Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Quotes
I was caught on the freeway for hours when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The entire city had to be evacuated. I observed lives threatened by catastrophes and a whole range of behaviour. What could people do during a crisis?
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. "A Conversation with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni." One Amazing Thing, Voice, 2010.
This quotation shows the naivety of the Islamic terrorists about America. They assumed that because the Federal Government did not send help to New Orleans and other communities hit by the hurricane, it was because there was a shortage of military personnel to send and they took credit for tying down all the troops. They just could not accept the possibility that some American administrations were totally incompetent and were not be prepared or that an American President could appoint someone with no real qualification. Ironically, they would believe that of the Arab countries in the Middle East, but not the vaunted USA. The terrible response to Katrina had nothing to do with the shortage of troops and civilian first line responders. There were more than enough. They just were never prepared and never deployed on time.
Tragically accurate prediction of just what occurred two years later when Hurricane Katrina stuck. Federal administration figures including President George W. Bush claimed they could not reasonably anticipate the problems (see {626224}.), however this public article, others like it, and the administrations own reports exposed the claim of inability to anticipate and the President’s claim.
The George W. Bush administration had been caught ill prepared and with the exception of the Coast Guard, was slow and inadequate in responding to the emergency.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian-American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.
