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You asked for it (well, not really), and I've finally completed my story about Katrina. 'm putting it into 3 parts because it's so bloody long. Warning, it gets a bit tedious, but everything I wrote about was important to me.
I have been wondering, for some time now, how I would be able to explain all the events surrounding Katrina to those of you who haven’t lived in the south. You see, many times I’ve tried to write this account down, only to stop after a couple paragraphs because trying to get a grasp on the entire incident is too much. I have tried to look at the whole picture, tried to get a grip on everything going on, but it was too immense. I’m not saying I understand everything that happened, and I’m not saying I’m completely unbiased. In fact I’m completely biased on everything that happened. I can’t help that. I have a very deep emotional investment in New Orleans, so my outlook on everything that happened is skewed. I’m not looking for sympathy either. Everything I had to deal with during the aftermath of Katrina was considerably tamer than most other people. What I hope to achieve with this is I want to give you all a better understanding of what it was like to be down here. I can’t flood your senses with the sights, the smells, and the sounds (or lack thereof) that I encountered, but by giving what I hope is a detailed depiction of everything that happened to us you can comprehend our position in life right now.
When I first saw Katrina, she was a little class 1 hurricane passing over the southern portion of Florida. I thought “huh, that reminds me of the way Andrew traveled back in the early 90’s.” (Andrew was the last hurricane to have any impact on Louisiana). I promptly forgot about the storm. You see, New Orleans has a long history of dodging bullets. I can’t tell you how many times we sat and watched as hurricanes came raging into the Gulf of Mexico, only to strike the Florida panhandle or Mississippi. Once a year it seems like the city of New Orleans would be ordered to evacuate. We’d hole up in a hotel in Birmingham or Texas and sit in the room pissed off waiting until the hurricane evacuation order was lifted. It gave us a big head. By 2005, we treated these evacuations like a really crappy vacation . Bring a weekend’s worth of clothes and the pictures from home and wait. This is one of the reasons why the evacuation process was slower than you’d expect. On the other hand, we’d also have someone give the same Doomsday speech. Every time a hurricane greater than Category 3 came a little too close to the city, people would start talking about how the city would fill up with water and sink into the Gulf of Mexico. Every time we evacuated, these thoughts would permeate and distort our common sense, yet things would always turn out just fine. We had acquired a “boy who cried wolf” mentality. This mentality destroyed so many things, both prized possessions and lives. The family that stayed with us for a while, Gilbert and Janice Collins, lost essentially all of the pictures of the son they lost years ago because they thought it would be safe to put their pictures on the top shelf of a book case. The water reached the roof of their 9th Ward home, destroying everything. The only picture they have of him hangs around Gilbert’s neck today. He never takes it off.
The Saturday before the storm we were nervous, but not really worrying. My brother was still planning on flying home the Monday after I graduated. The rest of us were ready to head back home on Wednesday. By Sunday, however, the news had soured on us. Katrina was getting stronger and stronger, and moving closer to the eastern Louisiana border. We were starting to watch the news constantly. Every hour, we’d glue ourselves to The Weather Channel to find out the latest hurricane data. What was her current wind speed? Was she changing direction? How wide was the storm?
Fortunately, Sunday was my graduation. We were able to pull ourselves away from the news. This helped all of us keep our sanity a little longer (but not much). You know, graduation was the first time I realized what could happen. I was entering the graduates prep room when one of the ladies handed me a form to fill out about where my graduation photos should be sent. I realized that I might not have a home by tomorrow. It was a really unsettling feeling. It did make me feel good when some of the people I met at graduation offered their sincere condolences.
By the time we had returned from Columbus to my Grandma’s house in Xenia, the news was worse than ever. Not only had Katrina moved closer to hitting Louisiana, but she was still strong and looking to keep her strength right until she made landfall. This was starting to look like another Camille. Sunday night turned into a haze of phone calls, messages, internet searches, and e-mails. We needed to know where everyone was and they needed to know where we were. We wanted to know about all of our friends and family and all of their friends and family. All night it was “Where are you evacuating to?” “What about your parents?” “______ is heading to _______” “Did you get in touch with _______?” By Sunday night the phone lines were useless. Taylor had to teach us how to send text messages so that we could contact anyone with a cell phone.
