KATRINA ROLLS ON

KATRINA ROLLS ON A week ago, I went for a swim in our large condo pool, and as I lay on my back in the warm water, gazing up at the peerless blue sky above, I counted my blessings at being able to live in the wonderful state of Florida. This morning, I returned to the pool and repeated the procedure, but this time I counted my blessings carefully. Looking up at the twenty four storey building in which we live, I could see the torn mesh and tattered storm blinds that still hang limply from some of the balconies, and below in the car park are the remnants of broken branches and palm fronds lying about awaiting the landscape team who will return us to a state of pristine beauty in no time. Vehicles move through the streets slowly, confused at the lack of traffic lights, and the swans on the golf course are revelling in the extra space afforded by the flooded lake. For two days last week we had done the Floridian thing and ‘hunkered down’ listening with trepidation as the huge glass windows in our apartment creaked, and the wind screamed and harried at any object that lay in its path. Storm shutters shuddered and shook and the lights flickered while daylight was turned into an evil mix of dark clouds and a white-out of rain storms. In the north of Miami, Katrina blew with intense force and then she turned southwards where she dumped incredible amounts of rain onto already sodden ground, turning streets into rivers. But we were not enough for her. We were just a dress-rehearsal; a chance to flex her muscles and to tease and torment the residents who had cowered at her arrival. She had bigger fish to fry than us, and having jinked her way back out into the Gulf of Mexico, she set her sights on that pearl of the Gold Coast, New Orleans. The television coverage is all that we see of Katrina now, but the exhausted tearful voices of previously hardened reporters tell of families drowned inside their own homes, of children left stranded and alone on railway lines, of the still rising water and of the thousands who now have no homes to return to. Stephen Spielberg in all his wild imagination could not have come up with a scene of such destruction and misery, and right now, the world waits to see if New Orleans will sink back into the waters from which it was wrested. It is a humbling day for Americans. This was an attack of enormous brutality and it came from a source against which they have no recourse. But I have no doubt that the inherent good-neighbourliness that we have come to appreciate will surface, and in the same way that South Florida is slowly rebuilding, so will the shattered lives of New Orleans and its surrounds.