That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last
week’s hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What
is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a
corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.
– Dan Barry, New York Times

For
decades conservatives have funded think tanks, filled libraries and
conducted political campaigns to promote the idea of limited
government. Now, in New Orleans, the theory has been tested. The
floodwaters have rolled over the rhetoric. – Sidney Blumenthal, Salon

This
is not about the incompetence of the Bush administration, the
scandalous neglect of poor black people in America, or our
unpreparedness for major natural disasters – though all of those apply.
Katrina’s big lesson is that the crust of civilisation on which we
tread is always wafer thin. One tremor, and you’ve fallen through,
scratching and gouging for your life like a wild dog. – Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian

If
there is a smoking gun in the Gulf Coast wreckage, it is the hurricane
warning issued by the New Orleans office of the US National Weather
Service soon after 10am on August 28 … “Devastating damage expected
… Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks … All gabled
roofs will fail … All wood-framed low rising apartment buildings will
be destroyed … Power outages will last for weeks … Water shortages
will make human suffering incredible by modern standards … Trees will
be snapped or uprooted. Only the heartiest will remain standing.” – Giles Whittell, The Times

It’s
all very well to blame what’s happened on poor planning, on Iraq
budget-starving, on racism yea and racism nay, but anyone with the
slightest sense of what’s been going on in this country since Reagan
must realize thatthe root of the manifest tragedy of Katrina
must have something to do with the singular American conviction that we
are God’s people and He will look out for us. – Michael M. Thomas, New York Observer

In
retrospect, the idea was so stupid and yet so American: Move the
homeless, the elderly, the impoverished, the unlucky, all those poor
souls who couldn’t get out of New Orleans in time to avoid Hurricane
Katrina; move them into the city’s cavernous domed football stadium.
Anyone who has seen a disaster movie could have predicted what would
happen next: Katrina slammed into the Superdome, ripped off the roof,
and knocked out the power, cutting off the drinking water and the air
conditioning. – Ari Kelman, Slate

Since
Hurricane Katrina, the world’s view of America has changed. The
disaster has exposed some shocking truths about the place: the
bitterness of its sharp racial divide, the abandonment of the
dispossessed, the weakness of critical infrastructure. But the most
astonishing and most shaming revelation has been of its government’s
failure to bring succour to its people at their time of greatest need.
– The Economist

I
filled the bathtub with water, cut the wick on the hurricane lamp,
froze water in plastic jugs to keep the refrigerator cool, secured the
dilapidated wooden shutters on the front gallery, stocked up on
batteries, food and bottled drinking water, and got out the portable
radio and the plug-in white Princess phone. Then I opened a bottle of
wine. – James Nolan, Washington Post

Now
nature has done what the Civil War couldn’t do. Nature has done what
the labor riots of the 1920’s couldn’t do. Nature had done what “modern
life” with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn’t do. It has
done what racism couldn’t do, and what segregation couldn’t do either.
Nature has laid the city waste – with a scope that brings to mind the
end of Pompeii. – Anne Rice, New York Times