Dying for Katrina
They are still finding bodies in New Orleans seven months later. Student volunteers from out of state stumbled across skeletal remains earlier this week, bodies the dogs had missed. In my other life I do research on Voodoo. See Voodoo Queen, The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau. So unburied bodies, hauntings, ghosts, and spirits not at rest are an important part of our history here. But post-Katrina I am angry at how the official body count doesn't count, how our dead in street lingo have been "dissed."
So-called official statistics---the ones the public hears---claims that "some 1300 people died in Katrina." Yet 300 to 3000 people, estimates vary, are still missing. Several hundred Bodies still have to be identified; relatives who can accept the fact of death cannot claim their loved one because the bureaucracy of death has been so slow and arcane. The "some 1300 people" conveniently diesn't cover what scholars call "excess mortality" ---delayed deaths from stress, grief, evacuation, deaths in neighboring states that won't appear in Louisiana's vital statistics. We're attending funeral that will not be counted, friends who died for Katrina. Suicides are growing, but they will not be official either.
Meanwhile, hundreds of caskets exploded to the surface in the flood, dozens of cemeteries uprooted and emptied, coffins in trees, bodies in funeral regalia on the highway. Many of our neighbors previously buried and believed to be resting in peace are washed out to the Gulf or lying in cold storage because identification is impossible. I am still in shock at the sight of bodies in wheelchairs, bodies floating in weeks-old flood water, and bodies stacked in the Convention Center. If our past is any help, their spirits are still walking the streets of this haunted, wounded city. Citizens used to blame the practitioners of Voodoo for the bodies and skeletons and exploded graveyards. But it was always the civil government who failed its citizens.
If only "some 1300 people" died, then Katrina is not really a national tragedy, rescue delayed is not a reproach, and failed storm walls are not a scandal. If only "some 1300 people" perished in the immediate aftermath of the storm, then Katrina is not the worst unnatural disaster in American history. Like civilian deaths in Iraq, the powers-that-be fudge, conceal, and deny the death rates that ordinary people in New Orleans are living with every day. We know far more people died for Katrina than any authorities are willing to say. Like the number of enemy dead in Vietman, the body count is always political. And our bodies are not counted or counting.
Thanks so much for doing this! It means the world to people in New Orleans, LA.
The tragedy continues daily. Keeping our plight on the minds of people across the country will definitly help!
MsAnnaNOLA
New Orleans, Louisiana
March 23, 2006 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, thank you! I was hoping someone would mention the true casualty count of this tragedy. The hearings on the Katrina relief effort exposed the callous incompetence of many in the Bush administration, but the continuing need of hurricane victims was given very little attention. It's important in coming weeks and months, and as hurricane season looms, maybe forever, to find out how to continue to mobilize support. If the government can't rise to the occasion, volunteers need to continue to be mobilized and inspired.
March 23, 2006 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
So today the Houston Chronicle reports that Barbara Bush made a charitable (tax-free) contribution to Katrina victims in the form of support for a company owned by the wayward Neil Bush. Are these people really the same as you and me; are we really all Americans??
March 23, 2006 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
yes we are. but the people you speak of live in a different world. you see they use the democratic form of government to gain things such as wealth. this is not in it self a bad thing. then they give some of what they gained to people like you. it makes them feel good. i am sorry that you are having a hard time. the only thing that i can tell you is the things i gave you can not be entered into a calculator and in my opinion are worth far more.
i will share this with you. in my termoil i do not ask anything from you or society. i feel society in general is beyound salvation. i encourage you to appreciate your family and the hard times you share with them and know that you are not alone and the one that keeps you loves you.
March 23, 2006 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
bluebell
Yes, thanks for this thread. We all know that compassionate conservatism is a fraud and that the Bush administration rivals any in incompetence, but what can you say about the Democratic Party? Where has it been on this issue? Where is the heart? the soul? the passion? Too afraid that the poverty word will scare away all those NASCAR Dads and the Reagan Democrats we're supposed to want back?
March 23, 2006 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its a horror on every side. I was so proud of Amoss and his reporters at the Times Picayune at first, of the military and the faith based, the many heroes of Katrina. I didn't want to blame anyone, Katrina was an unimaginable disaster, FEMA was in over their heads as much as anyone else.
I said so, many times, on many blogs, all over the nation. that I even started getting mail from people who though I worked for FEMA and thought I could help them get contracts (I don't and I can't).
And then I watched the aftermath on CSPAN and CNN. And I cried and screamed inside my soul, in those deep places where I almost never go.
Not over the dead bodies and the destruction, in the past half century, I have seen as bad, or worse, though not on that scale. And scale doesn't matter, life is not measured by a number line, even the destruction of one human life is as horrifying as 3.2 million. Some things just aren't additive.
You see, I saw something being born out of all that death and destruction. And like waking up from a nightmare, I could see a purpose, a uniting of peoples across the nation, the birth of a caring spirit that was somehow arising like the dawn sun out of the darkness.
I sat there, blinkng in that early light, barely daring to hope that the American spirit wasn't dead after all, that the warmth I was feeling was real...and the light died, a stillborn baby never got it's chance at life.
I watched, as our leaders, our representatives, fought each other while our fellow citizens, our neighbors, waited in vain for help.
I watched, as our poorest citizens begged for handoouts while illegal immigrants got jobs cleaning up the debris.
I watched, as Mayor Nagin repeatadly race baited the few remaining citizens, as cabals of carpetbaggers and thieves descended on New Orleans to steal whatever was left.
And you something? I couldn't even get angry. I tried. I mean I really, really tried, but somehow, it was just too much. Apparently anger isn't additive either.
Then, a few minutes ago, I tried to access some stories at nola.com, the regional website that delivers news from the New Orleans area for the rest of us.
And a screen appeared that demanded my birthdate before it would let me see any news. It was nothing, possibly the least offensive identity theft scam I have ever seen, if it was even that, but I got angry.
Horrific betrayals of trust, millions homeless, horrors beyond measure everywhere I looked, and I could only get angry at a stupid little data screen by some pathetic little penny ante crooks.
And thats the answer to your question, Ms Ward. It isn't that we have forgotten, that we don't care; it just that some things are so big they are effectively infinite, beyond our mental reach. We don't know how to respond to the aftermath of Katrina, its scope is so big there are no automatic reactions built into us, we have never needed them before.
But we can get angry at the small things, the normal things, the things within the scope of our experience. If you want a reaction, stop talking about Katrina, and the death of states, they are far too big.
Talk about the little things, individuals, things we know how to deal with. We can respond to that.
March 23, 2006 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink