unless you've found yourself under a rock, or disconnected from all forms of media, you undoubtedly heard about the first threatening named storm of the hurricane season. hailing from Florida, we grew up getting "Hurricane days," as opposed to snow days at school. learning how to track a hurricane was part of our annual curriculum. we all had evacuation plans in place, knew what sort of non-perishables to stock up on (my dad would get boxes of ding-dongs and ho-hos; no wonder why i loved hurricanes!), and would sit and watch the weather as if it were moving quick enough to change every 5 minutes.
all of that said, i get it. the hoopla over hurricanes. we were fortunate enough to never take a direct hit (although the eyes have passed just an hour or so in either direction of us). i understand and recognize their danger.
and maybe this is passé, but it is still on my mind, so i wanted to write about it.
last week, when hurricane irene was sitting east of haiti as a category 2 storm, no one seemed to care. the focus was that it could hit NYC later in the week.
as a journalism major, i know that a news story must have proximity to the reader to create a hook. i understand that NYC is "home-turf," so to speak. but it just didn't sit right in my stomach, worrying about million dollar high-rise apartments in manhattan when a million people could have to endure the hurricane in tents in haiti. (the most current estimate i read said roughly 600,000 were still displaced and living in tent-homes from the earthquake. the problem i have with that estimate is that in most other areas of haiti, the homes of even those not displaced by the earthquake are still "tents" by our standards; ill-pieced scraps of tin, wood, and block without a footer foundation).
i read about plenty of new yorkers stocking up on liquor for hurricane parties, and other perishable items (things that would not last in the case of a true emergency), and yet, i couldn't help but think of the haitian people unable to stock up on even the items kept in their "homes". fortunately, they avoided a direct hit again for the second time this season, and got nothing more than typical rainy-season rain.
but the media coverage was all focus on new york; the transportation system, the forced "nap" for this city that never sleeps.
i am not taking away from the danger of hurricanes, nor the havoc they are capable of wrecking on communities anywhere in this hemisphere. i guess its just the heart of what the "problem" is. it's all about our perspective. we are all very fortunate that the storm downgraded to a tropical storm before making landfall in NY, and leaving not much more than some localized flooding and downed trees behind. i know it is a terrible inconvenience when something as mundane as weather can force you to redirect your plans, and i don't want to appear heartless towards those that had to endure the storm in anyway, shape, or form. maybe we ignore it because the problem seems too big for us to be able to do anything about it. maybe we don't feel like it is our responsibility TO do anything about it. i don't know. and i don't know what i can do, or will do. and that bothers me too.
praying for safety for haitians and humanity in general this hurricane season.
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