For days the people of New Orleans could see her coming, the storm they'd feared for decades, as at first Hurricane Katrina lashed across Florida then lingered, building strength like a glowering angry animal.
They knew this was it. In their nightmares they'd shivered at the thought that one day she would come. As we can see in photograph of tree-shattered homes. It was as meteorologists say, an almost perfect storm. Whenever the force of nature strikes, mankind is vulnerable.Bumper to bumper in a vast almost Biblical exodus, car inched along the freeways leading north to higher land.
Looking at the devastation wrought in just a few hours on one of the most graceful, lively and beautiful cities in America, the city of Jazz, of blues, of Tennessee Williams, you feel humbled by nature's might, which can pluck oil rigs from the sea and hurl them against bridges and toss off-shore casinos onto land.A great Human tragedy has unfolded in the heartland of the most powerful nation in the world.
All America's wealth and scientific achievements could not save New Orleans and Biloxi from Hurricane Katrina's awesome power.We have seen already President Bush is galvanising his country's considerable resources to tackle this huge natural disasters.
America may not have been able to stop Katrina's advance. No country is better places to deal with her deadly legacy.We don't expect this to happen in a 21st century city in the rich West. We can't imagine that a city of more than half a million people, an industrial centre, but above all a tourist magnet for its music, its history, its food and its style, the place they call the Big Easy, can now be a place of disaster. It's unthinkable.
When I visited New Orleans in March 79 along with SanFrancisco, she has become one of my favourite American cities. To see her now submerged under deluge, the barriers that protected her from the giant Mississippi ripped open and bleeding filthy, muddy water into her elegant streets and homes, is to see a beautiful memory laid to waste.I still wonder why Americans should ever have built such a city in hurricane alley, mostly on land below sea level.
We can see every city is the sum of history laid upon geography. Located in the first piece of land up the Mississippi high enough and firm enough to make a port. And it was colonised by the French.New Orleans became a boom town, built on the back of slavery in the nearby sugar and cotton plantations and trade along Old Man River himself. On the river banks, levees were built and endlessly reinforced to protect the city.
New Orleans is synonymous with America music. From the black gospel choirs to the Cajun accordion players, from the barrelhouse pianists in the clubs on Bourbon Street to the blues guitarists. This was where Jazz began in the area known as Storyville, where Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and Kid Ory once played in Basin Street.Until this weeks disaster New Orleans was associated with joy. It was a weekend attraction for millions of Americans and a destination for thousands of Britons.
It was, with its narrow, pastel streets, a different kind of America, an America which seemed to belong to Europe, which had only accidentally ended up near the Gulf of Mexico.And last weekend in this historic French Quarter, a place of narrow streets, hanging baskets of flowers, wrought-iron balconies and above all music, they must have prayed for a miracle. Could this gem of American architecture and music survive?
But when nature chooses to act in this way, we are at her mercy. What we can all do is -- pray. In this region where there are churches by the thousand --- only God can help.Rini Kakati
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