These stories talk about Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating storms to ever hit the U.S. Lives were lost. Communities were leveled. Thousands of people relocated. Eight years later, memories still burn and the Gulf Coast is still recovering.
By Travis Kiger
I was in Allentown, PA when I heard a storm was headed for the Gulf Coast. Well, more specifically, I’d heard that a storm “may” or “may not” be heading for South Louisiana, which is just the way those things go. Growing up in South Louisiana, hurricane warnings meant a day or two off of school, perfect for windy wet games of tackle football, video games, and anything else not school related. In college, hurricane days were excuses to grab some hurricane daiquiri mix, open the doors to the apartment, and get silly with 30 of your closest compadres. My point is, the “may” or “may not” parts of hurricane warnings usually seemed to err on the side of “may not.” So when word that Katrina, or ‘Dat Bitch Katrina, as my mom would say, was going to crawl on up out of the Gulf, I wasn’t too worried. I was playing golf, drinking Yuengling, and celebrating a buddy’s wedding – in Allentown, PA.
My mom called a couple of times and I didn’t answer. She left a voicemail that she was evacuating to Mississippi with her camper just in case. She lived in Mandeville, LA, a suburb north of New Orleans, separated by the 24-mile long Causeway Bridge and Lake Pontchartrain. She wasn’t particularly worried either. After all, she was getting a few days off of work, and spending that time camping was business as usual.
The storm came and went on a Sunday. I was in New York City with Kenny - also from Louisiana and also in town for the wedding. The day was hot and relaxing. Kenny bought one of those wool fedoras with the feathers in them - the kind you wouldn't expect a college kid to wear. We were in a bar, full of the buzz of being tourists in New York. The bar was loud and even though the news was on, no one gave a damn about the storm down south. The sound was off, but the ticker along the bottom of the screen reported the damage wasn’t that bad. Katrina was a category 5, but considering the wind and the potential for destruction, the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas were not in that bad of shape. I drunk-stumbled to bed that night without bothering to check for an update.
By Monday, the water was rising. I tried to call my mom, but I couldn’t get through. It was when I checked my email that ‘Dat Bitch Katrina began to manifest into something real and consuming. I read emails from my mom, some of them sent hourly, updating me on where she was headed. As the weather worsened, she’d left Mississippi and she was working her way to Florida with a group of evacuees that she’d met at the campground. I imagined the exodus of RVs not so dissimilar to the one in Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, the one led by Randy Quaid before he sacrificed himself to save the human race.
I felt guilty about being in PA, and about partying in NYC the day before. Mostly, I was worried for my family. The campgrounds were crowded, and my mom was running low on cash. Servers were down, so it was getting hard to pay for things. She was worried about having enough money for gas. She was worried about finding gas at all. Eventually, she and her husband pitched in as cooks on a campground they’d found in Florida. They also pitched with some cleanup duties to earn their stay. It seemed like there was a lot of that going on – people pitching in. Suddenly, everyone on the Gulf Coast was a friend.
The cell towers in New Orleans were down, and the ones that worked were overloaded. We flipped our phones open and got busy signal after busy signal. “This call could not be completed” after “This call could not be completed.” My family – my mom and her 5 brothers and sisters, and their kids, and my sister – started copying everyone to email updates, which led to creating a message board. Of course, this type of forum is pretty archaic now, but in ’05, this was cutting edge tech. And it turned out to be a pretty great idea (it wasn’t mine), as no one had consistent cell service. The messages looked like this (Kathy is my mom):
o Kathy and her family are safe in Alabama. No news on the house, yet.
o Travis is in PA. Safe.
o Scott and fam are west and safe. Both rentals are flooded. No word on house.
o Sherry and family back home and have electricity. If need a shower- all welcome.
o Granny is now with Sherry.
o Cindy’s kids are safe. Cindy back in house.
o Kathy in Florida cooking / cleaning to earn stay! Can someone check her house?
o Roads still closed by Kathy’s house.
o Kathy’s fence is down and a tree fell into her bedroom. There is some water.
