Make sure you read Katrina Reflections Parts 1 and 2 first!
So what kind of miracle could arise from the tragedy of Katrina? Well, we’ll know within the next few hours whether the levees held, and there was certainly much more organization and compliance with evacuation orders during Gustav. We can only hope that the central western part of Louisiana doesn’t become “Cajun Country’s Katrina” as predicted.
But I’m thinking about the Aquarium of the Americas. Without electricity there is no air conditioning and no filtration. The reports immediately after Katrina were that the entire contents of the aquarium had essentially turned to gumbo, with the exception of the penguins that had been airlifted to Dallas. In the days that followed I reflected on the desperation, the loss of life, on both the human and aquatic scale. Thinking about the poor, defenseless sea dragons just made me even more depressed.
A week or so after the storm, I read a news article that leads me to believe that no matter how desperate the situation, there is always hope. When workers entered the aquarium, they expected to find only death. They certainly did not expect animals as fragile as the sea dragons to survive the dramatic temperature change and lack of oxygen. But they did...
And if that isn’t a paradigm of hope, I don’t know what is.
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