dollars in aid and supplies to help the beleaguered rescue efforts.
As the people in the affected areas struggled to makes sense of it all, the fingers started pointing. Blame had to be given. The federal government, the state governments, FEMA, Ray Nagin, George Bush, Mike Brown, Michael Chertoff, and Kathleen Blanco all, deservedly or not, suffered accusations of incompetence, neglect and ignorance. People struggling to re-build their lives muttered conspiracy theories claiming it was the Army Corps of Engineers that actually blew up the Industrial Canal levee to save Bourbon Street from the potential of flooding.
Reports of anarchy, looting, raping, and shooting along with many other crimes pervaded the news. The Republicans were pretty certain it was the Democrats that had failed the people. The Democrats were pretty sure it was the Republicans who were to blame. The poor folks implicitly knew it was the rich folks in cahoots with the government that delayed and postponed rescue efforts. It was somebody’s fault. The human fingers had to point. Somebody had to be blamed. The media misreported, the politicians changed their stories.
Time passed, and the media’s attention slowly shifted to events more current and ‘worthy of news’ than the tragedy of the Gulf Coast. 5 months after Hurricane Katrina hit, an occasional report would trickle through the media speaking of how Bourbon Street was back - how tourists are drinking, dancing, and partying along the length of the street. “New Orleans is back!”
5 months after the storm, I walked along a cleared road in the Lower Ninth Ward and observed the swath of nothingness in the area bordering where the Industrial Canal levee had failed. New construction occurring on the levee could be easily viewed. There was a scent in the air of petroleum, garbage, and mildew. Where the canal had failed, a semicircular path could be observed indicating the fan of the wall of water. For 2 to 3 blocks in a semi-circular swath away from the canal breach there was utter destruction. Houses had been splintered into oblivion. Remnants of concrete foundations, wood splinters, electrical wires, and pipes protruded from the ground amidst refrigerators, small tricycles and picture frames. 2 to 3 blocks further into the Lower Ninth more houses were on their foundations. The roofs were crushed, porches collapsed and the cars leaning on their roofs in the front yards.
As I walked through the Lower Ninth, the smells, the silence, and the destruction were all that my senses recorded. I walked and drove for miles and miles through the neighborhood. There was no power, there was no running water, and there was no habitation as far as you could see.
Destroyed houses and destroyed lives were reflected by the infamous ‘X’ markings on the house fronts or on vehicles near the structures, telling the story in shorthand. The markings recorded the grisly tasks of the search and rescue teams as they went house to house looking for the living and the dead. On most structures still standing, spray painted X-graffiti recorded the number of bodies, the conditions of the structures, the search date, and the search team’s identification markers. The markers were being placed as a check off to indicate a completed search and to help the body removal squads as they followed the searchers removing what lay within.
St. Bernard Parish had been destroyed. Many houses stood on their foundations in complete destruction; raging waters had transplanted others. Throughout the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, the same silence and emptiness still reigned. The neighborhood I walked through was clearly a white collar, higher income area. Once beautiful brick homes were gutted or in the process of being gutted. “For Sale by Owner” signs were posted on lot after lot like a bad joke, with graffiti on the garage doors reading “We are OK and are in Georgia,” “Have you seen my Irish Terrier? Call me!” or, “If you loot I will shoot!” or, “Hungry? Serving dog gumbo!”
I observed the tell tale black-yellow colors on the sides of the houses indicating the level of the water reaching 10 to 20 feet in height, drawing a thin line crowning the make-shift billboards people left on their former homes as they hurriedly left the area.
Guess what? 6 months after Katrina struck, New Orleans was not back as the media would have liked us to believe. New Orleans had been irrevocably altered. Bourbon Street may have projected an aura of normality, but 10 minutes away, the traffic lights still did not work. The empty homes of some 900,000 people still lay vacant and destroyed.
Almost 5 years after the storm, New Orleans appears to have recovered and is coming back to her original grandeur. There are still many destroyed and unoccupied houses. The Lower Ninth has been mostly cleared of debris, but it exudes a feeling of emptiness. St. Bernard Parish is still recovering…Most who have stayed and re-built have not completely recovered from the raging waters of Katrina’s wrath. Most still are rebuilding and trying to recover from what has been described as an atomic bomb type of destruction.
Noted as well is that something in the human collective spirit requires a scapegoat. It has to be somebody’s fault. This book is about a hurricane and the mass of destruction she breathed into being. This book is an attempt to communicate the magnitude of her fury and her destructive reach. This book has been written to tell the story of the people of Katrina. The tales are told through the voices and eyes of the people who lived and continue to live through Katrina’s wrath.
The stories are of the people who were on the ground, saving lives, saving animals, recovering from total destruction, and providing all manner of support during the chaos.
This is not a political book. However, for a subject of this nature, political influences and perspectives may require discussion. This book may reflect the politics of the people who have generously shared their perspective…and, as it is their right, these politics will be presented. This is not a book being written to pass blame or to jump on any number of bandwagons or political agendas.
This book is, in every way an attempt to speak to the truth of Hurricane Katrina. This book is an attempt to put the magnitude of the event into perspective. This book’s purpose is to share the pathos of the human story that exists for those people who directly experienced the storm.
Unlike other books which have come out since the hurricane, this book does not have an agenda. Many will likely be disappointed that it doesn’t cast blame to the federal government and that it probably will be useless as a slinger of political ideology. Katrina was a hurricane. She did what hurricanes do--she weaved destruction. Could New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have been better prepared? Probably! Will people learn from the past and try to be better prepared? Some will and some won’t. There were no surprises during those weeks in August and September of 2005. Maybe we need to learn how to respond quickly when an entire social infrastructure is brought to its knees. If anything, the toll that Hurricane Katrina took on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was significantly less than what had been predicted.
Never before in the history of the United States had so many people been rescued so quickly through the efforts of the largest local, state, and federal governmental rescue effort in history. Not embellishment, not spin…just a fact. Could all involved have done better? Probably! Will all concerned deal with it better in the future? Hopefully!
This book is about the people, their thoughts, their feelings, their experiences, and future concerns. This book is written for the people of New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and those special souls who spent many months away from home trying to help strangers. It is written for those special men and women in the New Orleans and local Gulf Coast Fire and Police Departments who were at ground zero and began rescue efforts before the winds had abated.
This book is about the pendulum of human behavior swinging from the most heroic to the most deplorable and everything in between. This book is about American people living through the greatest natural disaster this country has ever seen.
This book is about our humanity, our society and our culture. This book is about a freight train screamin’.
Cary Black
