Debate Now Katrina - Ten Years On

[Pogo]

Note: This isn't really a "debate" in the sense of taking sides in an issue. It's a repository of remembrance intended to be flameproof.

Ten years ago today, around dawn on Monday 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras, Louisiana, ease of New Orleans, after an erratic tour of the Gulf of Mexico where it doubled its size and grew from a Category 3 to a Cat 5.

While its wind damage was significant, landing as the third most intense storm to strike US land in history, the repercussions of its aftermath, most notably the flooding of New Orleans, would make it the costliest storm in US history, leaving its impression, lest we forget, in a long trail that spawned flooding, tornadoes and power outages as far north as Buffalo New York and Québec.

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This thread will be to remember, to share stories, to share photos, experiences etc, for those affected.

Were you impacted by Katrina? How much? When did you get word? What did you do?
Did you lose people or property? And what was your experience getting back to normal life, if ever?

THREAD RULES:

• There will be NO POLITICS. No pinning blame on this agency, that governor, this President, that mayor, this cabinet member, that political party. NONE. There will be no mention except in the Neutral of the names Bush, Cheney, Nagin, Blanco, Brown, Chertoff, Rumsfeld or Compass. There will be no mention except in the neutral of Fox News, CNN or any other media. There will be no mention of anyone's political party.

• No flaming. This is intended as a, as they say in New Orleans, "neutral ground". It's about the positive things humans do in the face of natural disruption when they work together. It is NOT about the negative things humans do to score political points on the backs of victims. This is about humanity -- not politics.

Let's see if we can do this -- share experiences to learn from in unity rather than polarize ourselves into "camps". I'm not interested in what Bush or Blanco or Nagin or Brown were doing. I'm interested in what YOU were doing.

Souvenons. We remember.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Nice thread.

Souvenon. We remember. Wir erinnern uns.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Let's hope that moments like what happened with Katrina are few and far between, for this was a huge disaster.

Some people, to this day, are still rebuilding.

A hell of a lot of people showed extreme good-will toward their fellow human beings.

 

[Pogo]

Redfish OohPooPahDoo tinydancer Soggy in NOLA Tresha91203

Apologies to those I didn't think of off the top of my head.

I lived in uptown New Orleans. I got the word about 2pm on Saturday August 27. A co-worker called and said, "so what are you gonna do about the storm?" I said, "what storm?" It was the first I'd heard of it. Right about this moment, the city was getting a call from the National Hurricane Center in Florida warning that the storm was going to be a major player (it had crossed Florida in the previous days before starting to wander in the Gulf).

It was about 36 hours before landfall, and those hours had to be used for prep and travel, whatever that involved. In my case it involved contacting my ex-GF because I knew she doesn't drive highways and had pets. We both had cars, so I parked my (larger) one in a parking lot on relatively high ground -- to the extent there is such a thing in New Orleans -- and planned to take her (lower and newer) car to my parents' house in Natchez, about 180 miles to the northwest, which is normally a three-hour drive. We packed what clothes we figured to need for several days, food, medications, and the dog. The cat however got out, and we scoured the neighborhood looking for him, to no avail.

By this time it was Sunday morning, less that 24 hours of window, and we had to go. We took the "contraflowed" I-10 (both lanes going out of town), and due to the intense traffic volume the trip took seven hours, but we arrived in time for breezes kicking up in anticipation...

 

[Pogo]

Monday August 29: Storm hits.
Upriver in Mississippi, well inland from the coast, the storm made its presence felt, but in that area nothing we hadn't seen before. Some tree limbs were knocked down but no structural damage. But the power went out for several days. Due to the way the grid is structured, the sister town in Louisiana right across the river had power as normal, so we got very familiar with the restaurants and stores for supplies in Vidalia Louisiana. One thing we needed was a can opener -- my mother somehow was plodding though life with only can openers that ran on electricity. We had to eat.

I had brought a battery-powered radio, and WWL in New Orleans, a clear-channel 50,000 watt AM station, had stayed on air to coordinate communications and resources. We stayed up through the night of Monday-into-Tuesday, looking for news and clues on what was going on. They were taking phone calls. In the wee hours people started calling in with stories like "the water was a few inches an hour ago, now it's a few feet -- I can hear my neighbor calling for help". It was the beginning of the result of levee breaks. I don't think I'll ever forget that phone call.

After several days crews came all the way from Arkansas to get the town's power back online, and we could start to scan the TV channels and the internet for info. I was able to see the roof of what had been my car, skimming just above the water, in a satellite photo. We also scanned any reports that might match Hector, the missing cat. We found none...

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

I remember seeing the devastation and thinking how are people going to survive that? People stranded on their rooftops, alligators were in the water, it was a terrifying scene. The people that were trapped in that shelter the Dome - I cannot remember the name of that place but the things people suffered during that storm! It was awful. Absolutely awful.

 

[Pogo]

Fast forward to October, five weeks after landfall:

Finally allowed back in to the city. We rent a truck for the purpose of salvaging what can be salvaged, not knowing how much that is. On the way we have to pick up dust masks, as there is mold growing everywhere. When we finally arrive at my GF's house we find the place standing, but with windows broken. It had taken 8 feet of water (she lived on an upper floor) and her downstairs neighbors, an older couple who had stayed put, had woken up Monday night to find themselves floating in their own bed. They broke in to the upstairs apartment and got some food to survive, and after several days were rescued by helicopter.

