BAW: Guest Commentary: Victims of Hurricane Katrina Must Turn Their Pain into Power
BAW: Guest Commentary: Victims of Hurricane Katrina Must Turn Their Pain into Power: "Guest Commentary: Victims of Hurricane Katrina Must Turn Their Pain into Power
Date: Friday, September 09, 2005
By: Judge Greg Mathis, Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com
Hurricane Katrina’s victims have suffered through and endured what will surely be marked as one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, despite being largely abandoned for several days by the federal government.
Now, as flood waters recede in New Orleans and clean up begins across the Gulf, these survivors must use the painful lessons this ordeal has imparted to empower themselves, their families and their communities. By doing so, they’ll ensure that they will never again be privy to such neglect and victimization.
The people of the Gulf Coast were hit by two disasters: Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal government to respond to it in a timely manner. According to recently released reports, Katrina ravaged the Gulf for nearly five hours before Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, requested any aid for the region. The airline industry says the government didn’t request help with evacuating storm victims until three days after the storm hit. While no one had any way of predicting just how much havoc the storm would wreak, news reports indicated Katrina would come down hard. As New Orleans and other cities evacuated, preparing for the worse, it doesn’t make sense that the federal government didn’t have an emergency response team at the ready. If they had, many more lives could have been saved."
Date: Friday, September 09, 2005
By: Judge Greg Mathis, Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com
Hurricane Katrina’s victims have suffered through and endured what will surely be marked as one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, despite being largely abandoned for several days by the federal government.
Now, as flood waters recede in New Orleans and clean up begins across the Gulf, these survivors must use the painful lessons this ordeal has imparted to empower themselves, their families and their communities. By doing so, they’ll ensure that they will never again be privy to such neglect and victimization.
The people of the Gulf Coast were hit by two disasters: Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal government to respond to it in a timely manner. According to recently released reports, Katrina ravaged the Gulf for nearly five hours before Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, requested any aid for the region. The airline industry says the government didn’t request help with evacuating storm victims until three days after the storm hit. While no one had any way of predicting just how much havoc the storm would wreak, news reports indicated Katrina would come down hard. As New Orleans and other cities evacuated, preparing for the worse, it doesn’t make sense that the federal government didn’t have an emergency response team at the ready. If they had, many more lives could have been saved."
posted by Blackgold at 6:58 PM
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