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Hurricane Katrina Essay

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Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast with tremendous force at daybreak, August 29, 2005, severely punishing regions that included the city of New Orleans and its neighboring state Mississippi. Resulting in a total of just over 1700 people killed, and hundreds of thousands missing. When we think of Hurricane Katrina stories, we think of stories that were published by the media such as, “Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the category 3 storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center. The hurricane's storm surge a 29-foot wall of water pushed ashore when the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast was the highest ever measured in the United States. …show more content…

During the crisis of Hurricane Katrina many survivors experience forces far beyond natural causes, some may call this animosity. In response to the increasingly desperate survivors search for food and water, the government has issued a defacto martial law, with soldiers and police enforcing a “shoot to kill” policy, forcing the entire New Orleans area to descend into chaos. Disturb by this atrocious outcome, Egger describes these actions as “a legacy of the war on terror, has the mentality that an overwhelming military response was the solution to a humanitarian crisis” (Egger 125) as he shines light on the inhumane behavior of the United States government. Research shows that many government officials and contractors had been sent into New Orleans to re-establish order, and help evacuate survivors, but for most survivors that was not the case. As stated by Eggers, long time Muslim New Orleans resident Zeitoun, was forced out his home by government officials with guns and was threatened to be shot even after he showed his I.D. confirming he is a United States Citizen and a New Orleans resident. Egger gives us a brief taste of government animosity, as Zeitoun arrived on dry land, and was immediately handcuffed and thrown in a white van. As seen in the evidence above, we begin to see the transition Egger is making to expose his point of view that this is no different from a typical Katrina

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