I was able to change the destination of my flight back home from Louis Armstrong International to Baton Rouge Metropolitan. Kenny flew separately back to Alexandria, LA – where his family was staying. My mom was still in Florida, and I still had not spoken to her directly. An aunt and uncle were staying at my apartment, as I still had electricity. I stayed with my girlfriend, whose entire family had evacuated from New Orleans and was staying in overbooked hotel rooms in Baton Rouge. It all kind of felt like camp at times, with people sleeping on floors and telling stories about their experiences so far. About their survival. Hurricane Katrina Survival Camp.
Even though Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana, it had always seemed peaceful. If there wasn’t a football game on Saturday, it was quiet. But the storm shook things up well before anyone was ready. It felt impossible to go anywhere, because it took hours to get across the city. A trip to the grocery store would take half a day. Everything took half a day. On the LSU campus, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center was converted into a field triage base. The basketball hardwood was unrecognizable as a venue for sport, but looked something from an Eastern European war movie. Fights were breaking out in town. Downtown was quarantined. People started buying - and carrying - guns.
But mostly, people were interested in helping each other.
“How’d ya’ll make out in da’ storm?”
“Yeah, we alright, but we got family had 6’ a water.”
“This is gonna be a bitch.”
And it was. And it still kind of is. I am thankful and fully realize how lucky I am that my family made out ok. The ones that lost houses had insurance and ended up in bigger newer houses. We lost a lot of family photos and belongings, but we didn’t experience real struggle. Our biggest struggle was finding good contractors for repairs, because demand was so high, and many under-qualified entrepreneurs were looking to make a quick boatload of money. But my family made out just fine. The ones that lived in the city moved back to the city, and no one really moved away, or if they did, it wasn’t because of the storm.
I moved away. I graduated from LSU in 2006 and moved to Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Katrina was still recent enough that that was what people wanted to hear about when I met them. Was I there? Did my family suffer? Was there much damage to my home? How is it there now? Like I was some sole surviving prophet with news of that mystic land New Orleans. Some of the questions were loaded with the micro- inequities that typically accompany inquiry into a misunderstood traumatic event. Is your town still there? Was there looting where you were? I’d tell them about being in Pennsylvania and they’d look disappointed. Sometimes I’d embellish the loss of property and drama to satiate their hunger for excitement. So they could tell their friends about this guy from New Orleans that they’d met. How his family was put out of their home for a year. But mostly, I’d shrug and say everything’s fine. We were lucky. I’m thankful for that.
Not everyone in my life was lucky. A friend lived through some particularly hard months during and after the storm. His neighborhood was destroyed, and he lost a friend during a violent dispute in the wake of the storm. Specifically, he watched his homeboy take a cinderblock to the head enough times to erase him. He is still trying to navigate through those feelings of loss.
I had a cousin on my dad’s side of the family who was in prison at the time of the storm. His prison lost power and running water, and the place went bananas. He’s a good storyteller, and paints a pretty vivid image when he recounts those days. It makes my stomach roll over when I hear it. He used the confusion in the state of emergency to get released a little early, and then he skipped town and ran around the country for a while before returning to turn himself in. When I first heard about that, I associated his leaving the state with being a criminal and wanting to be free. He says it was easy for him to leave because it didn’t seem like there was going to be a home to come back to anyway.
Eight years later and living in Florida, the storm and the story of it and what it means to me changes by the season. What is constant is that I value my home in Louisiana in a different way than I could have had I not experienced ‘Dat Bitch Katrina. I understand culture and home as fragile ideas worth protecting. New Orleans became something more to me than the whore I used to visit to get drunk. I find myself watching television about teenage vampires, because it lets me see New Orleans more often. Also, I probably have 87 fleur-de-lis in the house, trying to create some parallel realm where New Orleans and Florida can exist in the same plane. I listen to WWL through an app on my phone, so I can hear Bobby Hebert, the Cajun Cannon, talk about the Saints in his thick accent. My mom sends me care packages of beads and Zapp’s potato chips, and frilly green, purple, and gold boas during Carnival season. This is for protection. This is for preservation.