My mother called around 11pm to say she was somewhere in Mississippi. She brought the cat, and she was heading to a hotel in Alabama with her boyfriend, John. Taylor told me that my cousin, James, was sticking it out with his friend’s grandma in Slidell. His friend, Josh, had to stay with his grandma because she had a bad leg and couldn’t travel. We had no idea where any of my mother’s family was, except for James, and I feared for my maternal grandparents. They were stubborn folks and their home was located in pretty low-lying territory. They didn’t evacuate for Betsy and none of us could see them leaving now. My friend Laddie had left with his family for his sister’s house in Baton Rouge. I couldn’t get in touch with any of my other friends. Unless they had a cell phone, there was no way to contact anyone else. My step-mom’s parents had taken our dog (the dog was staying with Bob and Harriet while my parents were up in Ohio) with them to Birmingham. They had to load that fat ass dog on to their van with a board since neither one could lift her.
By Midnight on Sunday, we had lost contact with a bunch of people. All we could do was sit in the living room and wait. The news was always the same. “We’re waiting for landfall” “Landfall is expected to be somewhere between Biloxi and New Orleans”. Yet, we watched. We watched, hoping it would veer anywhere but where it was going. I really don’t know how I managed to fall asleep that night. I guess all the excitement was too much and I collapsed in exhaustion.
I woke up the next morning to the sounds of CNN and The Weather Channel. Katrina had struck just east of Slidell, where my cousin, his best friend, and Josh’s grandma were staying. All day, communications were useless. I didn’t know what had happened to my mom or any of her family. We just sat and watched as camera crews filmed debris flying and all of those horrors. It was actually kind of funny to see these foolhardy reporters step out of their rooms and try and stand in the wind. Yet, it didn’t look so bad for New Orleans. It was windy and it was rainy, but we didn’t see any really appallingly extensive damage to the city. By maybe noon, we were preparing to head back on Wednesday. My dad figured the highways would be open by then.
The most shocking part of the destruction in the city was what happened to the Twin Span and the Superdome. Seeing entire sections of the Twin Span knocked out was pretty scary seeing as I had crossed that bridge so many times. I couldn’t work out the idea of it losing entire sections to storm surge.
The Superdome is a different matter. The Superdome is a symbol of New Orleans. It’s been there all my life, and it served as a beacon of hope during hurricanes. You see, there are only two buildings that I would trust with my life in the event of a hurricane. The first is Children’s Hospital. The building has always been a third home to me. It’s equipped with three weeks of potable water, food, security, and medical staff. The other building is the Superdome. We, everyone in New Orleans, always knew that if you couldn’t get out of the city in the event of a hurricane, then you head to the Superdome. No hurricane could destroy that building. Well, we were wrong. Let me tell you something. Seeing the roof ripped off of an “indestructible” building is a pretty heavy blow to one’s outlook on life.
You know, when I learned about the breach in the levees, I couldn’t grasp the consequences. I think my whole family blanked out when we saw water pouring into New Orleans. My dad later told me it was just about the worst day of his life. I really don’t know what to say about this point in my tale. You see, I thought it was the end. I kept thinking “We can repair a broken roof” “We can replace our TV and our stuff”, but when the levee was breached I thought “Good Lord, how are they going to be able to fix this? The city’s under water. We’ll never pump it out.” Then there was another breach, and it killed us all. It sealed the deal, so to speak. Later we learned that the levees failed because of human error. They weren’t able to stand up to specifications the Army Corps of Engineers set for the levees. They didn’t take into consideration the soil strength, so when the storm surges pushed on the levees, the ground gave way and the levees collapsed. Our hopes of leaving for Louisiana on Wednesday were dropped. We were now planning on staying in Xenia for weeks, maybe months. At this point I was positive my mom’s apartment had been flooded since it was so close to the lake. I didn’t really know what to think about my dad’s house, because I knew it was on relatively high ground; however my Dad was certain we were flooded.
