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Silent Nights on the Gulf Coast

The media has lost interest in the victims of Katrina, who are living in small tents four months after the devastation caused by this hurricane. Young and old, rich and poor, black and white, all live in unimaginable squalor in the so-called richest country on earth, the U.S. of A. Thousands still live in tents, as there is a huge backlog for trailers promised by the government, and at least 10,000 more are needed. Progress is maddeningly slow, with most of the aid being provided by American and Canadian relief agencies.

Magna Corporation built a small village of houses, using the local people to help build them. I heard no mention anywhere in the U.S. mainstream media about this.

The tragedy of Katrina will worsen if the Gulf Coast is forgotten. People can not survive in tents. And FEMA trailers are not meant to be longtime homes, yet even for these there is a long waiting list.

Best-selling author John Grisham toured the area and writes about this American tragedy in an impassioned article which is excerpted here:

"This year, the great Christmas wish in the Village was to finally get a trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

" CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia In the harrowing days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the shellshocked and homeless survivors strung up tents and tarps wherever they could find standing shelter, anything to hide from the sun.

Now, four months later, many of the tents remain: in the front lawns of once fine houses now gutted and unlivable, in small clearings between mountains of rubble, beside camping trailers too cramped for entire families, on concrete slabs wiped clean by the storm surge, even in the living rooms of houses with few walls but intact roofs.

The sun is no longer the problem: instead, the most desperate of the hurricane's victims have stuffed tents of every imaginable make and model with Salvation Army blankets and mattresses to try to stay dry and warm.

There is the dismal feeling that some of these tents may not be so temporary. One tent city built by the army, dubbed "the Village," sits in the center of Pass Christian, a small town 30 miles, or 50 kilometers, west of Biloxi, at ground zero for Hurricane Katrina.

The Village is a gloomy grid of 70 tents, 10 numbered rows of seven each, housing about 150 people - old, young, black, white, poor, middle-class, some so ill that their tents are marked "Oxygen in Use." After four months, some of the shock of loss has worn off, and the people go quietly about the daily challenges of securing a warm, private shower, washing whatever clothing they have left, and hoping that their children do not fall ill."

Read rest of this article here

posted by Annamarie at 1:17 AM