Remembering Katrina

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of Katrina's path of destruction along the LA/MS Gulfcoast as moved on shore. Pretty much, unless you have your head in the sand, you have been bombarded with images and stories related to this catastrophe over the last few days.

First of all, Katrina made me realize how blessed i truly was. I was in Ascension Parish, LA at this time last year...located around I-10 in Southeastern LA; about 30 minutes outside of Baton Rouge and 45 minutes outside of Kenner, LA.
We stayed put in our home in St Amant as Katrina blew through our region with her wrath, no chance for us to evacuate due to the "powers that wanted to be" at our previous place of service felt it unnecessary to cancel services until the last minute. I guess that is neither here nor there now, but i do know if i could have moved my family out of there for their safety...i would have.
For Katrina we got the "clean side" of the storm, meaning as that as the storm circled on land and moved southwest back towards the Gulf, that is what hit us.

We lost power for some time, lost some trees on our property and at the church, as well as the church sign. Nothing major, especially when you consider just a 45 minute drive down I-10 was Kenner 3-5 feet under water and New Orleans.

A few weeks later we got the far end of the dirty side of Rita as she moved through the LA/TX coast, and saw about 12 hours of rain and the loss of the other side of the church sign. Once again, a reminder of how blessed we were because it could have been a lot worst for us. And because it could have been a lot worst we did what we could help those who were not as fortunate.

Now my thoughts on Katrina a year later:

First, who is to blame? Michael Brown was a nitwit and should have never been in charge of FEMA, so i do say President Bush has to accept, and i do believe he has accepted responsibility for the way FEMA dropped the ball in thinking that things were not as bad as they thought.
But for the most part, i think Ray "Wonka Bar" Nagin, Kathleen "Call me Babineaux only at Election Time" Blanco and the people of New Orleans are responsible for what happened. Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin grew up in Louisiana, and know how powerful a storm of this magnitude can be...and that New Orleans was not in a good position due to being below sea level.
The should have better planned for evacuations and better planned for an emergency response. Their incompetence continues in that New Orleans is still pretty much a ghost town and Louisiana is no better prepared for a storm like that than it was a year ago.
Have you noticed MS, FL and TX don't have these same problems? And have you also noticed that those states also have Republican governors? Not that i think the GOP gov's are always right...but i'm just saying.

Now as for the people of New Orleans, these "poor, oppressed people who had nothing to begin with" other than living off of my tax money. It is evident by how much crime has gone up in Houston (41% increase in felony arrests in Houston for November 2005 compared to November 2004 according to reports). These people were leaches sucking the life out of New Orleans and are now sucking the life out of other great cities; and it is time to cut it off!
I say let them fend for themselves, cut the FEMA and whatever other gravy train they are living off of.

Second, i want to talk about the way the church of Jesus Christ stepped up. I know in Ascension Parish i met with a number of local pastors, across denominational lines, within days of Katrina for us to come up with a game plan to reach out to our community. This took place in other cities and communities across the state and region.
Add to that the number of yellow Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief hats you saw all over the place actually made me proud to be part of the SBC again. For a long time the SBC was known for what it was against...now it is once again being known for doing ministry; and it is about time.

Finally, i may seem harsh, but i truly feel sorry for those who are truly less fortunate. My wife and i went to the PMac at LSU where a triage was set up for evacuees coming out of New Orleans requiring medical attention. It truly broke my heart as i saw some people who had lost everything and had no chance to get out, and would not have if it weren't for rescue workers coming after the storm. I had a chance to pray with them, minister to them, help them get a bag of clothes to replace the dirty ones they had been wearing for three days and more.
I don't want a pat on the back, but i do want people to know that there truly were some victims of Katrina. They are not the ones who lived in 4 and 5 star hotels on my dime for the next few months and bought HDTV's with their FEMA checks.

I hope we learned something from Katrina, as hard as the lesson was. I'm not sure if we did though. There is still way too much politics involved and considering we are talking about New Orleans...probably way too much going on under the table.
I can only hope for the best and pray that we don't have another "Katrina" any time soon.