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« Between Mom and Bomb! | Main | Thus Spake Cruella Deville »

August 28, 2006

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I had just paid a visit to the Johnstown PA Flood Museum last week, that houses artifacts from the Johnston flood of 1889 that killed 2200 people, mostly people living and working in the center of Johnstown, a then thriving community of 17,000 people built around the Cambria Iron works.
In this case, it was a combination of nature (unending heavy rain) and the failure of a poorly maintained earthen dam further upstream on the Conemaugh river that flooded the valley of Johnstown. The museum serves as a grim reminder never to underestimate the power of nature, nor overestimate the capacity of man's blunder to worsen an already bad situation. Fitting, I thought, on the eve of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Despite the loss of life and property in Johnstown, the townspeople rebounded with the generous help from all over the country, with the affected area well on its way to being rebuilt a year later. The same cannot be said of the worst affected areas of New Orleans. I was shocked to see a still mudcaked classroom in the Ninth Ward on the front page of our local newspaper this morning. U.S., the most powerful country on the planet, and we don't have the wherewithal ( or will?) to recover from such a disaster as Katrina, one year later?

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