Has it really been five years?
Hundreds of mourners in the southern US state of Louisiana have attended a symbolic mock funeral to commemorate five years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the area.
The funeral on Saturday was one of dozens of events planned to mark the fifth anniversary of the massive storm that wrecked the US coast along the Gulf of Mexico.
Mourners dropped notes, cards and letters, many of them stained with tears, into a steel-gray casket.
One letter written by a child in red crayon said: "Go away from us."
Another note recalled one of the 1,800 victims of Katrina: "R.I.P. Gloria, I will always love you."
The casket was later interred under a dark sky as rain pounded umbrellas.
"I asked for no more suffering, for everything to come back to where it was," Walter Gifford, 47, said of his note.
Gifford rebuilt his home and moved back to the area near New Orleans after the storm. "I ask for the sadness for so many to end."
Nancy Volpe, 61, who moved back into her house in November, said she cried a lot while writing her letter.
"But I'm finally home. I can't tell you how much better I know the meaning of that word - home," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment