by Sarah J. Blake
September 2, 2005
"The Big Easy Braces for the Big One." Was it really necessary to come up with such a corny headline? I wondered. I pressed a couple of keys, and my computer read in synthetic speech the text of the article about Hurricane Katrina, which had ballooned from a little category 1 hurricane with tropical storm-force winds extending out only 85 miles into a category 5 storm with maximum winds of 175 miles per hour and tropical storm-force winds extending outward up to 230 miles from the center in only 24 hours since entering the Gulf of Mexico from South Florida. Then I pressed a combination of keys on my keyboard and switched to my email window, where I issued commands to make the computer read subject lines, delete, open, read messages, reply, be quiet while I typed out my replies, etc.
Something in one of my emails bothered me. People kept saying, "I hope New Orleans doesn't get a direct hit."
I felt irritable, and I tried not to let it show too much. With Katrina's size and strength, New Orleans wouldn't need a direct hit to suffer greatly. In fact, the directness of the hit was fairly meaningless at this point--even if the storm turned, the eye would pass so close that the severe portion of the storm would still pass over the city and cause massive damage. I feared that people did not understand this at all. But more than that, I feared that they did not care about other cities on the coastline. Nobody needed that direct hit.
Everyone breathed huge sighs of relief when Katrina weakened to a low category 4 storm before landfall. Even I was lulled into a false sense of security. It would be like an Ivan or Charley in terms of strength. Those were known entities. I went to sleep that night instead of staying glued to the news--not that staying glued to the news would have accomplished anything, but somehow it makes me feel that at least I'm not abandoning the victims in my heart when my heart is all I can give them.
Katrina was no Ivan or Charley. It was not even a Camille. For those of us who lived through any other storm, those memories are all we have to work with in trying to understand what people affected by Katrina are experiencing. It's something that strikes terror in our hearts and stirs up memories of our own little "hells"--things we're now ashamed to call hell. And for the rest of the country, it is completely incomprehensible.
I know how it feels from both sides now... I remember my own little hell, and I remember how it feels to try to comprehend and prepare for something so strong and so mighty that I cannot fathom it. I was living these things at exactly this time last year.