstance
in a poor, Third World country, not in a rich
and powerful nation.
This writer was in the convention center attending
a scientific conference only a year ago; the modern,
gleaming facility was now unrecognizable from
its pictures, submerged in filth and human debris.
President Bush was on a month-long vacation at
his Texas ranch and did not return to Washington
for three days after the scale of devastation
became clear. Finally, he visited the disaster
area on Friday, five days after the hurricane
struck. The Federal Government’s primary
agency responsible for disaster management, FEMA,
proved to be both inept and incapable of managing
this crisis. Its director had had no previous
experience in disaster management, having previously
been the head of an agency dealing with Arabian
horses. Also, some of the vital equipment needed
for transportation such as helicopters and resources
such as the National Guard were deployed fighting
the war in Iraq. As happens often, prevailing
lawlessness and absence of any law enforcement
apparatus brought out looters who terrorized the
hapless refugees and pillaged shops and stores.
Some were seen carting away TV sets through hip
deep muddy water in a city which had no electricity
to operate them.
The TV images of the plight of the suffering people
of New Orleans flashing across the world provoked
a national and international outcry. The black
Congressional leaders as well as others in Washington
excoriated the Government for its slow response,
suggesting that the situation could not have been
permitted to become so abysmal if the suffering
people were predominantly white. Fifty-five nations,
including Pakistan, offered help. The Pakistan
embassy offered to send a team of doctors and
paramedics to help in the relief operations. The
Governments of Qatar and Kuwait contributed 100
and 500 million dollars, respectively, to the
relief funds. Even impoverished Sri Lanka donated
25,000 dollars to the fund. Individual Americans
have opened up their hearts and homes to homeless
people, showing unprecedented generosity and kindness.
Many have taken in homeless people in their homes
as guests. American-Muslim organizations have
also mounted major efforts to collect funds and
articles of clothing to help their fellow citizens.
Meanwhile, the relief operations in New Orleans
are now in full swing. The levees have been repaired
and water is being pumped out of the city. However,
the grim task of going from house to house to
look for the dead and the alive has just begun.
The people stranded in the two relief centers
have been evacuated to temporary shelters. The
mayor of the city fears that the final count of
the dead may be high, but no one knows for sure.
Whether this city known for its music and revelry
will ever be restored to its former glory remains
an open question.
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