Why do people think that hurricane katrina ONLY hit new orleans?

Question

don't get me wrong, i'm sad that it happened to them too, but i was watching i love millenium yesterday on VH1 and they were talking about hurricane katrina, not one person on there said a thing about MS. you know we were affected too!

Answer 1

Because everyone else who got hit by the storm was smart enough to get out of it's way! And then when it had passed, the communities banded together and rebuilt! New Orleans is an historical city and populated by many poor, who (supposedly) couldn't get out. So instead of getting together and doing what they could for thier city, Many sat back and cried, Oh, Government, HELP ME!! And when government help was slow in coming to thier aid, the news media ate it up! And never reported all the good that was going on in other areas! Death and destruction make good ratings! The good that people do doesn't sell!!

Answer 2

Because that what the media focused on.  The worthless whining ppl in the super dome.

Answer 3

That's a very good point.  Katrina affected the entire gulf coast.  The media seemed to focus on only the levees and that's almost all we've heard about since Katrina.  There were many people who suffered great losses in places in other than New Orleans yet we heard very little of their plight.  But, when was the last time the mainstream media gave the WHOLE story on any major event?

Answer 4

I wish you well!

The media's focus on New Orleans IS unfair, and ignores the other Katrina-devastated areas in southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi.

It was mostly because the whole world has heard of New Orleans, while even most Americans are not familiar with cities like Bay Saint Louis, Biloxi, and Gulfport.  The world is also unfamiliar with destroyed towns in LA, like Chalmette, Violet, Buras, and Port Sulphur.

Another factor was that the news media could get to New Orleans (when it took a week for the first National Guard convoy to arrive), but access to southern MS and the rest of southeast Louisiana was blocked by fallen trees for a week (MS) and/or floodwaters (LA) for weeks.

Tens of thousands of people were trapped by floodwaters in New Orleans, which provided very photogenic images. The lurid stories of violence also attracted the media to New Orleans. For example, there were "reports" of violence inside the Superdome. In reality, there were NO murders in the Dome, NO children were raped, and there were NO gun battles (all were high-profile news stories at the time). The same was true at the Convention Center.

The New Orleans area had a population of about 1,400,000 at the time Katrina struck, which was many times the population of southern MS plus the rest of southeastern Louisiana.

State & local government (Blanco & Nagin) utterly failed the people of New Orleans, but the media saw an opportunity to blast the Bush administration and took it.  There was no similar opportunity in the rest of the devastated area (images + governmental failure).

Your question has also attracted the usual myths about New Orleans (something MS is generally spared by being ignored).  I would really appreciate it if someone could show me all the people in New Orleans who are "sitting around with their hands out".  ALL of the Katrina-devastated areas are struggling to rebuild with little in the way of assistance, and that includes New Orleans.  There has been huge progress in the past 2 years but that is somehow never recognized.  

The ignorant "answers" from Joe Joe Dancer, zoe o, and Boloman are examples of comments from people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Ditto the comment from John de Witt. Katrina was enormous and winds in downtown New Orleans were 125mph (150mph in the suburbs). BOTH southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi were "hit" by Katrina. The damage in both was from storm surge flooding, which is historically the cause of most hurricane deaths and damage - not the wind. New Orleans-proper was flooded when the federally-built levee system failed at the height of the storm surge. The incompetent response can be blamed on Blanco & Nagin, but even they cannot be blamed for the flooding. That honor belongs to the US Army Corps of Engineers.

My friends who lived in Waveland/Bay Saint Louis tell me they could not get "home" (which had been turned into matchsticks) until the roads were cleared of trees.  I am glad John de Witt could drive home a few days after the storm when so many others could not go home at all.

Answer 5

We weren't hit too. It hit MS and sideswiped NOLA. But Haley Barbour, whom nobody confuses with a rocket scientist, had the sense to get the ball rolling on relief quickly. NOLA wasn't devastated by Katrina but by the state's Democratic Party.

Hey, NOLA guy! I got to south MS a few days after Katrina hit. I just had to gas up north of Jackson and dodge the trees.

Answer 6

Hmm lets see, black people suffering at the hands of a white republican president sitting on rooftops for days waiting to be rescued while the liberal media just flies over head and records it all.... nope cant figure it out either!

Answer 7

because looting and crime is always big news.

Answer 8

You didn't fit the media profile of who a victim is and how they should act. In other words, you probably did too much for yourselves and didn't glory in your victimhood so the media could shudder at how the "loathsome" government failed you. Note the lack of media "wailing and knashing of teeth" regarding the flooding in Iowa and Missouri. Too many can-do people spoil an indignant, agenda driven, media rant on the failure of a much despised president. Why look for those who react with fortitude and resolve in the face of adversity when a failed response so much better serves your purpose?

Answer 9

The people in New Orleans did have a hard time, but they seemed to be waiting for someone to do something instead of doing things themselves.  Maybe the reason the people in MS didn't get much attention was that they got busy and helped each other.

Answer 10

sadly the more you pay attention the more you notice the media bias... and the people who don't notice.  I went home to Waveland MS thi xmas and it is really sad that there hasn't been much improvement... I feel ya