Then came the looting. That really got to me. You see, it’s one thing to see a man break into a Wal-Mart or Sav-a-Center for food and water. But to break into a Footlocker for shoes (when I saw that on CNN my remark was “Something tells me he’s not carrying wading boots in that bag”) or DVD’s from Wal-Mart is stupid. People became ravenous beasts, taking everything available to them . I also found out that at this point men were trying to get stuff from Children’s Hospital. The looting insulted me because it made my city look bad. It made us look like animals. I didn’t mind it when I saw cops getting stuff from Wal-Mart. They were a major retail store, they could handle it. When the malls and smaller stores got hit, that started to piss me off. By this point my dad firmly believed that our house had been looted (he did not appreciate it when I told him there was nothing worth taking in our house). Pat was scared that looters had taken the safe box containing their mortgage and Graces adoption papers. Certainly something to concern yourself with, but the box was too heavy to be easily moved in a shopping cart.
So as you can see, my family did not have high hopes for getting back home any time soon. My Dad had become a pessimist to the highest degree. By his recollection, the house was wind-damaged, looted, and flooded. This was because he was watching too much news. We all were. All the news showed of New Orleans was looting, death, destruction, uncontrollable fires, and water. What were we to think? My step-mom was in a near-panic by this point. She was feeding the fires of my dad’s worries and he was doing the same to her. I and my brother were trying to keep calm. Taylor was keeping in contact with his friends via text messages, and I was busying myself on the computer. Truth be told, though, the stress was getting to all of us. I already mentioned how my Dad and Pat were starting to stress out, but it was affecting me and Taylor as well. Taylor was becoming moody and started complaining more and more about things, and I became moodier than usual. At the time, I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my composure and it was everyone else who was losing their cool, but if I were being honest with myself it was apparent that I was losing it too. I became more demanding with everyone. I was angry with anyone who didn’t try to check on us and offer their support. I got mad at friends when they didn’t respond to me and I got mad at one friend because I took something she said the wrong way. Clearly, I was stressed out. I’m sorry for that.
I became addicted to NOLA.com, especially their forums. People would post the conditions of different neighborhoods on the site, and sometimes a picture would get through. I scoured the internet looking for pictures of the Uptown region (my neighborhood). This both helped and hurt me. It helped me because I found a lot of photographic evidence suggesting that the Uptown region was not flooded. However, the downside to using the internet was the rumors. There were multiple rumors of Children’s Hospital being taken over by drug addicts which scared the hell out of me. Later on, the Director of Human Resources, a man I trusted completely, sent out a statement saying the hospital was fine.
We were finally starting to get pissed off about the political problems surrounding Katrina. We were all wondering “Where is the National Guard?” “Where is Councilman ___________?” “Where is the President?” At first, I wasn’t sure what was going on. I figured it would take a day or two to get the National Guard in the Gulf Coast region. A couple days turned into five days, and we were so infuriated we couldn’t even really talk about it. It seemed that everyone failed us. Our governor didn’t plan well enough for the hurricane. She didn’t get on the federal government’s ass about more troops and supplies for us. The president didn’t even look at the devastation until days later, when he flew over the disaster area aboard Airforce One. That hardly qualifies in my book. I didn’t even see one of our senators until weeks later. Even city officials abandoned us.
Despite all of this, I have the utmost respect for two officials. The first is New Orleans’ Mayor, Ray Nagin. He stayed in the city pretty much the whole time, except to move his children to Houston, Texas. He fought hard to get New Orleanians the supplies we needed, and he was the first, when things looked really bad for New Orleans, to start screaming and shouting. I’m not sure you heard his radio broadcast, but his “We’re not going to have any more goddamned press conferences until we get some help. There’s no one here, there’s no help” speech was exactly what we all needed to hear. All of our other officials were saying how good things were going and how good the federal government’s response was to the hurricane. Mayor Nagin said “Bullshit”, which is what we were all feeling. He was the first official to start screaming that things were going to hell. The second official I respect was our Lt. Governor, Mitch Landrieu. He didn’t give press conferences or any political crap like that. He did corpse duty. Yes, corpse duty. Mitch Landrieu actually went out with search and rescue teams and helped find bodies in that disgusting water. I can’t think of any other politician who would do that. Hell, I can’t think of many cops who would break into flooded homes in search for rotting bodies.
