Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“Katrina” was initially the code-name given to a powerful hurricane that gathered force out in the Atlantic in the summer of 2005, moved across the southern tip of Florida, and then landed with a vengeance on the US Gulf Coast. The reason “Katrina” has become a prominent name in modern history and has earned a place in this encyclopedia, however, has to do with its aftereffects. Hurricanes are measured by the velocity of their winds, the height of their storm surges, and other similar properties. But disasters are measured by their impact on the human environment, and on that scale Katrina will be remembered as the most destructive disaster in the American experience. In terms of lives claimed, Katrina may not have been the most lethal disaster. That grim honor still belongs to Galveston, Texas, where in 1900 a fierce hurricane killed 6,000 people as it swept across the island of Galveston itself and another 2,000 as it made its way inland. But when measured by the pain it inflicted on the persons caught in its path, the volume of damage it did to both human and natural landscapes, and the amount of money that will be necessary to restore even a semblance of the human habitat it damaged, Katrina is likely to reign for a long time as the most terrible disaster to have visited American shores as a result of a natural force. In the long term, moreover, we may one day conclude that ... log in or subscribe to read full text