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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Natural Disasters Can Change Lives in an Instant

While the 2010 hurricane season has been relatively quiet so far, there is now a fierce storm that is threatening to hit the East Coast tonight around North Carolina's Outer Banks and then move its destruction up towards New England. Earl is a Category 3 storm that is larger than the state of California! Many residents along North Carolina's beaches, even those who are experienced with the severe weather that can affect these coastal regions, are packing up and heading away from the water.

Hurricane Earl is coming to the shores of the United States just after we finished our national remembrance of Hurricane Katrina, a storm that devastated the Gulf region five years ago and claimed 1800 lives. New Orleans in particular continues to receive attention for the rebuilding efforts that are still underway in that city. Scars from Katrina are still apparent in many parts of New Orleans and some of its residents left five years ago and never returned.

In my second novel, Finish Line, readers are introduced to a character who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Once a famous blues musician whose records were adored by many, the disaster victim now earns a living shining shoes at the Prairie Winds Golf Course. He continues to play sporadic gigs on the nightclub circuit and fulfills his passion for music as a featured performer on one of the many showboats that are docked on the Mississippi River. While his life is fictional, he represents the thousands of lives that were turned upside down by a natural disaster.

While no one anticipates that Hurricane Earl will cause the same level of destruction that we saw from Katrina in 2005, the residents of the coastal areas in Earl's path certainly will be in our thoughts as the storm charges forward.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sarah, you could at least post as James--that would give the illusion that he's writing his own blog rather than paying you to write it!