By this point, it was clear we were stuck in Xenia, Ohio. So we started to make the best of it. Taylor and I spent countless hours at the Xenia Library, mostly because we couldn’t stand to watch the news any longer . We did learn our lesson about telling people where we were from though. One day Taylor, I, and one of the neighborhood girls were walking around a garage sale when I absentmindedly mentioned we were from New Orleans and we were just killing time in Xenia. They told us to take anything we wanted for free. I felt terrible. I didn’t want their charity, nor did I want their pity. My family was doing alright. We weren’t stuck in some disgusting hotel room eating McDonalds every day like so many other New Orleanians. This happened to us a couple times. We would tell somebody where we were from, and we’d have to spend the next 20 minutes telling them we didn’t know what had happened to our house or what we were going to do in the future. Ironically, it takes a long time to say “I don’t know.” Of course, after a while we started to get a sick sense of humor. Every time we saw a benefit for Katrina victims we’d say “hey, let’s go and see if they’ll give us some cash”.
Truthfully though, we were just trying to avoid dwelling on things. I still had not heard from my mom. I didn’t know if her parents were even alive. I didn’t know what had happened to my cousin, though Taylor assured me he was ok. Every night I tried to call people, but it was futile. Most of the phones lines and a lot of the cellular towers had been destroyed in the hurricane, so all of our lines of communication among evacuees were gone. We had to tell all of our Yankee friends and family to e-mail us or call us at my grandma’s house. My dad even set up shop at my Uncle’s computer, connecting with his department and other hospital staff. He and the other department heads worked out a plan to ensure that everyone was guaranteed their job and a paycheck until they were able to return. Every day became a series of who we had contacted, who we had not heard from, and rumors.
It wasn’t until a week later that I heard from my Mom. I followed my dad’s advice and called her work, Target. Lo and behold, there she was. She told me that she got back three days after the storm. She also told me that my cat Tigger had disappeared somewhere in Alabama. I was a little pissed with my mom. Not only had she been safe the whole time I was trying to call her, but she was home and working as if everything were just fine. Fortunately, she told me that her parents were fine along with her siblings, so while I was mad, I was still relieved to hear everyone survived.
Now that we had found everyone, we were getting bored. Along with that, my Grandma and my uncle were getting tired of having us stay with them. I’m not kidding here; they were getting tired of it. You see my uncle and my grandma enjoy their routine. They enjoy doing things their way, and we were messing up that routine. I’m not saying they were wrong for this, it’s just who they are. We were trying our best to stay out of their way and not be a burden, but it was clear we had worn out our welcome. So we made plans to visit my step-mom’s family in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
First, we visited my uncle Jim and his wife Margaret in Cleveland. It was great for my baby sister because she had my cousin Katherine to play with. In Cleveland we had to share a hotel for a couple days, but it was nice to sleep on a bed (I was sleeping on the floor at my uncle’s house). It was also nice to have some of my aunt Margaret’s cooking. In Xenia, we were eating fast food or restaurant food every night, and having a home-cooked meal was a nice change. Being in Cleveland also gave us the chance to see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We spent hours there, it was fun. It also gave me and Taylor a chance to walk around a different town for a while. Like I said, we were just trying to keep ourselves from going crazy.
After Cleveland, we left for Pittsburgh, where we stayed with my Uncle John, Aunt Sue, and my cousin Ben. It was nice to be surrounded by my step-mom’s family. It was a different setting. We weren’t watching the news every 20 minutes wondering what was happening. Around this time, Pat’s parents decided to leave the hotel in Birmingham for their home in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. My grandfather, Bob, was determined to see what had happened to his home. So he packed their van with food and water, bleach and tarp, and other tools and left for Mississippi. It was a foolish thing to do. He didn’t know the road conditions or what services were available in that area. If he were to run out of gas, where would he go? All of that being said, if it were me, I would have done the same thing. Call it stubbornness if you want, but I was just as determined to get home. I’d have swum across the Mississippi if it meant getting home. When Bob and Harriett got home, they found the area was devastated, yet their home was in very good shape. Their fence was gone, and their trees were down, but their home was intact. They were very lucky.
I ended up celebrating my birthday in Pittsburgh. The family brought me to the Texas Roadhouse where my uncle Dan told them it was my birthday. This meant they pulled out a saddle and a large foam cowboy hat and had me sit on it while they sang their version of “happy birthday”. For my birthday, I got a digital camera which would prove to be extremely valuable in the coming months. I guess this part was unnecessary, but I thought I’d include it because it was amusing.
