Katrina and Harvey. Does anyone really care because so far the remedy to these disasters has been to whistle as you walk through a grave yard while holding a rabbit's foot!

Hurricane Harvey


Water, water, everywhere.

This week. This very day (August 29th), 12 years ago, Tropical Depression Twelve which had developed into Hurricane Katrina, made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane at Bay St. Louis, MS. It smacked into St. Bernard Parish and St. Tammany Parish in Louisiana. This was its third U. S. landfall since it had been birthed in the Atlantic weeks earlier. It had first hit Keating Beach on August 25th, a place two miles south of Fort Lauderdale International Airport. In its wake, it had touched Alabama, the Bahamas, Cuba, and Puerto Rico at various intensities.

But the U. S. mainland had drawn the short straw. Active in the Atlantic in different forms beginning August 24th, she saved her worst havoc for August 28th- August 31st.

Incompetence. Delayed, botched evacuations. Indifference. Lack of compassion. Greed. Thrift. All contributed to the horror show and the its aftermath which continues until today in the area. New Orleans lost @90,000 residents.

Now, we have Hurricane Harvey. It demolished Rockport. Smashed Copano Bay and Aransas Bay. It barrelled through Corpus Christi, Galveston, Victoria, and Edna and made it way to Houston. Where it has sat for two days. Pouring rain. 25 punishing inches to be exact. But it's not over. It's due to get 25 more by Wednesday. It's gonna hit Beaumont and Port Arthur and along other places on the Texas/Louisiana border. It's all so sad. People displaced. people freaked out. But this is not new. This happened 12 years ago. 12 YEARS AGO! Ironically, cruelly, some people who evacuated New Orleans during Katrina, went to HOUSTON to live! They must be beside themselves now. I know I'd be.

Differences between Katrina and Harvey? As far as damage goes, no difference as I can see. There was/is destruction. People are displaced. People have died.

With Katrina, the levees broke and engulfed hold neighborhoods. Lots of foot-dragging and finger-pointing while people perished

With Harvey, the bayous have been overflowing but I see a quicker response albeit one spearheaded by locals. I see a mayor who decided NOT to call for evacuation. I was on the fence about that. But I think he made the right call. Could you imagine thousands of people stuck in cars on gridlocked, flooding roadways? All I could envision was dead folks in cars after the water receded. Who would have to do that duty? How many platoons would have had to clean that up? So, the mayor made the right decision. What is messed up is, how do you handle thousands of people who are trapped at home in 25-50 inches of water? Sheltering in place just ain't making it when water is surging into your house.Shelters are ill-equipped. There is nowhere to go. The problem is these cities have been built BELOW SEA LEVEL (New ORleans, Houston). Can't dig up the cities so a solution to whoever's bright idea it was to construct those places at those coordinates has to be figured out before the next severe hurricane comes.

But after Katrina, the experts assured that it would be solved by the next "big one." That was, what? 12 years ago.

Hurricane Katrina at her height