Saturday 29 September 2012

Loss... Comment by Sarah & Julien on a photo by Chris Jordan


The floor of the emptied room is covered in dried mud. This photo is about the emptiness a person feels when he or she loses everything. The cracks are in a way also the mental scars left by Katrina...

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster that occured over a week from August 23 to August 30 in 2005. Winds reached 280km an hour. It formed over the Bahamas and crossed southern Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, southeast Louisiana and Mississippi, Alabama, Cuba and almost all the east coast of the United States. The hurricane caused almost two thousand deaths. It caused beach erosion, local marshes were overrun by water, and it affected the habitats of animals and also caused oil spills.

Reconstruction was costly because infrastructures and forest lands were completely destroyed. Some insurance companies stopped insuring homeowners so people moved to other States. Looting in search of food and water was widespread and there were even some murders, thefts and rapes.
Are we all responsible to some degree for this disaster? Yes, we are, everyone of us, because of our constructions, of our new high tech products, of our industries, the environment is being damaged. Using the car is one of the worst things, and the United States is by far the worst culprit. Climate change is due to all of us and it explains the violence of Katrina.

But can we do something to avoid damaging the environment? Not much, because the electronic objects we use upsets the earth's fragile balance.

If the effects of the hurricane were so devastating it is also because people did not build strong enough houses and because the evacuation plans were not edequate. Maybe too some of the cities that were destroyed were situated too near to a river.

We consider that all our modern conveniences are essential. Disasters like Katrina are the price to pay for progress...

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