Hurricane Katrina Aftermath

I’m shocked watching the news about everything that’s happening in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It saddens me that there could be so much devastation and so many people killed. But it maddens me to see that the response hasn’t been enough, that it’s too little, too late.

Sheesh, this is America.

Why is it so hard to mobilize a relief effort? We put a man on the moon 40 years ago, but we can’t stop the chaos after a hurricane.


I understand that we were unprepared and the storm was bigger than we thought. It happens, move on. But three days later why are we still having so many problems? Why are refugees starving and shooting and looting? Why are they dying?

If this is such a crisis, which I believe it is, why can’t this great country rally to do something about it?

Buses are in short supply to ship people out. Greyhound was shipping in 67 buses tonight. Great, but that hardly sounds like enough. How about sending every bus within 500 miles?

Food and water are running out. OK, let’s ship more in. Drop it by the truckload all over the place and organize some distribution.

If we have refugees with no place to go, send a bus load to every church or community center or elementary school within 500 miles. Mobilize teams of volunteers to man those refugee centers. Ship supplies to those refugee centers.

I can’t understand why there are any obstacles in the way of helping these people. We should have the ingenuity, the money, the manpower–whatever is necessary to deal with this. The President, the Governor, the FEMA people, the Red Cross people–whoever, they need to think big and empower the American people to help in huge ways. Don’t sit there and tell us help is coming while we watch people die on the news.

The fact that we can’t deal with this is a sad, sad commentary.

3 thoughts on “Hurricane Katrina Aftermath”

  1. Churches Mobilize in Katrina Aftermath

    In the aftermath of Katrina I’m just baffled at the chaos. You’d think we could do better. The one tiny bit of consolation I have is the way churches and ministries are responding. Like the tsunami churches are stepping in, and while it’s odd to think …

  2. I have opened forums at http://www.DisasterReliefIdeas.org for the discussion of ideas to aid disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I am not soliciting donations, only ideas. Experts in aspects of disaster relief (housing, healthcare, rebuilding, etc.) are also able to rate these ideas, giving us a means of identifying the most promising ones, which will be shared with disaster relief professionals and persons in authority. Please help our society by contributing your ideas, especially if you are unable to contribute financially to relief efforts.

  3. I have made a customized EMERGENCY type search engine that links only to crisis situation type websites (like relief aide, evacuation planning layouts, crisis management setup and others relating to disasters caused by terrorism, natural disasters, poverty, disease and man-made war), see http://www.CrisisSearch.com :)

    My first nonprofiting humanitarian project was http://www.SpareSomeChange.com which only covers resources for those living homeless (I had suffered homelessness a few times as a youth). I will try to come up with other helping humanity type portals as I can afford too…

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