February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
There will be time enough to apportion blame for the slow and initially inadequate response of the federal government to the Katrina catastrophe.
There will be time enough to weigh the degree of responsibility that must be borne by local and state government in the disaster stricken area.
For now, however, our thoughts and energies as individuals, and collectively as a nation, should be focused on the enormous task that faces us in the months and years ahead.
This task is not confined to search and rescue, draining away flood waters and rebuilding.
These are all priorities for sure.
But beyond our physical response to the disaster in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast we have some thinking to do, and not a little soul searching.
The harrowing scenes of people screaming to be rescued, in full view of television cameras and days after the hurricane, was a harrowing sight that none of us should forget.
The reasons for the second battle of New Orleans being lost, with thousands of the city’s inhabitants likely left dead, are many and varied.
But one very particular reason concerns the levee system around New Orleans.
We are not alone in our astonishment that some of the most critical levees were built to withstand only a category three hurricane when a four or five was seen as someday being inevitable.
We are not alone in our astonishment at the TV pictures of the stricken 17th Street levee. It looks like the kind of concrete divide sometimes placed in the middle of highways during road construction.
Hardly enough to hold back a lake.
We are not alone in our anger at the fact that the levee system was short changed even to the point that money needed for maintenance and upgrading was siphoned off to the war in Iraq.
Thankfully, the number of American dead in Iraq is well short of 10,000.
But in New Orleans it might exceed that grim number.
Yes, there are many questions to be answered.
But first comes the helping hand. We are certain there will be millions of them.