Some tragedies take no effort at all to happen.

One moment life is perfect and normal and everything we expect it to be.

Then it changes in an instant.

No warning, no chance to avoid it.

It just happens.

Old disaster is one of those agents of tragedy that seems to sneak up on us and bring ruin

into our lives.

Fire, flood, tropical storms, just watching the news each night can give us a glimpse

into yet one more episode of pain and suffering that no one saw coming.

Other tragedies though only exist because we have ushered them into our world.

That we has sometimes been humanity as a collective and sometimes just one broken individual.

Genocide or patricide, school shootings or terrorism, regardless of the source, these are

tragedies that couldn't have existed without human involvement.

It doesn't make them any less painful, mind you.

Sometimes it even makes them worse.

These moments of tragedy are thankfully very spread out.

We have a chance to breathe and move on, time to recoup, but give a city enough time and

those tragedies can start to pile up.

The older the place, the deeper the pain, a murder here, a disaster there.

Throw in a war or two for good measure, soon its entire history can feel like one long

nightmare.

And nowhere is that more true than in the city that most would call the big easy.

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