I have been wondering, for some time now, how I would be able to explain all the events surrounding Katrina to those of you who haven’t lived in the south. You see, many times I’ve tried to write this account down, only to stop after a couple paragraphs because trying to get a grasp on the entire incident is too much. I have tried to look at the whole picture, tried to get a grip on everything going on, but it was too immense. I’m not saying I understand everything that happened, and I’m not saying I’m completely unbiased. In fact I’m completely biased on everything that happened. I can’t help that. I have a very deep emotional investment in New Orleans, so my outlook on everything that happened is skewed. I’m not looking for sympathy either. Everything I had to deal with during the aftermath of Katrina was considerably tamer than most other people. What I hope to achieve with this is I want to give you all a better understanding of what it was like to be down here. I can’t flood your senses with the sights, the smells, and the sounds (or lack thereof) that I encountered, but by giving what I hope is a detailed depiction of everything that happened to us you can comprehend our position in life right now.
When I first saw Katrina, she was a little class 1 hurricane passing over the southern portion of Florida. I thought “huh, that reminds me of the way Andrew traveled back in the early 90’s.” (Andrew was the last hurricane to have any impact on Louisiana). I promptly forgot about the storm. You see, New Orleans has a long history of dodging bullets. I can’t tell you how many times we sat and watched as hurricanes came raging into the Gulf of Mexico, only to strike the Florida panhandle or Mississippi. Once a year it seems like the city of New Orleans would be ordered to evacuate. We’d hole up in a hotel in Birmingham or Texas and sit in the room pissed off waiting until the hurricane evacuation order was lifted. It gave us a big head. By 2005, we treated these evacuations like a really crappy vacation . Bring a weekend’s worth of clothes and the pictures from home and wait. This is one of the reasons why the evacuation process was slower than you’d expect. On the other hand, we’d also have someone give the same Doomsday speech. Every time a hurricane greater than Category 3 came a little too close to the city, people would start talking about how the city would fill up with water and sink into the Gulf of Mexico. Every time we evacuated, these thoughts would permeate and distort our common sense, yet things would always turn out just fine. We had acquired a “boy who cried wolf” mentality. This mentality destroyed so many things, both prized possessions and lives. The family that stayed with us for a while, Gilbert and Janice Collins, lost essentially all of the pictures of the son they lost years ago because they thought it would be safe to put their pictures on the top shelf of a book case. The water reached the roof of their 9th Ward home, destroying everything. The only picture they have of him hangs around Gilbert’s neck today. He never takes it off.
The Saturday before the storm we were nervous, but not really worrying. My brother was still planning on flying home the Monday after I graduated. The rest of us were ready to head back home on Wednesday. By Sunday, however, the news had soured on us. Katrina was getting stronger and stronger, and moving closer to the eastern Louisiana border. We were starting to watch the news constantly. Every hour, we’d glue ourselves to The Weather Channel to find out the latest hurricane data. What was her current wind speed? Was she changing direction? How wide was the storm?
Fortunately, Sunday was my graduation. We were able to pull ourselves away from the news. This helped all of us keep our sanity a little longer (but not much). You know, graduation was the first time I realized what could happen. I was entering the graduates prep room when one of the ladies handed me a form to fill out about where my graduation photos should be sent. I realized that I might not have a home by tomorrow. It was a really unsettling feeling. It did make me feel good when some of the people I met at graduation offered their sincere condolences.
By the time we had returned from Columbus to my Grandma’s house in Xenia, the news was worse than ever. Not only had Katrina moved closer to hitting Louisiana, but she was still strong and looking to keep her strength right until she made landfall. This was starting to look like another Camille. Sunday night turned into a haze of phone calls, messages, internet searches, and e-mails. We needed to know where everyone was and they needed to know where we were. We wanted to know about all of our friends and family and all of their friends and family. All night it was “Where are you evacuating to?” “What about your parents?” “______ is heading to _______” “Did you get in touch with _______?” By Sunday night the phone lines were useless. Taylor had to teach us how to send text messages so that we could contact anyone with a cell phone.
