Give your heads a shake

Amazing what feelings live, pent up inside.

Just when I thought I'd successfully dealt with all trauma from the wildfires, and I don't think I experienced a whole lot compared to some people in Barriere and Kelowna, I sat down to take in what I felt would be an informed hour of information on Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Not a wise decision on my part. The following is my "racous rant":

Location: Living Room in Barriere after viewing the Dateline NBC Special a few nights ago.

Daily Goal: To drum up some empathy

Trials & Tribulations: Having lived through a natural disaster (Wildfires of 2003) complete with down-to-the-wire eviction notices, devastated landscapes, loss of jobs, the list goes on and on... I find myself barely able to stomach a one-hour special on the current happenings in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Not because it all comes "rushing back to me" - rather, because I can't stand the "spin" the news puts on the situation. I remember telling family and friends to "shut off the T.V." What was being depicted was nothing like what was really happening.

I was sitting in front of Dateline's national broadcast as it spouted, "12 countries have offered assistance to what is being hailed as the United States' Tsunami".

Cut to commercial: An advertisement for the $130 million dollar jackpot up for grabs in the Washington State Lottery.

Back to the show... a family is being highlighted, a young, married couple with four children and one on the way. They are living out of their car. They have just returned from their old neighbourhood. Initially, they made it out ok, but just had to go back to "see their house" (which wasn't there). The couple and their children have not eaten in two days, they have a flat tire and are parked in front of a pharmacy in the next state, taking handouts from "kind strangers".

It was all I could do to sit quietly instead of screaming at the t.v. "Idiots! You will risk life and limb including the lives of your kids by returning to the site of one of the worst natural disasters, then wonder what happens when you run out of gas?"

Been there, didn't do that. The last place I wanted to be was back at home. If my house had burnt, what could I do about it after the fact? I knew I was returning to boil orders for water, no electricity, no fridge; a worst case scenario situation.

Why do people opt to jump from the frying pan into the fire? Rather than be happy they escaped with all of their family intact, these folk opt to return to the scene of the crime. Pointless. Even more pointless that NBC would opt to waste air time on stories like this.

I don't recall one incident of looting when our whole town was abandoned. United States citizens are in a situation where Search and Rescue efforts (when they are at their most critical) are being called off to control violence and looting. Give your heads a shake.

Successes:

• I predict a "New" New Orleans will be rebuilt, bigger and better with state of the art technology, better building codes and top-of-the-line engineers involved. This is the US, after all.
• For me to realize BC may be the next huge natural disaster showcased with a re-defined coastline... we live on top of the San Andreas fault, don't we?
  

Failures:

• For the #1 super-power in the world to have developed and employed a simple "evacuation plan" in an area they knew full well was an accident waiting to happen. If they had one, Dateline chose not to address it. Seems to me all that was showcased was the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots". I didn't see anyone dripping diamonds stuck on her roof.
  
• For Dateline to have highlighted hundreds of other possible scenarios besides people's stupidity.
• For anyone caught on T.V. wading through shoulder high water to address, "Where have all the alligators gone?"