A poet friend of mine, Chancelier ‘xero’ Skidmore, recently wrote a poem in the persona of New Orleans. He begins, “Mark Twain once said that the rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. I can relate.” This is an often-paraphrased quotation of Twain’s that speaks to my feeling about the city and is the perception of those living there. After the storm, there was a lot of public national speculation as to whether or not it would be worth it to rebuild New Orleans. Nevertheless, Xero continues in his poem, “Feel free to dance in my streets, but remember, this resilience is routine. This recovery is the new regular. There are hammers swinging in the 9th ward.” And he’s right. The resilience is routine.
In 1965, Hurricane Betsy helped flood New Orleans, and my mom’s father hopped in his boat and sped to the rescue of stranded Orleans parishioners who were anxiously waving their arms atop their roofs. And there was talk then about whether or not building in New Orleans was worth it. How long would the city last? Well she’s lasted. She lasted through the fire of 1788. And of 1794. She lasted through the floods of 1816. 1828. 1849. 1874. 1882. 1927 – and Randy Newman wrote that great song. 1965. 1973. And she lasted through ‘Dat Bitch Katrina and the flood of 2005. And she’s lasted in my mom’s New Orleans Yat I hear over the phone. And in the fleur-de-lis hanging high in my living room, and in so many living rooms of so many New Orleanians across the country. This resilience is routine. And I love her all the more for it.
By Brian Allen
Working in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was both the best and worst experience of my professional life.
It was the best because it was journalism under real world, ever changing conditions.
It was the worst because of the devastation and carnage that led to the coverage in the first place.
It’s tough for me to say this - as I work in TV news - but seeing the aftermath of Katrina on TV simply did not do it justice. To fully experience this, you had to smell it and feel it and taste it.
And I did.
For two weeks.
I was dispatched to New Orleans by the TV station I was working for at the time; KLAS in Las Vegas. As the crow flies, Las Vegas and New Orleans are a little more than 1,800 miles apart. But after my time there, it felt a world away.
I have never worked on a story that I so closely associated with a smell. It may sound crass or sarcastic, but I am telling you the truth when I say that for much of my work in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the area smelled like a skunk had just received a perm. There was a pungent odor in the air that was always there. It just did not go away. And that odor would be exacerbated by the heat and humidity the area is famous for. I assume the smell came from stagnant water and chemicals. I tried to tell myself that I was not smelling death. But I am sure I was. Though it is not something I like to think about.
The physical damage was unlike anything I have ever seen. I am a Midwest boy. I know my way around tornadoes and tornado damage. The aftermath of a hurricane like Katrina shamed any images of tornado damage I had in my head. Homes in the area weren’t just damaged by Katrina; they were erased. The only sign they had even been there being a concrete slab of foundation. And in some cases, even that was gone.
What struck me the most is how the victims of all this weren’t bitter. They were mad that it happened. They were upset with what they thought was a lackluster federal response to their pain. But they were not bitter. And I tried to find out why. One woman told me that she couldn’t be bitter, that for better or worse this was home. Another man stopped me in my tracks when I asked him what the lesson was from all of this. He paused and said “Don’t let Katrina steal your soul." Those are words you would expect from a seasoned church pastor. They came from a man who was cleaning up damage and just wanted his old life back.
I will keep my Katrina experiences with me until I am old and grey. I have been a reporter in one form or another for 25 years now. The best work I have done to date was in New Orleans after Katrina. And it’s not my best work because of anything I did. It’s my best work because it was the most raw and the most real story I have ever been immersed in.
By Barclay McConnell
“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”― Brené Brown
On Friday, August 26th, 2005 I was sick in bed in my apartment on Sycamore Street, just a block from the end of the streetcar line at Carrollton and Claiborne. I was listening to weather updates and initial evacuation reports on my clock radio while my sweet, unconcerned cat spooned up beside me.
