Hurricane Katrina and abandoned being

摘要

Like all physical events, Hurricane Katrina was singular. It began on August 23 as tropical depression #12, taking form in the southeastern Bahamas. It crossed the Florida peninsula on August 26 as a small category-1 hurricane, then roared to life over the Gulf of Mexico. With warmer than usual water temperatures, low shear, and favorable steering currents, it quickly attained winds of over 175 mph, with the Louisiana coast directly in its sights. Only slight weakening and an unexpected jog to the east saved New Orleans a devastating hit. Or so it seemed. As those unable to evacuate returned to the streets to clean up fallen branches and repair broken windows, the city's levees failed, filling streets and submerging houses with a toxic stew of water, chemicals, and oil. To television viewers the scenes that followed seemed extraordinary, even unprecedented. In the heart of the world's most powerful and wealthy nation people clung to rooftops, desperately signaling for help that would never come. Masses huddled on freeway overpasses built over Louisiana swamps, the rising waters on one side and the National Guard on the other. Countless others were herded into the cramped and unsanitary confines of the Superdome and Convention Center, or simply abandoned to fend for themselves, their lives and their deaths treated with equal indifference. What was extraordinary about these scenes, however, was not that poor, mostly black, residents were abandoned by the state, or turned away from safe havens by white, middle-class vigilantes, but that this abandonment was rendered visible for all to see, a shocking failure on the part of an administration that has gone the extra mile to carefully stage what counted as 'news' in America.