Katrina 15 years

 

Po-Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

Katrina Fifteen Years

            6:10 A.M. Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slams into the Southeastern gulf coast as a category 3, 4, or 5 storm (depending on your sources) with winds of 127 miles an hour. New Orleans, taking only the outer bands, was still hit hard; by that afternoon 20% of the city was flooded. By August 30^th 80% of the city was under water. By September 1^st, 55,000 people had sought shelter in the Super Dome and Convention Center having refused/unable to evacuate. Many were still in their homes, many of them dead. Over a million people fled after hearing the mandatory evacuation order 48 hours before. The last of the water was pumped out of the city on October 11^th, 43 days after the storm hit. We were, as General Russel L. Honore quipped when seeing the local, state and federal responses, “Stuck on stupid!”

            In the aftermath, our city was (almost) completely evacuated, troops went door to door looking for survivors and bodies; Debbie and I were in the French Quarter holed up at our apartment on St. Philip and Dauphine Street for six days before we saw any first responders and by that time we had finally found a way out of town. I aged six months in those six days. Very few remember or recall those days and those that do usually don’t want to talk about it.

            Here’s what I remember: the night before, we went bar hopping, playing kick the can in the street and wondering why that pizza delivery was taking so long. First bands start 1:15 A.M. A few hours later Debbie was dragging me and a mattress into the hallway to cower as what felt and sounded like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse enacting a no-knock warrant accompanied by chimneys imploding. A 50 year old cypress tree was bashing the house while conducting a concerto of small tornadoes in the ‘Wreak Havoc Overture’ through the neighborhood. Background music was provided by the Torrents of Rain Orchestra.

            In the morning (expecting to go for coffee and a NYT), electricity and water cut off, the streets are empty. The next day, the last neighbors on our block caravanned out. Somebody gives us their dog. Very quiet. Looting had started almost immediately, Cartier, Brooks Brother, Pottery Barn, convenience stores, Winn Dixie, anything that can be taken is taken for little or no apparent reason. One third of the police force drives out of town. Psychiatrists that can prescribe anti-depressants are gone and folks are off their meds. Charity Hospital is under siege by boat. We clean up debris like good citizens. The weather is hot and there is no air conditioning.

            Police loot Walmart for electronics, leaving the guns and ammunition that the store sells for civilian looters. Looters breaking into hardware stores steal bolt cutters, looters use bolt cutters to break into warehouses, stealing forklifts. Armed looters on forklifts off their meds. A kid steals a city bus and drives folks to Houston. The busses for evacuation high and dry but keys are under water.  Curfew imposed. Warm beer at Molly’s at the Market, solidarity and community updates. Cops put snipers on rooftops to discourage looters, Governor: “Shoot looters on sight.” Mayor hiding out in a hotel, George Bush does a flyover. Esplanade Avenue is impassable due to fallen trees and debris.

            Water in the street, petrochemical waste, medical waste, human waste, decaying animal waste. Explosions on the river Wednesday night. Rapes. A couple of corpses reported abandoned on streets. Folks drifting into town from lower nine. Animals not allowed in shelter, being turned loose, reports of dogs being shot to discourage ‘packing”. No ice, no refrigeration, no toilets, no bathing (no water). No lights at night besides gaslights. The kindness of strangers, food sharing, help with bolt cutters to free a chained dog. The Nelly Deli gives away supplies on credit. We now are caring for 4 dogs and 3 cats. Our house is known as ‘Dogpatch’.

            Radio reports ‘French Quarter looks like an island’, the ‘sliver by the river’ holds, all else under water. Animals coming out avoiding drowning, alligators, raccoons, snakes and rodents, seeking higher ground like people do. People rescued from rooftops only to find that there’s no way out of the city, people turned away at gunpoint from crossing into Algiers. Nita and Jeffery have their apartment taken away at gunpoint. Reports of trucks with bodies being dumped in the river, running gun battles. We’re holed up on the second floor, banging tin sheeting to discourage ‘visitors’.

            A radio report that thousands have been standing on the overpass for days waiting “where are they going to the bathroom?” one reporter asks, “They’re crowded together!” Looters set up a market in the Convention Center which was broken into by folks not wanting to go to the Superdome where that roof has blown partially off.

            A fire at Saks Fifth Avenue set by looters and a scramble for water to put it out. Police tell us to not bike ride because people are getting ‘bike-jacked’ for a way out of town. Food rotting in refrigerators and restaurants (it’s Labor Day weekend, people stocked up). Reports of a car to be had if we can get to it. Cemeteries flood and bodies rise to the surface.

We’re invited to a meeting at the Bourbon Orleans ballroom where the topic to be is the intentional flooding of the French Quarter to ease the outlying areas. Those left here transmit information and hearsay as they get it, some is rumor and some turn out to be uncomfortable truths.

Fifteen years later we veterans of Katrina find nothing about the coronavirus extraneous or dismissive; but still, ask any one of us and we’ll tell you that we’ve been through worse. Quit your bitching and put on a mask. As deadly as Covid-19 is, I wish Katrina had been this easy to deal with.