My mother called around 11pm to say she was somewhere in Mississippi. She brought the cat, and she was heading to a hotel in Alabama with her boyfriend, John. Taylor told me that my cousin, James, was sticking it out with his friend’s grandma in Slidell. His friend, Josh, had to stay with his grandma because she had a bad leg and couldn’t travel. We had no idea where any of my mother’s family was, except for James, and I feared for my maternal grandparents. They were stubborn folks and their home was located in pretty low-lying territory. They didn’t evacuate for Betsy and none of us could see them leaving now. My friend Laddie had left with his family for his sister’s house in Baton Rouge. I couldn’t get in touch with any of my other friends. Unless they had a cell phone, there was no way to contact anyone else. My step-mom’s parents had taken our dog (the dog was staying with Bob and Harriet while my parents were up in Ohio) with them to Birmingham. They had to load that fat ass dog on to their van with a board since neither one could lift her.
By Midnight on Sunday, we had lost contact with a bunch of people. All we could do was sit in the living room and wait. The news was always the same. “We’re waiting for landfall” “Landfall is expected to be somewhere between Biloxi and New Orleans”. Yet, we watched. We watched, hoping it would veer anywhere but where it was going. I really don’t know how I managed to fall asleep that night. I guess all the excitement was too much and I collapsed in exhaustion.
I woke up the next morning to the sounds of CNN and The Weather Channel. Katrina had struck just east of Slidell, where my cousin, his best friend, and Josh’s grandma were staying. All day, communications were useless. I didn’t know what had happened to my mom or any of her family. We just sat and watched as camera crews filmed debris flying and all of those horrors. It was actually kind of funny to see these foolhardy reporters step out of their rooms and try and stand in the wind. Yet, it didn’t look so bad for New Orleans. It was windy and it was rainy, but we didn’t see any really appallingly extensive damage to the city. By maybe noon, we were preparing to head back on Wednesday. My dad figured the highways would be open by then.
The most shocking part of the destruction in the city was what happened to the Twin Span and the Superdome. Seeing entire sections of the Twin Span knocked out was pretty scary seeing as I had crossed that bridge so many times. I couldn’t work out the idea of it losing entire sections to storm surge.
The Superdome is a different matter. The Superdome is a symbol of New Orleans. It’s been there all my life, and it served as a beacon of hope during hurricanes. You see, there are only two buildings that I would trust with my life in the event of a hurricane. The first is Children’s Hospital. The building has always been a third home to me. It’s equipped with three weeks of potable water, food, security, and medical staff. The other building is the Superdome. We, everyone in New Orleans, always knew that if you couldn’t get out of the city in the event of a hurricane, then you head to the Superdome. No hurricane could destroy that building. Well, we were wrong. Let me tell you something. Seeing the roof ripped off of an “indestructible” building is a pretty heavy blow to one’s outlook on life.
You know, when I learned about the breach in the levees, I couldn’t grasp the consequences. I think my whole family blanked out when we saw water pouring into New Orleans. My dad later told me it was just about the worst day of his life. I really don’t know what to say about this point in my tale. You see, I thought it was the end. I kept thinking “We can repair a broken roof” “We can replace our TV and our stuff”, but when the levee was breached I thought “Good Lord, how are they going to be able to fix this? The city’s under water. We’ll never pump it out.” Then there was another breach, and it killed us all. It sealed the deal, so to speak. Later we learned that the levees failed because of human error. They weren’t able to stand up to specifications the Army Corps of Engineers set for the levees. They didn’t take into consideration the soil strength, so when the storm surges pushed on the levees, the ground gave way and the levees collapsed. Our hopes of leaving for Louisiana on Wednesday were dropped. We were now planning on staying in Xenia for weeks, maybe months. At this point I was positive my mom’s apartment had been flooded since it was so close to the lake. I didn’t really know what to think about my dad’s house, because I knew it was on relatively high ground; however my Dad was certain we were flooded.
Then came the looting. That really got to me. You see, it’s one thing to see a man break into a Wal-Mart or Sav-a-Center for food and water. But to break into a Footlocker for shoes (when I saw that on CNN my remark was “Something tells me he’s not carrying wading boots in that bag”) or DVD’s from Wal-Mart is stupid. People became ravenous beasts, taking everything available to them . I also found out that at this point men were trying to get stuff from Children’s Hospital. The looting insulted me because it made my city look bad. It made us look like animals. I didn’t mind it when I saw cops getting stuff from Wal-Mart. They were a major retail store, they could handle it. When the malls and smaller stores got hit, that started to piss me off. By this point my dad firmly believed that our house had been looted (he did not appreciate it when I told him there was nothing worth taking in our house). Pat was scared that looters had taken the safe box containing their mortgage and Graces adoption papers. Certainly something to concern yourself with, but the box was too heavy to be easily moved in a shopping cart.
So as you can see, my family did not have high hopes for getting back home any time soon. My Dad had become a pessimist to the highest degree. By his recollection, the house was wind-damaged, looted, and flooded. This was because he was watching too much news. We all were. All the news showed of New Orleans was looting, death, destruction, uncontrollable fires, and water. What were we to think? My step-mom was in a near-panic by this point. She was feeding the fires of my dad’s worries and he was doing the same to her. I and my brother were trying to keep calm. Taylor was keeping in contact with his friends via text messages, and I was busying myself on the computer. Truth be told, though, the stress was getting to all of us. I already mentioned how my Dad and Pat were starting to stress out, but it was affecting me and Taylor as well. Taylor was becoming moody and started complaining more and more about things, and I became moodier than usual. At the time, I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my composure and it was everyone else who was losing their cool, but if I were being honest with myself it was apparent that I was losing it too. I became more demanding with everyone. I was angry with anyone who didn’t try to check on us and offer their support. I got mad at friends when they didn’t respond to me and I got mad at one friend because I took something she said the wrong way. Clearly, I was stressed out. I’m sorry for that.
I became addicted to NOLA.com, especially their forums. People would post the conditions of different neighborhoods on the site, and sometimes a picture would get through. I scoured the internet looking for pictures of the Uptown region (my neighborhood). This both helped and hurt me. It helped me because I found a lot of photographic evidence suggesting that the Uptown region was not flooded. However, the downside to using the internet was the rumors. There were multiple rumors of Children’s Hospital being taken over by drug addicts which scared the hell out of me. Later on, the Director of Human Resources, a man I trusted completely, sent out a statement saying the hospital was fine.
We were finally starting to get pissed off about the political problems surrounding Katrina. We were all wondering “Where is the National Guard?” “Where is Councilman ___________?” “Where is the President?” At first, I wasn’t sure what was going on. I figured it would take a day or two to get the National Guard in the Gulf Coast region. A couple days turned into five days, and we were so infuriated we couldn’t even really talk about it. It seemed that everyone failed us. Our governor didn’t plan well enough for the hurricane. She didn’t get on the federal government’s ass about more troops and supplies for us. The president didn’t even look at the devastation until days later, when he flew over the disaster area aboard Airforce One. That hardly qualifies in my book. I didn’t even see one of our senators until weeks later. Even city officials abandoned us.
Despite all of this, I have the utmost respect for two officials. The first is New Orleans’ Mayor, Ray Nagin. He stayed in the city pretty much the whole time, except to move his children to Houston, Texas. He fought hard to get New Orleanians the supplies we needed, and he was the first, when things looked really bad for New Orleans, to start screaming and shouting. I’m not sure you heard his radio broadcast, but his “We’re not going to have any more goddamned press conferences until we get some help. There’s no one here, there’s no help” speech was exactly what we all needed to hear. All of our other officials were saying how good things were going and how good the federal government’s response was to the hurricane. Mayor Nagin said “Bullshit”, which is what we were all feeling. He was the first official to start screaming that things were going to hell. The second official I respect was our Lt. Governor, Mitch Landrieu. He didn’t give press conferences or any political crap like that. He did corpse duty. Yes, corpse duty. Mitch Landrieu actually went out with search and rescue teams and helped find bodies in that disgusting water. I can’t think of any other politician who would do that. Hell, I can’t think of many cops who would break into flooded homes in search for rotting bodies.
