This isn't 'our tsunami'

This isn't 'our tsunami': "How could one compare what has happened here to the 180,000 lives lost in the tsunami, unless you happen to consider American life more worthy? I am disgusted that the American media resorts to using and belittling other world tragedies just to get better ratings. There's no comparison."

Yikes. Somebody hold up the 'pretend to empathize' sign for our audience, please!!

Yeah, you know that's how it works in American culture... There is this suffocating mentality that works something like a live studio audience: We clap and cry and remain silent on cue.

I have no choice but to go back now - six months later - and read through the news articles and commentary from those days following Katrina. We didn't get to see them then... Not for many weeks did we watch our first news special about what had happened to us... And even then we were only catching straggling stories. You see - by the time we had contact with the outside world again - our story was 'old news.'

Inevitably, I run across such scandals as the 'This is our tsunami' quote from Biloxi Mayor AJ Holloway. Reading the widespread public reaction to his statement sickens me. I am very grateful not to have had access to any of this information before now...

In true form, I would like to take a moment to think about this now infamous quote without bothering with choking myself to death with political correctness. Let's begin with a full frontal assault: This is our tsunami. This is OUR tsunami. He did not say "This tsunami is worse than the tsunami that hit in Asia because it happened here" - he said 'This is our tsunami.' No - close to 200,000 people did not die on the Gulf Coast... and I have been unable to uncover any other quotes from Mr. Holloway that suggest that he made even the slightest reference to the death toll... let alone any inference that a handful of dead Americans were worth more than a few thousand dead non-Americans.

Let me say thank you to the American public for being such timid nimwits that you cower and grovel and make clarifying statements when there is a remote possibility that someone out there in France or somewhere might think that you actually care about your fellow Americans in a mildly biased way. Augh. I used the word 'biased.' I'm sorry.. biased is a bad word, isn't it? Yeah well.. I'm sorry. I'm biased. I think my dog is the smartest dog on earth and my kids are cuter than anyone else's kids. I'm biased. Wake up, people!!

Was what happened on the Gulf Coast during Hurricane Katrina worse than what happened to the people in Asia on December 26th, 2004? First, let me say that this is a profoundly stupid question. Second, let me make it clear that I am not the idiot who originally posed this question -- I was beaten to it by countless pundits and hungry reporters looking for their big break. Third, let me answer with brutal honesty: It was worse for me personally. I was horrified following the Asian tsunami. I prayed for weeks. I cried. I sent money. I had nightmares. It was awful. My children sold pickles and raised money. We were shocked and saddened. I still cannot fathom the death toll. I pray for them still today...

And you, media pundit or average American citizen, who may be totally appalled that I have the audacity to admit that what happened in my home town had more of an effect on my family than what happened on the other side of the world last year... When did you tire of hearing about the rising death toll along the Indian Ocean? When did 'compassion fatigue' set in for you?

That morning as I watched the Gulf of Mexico laden with debris race down our streets -- washing people out of their hiding places... I thought of the survivors of December's tsunami. All in an instant I understood that although I had sympathized with the plights of the people in the aftermath... I had never really grasped the terror of what they went through that morning. Until it happened to me.

We were warned, they say. We had warnings therefore it was our fault.... That makes things different, right? Let me make something very, very clear: We were NOT warned. We had warnings of a landfalling hurricane. We were warned that we could experience hurricane conditions. We were not warned that we would have a tsunami.

Did anyone catch that? The hurricane tore off some siding and shingles. The wall of water and battering waves half a mile inland took out the ground floor of our home.

The most widely publicized rebuttal to the mayor's characterization of the events here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast came from commentator and consultant, Nick Cater. Mr. Cater does very strongly suggest that there is very little basis for comparison between the Asian tsunami and the events of Hurricane Katrina -- and illustrates his point by drawing conclusions about New Orleans alone: "In the politics and economics of geography, the differences persist. Asia's coastal inhabitants lack choices about where to live, and few can afford insurance to share their risks. By contrast, the people of New Orleans can and should abandon their city's unsustainable location below sea levels, since only multi-billion dollar coastal and river defences prevent its demise."

I am too tired and too irritated to take Mr. Cater's rebuttal point by point... so I will summarize as simply as I possibly can. Mr. Cater lambasted the mayor of Biloxi, Mississippi for his characterization based on arguments about the geography and demographics of New Orleans, Louisiana. (And even those arguments are skewed -- is he suggesting that the people in New Orleans have the resources to simply pack up and move at any time simply because the per capita income is higher than most places in the developing world? Is Mr. Cater totally unaware that poverty persists in our 'rich' nation?)

New Orleans was, indeed, warned. For some reason - everyone was sure that the levees would fail. Yes, I know there are folks out there saying that they had no idea the levees were going to fail (one particular U.S. President comes to mind)... But if you were down here and watching the news for four days straight -- you know better. For four days the warnings went out... the levees would be breached and the city would flood to unprecedented levels. The fear was a category 5 hurricane making landfall just to the west of New Orleans -- bringing the brunt of a catastrophic storm on the city -- would damage infrastructure, raise water levels, and bring tropical rainfall in torrential downpours. Uh... for some reason a category 3 hurricane making landfall much to the east did the same thing.... But that's another story entirely.

One commentator suggested that we stop referring to 'tsunami' as if the word itself necessarily belongs to some other region of the world.. and refer to what happened here as "Our Hurricane Katrina". You know something? I just can't do that.

We were hit suddenly and violently -- without warning -- by an enormous tidal wave on the morning of August 29th, 2005. It just so happens that we were hit in the middle of a hurricane... a minor complication in the broad scheme of things. The wave caused unprecedented destruction throughout the Gulf States -- reducing many coastal cities to not much more than piles of twisted rubble. It will be decades before we can rebuild -- if we can ever completely rebuild. This was not 'our hurricane'. Camille was 'our hurricane'. This was our tsunami.