This will be my last post about Katrina and NOLA for a while. It’s becoming more than I can bear.
Critical Condition – Newsweek Hurricane Katrina Coverage – MSNBC.com
Critical Condition
The Health Crisis: Contaminated water. Dysfunctional hospitals. The city’s medical challenge is just beginning.
I’ve spent the last several days reading a lot and writing a bit about the conditions, causes and calamities in NOLA. The Newsweek article cited above describes the long term health challenges posed by a disaster of staggering proportions. Even viewing it from Manila, where I’ll be working until early October, is a soul crushing experience. I really can’t fathom how it must be for those who survived. Sarah Childress writes:
Mental trauma will be the biggest long-term concern, health experts predict. Children, especially those separated from their families, will be hit hardest, overwhelmed by “feelings of abandonment, isolation and disconnection,” says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness. Typically, neighbors might comfort survivors. But Katrina cut such a wide swath that there’s nobody left standing for anyone to lean on.
For all the heartache, looting, death and massive incompetence. Displayed there’s and occasional gem to found in the fetid water of one of America’s most unique cities. Like the priest who held mass in a church where nothing remained but a floor and a plywood sign announcing when mass would be held. Or another parish where a priest opened his church to survivors who were denied shelter elsewhere because they refused to abandon a beloved pet, often representing the only salvage from another life now destroyed.
