They Called It Katrina (one year ago tomorrow, the storm was born)

WilliamPitt

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Tue Aug-22-06 12:02 PM
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They Called It Katrina (one year ago tomorrow, the storm was born)

They Called It Katrina
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 22 August 2006

One year ago tomorrow, on August 23rd, Tropical Depression Twelve formed over the eastern Bahamas. The depression was upgraded to a tropical storm the next day as the energy and winds within intensified. It was the eleventh tropical storm of the season, and thus was given a name beginning with the letter "K."

The watchers at the National Hurricane Center called it Katrina.

Tropical Storm Katrina made landfall in Florida between Hallandale Beach and Aventura on August 25th, where it weakened for a time. One hour after crossing Florida and entering the Gulf of Mexico, however, the tropical storm strengthened after feeding off the warm Gulf waters. Katrina became a Category Three hurricane on August 27th, and nearly doubled in size.

By the morning of August 28th, Katrina was a Category Five storm, and by 1:00 pm CDT the storm's maximum sustained winds peaked at 175 miles per hour. It achieved landfall again on the morning on August 29th as it crossed into Louisiana and Mississippi. Katrina's hurricane status was maintained even 150 miles inland, and was not downgraded to tropical storm status until it had reached Clarkesville, Tennessee. The impact of the storm's remains was felt along the eastern Great Lakes region into August 31st, and as calendar pages were turned to September, Katrina finally dissipated entirely over Ontario and Quebec.

The storm came, the levees failed, and the nightmares began to unfold. Days passed without any help coming from the federal government. Memories and images of the devastation left behind in the wake of Katrina - in Alabama, Mississippi, and most searingly in New Orleans, Louisiana - are today as much a part of this nation's tragic history as the memories and images of September 11, Pearl Harbor, and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

The entire country watched in numb horror as one of our greatest cities was slowly and methodically washed off the map. Untold thousands fled their homes, were separated from families, and sent to faraway states to wait for whatever Fate had in store for them. Nearly two thousand others remained behind, and perished. Thousands more suffered in unutterably ill-prepared shelters. Petroleum distillation and distribution was disrupted, and the economic shock hit every gas station in America. The cost of Katrina has been estimated at close to $100 billion.

The pictures from New Orleans cannot be purged from memory. There was Ethel Freeman, an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair outside the New Orleans convention center with a black poncho covering her head, dead and left to molder because the convention center was overwhelmed with evacuees. "Let's not forget," said Freeman's lawyer, John Paul Massicot, "she survived the storm. The storm didn't get her. She didn't survive the rescue."

More: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082206J.shtml