When the Levees Broke

On today’s post I would like to talk about a film I watched today in class, it was called “When the Levees Broke.” It was a documentary shown on HBO about Hurricane Katrina and all aspects of it both positive and negative. I know on our syllabus the suggested theme today is diversity and the professions, but I really want to talk about the film because it sheds so much light on the matter and gives information to people who still have no clue about what was going on in New Orleans at that time.

I personally have family in New Orleans, and luckily none of them where heavily affected by the storm, they did have some water damages but they did not lose their homes thank goodness. My family was fortunate, however watching this video today and seeing people suffering they way they did and how there was not much help provided to them really puts me in a state of disbelief. I know this term has been overused but… this is the United States of America, you would think that if something happened to our people in our country help would be provided and nothing else would matter. That did not happen for Katrina, why? I really don’t know why, it amazes me along with many other people why help was not more responsive to the situation. A Tsunami disaster that takes place half way around the world, America is there within two days. For Katrina it took two weeks, that just does not make sense to me. Now I am sure there are circumstances that we as everyday citizens can’t understand, things such as who has the power in this situation? Who makes the final decisions on what’s going to happen? Etc. Still, personally I feel that when there is a situation, rather it be from weather or terrorist attacks or whatever, anything that threatens American lives on American soil that should be priority number one, everything else in the world can be put on hold to help our people, and I do not think I am out of line in saying that.

In the end this video really opened up my eyes today, it showed me parts of Katrina that I might never had known. Seeing this video really makes you think about a lot of things and it gets me kind of heated as you can tell from this post. It was an eye opening experience to say the least.

Related Links:

Wiki page dedicated to the delayed response, thats how poor it was

Picture of New Orleans under water after Katrina