America Revisited: Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

A year ago to this day, Hurricane Katrina swept into Gulf coast of USA and killed many people, damaged properties, made thousand of people homeless and destroyed many businesses.

Deaths by state
Alabama 2
Florida 14
Georgia 2
Kentucky 1
Louisiana 1,577*
Mississippi 238
Ohio 2
Total 1,836
Add'l missing 705
*Includes out-of-state evacuees counted by Louisiana

Years of under-investment in its people and its defences against "potential" natural causes, showed how ineffective the government was against Mother Nature.

Images of seas of black faces begging for help that took days to arrive, and stories of sheriffs from adjacent white suburbs turning desperate evacuees away at gunpoint as they tried to flee New Orleans, horrified the nation.

People were also shocked to see some residents looting for food and water (as well as non-essential items). Many looters were armed and did not care who they harmed. It was a dog eats dog situation. The police had to move in quickly and had to resort to using weapons to control these people and bring stability to the areas.

The area was also hit with scandels during the reconstruction period when contracts were being awarded to favourable people and some of them were mis-using the funds and were found to be making false claims.




You would expect something like this to happen in a war torn region such as the Lebanon, but you would be firmly wrong. Since the ceasefire in Lebanon, there have been no reports of shops being looted or of any fighting amongst its people. People of Lebanon are living in hard times, most of them returning back to their home have found out that their homes have been destroyed or cluster bomblets are awaiting for them at the residence.

People have been united, looking after its other. Hezbullah are working day and night to clear debris and retrieve rotten bodies hiding underneath the rubbles left by the IDF. They have also started to process claims for compensation from the estimated 15,000 householders who lost their homes to Israel's bombing.

Hezbullah the enemy of Israel is a terrorist organisation according to a few countries (USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Netherlands & Israel) but not according to The UN’s Deputy Secretary-General, Mark Malloch Brown, while acknowledging that “Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics,” he says that it is unhelpful to call it a terrorist organization; the United States and the international community, in his view, would do well to respect it as a legitimate political party.