By this point, it was clear we were stuck in Xenia, Ohio. So we started to make the best of it. Taylor and I spent countless hours at the Xenia Library, mostly because we couldn’t stand to watch the news any longer . We did learn our lesson about telling people where we were from though. One day Taylor, I, and one of the neighborhood girls were walking around a garage sale when I absentmindedly mentioned we were from New Orleans and we were just killing time in Xenia. They told us to take anything we wanted for free. I felt terrible. I didn’t want their charity, nor did I want their pity. My family was doing alright. We weren’t stuck in some disgusting hotel room eating McDonalds every day like so many other New Orleanians. This happened to us a couple times. We would tell somebody where we were from, and we’d have to spend the next 20 minutes telling them we didn’t know what had happened to our house or what we were going to do in the future. Ironically, it takes a long time to say “I don’t know.” Of course, after a while we started to get a sick sense of humor. Every time we saw a benefit for Katrina victims we’d say “hey, let’s go and see if they’ll give us some cash”.
Truthfully though, we were just trying to avoid dwelling on things. I still had not heard from my mom. I didn’t know if her parents were even alive. I didn’t know what had happened to my cousin, though Taylor assured me he was ok. Every night I tried to call people, but it was futile. Most of the phones lines and a lot of the cellular towers had been destroyed in the hurricane, so all of our lines of communication among evacuees were gone. We had to tell all of our Yankee friends and family to e-mail us or call us at my grandma’s house. My dad even set up shop at my Uncle’s computer, connecting with his department and other hospital staff. He and the other department heads worked out a plan to ensure that everyone was guaranteed their job and a paycheck until they were able to return. Every day became a series of who we had contacted, who we had not heard from, and rumors.
It wasn’t until a week later that I heard from my Mom. I followed my dad’s advice and called her work, Target. Lo and behold, there she was. She told me that she got back three days after the storm. She also told me that my cat Tigger had disappeared somewhere in Alabama. I was a little pissed with my mom. Not only had she been safe the whole time I was trying to call her, but she was home and working as if everything were just fine. Fortunately, she told me that her parents were fine along with her siblings, so while I was mad, I was still relieved to hear everyone survived.
Now that we had found everyone, we were getting bored. Along with that, my Grandma and my uncle were getting tired of having us stay with them. I’m not kidding here; they were getting tired of it. You see my uncle and my grandma enjoy their routine. They enjoy doing things their way, and we were messing up that routine. I’m not saying they were wrong for this, it’s just who they are. We were trying our best to stay out of their way and not be a burden, but it was clear we had worn out our welcome. So we made plans to visit my step-mom’s family in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
First, we visited my uncle Jim and his wife Margaret in Cleveland. It was great for my baby sister because she had my cousin Katherine to play with. In Cleveland we had to share a hotel for a couple days, but it was nice to sleep on a bed (I was sleeping on the floor at my uncle’s house). It was also nice to have some of my aunt Margaret’s cooking. In Xenia, we were eating fast food or restaurant food every night, and having a home-cooked meal was a nice change. Being in Cleveland also gave us the chance to see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We spent hours there, it was fun. It also gave me and Taylor a chance to walk around a different town for a while. Like I said, we were just trying to keep ourselves from going crazy.
After Cleveland, we left for Pittsburgh, where we stayed with my Uncle John, Aunt Sue, and my cousin Ben. It was nice to be surrounded by my step-mom’s family. It was a different setting. We weren’t watching the news every 20 minutes wondering what was happening. Around this time, Pat’s parents decided to leave the hotel in Birmingham for their home in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. My grandfather, Bob, was determined to see what had happened to his home. So he packed their van with food and water, bleach and tarp, and other tools and left for Mississippi. It was a foolish thing to do. He didn’t know the road conditions or what services were available in that area. If he were to run out of gas, where would he go? All of that being said, if it were me, I would have done the same thing. Call it stubbornness if you want, but I was just as determined to get home. I’d have swum across the Mississippi if it meant getting home. When Bob and Harriett got home, they found the area was devastated, yet their home was in very good shape. Their fence was gone, and their trees were down, but their home was intact. They were very lucky.
I ended up celebrating my birthday in Pittsburgh. The family brought me to the Texas Roadhouse where my uncle Dan told them it was my birthday. This meant they pulled out a saddle and a large foam cowboy hat and had me sit on it while they sang their version of “happy birthday”. For my birthday, I got a digital camera which would prove to be extremely valuable in the coming months. I guess this part was unnecessary, but I thought I’d include it because it was amusing.