Unfiltered Analysis

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans as well as the surrounding areas. It had a stunning “death toll of 1300 people and damage over $100 billion ”( Davlasheridze 94 ). The communication were taken down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were battered, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” ( Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS ).

Viewers across the nation are affected by the social media causing stress on the subject by bombarding the public with media stories, rumors and “a sense of mass panic”. Victims have to relive that horrible moment because the media wants to

New Orleans itself is 10 feet below sea level. This only makes me wonder why even build a city there when there wont even proper conditions for one yet alone live there after experiencing the first hurricane that had hit them. When they were first told of that Hurricane Katrina would be hitting them, FEMA aka Federal Emergency Management Agency said they were ready for the news. Making people feel more relaxed about what was about to come. After being announced that Katrina had turned into a category five people started cleaning up their yards and boarding up the windows. The citizens were ordered to evacuate a bay before the storm and if they didn’t evacuate they were on their own. Along with that they were also told to write their social security on their arm with permanent marker in order to identify their bodies. I was definitely shocked about this information, why wouldn’t they

Hurricane Katrina will forever be noted in United States history as one of the worst natural disasters to hit the states. Within its wake, Hurricane Katrina left thousands of Americans dead and many more homeless with no place to call home. A vast majority of the homeless were already living in poverty in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina hit the hardest. People that already didn’t have what most Americans have were forced out of their homes and their jobs with nowhere to go. Many have criticized the United States government and President Bush for the lack of response to this disaster, as well as ignoring the fact that the levees in the Lower Ninth Ward were not strong enough to withhold this type of force. Still to this day, many are still rebuilding their lives, homes, and businesses.

The main big failure was the levee system. Three hundred fifty miles of levees and floodwalls that were created to protect the city of New Orleans failed and the flooding allowed the entire Ninth Ward and much more to be swept away. A field reporter described it as this after a few days of the flooding;

Opening the book, Postman explains how he will fulfill showing that a “great media-metaphor shift has taken place in America, with the result that content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense” (pg. 16). There are two major points First: under the printing press, discourse In America was different from what it is now—generally coherent, serious, rational. Second: under the governance of television, it has become withered. This made me think about how much media affects us on a daily basis.

10 Years ago on the last week in August, one of the most brutal storms the United States has ever had hit Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. On August 28th and 29th, Fifty-five-foot waves crashed down the Mississippi coast leaving total destruction behind. In New Orleans a levee was built to protect the city but failed in 50 different places due to it being poorly designed. FEMA brought many survivors to their camps, but some weren’t that lucky. In New Orleans about 20,000 residents were trapped in the Louisiana Superdome without clean water, medical care, or working toilets. After the floodwaters receded, over 100,000 residents left the city of New Orleans to never return. 10 years later after the hurricane, most of the affected

The physical impacts left by this storm, is the central premise to understanding what really happened to this city. The time frame from when the storm hit till now, has caused a significant limitation to really comprehending this historic event. Furthermore, the mass amount of destruction was primarily due to New Orleans being on average 1-2 feet below sea level (NOAA, 2012). Also a lack of scientific accuracy sealed in troubling fate for this city. The duality of being geographically vulnerable as well as the shortcomings of scientific knowledge led to extensive damage to 134,000 housing units, the destruction of multiple bridges along the Gulf Coast, various buildings across the city, which caused harmful chemicals to be leaked into the water system and the disorientation of the main power

