The historic, unprecedented flooding in Louisiana has claimed at least 11 lives and swept 40,000 homes underwater. While statistics will no doubt worsen before the total damage is assessed, many US media outlets are paying scant attention to the disaster. “When you have a storm that is unnamed — it wasn’t a hurricane, it wasn’t a tropical event — people underestimate the impact,” declared Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Locals and officials in Louisiana have been working nonstop since Friday, Aug. 12, when the sky opened and a crucial levee eventually collapsed. Up to 30,000 stranded individuals were rescued to date. No one knows how many are still missing. As of press time, Ascension Parish in Louisiana continued urging evacuations, and emergency workers were going door to door to find survivors, the injured or dead in Baton Rouge.
FEMA is firmly on the ground, helping people cope with a demanding list of imminent and future needs.
“We are still very much in an emergency, search-and-rescue response mode for much of the Florida parishes,” said Edwards, referring to an eight-parish area east of the Mississippi River. “Saving life is the most important priority that we have. We are going to dedicate every available response to that effort until it’s no longer required.”
According to recent reports, help is now converging on Louisiana from all over the US. Once disaster strikes — as it did in Boulder in 2013, when a 1,000-year rain and 100-year-flood hit the area — security and familiarity vanish in an instant. It’s a horrible feeling, and even starker reality.
Why several national media outlets buried the Louisiana flood way below tired political exchanges or completely excluded it remains a mystery. Perhaps FEMA administrator Craig Fugate summed it up best: “You have the Olympics. You’ve got the election. If you look at the national news, you’re probably on the third or fourth page.
“Just because the national media hasn’t picked up on this — making it a headline — we think it is a national headline disaster.”
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
