Hurricane Katrina & super-typhoon Yolanda
TEN years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States on August 28-29, 2005, many people continue to harbor disappointment over the failure of the United States government to help the survivors quickly enough after the storm. The Bush government was widely criticized as, even on Day 4 of the hurricane, babies and old people were still reported dying.
Hurricane Katrina was a Category 3 tropical cyclone which landed in eastern Louisiana just southeast of New Orleans. Several communities were inundated by a storm surge that topped 16 feet. Levees protecting the city were breached in 50 places, flooding 80 percent of the city area. Between 80 and 90 percent of the city’s residents had to be evacuated. The official death toll was 1,464 people.
For months afterwards, many parts of the city remained flooded and survivors reported seeing bodies lying in city streets. Collection of the bodies began on September 9, nearly two weeks after Katrina struck New Orleans and Louisiana. This weekend, two national TV networks – ABC and Fox News Channel – are airing recollections of survivors. Fox News anchor Shepard Smih said of the government’s mismanagement of the calamity at the time: “We failed as a society. That’s what we did. All of our leaders failed.”
As we read about the continuing indignation of many Americans over the sorry performance of the national, state, and city governments in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we are reminded of our own super-typhoon Yolanda which struck eastern Visayas on November 8, 2013. It was a Category 5 cyclone with 180-280 kilometers-per-hour winds, so much stronger than Katrina’s Category 3 178-208 kph winds. At least 6,300 people were killed by Yolanda, many of them in the storm surge that reached up to 20 feet.
To this day, 21 months after Yolanda, many of its victims continue to live in makeshift homes, despite millions of dollars in aid that came from all over the world, as government plans took months to complete and remain unimplemented. The national government blames local governments for their failure to provide sufficient and safe locations for permanent housing locations.
Yolanda took many more lives and caused much greater devastation than Katrina and if many Americans continue to criticize their government for its poor record in helping Katrina’s victims, our own people in Eastern Visayas, especially in Leyte and Samar, have all the more reason to lament their own government’s performance.
It will be the 2nd anniversary of Yolanda on November 8 and in these two months before the anniversary, the government should work doubletime on the aid and rehabilitation program for Yolanda’s victims to help ease away some of the disenchantment that has lingered among the victims all these months.