Canada's Response to Katrina
The U.S. Gulf coast has been hit really hard in the last short while. And more to come, sadly, as a result of Global Warming. While the incidence of hurricanes during the fall hurricane season doesn't appear to have increased, it is the ferocity of such hurricanes which has appeared to increase substantially. As the Arctic Ice Cap recedes and our oceans continue, gradually but inexorably, to warm, they fuel such weather anomalies. A hurricane which begins as a weather event of no great moment, picks up steam and potential brutality as it hovers over the Gulf of Mexico where the warmer currents fuel its intensity. And the result is the horribly damaging hurricane, Katrina, which came ashore in Louisiana last month. Promptly followed by two more; Ophelia and Rita.Canadians watched the unfolding drama which began to take place as warnings, then evacuation orders were issued in the week prior to the arrival ashore of Katrina. Just as they did as Rita washed ashore in Louisiana and Texas a scant few weeks later, with its own attendant, albeit marginally less severe consequences on the land and population there.
Americans may resent the fact that Canada officially and Canadians in particular, did not overall agree with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and refused to join the 'Coalition of the Willing'. Why would we join? We did not believe, unlike Americans, that Iraqis had done anything to deserve an armed invasion and the consequent deaths which would result from it. But that's another story. Other than the fact that bad feelings between the two countries resulted from Americans feeling that Canadians had let them down. We hadn't; we simply did not agree, and I, like many others, took the time to march in an anti-invasion peace rally.
Bring forward an issue on which we could, and would agree and it's another story altogether. For we are, after all, neighbours and friends, even if we don't (and we don't) always agree on where our respective administrations take us. New Orleans was cruelly inundated by an awful force of nature, its citizens left in dreadful plight. Canadians responded, and continue to do so. Many Canadians made donations to the Canadian Red Cross which organization then turned over these donations to the American Red Cross to assist in helping desperate flood survivors. Individual Canadians and individual Canadian companies collected clothing, drugs, health supplies and trucked them over to aid agencies operating in the Louisiana-Mississippi evacuation corridor. Our military sent over ships loaded with supplies and with mechanical and other specialists to aid and assist in disaster relief. On Parliament Hill, members of Parliament, members of the Parliamentary press gallery and others raised thousands of dollars selling hamburgers produced from the same Canadian western-based cattle which have been prevented entry into U.S. markets.
The Canadian forces sent four ships to the disaster zone in early September loaded with relief supplies which included generators and chainsaws; diapers to bottled water. Canadian army engineers have returned to Canada, but a contingent of Canadian soldiers (sappers, part of a Naval Construction group) are still in Mississippi helping to clean up schools, repair roofs and walls at public utility stations in Biloxi. They've helped to build kitchens (used by local church groups to feed two to three thousand displaced people a day) and temporary housing for hundreds displaced by the storm in Bay St.Louis.
Not only have Canadians sent donations for hurricane relief to various agencies within the U.S. and Canada, but they have also sent sizeable donations to animal rescue groups to aid in the rescue of abandoned pets and other animals. A local animal rescue group has just returned from Louisiana bringing back 19 abandoned dogs and a cat (which had been sheltered in local Louisiana animal shelters prior to the floods) to bring relief to the pet-inundated animal rescue groups there.
So, you see, American cousins, we do care. It broke our hearts to see the desperate situations in which families found themselves; those who fled the onset of the hurricane; those unfortunates who were left behind and herded for safety into large public arenas, and who suffered the pain of displacement and fear for the future.
The deaths of over eight hundred people as a result of the hurricane is beyond belief. It is at this point that Americans all over your great country should be making a resolve to ensure that sufficient pressure is brought to bear upon the three levels of oversight administration so that safety mechanisms are finally put in place to avert future such tragedies. That should include funding of mechanical seawalls of sufficient strength to forestall such catastrophic events. It should also include accountability on the part of a more meaningful disaster relief agency at the federal level to augment that of a beefed-up local organization for disaster relief.
Canadians would want no less for their country, their provinces, their citizens. We are none of us immune to natural disasters and the horror they are capable of wreaking on our world.
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, October 02, 2005
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