Oral History of Katrina

There's a fascinating new web site, Alive in Truth, that is documenting the oral histories of Katrina victims. Here's an excerpt:

".... I was in the process of buying a home. And everything is just destroyed. What do I do? I don’t know … and now I’m at the point where I have to laugh to keep from crying. It hurts, it hurts. And then, just to know that our lives are in other people’s hands. Because I know that when Florida had those hurricanes, the help was there before the hurricanes hit. And we had to wait – the governor had to wait twenty-four hours before she could make a decision … It just made me feel like, you were waiting, you were gonna let all those unfortunate people just die. The place was just expecting us to be wiped out. I mean, not all people are unfortunate in New Orleans, but a lot of those were left behind, most of them were. They were saying, come back on-- the ones that left out were the ones that were more fortunate. You know a lot of people were left behind because it was like the first of the month, you know, bills were due, you know, you need money to evacuate. ...." Tami J., Algiers district of New Orleans