A Disaster Waiting to Happen
In light of the doomsday scenarios that had been offered on the fate of the sunken Crescent City should a hurricane breach its defences, and in view of just such a horror that started visiting that city three days ago and that is still building even though the remnants of Hurricane Katrina are now whirling themselves to exhaustion hundreds of miles to the north, a lot of people are probably taking recourse to the title of this post.
I think it applies to any big city, not just New Orleans, and that's one of the reasons why I so often took the opportunity to escape the one in which I was born, finally managing to pull off a very lengthy absence.
I wasn't born there, but I have seen lots of New York City, because I had relatives living there, and I especially saw that place in disaster terms. Just before 9/11 I looked at a photo of the hideously unnatural growth with which NYC has overloaded the tiny island of Manhattan, with that madness of skyscrapers, and I shook my head sadly. I had visions, not of two misdirected airliners but of a single earthquake.
One official in or near New Orleans said that what is happening there now is worse than her worst fears. I wonder if, like me, she has been derided all her life for being a worrier and for cooking up and actually experiencing -- in her mind --terrible scenarios that haven't happened yet and most likely "will never happen."
An experience three months after 9/11 that for my wife and I personally dwarfed the horrors of that event, followed by another catastrophe three months farther on, showed me that, no matter what the wiser and more sanguine souls among us say, the things that we fear the most not only can but sometimes do happen, and you don't necessarily have to wait around for them for long, though it may not be till years later that their true magnitudes finally become clear.
The main development, however, that sets in afterward does so quickly enough, and it consists of a big change in one's mindset -- a very quiet and beneficial change, I would say.
I think it applies to any big city, not just New Orleans, and that's one of the reasons why I so often took the opportunity to escape the one in which I was born, finally managing to pull off a very lengthy absence.
I wasn't born there, but I have seen lots of New York City, because I had relatives living there, and I especially saw that place in disaster terms. Just before 9/11 I looked at a photo of the hideously unnatural growth with which NYC has overloaded the tiny island of Manhattan, with that madness of skyscrapers, and I shook my head sadly. I had visions, not of two misdirected airliners but of a single earthquake.
One official in or near New Orleans said that what is happening there now is worse than her worst fears. I wonder if, like me, she has been derided all her life for being a worrier and for cooking up and actually experiencing -- in her mind --terrible scenarios that haven't happened yet and most likely "will never happen."
An experience three months after 9/11 that for my wife and I personally dwarfed the horrors of that event, followed by another catastrophe three months farther on, showed me that, no matter what the wiser and more sanguine souls among us say, the things that we fear the most not only can but sometimes do happen, and you don't necessarily have to wait around for them for long, though it may not be till years later that their true magnitudes finally become clear.
The main development, however, that sets in afterward does so quickly enough, and it consists of a big change in one's mindset -- a very quiet and beneficial change, I would say.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 6:03 PM
2 Comments:
This sounds like a change of heart from the comment you left at my blog this morning. Is that the case? Or is it just a reflective tone I am mistakenly labeling?
Hi, Guy Andrew.
I doubt that it's a change of heart. I am getting to this comment late. It's a ragged time for me. Sorry. Actually the post on your blog inspired me to write another one here a few days later, the one called "Resilience." Thanks.
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