RenaRF's
excellent diary, and others, inspired me to think. It's been nearly one year since Hurricane Katrina utterly devastated the Gulf Coast and imprinted a deep blemish on our national psyche.
There have been days like that before in our recent past. Oklahoma City and Lower Manhattan. But what is different about this national trauma as opposed to that one are the names.
We know their names in each of those two incidents. 168 at Oklahoma City. 3,000 in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania. But in the case of Katrina, a disaster that left an area the size of the United Kingdom in ruins, we don't even know the full death toll.
Wikipedia states that 1,836 are confirmed dead, and 705 are still missing (although the table indicates that as many as 1800 people may still be missing. Please note that Wikipedia can be a dubious source at times.)
Yet where are their names? Who are they?
And this is what makes Katrina a story that still resonates so deeply with us all. We remember the names of those who died at Oklahoma City. Indeed, they have a memorial. We make note of the men and women murdered by terrorists on 9/11 by remembering their names in ceremony.
There were newspaper spreads on the dead after both attacks. Full bios of the murdered. It allowed us to connect with the people who were killed. It reminded us that these were human beings, citizens, with lives and families. They were just like us. They had hopes and dreams, cut short.
Just like the victims of Katrina and the subsequent aftermath.
Will we remember the names of Katrina, the names of those whom government failed, this 8/29?
They were people too, and not just a number or a statistic.
They lived, breathed, hoped. They were just like us. Let us remember their names.