AUGUST
28, 2006 --
LPR
has heard radio newspeople refer to the "one year anniversary" of
Hurricane Katrina. Isn't that kind of talk about as imprecise as, say, "six
month anniversary?"
Reports, some of them possibly intended
for political effect, suggest that New Orleans is still not the same this first
anniversary of Katrina.
August 19th was the fifty-first anniversary of the Winsted Flood that took
seven lives in a city of some 8,000 people.
This photo, looking towards the eastern end of Main Street that remained above
the aptly-named Mad River, was taken last week. Half a century before Katrina,
Winsted was changed by hurricane-driven floodwaters.
Prior to August 19, 1955, stores lined both sides of a narrower Main Street.
The structures on the Mad River side of Main
Street are gone.
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Main
Street, Winsted Connecticut, 51 years after the Flood
of 1955.
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I can recall
seeing a building just before the rise at the eastern end of
Main Street cut in two by the flood, looking like a dollhouse,
with the interior open to view.
And Main Street was widened to make it seem more an interstate highway than
the heart of a small town. Partisan use of
Katrina notwithstanding, the force of Mother Nature is rather greater than
the winds of politics, and leaves, I guess, a more-lasting impact.
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