Since Zeitoun and the documentary has been focusing exclusively on Katrina, I might as well discuss it in depth. 2005 is already a decade ago, yet to me personally it seems as though it was just yesterday. Being the United States of America, we would’ve expected the superpower to have made a quicker recovery given its vast economic resources. Instead, New Orleans was left comparatively impoverished in the immediate years following Katrina.

        This fact is exacerbated when compared to the speed and efficiency of the response to Florida when Katrina made landfall there earlier. It seemed to suggest a geopolitical division and difference in importance of the two regions in the eyes of the Bush administration. A GEOG 122 discussion I had a week ago brought Katrina out of nowhere, yet fortunately it does relate well to our material in ASTU. One could argue that it was because of Florida’s extremely close election results back in 2000 that gave Bush his presidency, but there is no “apparent” correlation between that event and Katrina. Another logical argument would be that Florida was the first place to receive landfall, thus all the resources available for help could be immediately called. This supply and stock of first aid would’ve been exhausted by the time Katrina made landfall in New Orleans.

        Of all the major natural disasters, it is usually the most developed areas with the least relative casualties. The more developed areas has better infrastructure capable of withstanding enormous damage, thus there is a higher chance of it saving more lives. Disasters of a particular magnitude that have taken hundreds of lives in Japan has taken ten-thousand lives in Sri Lanka. Underdeveloped areas do not have the infrastructure, the experience nor the adequate warning system. Many of Japan and Taiwan’s buildings are engineered with pendulum balls inside it, so that the momentum of the earthquake can be countered, thus maintaining the balance of the building. The more hard-weathered area are also better prepared in an instance of natural disasters; this is particularly true to countries close to the Pacific Ring of Fire.

        The point is, considering it’s economic background and experience, the expectation on the recovery after Katrina was relatively high, yet the USA wasn’t able to deliver it’s best efforts. Katrina’s unfortunate position of being below sea level and surrounded by both a sea and a lake definitely factor in. People labeled it more as a human disaster than a natural disaster due to the politics behind the event. This was one of the key events people used to downgrade the credibility of the Bush administration, the other key examples being the 2003 Iraq War. So much spending was focused on advancing military technology against a now illusional hypothetical enemy ever since the USSR collapsed in 1991. Tohoku in 2011 was a similarly devastating disaster, yet the Japanese were able to turn things around much quicker than Katrina, save for the unique radioactivity issue.

        With respect to Zeitoun and the presentation in ASTU class, one must also question the people. Those that couldn’t escape were unfortunate to remain in New Orleans, but those that could’ve escaped and didn’t really pushes reasoning to it’s limit. Having a chance and not taking it borders on absurd – it was a chance that other people would kill to obtain it, who would kill to have your problems instead of theirs.

Works Cited

Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2009. Print.