Collaborative BWP Writing

Please provide inpu as far as:

1) transitions
2) citing the sources (DMN---Do I need to list all the articles from that date?)
3) overall fluidity---I know it's still rough. It's like I know what I want to say, but I'm not so sure I'm saying it.


I. Intro: Weather Warnings---08/01/06

Viewing the archives of The Dallas Morning News for August 29, 2005, there was a balance of heartfelt cautions of this being the most destructive storm in the history of our country, as well as more economic rhetoric about possible impacts on gas prices. I get both a sense of urgency for the people in New Orleans to evacuate and avoid potential death, but I also temper that with the influence the storm may have on my already thinly stretched gas money.

The paper discusses the evacuation of New Orleans. There were mentions of people who had chosen to stay causing problems with police staff that chose to stay behind and work. There was one article about the Superdome and how many chose to use it as their shelter from the storm.

It was interesting to note that here in Dallas, Hurricane Katrina was also discussed in a sport context: stories about brave athletes confronting one another despite chances of the hurricane. I doubt that people in New Orleans were worried about sports on August 29, 2005. As the paper discusses, most were trying to evacuate and prepare for a horribly destructive storm.

The Dallas Morning News spoke of the threat as still being very distant---limited to those who live in Louisiana. The impact was made more local via economic projections and gas prices. This seemed to be the biggest impact on the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex. The paper did, however, ask readers for assistance. There was one article about ways to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. Dallasites were being called upon to raise awareness and charity for the victims of this natural disaster.

Still on the whole, Hurricane Katrina and its immediate danger was not local news. Most articles focused on Louisiana, more specifically New Orleans. With exception of the sports and the discussion of economic impact, there was no real sense of impending peril for Dallas. In fact, one of the articles from that date was entitled, “Texas Expecting Nothing from Katrina”. It seems that reporters in Dallas saw Hurricane Katrina primarily as a threat to Louisiana, not as an event that would influence Dallas---with the exception of gas prices, of course.

For me personally, I had a similar outlook to The Dallas Morning News. As swirls of greenish colors became larger and larger on Doppler radars, I must be honest and say that I don’t think I really took them seriously. They were colors, colors I had seen before, and they had little meaning because as warnings ticker-taped across the bottom of my television screen, I had a difficult time heeding their caution. How many times had we heard this before with little to no result? For the most part in the past, fortunately, those colors just spun away from our coast with high winds.

When they say that the US was unprepared to handle a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina, I suppose I am included because I was one who was unprepared to listen to another possible false alarm. Like so many others, I didn’t see any risk to myself personally nor did I understand the impact of such a storm so I resisted perceiving it as a possibility (Schmidlin, 2006) I couldn’t conceive the devastation that would occur. I don’t think I am alone.

In fact, I know I am not alone because many people chose to stay in Louisiana and Mississippi. Many people who did not leave had survived previous storms. They felt less at risk and more knowledgeable about how to confront this disaster. (Schmidlin, 2006) Maybe, some people just did not want to leave their homes, but many of them lost their lives, and what is left of their homes is a grave reminder of the power of this Category 5 storm.

My question is: how could anyone be prepared to accept the possibility of such destruction?