We had spent five weeks looking for clues of where Hector might have ended up, with no leads whatsoever. However as soon as we reached the inside of the apartment, that question was resolved....

Hector popped up in the window and said, in his cat voice, "where the fuck you two been"?

He looked healthy, well-fed, in fact he looked better than ever. Cats.

Here are Hector the cat, and Sophie the dog, reunited, taken later in the year in New Jersey:

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They lived the rest of their lives there. Sophie passed away in 2009, Hector earlier this year.

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

My best friend is from Louisiana but moved to the State I live in. She still has family there. She invited them and I told her to let some of them stay at my house (so there would be more room at hers). I also had a friend online who lived there in the Parrish - a historic home that had survived many hurricanes on the water - his family was descendants of Lafayette - we invited them to come to our home and bring his family because the report of a hurricane on the way was not persuading them at first to leave. They were thinking of staying due to the house having survived other storms. It is odd that people sometimes will go by past events thinking it is safe for the next time. I do not quite understand how they reason that out.

 

[Pogo]

My best friend is from Louisiana but moved to the State I live in. She still has family there. She invited them and I told her to let some of them stay at my house (so there would be more room at hers). I also had a friend online who lived there in the Parrish - a historic home that had survived many hurricanes on the water - his family was descendants of Lafayette - we invited them to come to our home and bring his family because the report of a hurricane on the way was not persuading them at first to leave. They were thinking of staying due to the house having survived other storms. It is odd that people sometimes will go by past events thinking it is safe for the next time. I do not quite understand how they reason that out.

There are always, literally always, some people who stay through the storm. Katrina was in fact the first encroaching hurricane I myself ever evacuated for. It can be a gamble, though once you've been through a few power outages and such, you get resourceful. And of course you don't have much time to make up your mind -- you can't exactly leave when it arrives, you have to already be out of harm's way.

The generosity of people offering living spaces was unfathomable. Once it became clear that nobody was going back to the city any time soon, people started offering up rooms in their houses, extra houses, garages, barns, anything they had. I saw offers online everywhere from Mexico to Nova Scotia.

I picked western North Carolina as I was familiar with the area and it was central enough to still travel to ... Florida, Nashville, Atlanta, Philadelphia, places I could find work. We ended up for the moment in somebody's vacation house, a former hunting lodge up a dirt road overlooking seven layers of Appalachian mountains. Somewhere I have a picture of that view.

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

Your story is amazing! I am so glad that Hector and Sophie survived and that you and your ex-girlfriend made it out alive! What a story! When you told the story of how you found out about the approaching storm? It reminded me of myself, Pogo. There have been many times I was one of the last to hear about something big happening - sometimes I even miss it entirely because I do not watch the news at all - very rarely watch television at all - and I'm not out around people very often. If I don't hear about it by someone on USMB reporting it - there's a good chance I'd miss it.

 

[Pogo]

Scenes seen upon re-entry, early October 2005, the day after residents were let back in....

The city was a ghost town. No electricity or running water/gas anywhere, no traffic lights, only some streets even clear enough for travel. By sunset you pretty much got out of town as there was no way to see anything.

We were put up for a few days by some friends in the western suburbs, where there was power and even a couple of restaurants open.

The expression on this car says it all. This is a residential street in Mid-City where my GF's apartment was. The area took about 8 feet of water.

 

[Pogo]

The inside of the convenience store at ground level of the apartment. This was all completely underwater:

 

[Pogo]

A residence off Carrollton Avenue, uptown:

 

[Pogo]

Closer look at what a car looks like after an Earl Sceib black mold paint job....

 

[Pogo]

Cleveland Avenue, Mid-City:

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

Wow. Those pictures reveal quite a story, Pogo. The neighborhood looks like a ghost town in the picture. I heard that many people never moved back to the State.

 

[Pogo]

Notice the fire damage -- burning itself down to the water line, straight and even. The FD was of course powerless to even get to fires, let alone stop them, so they simply burned themselves down, fire meets water.

That's again Carrollton Avenue and some side street, between Earhart and Claiborne...

Check this out... this is a stop sign on the nearby corner. The heat from the fire was intense enough to peel the sign's paint:

 

[Pogo]

A massive cleanup begins... tower of detritus placed at Beauregard Circle, Esplanade at Carrollton, Mid-City, just outside of NOMA (New Orleans Museum of Art) -- for perspective, see the fence at the bottom. It's about five feet.

 

[Pogo]

Wow. Those pictures reveal quite a story, Pogo. The neighborhood looks like a ghost town in the picture. I heard that many people never moved back to the State.

That's true, I'm one of them.
I did go back to do work there, once there was a place to do any work, and still do. By then I was established in Carolina and that, with other gigs, provided enough income to maintain, so I ended up with the best of both worlds -- income and people to visit, and endless places to stay, within New Orleans, without having to live there full time.

 

[Pogo]

On St. Charles Avenue, lower Garden District: