My single most vivid memory of a hurricane is of me, standing agains the wind, smelling the humus and seaweed in the air. Mine was a double-dare the Taino god of storms, juracá. I wanted to see how slanted I needed to be against it before hitting the ground. Well, my sheroism was short lived : my father came running, screaming at the top of his lungs to get back in and run for cover the eye of the storm was near.

It was 1975 and I had just double-dared Hurricane Eloiza, one of the most devastating hurricanes ever to hit Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and Florida's 'Gold Coast'.

At first, when the winds come and the rain pours, you think that's really bad. The barometric pressure drops and if you are like me, your head hurts for hours, you feel sleepy and morose. Everything seems to move in slow motion. It tells you, rain is coming. Then the smell in the air turns sweet and earthy. That is, if we are talking about a storm. The fauna, domesticated and wild grows quiet right before a storm. They lay low, they know rain is coming. Right before a hurricane though, they freak. The smell is not of earth and minerals. The air turns marine.

It's really freaking weird to be miles away from the beach and smell seaweed in the air. That's probably why that day at our house the chickens freaked out, the parrot wouldn't stop squawking and our dogs just howled and howled.

My mother grew up in a poverty and learned the hard way to be prepared for anything. Gas stoves were out, soup was in the making, and everything they could get off the floor was put up on cinder blocks. Car was secured with bricks and sand bags. Anything outside in the yard was either put away or bolted. The chickens and the dogs were actually brought into the house and set up in the garage. Unfortunately it was not enough : We lived at the bottom of a hill, on land that was once a sugar cane plantation.

During a hurricane, when the winds and rain subside after a few hours it can mean only one thing : the eye of the storm is coming. That's when everything gets really, really quite. The air is heavy to breathe --I can only describe it as turning 'heavy'. Depending how big it is, you will a sunny sky. And then you hear the ((BOOM)). The wall of water that is coming at the other end --that is were devastation awaits.

I can't remember how many days it took for the water to come up our home. All I know is that my parents packed bags, locked everything, brought the dogs with up and we just battled the storm uphill to stay with our friends for what seemed like days.

When the rain was over, our house had four feet of water and mud waiting for us. Thankfully, our house was made of cement and thanks to my parents foresight, we were able to come relatively unscathed financially. A lot of our posessions were salvaged but we still had to throw out all of our furniture and anything that was under 4 feet of height. I had classmates who lost everything. Carolyn Nieves was a girl that I was very close to in first grade and she lived in another Levittown like neighborhood close not only a beach but right at the edge of an estuary. Her family lost everything. They actually came and stayed with us for some weeks because they had nothing but 7 feet of water and mud to go back to.

That was not the only hurricane I remember. David, Elena, Gloria, they were all bad but not as bad. It was 1989 when Puerto Rico would be hit again and in a big and ugly way with Hurricane Hugo. I missed it --I was already here in New York City attending NYU, but when I went back, I could not believe my eyes : almost all the major forests, especially El Yunque were gone. It would take years before the island recuperated environmentally; needless to say financially.

Which is why, when I read things like the following bit of news, I just want to scream :

[via Governor: Everyone Must Leave New Orleans]:

A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets Tuesday, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, inundating miles and miles of homes and rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months.

"We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in," Mayor Ray Nagin said on ABC's "Good Morning America, "and the other issue that's concerning me is we have dead bodies in the water. At some point in time the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue."

Earlier yesterday I read one of those ephemeral bits of news from either AP or Reuters that said they were thinking it would take days for the water to subside. All I could think of was, are they insane? People, when the mayor is saying that it would take 16 weeks to get in there, take that as a conservative estimate. It means that New Orleans, a city built on drain swamps and wetlands that stood 8 feet below sea-level, is a lake at the moment. We may never see that city ever again. And what's worse about this situation is that they knew it could happen but did little to prepare for the catastrophe :

[via Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues]:

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

Now, not only is New Orleans submerged in water, but 40% of the Louisiana National Guard is out in Iraq as well as Mississipi's. Of course, the Bushites are saying the National Guard's presence in Iraq will not be diminished :

[via Hard New Test for President - New York Times]:

That leaves more than 60 percent of their Guard still in the state, which Joseph M. Allbaugh, one of Mr. Bush's closest friends and his first head of FEMA, said in an interview Wednesday should be plenty for the challenge ahead.

"If anyone is telling you that Iraq is getting in the way, well that's hogwash," Mr. Allbaugh said from Baton Rouge, where he was clinging to a bad cellphone connection while trying to help muster private industry to aid in the disaster relief.

Well, that's his opinion. This is the editors of Biloxi's Sun-Herald had to say :
[via Biloxi Newspaper Slams Relief Effort, Begs for Help]:

On Wednesday reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics.

Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!

When asked why these young men were not being used to help in the recovery effort, our reporters were told that it would be pointless to send military personnel down to the beach to pick up debris.

Litter is the least of our problems. We need the president to back up his declaration of a disaster with a declaration of every man and woman under his command will do whatever is necessary to deal with that disaster.

We need the governor to provide whatever assistance is at his command.

We certainly need our own county and city officials to come together and identify the most pressing needs of their constituents and then allocate resources to meet those needs. We appreciate the stress that theses elected and appointed officials have been under since the weekend but they must do a better job restoring public confidence in their ability to meet this challenge.

New York's National Guard "contribution" was one hospital airplane with 9 people aboard. So much for the thousands to spare. But it's not so much the numbers as the attitude towards to the devastation.

[via KRT Wire | 08/31/2005 | Not everyone impressed with government's aid to Katrina victims]:<

In another development, the Environmental Protection Agency temporarily waived Clean Air Act requirements to permit the sale of higher-polluting blends of gasoline and diesel fuel. The waiver is intended to increase fuel supplies nationwide.

To the Bush administration a tragedy and people's grief is just another business opportunity.

Do you remember the curious evangelical moment Bush had during the State of the Union Address? As if on cue, take a gander at the partial list of relief charities being suggested at The New York Times. Four out of about 20 organizations are not affiliated to a church. This is a time for progressives to support non-denominational charities all across the country. People should not be subjected to religious brainwashing in times of need.

While the head of FEMA is cutting deals with corporations and extremist religious organizations for relief donations, the Census Bureau reported there were 37.0 million people in poverty (12.7 percent) in 2004, up from 35.9 million (12.5 percent) in 2003. Some relief will certainly come to people in the coming weeks, but it is 6, 8 and 12 months from now that the scope of this tragedy will be felt due in part to the new bankruptcy laws that will take effect October 17. There was never a tragedy Wall Street has disliked. Oil and, ironically, coffee bean stock-gambling went berserk as the Dow fell 100 points yesterday. Still, it is during the reconstruction that we will see most of the financial calamity in not just in Louisiana and Mississipi but all of the country as history empowers insurerance companies to celebrate their culture of usury and greed by jerking off to the massive increases stockholders will demand all across the industry.

Now is a good moment to ponder on this catastrophe and honor the dead, by Katrina and the Iraq War, for they have died for all our sins of usury and greed.

I have a HUGE problem with FEMA asking people to donate cash to religious organizations like the Souther Baptist Church. Government should not be left in the hands of any religious entity.

The Liberal Bloggers Network has a fundraising effort at the moment with all the proceeds going to the American Red Cross.

Still, if you cannot give now to a charity, you will have the opportunity later. Yes, emergency relief is always needed; but the worse of the Katrina devastation is coming after October 17, when the new bankruptcy laws take effect. You will have time during the holidays to give and also during the cold weather months. There will be need for billions of dollars in relief, and millions of hands to help in the rebuilding of the south.

Now is the time for US citizens who care about their country to stand together and say NO to the corporate stronghold that has over-taken our every single aspect of our government and culture. This hurricane may well be the needle that will burst ">the housing bubble, sending more people into poverty sooner than later and tapping into the federal oil reserve to keep prices down will only make matters worse in the long run.

And of course, there is always Iraq : money that could have been used to secure the area from this kind of calamity was cut so it could be 'reinvested' in the war. And of course, we have a National Army that is supposed to be protecting our citizens inside our borders, dying and maimed by a war that was all about the real weapon of mass destruction : OIL. With OIL, through OIL and for OIL, what we have coming, politically and economically is a perfect storm, more devastating than any Katrina and Hugo combined.

Now is the time to effect change and rebuild the country by helping rebuild the south. Liberally. Progressively.