Hurricane Katrina: New Orleans Ain't a 3rd World Country

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the havoc wreaked on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. There have been recent retrospects on TV, radio, and in print, and any number of commentaries put out on about how the area's recovering well from that devastation.

Indeed, it is recovering. The people of New Orleans are no strangers to hardships and particularly those brought on by weather conditions. Hurricanes have come and gone there since being founded in 1718 … and almost definitely even before that. The people of all nationalities and colors who settled that area, and ever since, have come to know their weather and geography in all its intimacy, figuring out how best to survive amidst the concerns created by living in an area below sea level.



So why is it that for well over 200 years, a location prone to such weather conditions has survived and thrived, despite what nature would repeatedly throw her way?

Then, suddenly, in a fit of fury, in an age where humankind had made leaps and bounds in technology and better living conditions … that same major American city is nearly annihilated by one powerful hurricane. How could this have happened? Homes that had stood for generations disappeared in seconds, never to be seen again. Entire neighborhoods were washed away. Many of the people in those neighborhoods had absolutely no chance from the first whisper of danger.



I’m not writing this to go into all the various reasons why this happened. Let it suffice to say that history has fairly well proven it wasn’t really Mother Nature which nailed The Big Easy. It was a man-facilitated disaster and, as such, must be a man-facilitated recovery. It's a recovery which, to this day, is still in process—slowly inching upward. And while, as many of those retrospects have indicated, New Orleans is coming alive again, there is so much more still to do.

I challenge anyone who cares deeply about others on this planet to look in their own backyard when they want to help. If you haven’t seen the Katrina-ravaged area with your own eyes, you cannot imagine how much work there is still yet to do. You cannot possibly imagine how drastically like a Third World country much of the New Orleans area still appears. You have no way of understanding, without seeing it yourself, the continuing blight being fought every day, still, in a city that has survived, and thrived, for well over 200 years, despite all that Mother Nature has sent her way.

The photos in this album are of the area in and around the Lower Ninth ward of New Orleans, taken about two-and-a-half years ago. Even then, it was over three years later. Just think about it—New Orleans, Louisiana is not part of a Third World Country … this is part of your country.