Should We Abandon Louisiana

       Should We Abandon Louisiana? In some ways, we already have. by Zack Kopplin at Slate.com discusses the national media's lack of coverage of the historic flooding in Baton Rouge in the middle of August this year. Kopplin, who grew up in Baton Rouge, points out the differences in the national media coverage of Hurricane Sandy and Louisiana's flooding. He refers to another author who says, "Media coverage scales with location", which means coverage is based on where you live, not on the actual disaster or suffering. He  says the media conspiracy decides whether or not people care about the people affected in a disaster. Some national figures and media coverage suggest that Louisiana residents should all just relocate and not rebuild because Louisiana is poor, corrupt and has bad schools. Kopplin writes that the blame for the flood is the climate because the chance of the flood was only 0.1 percent. The storm that caused the flood shouldn't have happened.
       I think Kopplin makes some good points. The storm was a freak thing and Louisiana should not be abandoned by the media or the country. If we covered and cared about the people who suffered during hurricane Sandy then we should care about the people who suffered in Louisiana. After all, the flooding after Sandy was predictable. Louisiana flooding was not predictable. I think about some friends in California when I read this article. We all know the earthquakes are going to hit the faults there, do we abandon them? Do we tell them to give up and move? Here, in Louisiana, our flooding for Katrina was the failure of a man made structure. In Baton Rouge it was a very rare storm. I agree with the residents of Louisiana who see the flood for what it was, a freak disaster, not a reason to abandon homes. I also agree with Kopplin, we will rebuild. We should help our neighbors and make it happen.