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Ike vs Katrina?
Before I go on to explaining the differences between (after much research, mind you and also putting off folding my laundry just because my cho beh asked), I would first need to make a public interrogation on Jaslyn about her new found love that I didn't hear about. I'm expecting an e-mail, Jaslyn Saw Wei Wen or we're getting a divorce... grrr
Here's the link about the differences... some what.. let me know if you still need to anything more, Cho Beh... hehe
http://kathleend.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/hurricane-ike-vs-hurricane-alicia/

“Your father and I were without power for two weeks,” my mother tells me in her usually quiet voice as we talk about Hurricane Ike. I opened the conversation by saying that I read online that nearly 90,000 people stayed behind. It was as if Hurricane Katrina was happening all over again except this time in Texas. My mother’s quiet reply from the table across the room was, “Correction, honey. It’ll be like Hurricane Alicia.” She then went on to tell me about this hurricane that came through my birthplace of Channelview, Tex. She pulled out an old album with newspaper clippings as she started her story.

“It was 1983 when Hurricane Alicia hit,” she said as she flipped through the pages. She pulled out a clipping from the Houston Chronicle. The headline is “Alicia Pummels Houston Area”. I read the article as i listened to my mother speak.

“We were living in Channelview, where you were born and we were living in a trailer.” For those that don’t know, Channelview, Tex. is about 10 miles outside of Houston. As I read this article, I was astounded to think that after something like that, Texan officials would be willing to let the populstion just hunker down and wait it out. According to the article Mother handed me the then-mayor, “Kathy Whitmire called on Houstonians to stay indoors until the danger passed. ‘We do not recommend that people get out of their homes unless they absolutely have to,’ she said”.

In the paragraph after that I read “Houston firefighters frantically fought a wave of fired across the city early today, many of which were blames on sparking electrical lines ripped loose by the howling winds.”

This article was written the day Hurricane Alicia hit landfall. According to articles throughout the small stack my mother accumulated, everything from toxic spills to the crushing death of a 71-year-old woman by the name of Elisa Lopez Flores was blamed on the hurricane.

” It was horrible and Ike is just going to be worse,” she stated. “Your father and I were out of power for two weeks and it was absolutely horrible.” She then got up, walked to the living room, and proceeded to read the current newspaper.

As I sit here and think about what’s happening in the Gulf right now, it makes me glad that I live in northern Louisiana. I hope I don’t have to experience anything like this. I hate it when it rains here. I feel sorry for the estimated 90,000 people attempting to ride out the storm. I hope there are no instances like the late Elisa Flores, who “was crushed to death in her bed when a falling tree fell on her home. . .”. For native Texans, native Houstonians or Galvestonians even, this must seem like nothing new but Hurricane Ike is coming. It will hit hard and it will amass quite a large amount of damage.