Trouble the Water is a documentary that is based on the experience of hurricane Katrina for a local woman named Kimberly as well as some of her neighbors. Kimberly and her neighbors resided in the ninth ward of New Orleans at the time when Katrina hit. It is no secret that New Orleans is below sea level, so most people knew that there were risks of potential flooding. Little did they know that the levees would break and there would be water higher than the ceiling in most of their homes. In the Times-Picayune, Schleifstein states that “the lake [Pontchartrain] is normally one foot above sea level, while the city of New Orleans is an average of six feet below sea level. But a combination of storm surge and rainfall from Katrina have raised the lake’s surface to six feet above sea level or more” (Schleifstein, No. 221). On a normal day, Lake Pontchartrain usually sits at one foot above sea level. As mentioned above, New Orleans is below sea level; six feet below to be exact. If you think about it, New Orleans is practically a bowl. The levee holds back millions of gallons of water from flowing into the city. The storm surge and rainfall raised the water level in the lake to six feet above sea level so, during the storm, the levees were holding back more water than ever before. The levee walls could not withstand the wind and water pressure and they collapsed, flooding the city. As stated by Schleifstein in the Times-Picayune, “the only dry land was a narrow band from the French Quarter and parts of Uptown, the same small strip that was settled by Bienville amid the swamps” (Schleifstein, No. 221). Amidst the flooding the only dry area in New Orleans was a band of the french quarter and Uptown. Everywhere else there was water. Businesses and homes along this area were very lucky not to flood. This certain area that did not flood was established by Bienville when New

Certainly, because of the breaks in the levees and the flooding, the helicopter rescues, film clips of looting, angry crowds at the Superdome and the Convention Center, it was vivid TV drama and suspense. Many viewers would have fond recollections of New Orleans and also TV personnel could find some high dry ground there. So, New Orleans became the center of operations for the media regarding Katrina. Its mayor and police superintendent were available for interviews, but New Orleans was presented as a disorganized city on the brink of collapse, less from the storm than from its residents. On September 2, The Army Times (newspaper) reported that “combat operations are now underway on the streets…This place is going to look like little Somalia…We’re going to go out and take the city back.” “This will be a combat operation to get this city under control,” was the lead comment by the commander of Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force. Several weeks after the storm, the story of Katrina can now be better

The onset of Hurricane Katrina proved to be the very element that separated the economically challenged residents of New Orleans from financially stable residents. The residents who resided in the suburbs were able to evacuate early because of accessibility to more resources. Inner city residents were forced to wait on the arrival of Katrina. This ideology of the residents and the authorities led to a reactive approach being employed in efforts to save inner city residents. Although the efforts did save some residents, the emotional blow had already been received and soon would be reopen with the acceptance of less than adequate rescue accommodations. According to Jacqueline Rhoads, Faye Mitchell, and Susan Rick (2006)

Not only that, but news reporters just look for dramatic stuff to cover when they don’t have any other good stories to freak people out with. In the essay I read, the writer said that in the summer of 2001, shark attacks were ALL OVER the news - when really, the number of shark attacks each year hadn’t gone up! 2001 was the same as any other year! I wasn’t even three years old when that happened, but I think that’s stupid. The media was CLEARLY just bored or something. Why would people be scared of a shark attack? That’s just silly. The author in the essay says that lightning

Katrina hit its second landfall on Monday, August 29, 2005 and because of the widespread destruction of the communication infrastructures, authoritative reporting, which “incapacitation of many State and local responders, and the lack of Federal representatives in the city. As a result, local, State, and Federal officials were forced to depend on a variety of conflicting reports from a combination of media, government and private sources, many of which continued to provide inaccurate or incomplete information throughout the day, further clouding the understanding of what was occurring in New Orleans”. (Ibid).

I have decided to write about internets and television on what happened after the hurricane. The disaster I would be talking about is hurricane katrina. On August 29,2005 hurricane katrina hit the gulf coast and killed nearly 1,577 people. The journalist reported what happened after the hurricane,later on it ended up on news and also and several websites. They are video and even pictures of what happened after and during the storm.

The absence of media attention stops the immediate terror from the citizens, making the whole event seem less important, and "because the evacuees are attuned to the forms, genres, and in fact the larger aesthetics of television, they experience a lack, a sense of emptiness" (Duvall 130). According to Duvall: The heart of the TV man's anger is that for those who experience disaster, the presence of the media makes the experience "real;" that is, as part of our cultural repertoire, people know, like the TV man, that the media is supposed to be interested in marketing disaster. Therefore, the airborne toxic even cannot be a real disaster if the media shows no interest (133).