With tomorrow being the seventh anniversary of Katrina, it’s easy to make comparisons between Katrina and Isaac. But Isaac is a very different storm — and we live in a very different time. Isaac doesn’t pack the wind of Katrina, but he will dump more rain on us. He is moving slower and will cause wide-spread flooding. Katrina, for all her fury, was gone in a day. Isaac is as big as his wicked aunt, but is only lumbering ashore as a tropical storm/weak hurricane and stick around for a while. We’re in for a soaker.
The weather isn’t the only thing different. The Federal Government has gone from a much sounder financial position in 2005 to where we are today. Sen. Thad Cochran is still there on the Senate Appropriations Committee, but is in the minority. The House of Representatives, which was hostile to the block grants that rebuilt much of the Gulf Coast, is even more hostile to such spending today. Governor Haley Barbour, whose Rolodex helped twist some arms, is now a lobbyist. Let’s pray the Isaac’s feared storm surge turns out to be an overestimation and we’re not faced with the type of devastation we faced seven years ago. We’ll have to sell cookies to pay for it.
What is the same is the fact that Mississippians are strong. We’ve made it a habit of bouncing back from near-death experiences. But the Coast has been hit with one thing after the other since 2005: The hurricane, the economic downturn, the oil spill — even the strongest can only take so much. If this was a football game, Mother Nature would be flagged for piling on.
As I type this, people all through the Southern part of the state are finishing up their preparations. We’ve learned it is better to plan than panic. And once our emergency plan is in place, we’ll just watch. We’ll wait and see what nasty surprise Isaac will leave on our front porch. On this eve of the seventh anniversary of Katrina, I pray for the victims of that killer storm. And I pray for the safety of everyone in the path of her nephew Isaac.
I saw your illustration and teared up. It’s a wonderful illustration, but it just transported me back to the day my life turned upside down. I really haven’t been the same since. Maybe there will always be a piece of me, stuck on Highway 90, staring at the rubble.
The sad thing is that that tree (in Pass Christian) died and they cut it down.