Some History

When I was ever so much younger than I am today, I used to spend time in the summer in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. My grandmother made her home there for many years and between visits to her and being sent to summer camp there (not because my family had money, but for exactly the opposite reason), I spent quite a lot of time there as I was growing up.

One thing I remember seeing, over and over, in many places were trees knocked down. Sometimes vast stretches of trees, in fact. Whole valleys in fact. But these were not newly fallen trees. These had been down for many years. But they were everywhere, in ones and twos or by the thousands. I asked why and was told they were the trees that had been knocked down in the big hurricane. The one back in 1938.

The center of the hurricane had not even passed over the area I spent summers in, the central Adirondacks, but had actually passed slightly to the East. Yet many years later, the fallen trees bore silent witness to the sheer power that had laid them low. I guess nobody ever did anything with all the fallen timber because the whole region was a park and was protected even back in those days. So the trees remained for a visiting boy to wonder over all those years later.

The hurricane of 1938 hit New England with virtually no warning. People in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island bore the brunt of the storm. Almost 700 people died. Billions of dollars in damage resulted. Whole villages that had been there before the storm, simply were not afterward. The devastation was enormous. At the time, the population of the United States was around 130 million. 

Thirty or so years later, the damage was still evident to a visitor in an area well away from the coast and well away from the worst of the damage.

So is it really surprising that one year on New Orleans is not rebuilt entirely? Or are scoring political points more important than the reality of how the world works?