There had been so many storms that season. For many, I hadn’t bothered to evacuate. But, my gut told me New Orleans was going to take a hit this time. I’d been through countless hurricanes in my thirty-five years on the planet—the full range from minor to major. Luckily only one of them was at the latter end of the spectrum, Hurricane Frederic, back when I was in fourth grade in Mobile, Alabama.
Mobile is like a sister city to New Orleans, only an hour and a half away and similar in its history and culture. Frederic hit Mobile hard but we did not evacuate. I remember my grandfather going outside at the raging height of the storm in full military weather gear. He held on to a brick column supporting the porch and watched a 200-year-old pecan tree with its massive root system being lifted and held suspended in the air, motionless for several full minutes, before being dropped unceremoniously nearby. That night I experienced the eerie calm and quiet of being in the eye of the storm.
After Frederic, we were without power and water for months. The city had been stripped naked of most of its beautiful canopy of live oak trees, and the tornados that ringed the eye of the storm left a path of flattened and twisted devastation. I recall endless days climbing through the debris with my little sister, the high-pitched whine of chainsaws a constant soundtrack, dawn to dusk.
But Frederic was not the norm. Hurricane warnings are just a part of life on the Gulf coast and I considered staying put for Katrina. But the thought of being stranded alone without power or water motivated me, no matter how bad I felt, to evacuate—and quickly, before the exit routes turned into parking lots.
I was too sick to do any serious preparation so I ignored my needling instincts that this was a big one, convincing myself that I would be back home and back to work in a few days’ time. I packed some toiletries, a basket of dirty laundry, my cat, her food and litter box and that’s pretty much it. I took old Highway 90 traveling through the low areas of New Orleans East, which would soon be dramatically and permanently altered. The trip took about two hours longer than usual, but I made it to Mobile and hunkered down with my parents to wait out the storm.
We all know what happened next. In just a few short days the name Katrina superseded all the legendary Gulf coast storms, like Camille and Betsy. In my little corner of New Orleans on Sycamore Street, the floodwaters rose. Houses were flooded. Neighbors who stoically stayed were evacuated by boat. The day after the storm someone got shot at the end of my block and the body floated in the shallow water by the stop sign for days. Two of my friends made their way out of the city by car in the days after, fearing for their lives and facing armed and aggressive bands of looters while searching for a way out. New Orleans was a half-demolished war zone. Other friends waded long distances, through toxic floodwaters, to reach buses that would take them out of the city. Their pets were not allowed to go.
Through all of this I remained in my parents’ house glued to the television for updates, scouring message boards for news of friends with whom I’d lost touch and were now scattered over the U.S. I heard tales of horror from friends all along the Gulf coast who had experiences that would scar them for life.
Unprepared, I spent the next few months wearing donated clothing, waiting to learn whether I still had a job and wondering if I would accept it, if offered. It was December before I was offered my job. But after hearing stories of the high rates of suicide in New Orleans, the toxic residue left after the floodwaters receded and doctors reporting crazy respiratory illnesses and skin conditions, I decided to go somewhere else where I was more likely to thrive. I had been diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease a few years before and my health was already precarious.
I spent my entire 401K supporting myself as I searched for a job, the majority of it going to COBRA health insurance. I eventually took a great leap of faith and borrowed money from a friend to move to the Triangle area of North Carolina. I initially took a low-paying job outside my career area just to have some income until I could get my foot in the door in my field. Eventually I got a good job but it was a long, hard process.
I am writing this eight years and a month after Hurricane Katrina, realizing that in those years I’ve lived in three states and ten different houses. I’ve had six jobs. I have no savings and I’ve just started rebuilding a 401K at age 43. Only two years out of grad school with a ton of medical debt, I was not in a great financial position when the storm hit. But the storm reduced me to living at the poverty level.
The upheaval of Katrina was much more than financial. I am surprised by how emotional I get at a mention or a fleeting image from that time. It is too easy to bring back the insidious anxiety of those months of dread and difficulty. I still feel anger that New Orleans was treated like some sort of red-headed stepchild after the storm and that many felt it was not worth saving. During my apartment hunt in North Carolina, a rental agent went on a red-faced tirade about the waste and absurdity of saving the city, not even considering that I might be someone who left it unwillingly and loved it like an old friend.
There’s still an ache in my heart for New Orleans. I miss my funky Carrollton neighborhood and my quirky neighbors: Mrs. Sterling the busybody with lots of green eye shadow on her wrinkled eyelids who rooted through people’s garbage; Ingrid the grumpy former East German Olympian who owned the beauty parlor at the end of the block; Doc and Helen the elderly hippies next door who smoked lots of pot and sometimes answered the door naked; Fred the semi-famous rock drummer upstairs with the dog named Tater Tot… I have no idea what happened to any of them.
There is still pain. There is nostalgia. But I believe in embracing change and I am sure I am stronger having come through the many challenges of this storm. I lost a life, not my life, but a life. Now it’s time for me to honor this and to heal.
By Tish Williams
Close your eyes for just a minute. Think about your office, your home, your personal belongings, family pictures, all the little things that make your house a home. Now, open your eyes and imagine all of those things gone, overnight. That is what happened to the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Overnight, in Bay St. Louis, I became the director of the Chamber of NO Commerce - not what I planned for when I took the job three years earlier.
The Call Back to Bay St. Louis
In 2000, I took a leap of faith, followed my heart and moved back to Bay St. Louis. Ironically, right out of college I was offered the position of director of the Hancock County, MS Chamber of Commerce. But I turned them down. I was going places. I wasn’t going to stay in this small town forever. I’M GOING NATIONAL! I remember thinking I had a national calling, not really knowing why I thought this. I ended up working for several different national organizations, skidding my life out of control in the process. I spent too much time working, not enough time focused on my financial future, and my kids were left home alone too often. I didn’t exercise or eat right, and I lived a stress-filled life.
When our twin girls were first born, I found myself still focused on my career without integrating my new role as mother. I was flying all over the countryside, working too much, never seeing my husband and new babies. WHY was I focused in this direction? The honest truth was…I was dedicating my life to an organization that could have easily replaced me.
I actually thought through and answered three simple questions: What really matters most to me? What is the source of my passion in life? Where should I focus my energies? All of my answers came back to family and my hometown where my family roots and faith were. In my search to be a better wife/mother/sister/daughter, in my attempt to avoid falling over from high cholesterol, and to provide a better environment for my girls, my husband and I packed up in Baltimore and headed south, back to home in the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Two years later I was offered the job as director of the Hancock Chamber of Commerce. Hopefully, the first job I was offered---will now be my last. And thanks to an unexpected storm in 2005, it has been a challenging yet
rewarding career.
Devastation Was Immense
All but two of the eight Chamber offices Coast-wide were destroyed by Katrina. Two hundred people were dead. More were missing. All communications were lost, and the entire seventy-five mile beachfront was devastated. Destruction from wind and rising water extended more than fifty miles inland. Out of 1,600 businesses countywide, at least 50% were either damaged or destroyed. Overnight, the county’s economy was incomprehensibly shattered. Business owners who worked a lifetime to build their businesses found themselves starting all over again with nothing except hope, faith and a drained retirement account. The lives of 400,000 survivors were changed forever.
But we couldn’t give in and we responded quickly on multiple fronts.
“Failure cannot cope with persistence,” is our mantra.
Only two weeks following Katrina, our Chamber of Commerce re-emerged as the first Business Assistance Center on the Mississippi Coast, bringing all of the resources for small businesses together under one roof. We were the “window to the world” for our businesses and residents. Through our efforts, the Hancock Chamber was recognized nationally as a model for disaster recovery. And in 2006, I was honored to receive the National Phoenix Award by the U.S. Small Business Administration for Outstanding Service by a Public Official. When the President of the United States showed up at the awards presentation, I realized it was a big deal. We weren’t setting out to win awards, we were just making it up as we went along. We did what we could to help our businesses get back up and running as quickly as possible.
