America Is Ill-Prepared,
The Church Is Certainly Ill-Prepared
: THE KATRINA BLUNDER
Sunday, August 28, 2005:
Hurricane Katrina, still fourteen hours away, had begun to announce its arrival as the sea waters powerfully surged against the shores of the Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, Lake Pontchartrain was fast rising and eating away at the base of the levee, which was the concrete floodwall built to protect the city of New Orleans from floods. By the morning of Tuesday, August 30, 2005, the levee had given way, and water had begun to flood the city at an unimaginable rate. Katrina devastated cities in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi, plunging hundreds of thousands of families into unspeakable agonies. But the damage done to the city of New Orleans, and the chaos and despair it brought to hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians, was beyond imagination.
But was Katrina a surprise? No. Katrina announced itself before arrival. There was an obvious failure in the preparation and response to the Katrina crises. Many days before it plunged New Orleans into agony, government officials (federal, state, local, and other delegated authorities) were well aware of the looming disaster. Between Thursday, August 25, and Friday, August 26, long before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast that Monday, government agents had enough time to evacuate the innocent, poor, and weak citizens of New Orleans, but they did not.
:: SO WHAT WENT WRONG?
On Monday the 29th, the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast, and national chaos ensued. The fiasco that the whole world watched on television on August 30 (following the breaches in the levees and the catastrophic flooding of 80% of the city of New Orleans) reflected a botched relief and rescue operation that consumed three thousand lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. From the federal level to state and local levels, there was an obvious lack of coordination among the agencies involved.
In addition, the animosity between Louisiana’s Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans’ Mayor Ray Nagin made things worse. Their infighting was so grave that the governor and the mayor could not sit down together to work out their differences in order to save lives and properties, and protect the dignity of their people. It is not surprising, therefore, that the hundreds of buses meant to evacuate the poor and needy had no drivers.
Former director of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), Michael Brown, admitted before the U.S. Congress that FEMA’s response and rescue operation was a little too late because FEMA had “logistics failures.” “Logistics failure” is a clever phrase by which government officials often explain away their wrongdoings without really taking responsibility.
In the case of Katrina, this failure was fueled more by power tussles among the government officials involved in the preparation, prevention, and rescue operations. Unfortunately, bureaucracy has no respect or sense of urgency where the lives and dignity of innocent, weak, poor, and needy families are concerned. That was why Colonel Tim Tarchick of the 920th Rescue Wing, Air Force Command was forced to wait twenty-four hours for permission to take his three rescue helicopters into the disaster zone. Can you imagine that!
According to Newsweek magazine, September 12, 2005, Tarchick was unable to cut through the red tape until 4:00 p.m. the following day. By then, the surging waters, up to twelve feet deep, had swept through the city. With hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced; and homes and businesses destroyed, there is no telling what Colonel Tarchick and the likes of him could have done to alleviate the plights of the victims, had they been authorized early enough.
:: KATRINA TODAY, a BOMb TOMORROW
Katrina was clearly one of the worst disasters ever to hit America. While many people heeded the warning to evacuate the cities, left behind were mostly the poor, no-car, no-money, and no-credit card people, who could not afford the cost of evacuation.
Their eventual evacuation to the Superdome was unplanned and uncoordinated. One chaos followed the other: no food, no water, no bathrooms, no organization, no air conditioning, no lights, no structure, and no security. Feces and urine smeared the walls and floors. Medical relief arrived too late. Dead bodies were all over the place. There were reports of gunfire and looting. By the end of the first week of September, there were a million Katrina victims without homes, jobs, or schools. One thing that bothers many people still is that tens of thousands of body bags (used for carrying and storing dead bodies) found their way to the disaster zone four days before food and water did. Apparently logistics favored their timely arrival.
:: a failed system
For days, government officials fought like cats and dogs over the chain of command— who should be in charge. The exhausted families and helpless, starving children found themselves at the mercy of a failed system.
The consensus is that, from the Bush White House to the New Orleans’ State and local governments, the whole system failed New Orleanians, the American people, and the whole world.
Fingers pointed in all directions: President Bush’s critics say that he was disengaged, vacationing, distracted, and insensitive to the plight of poor black people. The White House fires back, blaming everybody else. Nevertheless, Katrina did more than to expose the vulnerability of a great nation; it exposed an imperfect system at various divisions and levels of the U.S. government.
Katrina exposed the magnitude of poverty amid plenty in America. The ghastly images of thousands of people, mostly poor and underprivileged African-Americans, crying out for food, water, and rescue, is a reflection of a racially-divided and class-segregated America. Indeed, Katrina exposed the serious need for America to seek the face of God. Therefore, government institutions must understand that God is sovereign over all things, even the State. Politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, administrators, and others must be willing to make a paradigm shift where Church and State relations are concerned; for God is Lord over all things.
:: is the church ready?
It took FEMA four days to get to the disaster zone, and it took President Bush five days. How long did it take the Church?
Katrina also exposed the Church’s unpreparedness to respond decisively to communal, regional, national, and international crises. The Lord wants me to tell His Church world-wide that we are to be the first responders, as this is key to the end-time harvest. Katrina was a microcosm of what may happen in the future. I assure you the Lord is holding back the hand of the enemy because the Church is not ready for a great and sudden influx of people, and is unprepared to meet the great need that will ensue. With 9/11, the people came and left because the Church was not ready for them. With Katrina, they came and left because the Church, again, was not prepared. Now I perceive there will be a surge of need, but the Church must be ready, for this is key to the revival many have been praying for. He who has an ear let him ear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.
