Its a year ago, today; that the mother of all hurricanes ( in two generations) hit the Big Easy. New Orleans was brought down to its knees and then some.
While FEMA and state agencies bungled and screwed up, the world saw images of a major US city as if it was from a war zone.
Today, a year later, hardly anything has changed much. Reconstruction has started only in name and on paper. The blame game continues and another hurricane season is upon the people of the Gulf Of Mexico.
The BBC has an interesting article about South Asians recalling the scary days before and after Katrina.
Indian community activists turned their homes into temporary shelters for displaced families.
Dr M Sulaiman, a Pakistani-American surgeon living in New Orleans for the past 25 years, was among those who volunteered.
“For days, we worked in makeshift camps with people who had suddenly lost everything,” he told me as we drove to see the devastated eastern parts of his city.
“There was no food, no place to sleep or sanitary facilities. It was a nerve wrecking experience,” he said.
The hurricane killed over 1,000 people while hundreds of thousands were forced to flee homes. Eighty percent of New Orleans was submerged.
Along with the most of the city’s infrastructure, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh worship sites were also destroyed.
Read entire article here
For more coverage on Hurricane Katrina, here at news views and analysis, click here.
