Tuong Responsibility

Katrina Disaster

Ten years after the most terrible storm had occurred, life seemed to return to normal with the people who live in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and Alabama. However, Hurricane Katrina is still a nightmare for them.

Detrelle Penns, a survivor of Katrina, said that she woke up and saw people outside like the street was a water park.

Douglas P. deSilvey survived the hurricane, yet his family was not so lucky like him. When he tried to warn his family, the roof collapsed, killing his wife and daughter.

Hurricane Katrina, one of the five deadliest storms of America, killed more than 2000 people and destroyed more than 90000 square miles of the US. Whenever I watch videos about Katrina, I never believe that it was real. It washed away cars, houses and people. Everything was deep in water and people had to move by boats. As I have watched the videos, I have asked myself: “What if I was there, what if I lost everything like those people, what would I do?”. Not only that, after the storm, everything was still a tragedy for people who lived there. Children cried in fear, people fought for food, families lost each other. A man died on the roadside and the only thing others could do was cover his body with a piece of plastic. When I heard about it, I believed that hell was real.

For those people who were killed, death was the end of the tragedy. But for those people who survived, that was a torture for them. They lived and cried for their loss. Their efforts, their dreams of a better life, were swept away with the floodwaters. The only thing they could do was try to survive and wait to be rescued.

I did not know those people and I even did not speak their language, but when I looked at them, I could feel their pain, their hopelessness, and I cried. Maybe God wanted to test those people. Maybe he wanted to make them appreciate life more. However, I believe that those people did not deserved to encounter such a tragedy. They deserved something better. Everybody was given a life to live, to work, to enjoy, not to suffer. I knew that there were many people like me, they cried and they prayed when they saw the pictures, the videos about the victims of Hurricane Katrina because we are all human, we want the best for our kind and we hurt when our kind hurt.