Labeled as one of the worst disasters in United States history, Hurricane Katrina nearly wiped the city of New Orleans off the map. Yet, many Americans only witnessed the catastrophe through broadcast and newspaper reports. However, Nicole Cooley’s poem “Burning/Missing/Flooded/Gone,” shows the post-apocalyptic aftermath of the hurricane and the lack of disaster relief support. Cooley is able to effectively convey this theme to the reader through her use of poetic form and structure, tone, and figurative language. The poetic form and structure of Cooley’s poem strengthens the reader’s understanding of New Orleans in the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The poem is written as a series of ten tercets, which ironically provides structure
My book was Gone by Lisa Gardner. It is a story about an ex-FBI profiler Pierce Quincy and his estranged wife, Rainie Conners. The story takes place in Oregon. The story begins with the profiler finding an empty car on the highway. After doing some investigating, he figured out that it was Rainies car. Thus begins the searching for Rainie. Unknown to Pierce, Rainie had been kidnapped. She is beaten, tortured, and thrown into a dark and cold basement. She stays there and tries to escape many times. Eventually, the kidnapper throws down another victim. Rainie was horrified to realize that it was a small boy. Now she can’t escape herself, she has to help the boy escape. With every failed escape, she is beaten even worse. The kidnapper finally had enough and decided to kill them. He fills the basement with water until he thought that they were dead. Fortunately, Rainie and the little boy escaped. The boy ran past the attacker while Rainie threw the attacker into the basements. They
Rankine also shares the horrible tragedy of hurricane Katrina experienced by the black community, where they struggled for their survival before and post the hurricane catastrophes. She reports that the lives of black people in the disaster were of no cost for white administration and they delayed the help. She expresses this by writing, “I don’t know what the water wanted. It wanted to show you no one would come” (Rankine 94)(11).
In Drea Knufken’s essay entitled “Help, We’re Drowning!: Please Pay Attention to Our Disaster,” the horrific Colorado flood is experienced and the reactions of worldly citizens are examined (510-512). The author’s tone for this formal essay seems to be quite reflective, shifting to a tone of frustration and even disappointment. Knufken has a reflective tone especially during the first few paragraphs of the essay. According to Drea Knufken, a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor, “when many of my out-of-town friends, family and colleagues reacted to the flood with a torrent of indifference, I realized something. As a society, we’ve acquired an immunity to crisis. We scan through headlines without understanding how stories impact people,
On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, the most expensive hurricane in American history, made landfall in Louisiana with winds of one hundred and twenty-seven miles per hour (“Hurricane Katrina Statistics Fast Facts”). The sheer magnitude of the amount of lives and property lost was enormous, and it was triggered simply by warm ocean waters near the Bahamas ("How Hurricane Katrina Formed"). Nature was indifferent to whether the raging winds and rain would die off in the ocean or wipe out cities; it only follows the rules of physics. A multitude of American authors has attempted to give accounts and interpretations of their encounters with the disinterested machine that is nature. Two authors, Stephen Crane and Henry David Thoreau, had rather contrasting and conflicting interpretations of their own interactions with nature. Crane’s work, “The Open Boat,” is story based on his experience as a survivor
Hurricane Katrina was considered as the worst hurricane in the history of United States. The winds and the rain were shattering people’s homes which collapsed and flooded. Thousands of people were suffering and dying. People were starving, and becoming dehydrated. Many people were left on the street and became homeless. After the hurricane, so many questions were left regarding the widespread damage and loss of loved ones. This devastating disaster destroyed the city of New Orleans and nearby cities and was estimated to cost $80 billion dollars in damage. State and local emergency in the affected area were struggling to perform urgent response missions such as emergency medical services, search and rescue, firefighting, giving food and water,
The Coast Guard, for instance, rescued some 34,000 people in New Orleans alone, and many ordinary citizens commandeered boats, offered food and shelter, and did whatever else they could to help their neighbors. Yet the government–particularly the federal government–seemed unprepared for the disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took days to establish operations in New Orleans, and even then did not seem to have a sound plan of action. Officials, even including President George W. Bush, seemed unaware of just how bad things were in New Orleans and elsewhere: how many people were stranded or missing; how many homes and businesses had been damaged; how much food, water and aid was needed. Katrina had left in her wake what one reporter called a “total disaster zone” where people were “getting absolutely
According to Hurricane Katrina At Issue Disasters, economic damages from Hurricane Katrina have been estimated at more than $200 billion… More than a million people were displaced by the storm… An estimated 120,000 homes were abandoned and will probably be destroyed in Louisiana alone (At * Issue). For this perspective, “Hurricane Katrina change the Gulf Coast landscape and face of its culture when it hit in 2005” (Rushton). A disaster like Katrina is something the victims are always going to remember, for the ones the lost everything including their love ones. Katrina became a nightmare for all the people that were surround in the contaminated waters in the city of New Orleans. People were waiting to be rescue for days,
“Fire away. Take your best shot, show me what you got. Honey I’m not afraid (Chris, Lines 4-5)…” Strength, love, heartache, all words that many people can identify with, but what about mental illness, depression, and suicide. These words are those that humans avoid, pretend they are not there, but in reality those three words effect many more people that was ever thought possible. Over 18.2% of United States citizens suffer from a mental illness (Depression), 6.7% of United States citizens suffer from depression (Depression), and each year in the United States there are on average 42,773 deaths by suicide (American). Now, many people can relate to the words love and heartbreak, but many more can identify with the three words that the world
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating natural disasters to happen in the United States. The storm resulted in more then US$100 billion in damage when the cities flood protection broke and 80% of the city was flooded (1). The protection failure was not the only cause for the massive flooding, the hurricanes clockwise rotation pulled water from north of New Orleans into the city. 330,000 homes were destroyed and 400,000 people from New Orleans were displaced, along with 13,00 killed (1). Although the population quickly recovered, the rate of recovery slowed down as the years went on leading us to believe not everyone
“This town is full of Tabasco.” This is just one of the ways the author describes the city full of debauchery and degeneracy, New Orleans. But be mistaken, The author Elton Glaser loves the city so much that he believes a the only way to live is the New Orleans lifestyle. This consists of spending sunday in the pews and riots and parties in the street. Even your own funeral is a party you don't wanna miss as a parade of bells, trumpets, and drums travel down the street, shaking the ground. People in New Orleans are carefree and enjoy all of life’s amenities. No where else can you truly experience the extremity of life except for New Orleans.
In August of 2005, the Southern United States suffered one of the greatest natural disasters in American history when Hurricane Katrina hit. The response from the Bush administration was appalling and inadequate, forcing many people out of their homes and livelihoods. Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin, offers commentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, following a self-sufficient community in New Orleans called ‘the Bathtub’, who refuse to assimilate and surrender their culture and way of life. His purpose with this film is to help the viewer understand the effect of Hurricane Katrina and the government’s response on the people of New Orleans. In this film, an important setting is the Bathtub.
Hurricane Katrina is approaching New Orleans, Louisiana, including the Ninth Ward, where Lanesha and her guardian, Mama Ya-Ya live. The chapter, titled “Sunday”, starts off with the newspapers and the televisions emphasizing the word “evacuate”. Mama Ya-Ya, who is normally up and about, ready to greet the day, is curled up on the couch asleep. Something has been bothering Mama Ya-Ya; Lanesha even sees it when she wakes up.
The author basically told us what was going to happen to Katrina and how it’ll happen. Notice how in both scenes she fell and the first fall could have killed her, but someone was present to help her. But in her second fall she had no one which made things worse. This shows that just by being present in anything can change a person's
Fink, Sheri. "Hurricane Katrina: after the flood." The Gaurdian. N.p., 7 Feb. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
Picture this, you laying on top of you car as you are being violently slung down your street, which was once dry and calm and is now wet and foreign, at an extremely rapid pace. You can’t find your family and all you can do is hope that they haven’t drowned and are able to stay afloat against the violent waters that are angrily attempting to destroy everything in its path. You look around the weather is gray and it’s raining heavily. It is a struggle to breathe between the rapid rain and the violent waters which are attempting to pull you under, forever. Your house no longer exists it is broken down from the pounding waters and fast winds. That is exactly what it would be like if you were in the midst of a hurricane. After hurricanes are over the confusion is crazy, children who had loving families are now orphaned, people become homeless, and people miss certain joys such as walking due to becoming paralyzed.