-draft-
When Katrina hit, I lived in the City of Orange, CA.
My best friend William was visiting me at the time, and I stayed up all night, more than once (don't ask me how. no...seriously...don't ask me that...), watching the news coverage showing the horrendous situation that was going on at the Convention Center and environs after the flooding. I sat with my jaw open, heartbroken, unbelieving that this could actually be happening in a major US city, which I had yet to come to know and love. I was not surprised at the fact that the city was practically destroyed by flooding after an almost direct hit by a very large hurricane (I mean....come on...I grew up in Charleston, SC.. so just look where both Charleston and New Orleans are located on a map....is that really all that surprising??).
No....what I couldn't believe was how the survivors of the storm were being treated...or more accurately...were NOT being treated. Days upon days after the storm, and people continued to die waiting for help, for water, for food, to be treated as humans, to be saved. I mean, FUCK! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING??? WHY IS THERE STILL NO HELP FOR THESE PEOPLE??? Things kept running around my mind...."This is what they should be doing..then this...then this should happen..." A po-dunk woman on her sofa watching TV kept
The failure of the floodwalls (not 'levees'..as everyone wants to say, levees require a much larger footprint due the wide base tapering up to the top...as to why floodwalls were used as flood protection inside the city instead of levees which the Corps actually wanted to build...one guess as to why they weren't allowed to?....REAL ESTATE) see bottom of page 95 in "Catastrophe in the Making - the Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow" - should be required reading!
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While watching George 'Doublya' Bush speak in an abandoned Jackson Square....a majestic landmark in one of the world's great cities....with floodlights powered by fucking generators...I became enraged. I remember SCREAMING at the TV...at him speaking on the TV... watching him speak, reminded of the 'mission accomplished' banner, words saying nothing, meaning nothing. So I took photos of the TV, adjusted them, distorted his face, and wrote what I felt at the time on each photo. (attempt to add text to orig photos in Lightroom and replace photos, below)