Since then, we have literally rebuilt two downtowns from the ground up. The downtown in Bay St. Louis was partially destroyed, and the downtown in Waveland was totally washed away. Local governments received Community Development Block Grant funds to build the harbor and many other projects in Bay St. Louis. And, in Waveland a retail accelerator project was established to restart this new downtown near the waters edge at ground zero. The infrastructure has been completely rebuilt, and all of our roads have been replaced. Our new bridge, which connects us to the rest of the MS Coast, was rebuilt. With its walking path and the most unique display of local art found anywhere, it became a motivating, beautiful symbol of our recovery.
Trees, which were hit hard by Katrina, are being planted throughout the major corridors. Total destruction has been replaced with a new oasis of beautiful landscaping, new roads, sidewalks and homes. And in the aftermath of Katrina, we are painting, dancing, singing, writing, drawing, printing, sculpting—we are creating. Our artists have since displayed their works all over the country.
We addressed the low/moderate income housing in 2007 and 2008 through the establishment of the Hancock Housing Resource Center. This organization was tasked with getting people back in their homes to re-establish our population, labor market and customer base for our businesses. And in 2009, we launched a low interest/ forgivable loan program for small businesses, which has helped rebuild the retail and service sector of our economy, critical for many of the 1,800 businesses countywide, all which were shut down at least temporarily and 50% were severely damaged or destroyed.
Our last major rebuilding project, a new downtown harbor, is set to open in May 2014. This will be the economic catalyst to complete our rebuilding. Today, eight years later with this final milestone on the horizon, we pause to reflect on how far we have come. But we did not get here on our own. Volunteers from all over the country came to help and today still give us so much hope. These volunteers knew before we did that a community without hope would have many challenges, which federal assistance could not address. The people of Hancock County are eternally grateful.
When you witness first-hand the power of the human spirit, people helping people, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a God. And, He has a plan for each of us, whether we are leading a balanced life or a life that seems out of control.
By Kirby Roy III
I was not born in New Orleans, nor was I raised there. But, since my family has more than one hundred years in the city, it will always be part of me. I remember driving down to the Crescent city to visit my relatives. I always knew we were close when I would see the moss on the trees along our route.
After a while, it became routine. One week with my grandparents, one week with Aunty Jean, one week with Aunty Naomi and Uncle Bill, and my last week with cousin Cecilia. And so, my affection for the city encompassed its people as well as its trappings. To be sure, I feasted on beignets in the ‘Quarters, but I also dinned on gumbo in my grandmother’s kitchen.
I grew connected with the soul of people from the bayou and with the humility that can come from people who weather storms. I grew connected to the kindness and sense of community I felt when seeing my grandfather hand out fish to his neighbors when he returned from an expedition in the gulf.
And so, when Katrina hit, I felt a part of myself torn apart, just like the city I loved. I cringed as I heard the stories of despair. I felt blessed that my family was safely evacuated. But I dwelled on the devastation left behind.
It was hard to understand if God was punishing us or testing us. It was hard to think that the home of my memories could be torn asunder in the blink of any eye. The image of bodies floating in the muddy waters of the Mississippi haunted me.
My loss became the catalyst for my novel, Two Roads. Writing was a way to deal with the tragedy of losing part of my childhood. Losing the city that was part of my foundation. I had to express what the people were going through and to tell their story in a way that was real yet still hopefully uplifting. Part of the soul of New Orleans is renewal. Part of its sprit comes from people who believe and have faith beyond today. People from the bayou deal with pain, yet release it in ways that can only be witnessed at Mardi Gras.
I wrote Two Roads through the eyes of two lovers not only coping with the storm and trying to build a life beyond it. They are forced to decide if their future will be in New Orleans or in Atlanta, an issue many of the survivors of Katrina faced.
My Aunt and Uncle were displaced by Katrina, but the city was always in their heart. As time passed, it became apparent that they would never return home. And I began to think of the thousands of people who were in the same condition. These souls would only return for a funeral procession following the music of a 2nd line band. I was blessed to witness a 2nd line band when my Aunt was laid to rest in the city she once called home.
