Minute Paper 2/26

I remember back in 2005 sitting at my grandma’s house in Virginia a few days before heading up to Arlington for my grandfather’s funeral and watching as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast with my aunt and uncle who are Louisiana residents. Other than September 11th it has to have been the most surreal event I have ever experienced, with us calling cousins to confirm that they where alright and my uncle realizing that his car would be underwater as we watched the storm rage on TV, will forever be ingrained in my memory. Yet as terrible as those events where we had barley even touched on the magnitude of the disaster until we began to see pictures and videos of its aftermath with communities completely destroyed and many lives lost. Days lingered on and I could not help but wonder how there could have been so many failures by so many different government officials from Governor Blanco, Louisiana Governors before her, FEMA, Homeland Security, President Bush, and into former President Clinton and presidents before him all of whom ignored the potential dangers that New Orleans faced, and in the case of those in power at the time of Katrina (Blanco, Bush, ect…) their insufficient response before and after the disaster is still shocking to me today.

Oh, and as honored as I am that my group won today I just wanted to say that the group who presented the excellent 4 different goverments skit, in my opinion, was just as deserving of a victory today.

Mark Alexander