Six years ago tomorrow, Category 5 Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. In a combination of lack of resources, a lack of preparedness and, let’s face it—a lack of rich white people—the city of New Orleans is still recovering from a hurricane that buried a city in water. Meanwhile, New York has a few flooded basements and a bunch of tourists snapping pictures of the waves.
New England isn’t used to hurricanes, but the hype around Hurricane Irene is ridiculous. Downed trees and broken power lines in Manhattan just don’t compare to the ragged Atlantis that New Orleans became. Mainstream news media were bracing for another Katrina, and boosted coverage accordingly. TV stations like CNN invested so much money and so many resources in putting correspondents in the path of Hurricane Irene and making fancy touch-screen presentations, they have to follow through with non-stop coverage, regardless of whether Irene turned out to be a Category 3 hurricane or just a pretty bad rainstorm. Perhaps my memory does not serve me correctly, but the coverage of Irene and that of Katrina seems comparable. So, please allow me to illustrate my point with two pictures, and I’ll leave it at that:
Hurricane Irene in NYC
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans
