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On the road
At noon on Sunday, seven of us piled into a gray Ford Escort and pulled out of my aunt’s driveway, headed for parts unknown, not knowing whether we would ever see it again or whether it would still be standing when we returned.
It became a race against time. I figured that since Katrina’s estimated time of arrival was Monday morning, with some of her outer bands coming Sunday evening, it would take us a few hours to completely clear out of her sphere of influence. We reached the interstate at Gonzales in Ascension Parish. Interstate 10 was bumper-to-bumper, full of cars and SUVs and campers and boats heading out of the New Orleans area. The traffic was so slow that I thought on several occasions we would never get to our destination.
Usually when we take long car trips we like to listen to music. But on this morning, the apocalyptic weather reports filled the air. The more time passed, the more ominous they became. Katrina had reached the Holy Grail of hurricanes. She had become the fourth strongest storm on record in the Atlantic Basin (since exceeded by storms named Rita and Wilma). Her maximum winds had increased to 175 miles per hour, with gusts as high as 220. She was, indeed, the perfect storm. So perfect, in fact, that the scenario setting up was catastrophic. Off our coast was Armageddon – the end of life as we knew it.
The same feelings of dread and uncertainty were echoed in some of the many weary travelers we encountered. “Is this what they went through in Florida?” one lady asked me in a restroom in Breaux Bridge, just east of Lafayette.
“None of the storms that threatened Florida last year,” I reminded her, “was a Category 5 monster.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m scared I won’t have anything left when I get back. If I get back.”
We continued to creep along I-10 west, stopping occasionally to seek hotels. None were available. At every stop we made, we were given the same refrain. “No vacancies.” “I’m sorry we don’t have any rooms.” “We’re booked until Wednesday.”
We had already been on the road for four hours and were weary of riding. The three children in the backseat were restless beyond belief. We filled up with gas, got some snacks, and got a stretch. I went in and picked up a couple of Advil to deal with the splitting headache I’d gotten. What we didn’t know was that our trip was just beginning.
While back on the road, we passed the scenic town of Westlake, with a lake that emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. Looking down at the lake, one would never know that the monster storm known as Katrina was lurking just to its southeast. Only a few ripples gently caressed the shoreline, while the boats cuddled next to the marina and the beach. By that time we had been on the road five and a half hours.
While I looked down at the marina and over at the hazy late-summer sky, I was certain that we had outrun Katrina. But what about those that couldn’t and wouldn’t get out? What would we find when we returned? My soul was consumed with dread.
Are we there yet?
After another hour of driving and sightseeing, we reached the Louisiana-Texas border. Of course, a border is not a point, neither is it seen (except on maps) save for a star sculpture and a sign which read “Welcome to Texas.” Tents were set up in the entire area, with free food, maps, water, and an area where people could rest and chat. Even Salvation Army vehicles surrounded the area.
Melissa, treating the impromptu trip like a vacation, wanted to take pictures of the “Welcome to Texas” sign to her right. She and her boyfriend constantly argued during the trip, about where they were going, what they were going to do, and how they were going to do it. Even though I and just about everyone else wanted to check out the rest stop, Ben wanted to keep going, so we did.
The five-year-old, Logan, who is hearing-impaired, decided he needed to go potty, so we had to take a stop on the side of the road to allow him to relieve himself. His seven-year-old sister Pamela had to cover him up to do that, so that passing cars wouldn’t see him doing that.
Getting back on the road proved even more of a challenge. It was getting dark, and the kids were becoming even more restless, if that was at all possible. Upon getting through the maze of construction reaching Baytown, we made another stop – at Popeye’s Chicken. At least something from home was familiar. Everything else seemed like it was transplanted from an entirely different country.
While we were at Popeye's, we nearly averted another disaster. My sister couldn't find her car keys! Panicking, she railed against her boyfriend, accusing him of pilfering them to go to the nearest service station. She insisted that she was incapable of leaving them on any counter. Imagine being in a strange city without any of the comforts of home, and not knowing who to call in the case of something like this. Fortunately a fellow evacuee approached me, dangling a set of keys with a blue spotted caterpillar attached to them. "Do you know who these belong to?" she asked in a calm voice.
I instantly recognized the keys as Melissa's. "Oh, my God, thank you so much!" I exclaimed. "They're my sister's. She's looking for them now."
The lady gave me a knowing smile.
After leaving Popeye's we took many detours in southeast Texas due to construction on the interstate – first between Orange and Beaumont, and then in Houston itself. The traffic detour really threw us for a loop. I thought for awhile I was going in circles. The eventual trip from Beaumont to east Houston took another three hours, when on a normal day it only took one. By that time it was eleven at night. I dialed Monica again to let her know we had made it into Houston, and were on our way to her place.
In another fifteen minutes, we were unpacking our bags and walking up the staircase with our stuff -- the pieces of our lives we had thrown together and taken with us. The eleven-hour trip was over, and now it was time to rest. Because we didn’t have internet access and we were unfamiliar with the Houston area radio stations, we wouldn’t know what the next day would bring.
The day after tomorrow
I awakened at about six in the morning on Monday, August 29 – a day that would live on in United States and hurricane infamy. It was still dark in and around the Houston apartment complex where my sisters, mother and I were holed up. Ironically, it turned out to be the same time Katrina showed up at the mouth of the Mississippi River, near Buras. Most hurricanes make landfall at night. Katrina was brazen enough to show up at sunrise, right on schedule.
She pounded the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts with high winds, torrential rainfall, and astronomical storm surge. As the day wore on, while I enjoyed perfectly hot late-summer weather, my remaining family, neighbors, and friends to the east were dealing with their uninvited guest. I felt a little guilty.
We decided that, to get our minds off the situation back home, we would go exploring in and around the Houston area. So we woke up, bathed, and got in the car to explore the area of the city we found ourselves in. Our first destination was a rather large pet store, where the kids saw rabbits, birds, and even white mice kept as pets. The kids were most interested, though, in the many colors of tropical fish that swam around in the various aquariums lining the walls.
After leaving the pet store, we decided to ride around, not knowing where we were. We wound up driving around the interstate looking for a Wal-Mart, just to kill time. Somehow wandering away from the group, I found a McDonalds where a New Orleans area television station was playing, albeit the reception wasn’t great. I watched this local station along with other evacuees from the area, who were, like me, trying to find out news from home.
Through the local station, I learned Katrina had yet another trick up her sleeves. She weakened a tad and veered a little east of her projected path, supposedly sparing the metropolitan New Orleans area and bringing the bulk of her ferocious winds and heavy rains to the eastern part of the city, to lower Plaquemines and St. Bernard, and to the Mississippi gulf coast. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I thought we had dodged yet another bullet, but cringed at the realization that thousands of people in southern Mississippi might not have evacuated, thinking the storm would hit New Orleans directly.
We did get one glimpse of Katrina's power in Houston as we returned to the apartment -- a lone, far-outer thunderstorm that developed around her center of circulation. This was a particularly violent but short-lived storm, with a burst of heavy rain and gusty winds.
It was as if she decided to send me a postcard.
As soon as it passed, though, we decided to hear news of the storm's passage at the apartment. We saw video of her ferocious winds, heavy rain, and storm surge. Through a phone call to my mother, which she relayed to me that evening, my doubting-Thomas uncle, the Vietnam vet who stayed in our home just to prove Katrina wasn't coming, admitted the storm had frightened him, too. “The winds sounded like a freight train,” he said. “I could hear debris crashing against the side of the house.” Speaking of our home, the hours that I hadn't heard about its fate seemed like an eternity. As far as I could tell from the various reports I got, I thought most of the New Orleans area had been spared the worst of the catastrophic damage, although I'd heard Monica's friend and co-worker in New Orleans east lost everything.
I was wrong.
Our worst fears
It wasn’t until we returned to southern Louisiana, though, that the scope of the catastrophe set in. It became perfectly clear that Armageddon had indeed happened. The whole thing seemed fully surreal. Aerial shots played and regurgitated over and over on both local and national news revealed entire cities underwater, towns turned into piles of rubble, parishes and counties disappeared from the map. Lakes were made where just a few days earlier, grassland stood. There were some areas that were still inaccessible. The submerged city of New Orleans had descended into lawlessness and chaos, while survivors who sat stranded for days did anything and everything in their power to get the attention of anyone who could help. On the home front, helicopters flew overhead all the time, and there were lines for everything for gas to ice to bread. Hurricane Katrina was the worst American natural disaster I had ever seen. And it happened right in my backyard.
The whole time, though, I continued to wonder about my own house. How had it fared? Information was difficult, if not impossible, to come by. Most every modern method of communication failed during the storm. One thing about extreme circumstances is that they force us to think “outside the box.” In other words, many of us survivors had to come up with other ways of passing on news to our loved ones. The only thing that worked was, believe it or not, text messaging on the cell phone. Some people say text messaging is easy, I find it incredibly difficult. One must repeatedly press keys on the phone pad until the correct letter comes up. Through this method I let friends and family who had this capability know I was okay.
After my tour of duty in Houston, I settled a few days more with other relatives in the Baton Rouge area. Our stay there became protracted when we learned of my oldest aunt's death. She’d been a resident of New Orleans for over forty years, moving there after she got married. Her husband perished long ago, in Vietnam. I suppose after seeing her adopted home’s destruction at the feeder bands of Katrina, she saw no other reason to live.
At 83, she was the oldest surviving family member, and had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for the past ten years. She’d been through the turmoil of the sixties and had also survived breast cancer. During the final two years of her life, she had been back and forth in between hospitals for myriad ailments ranging from diabetes complications to Alzheimer’s complications.
To ease transport worries with my wheelchair-bound mother, we decided to stay put. Reluctantly.
Being with more relatives was not what I wanted at this point. But then again, Katrina made sure none of us did what we wanted. All the newscasts both local and national were devoted to her and the mess she’d created, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The complete and total devastation that she wrought on a large swath of the Gulf Coast was on display for the entire world to see.
Day after day was filled with waiting and wondering. It seemed as though when one day ended and another began, it was the same day. At least at this point, we had settled into some sort of routine. I would fix mother’s breakfast, check her blood sugar, administer her meds, and then walk to my sister’s place where I was able to briefly use the internet. The fact that I was able to use the internet at my sister’s was a small miracle. On the bright side: at least there was a routine. I thought about the people in shelters for whom routine was a foreign word. Every passing day was yet another reminder of how lucky I truly was. I was alive, in a reasonably safe place, leading a life that, while it wasn’t completely what I was accustomed to, was considerably better than what it could have been.
This went on until September 10, nearly two weeks to the day after we fled Armageddon.
It was another crystal-clear morning, much like the one during which we had to abruptly leave our lives and our securities behind. The circumstances surrounding my aunt’s death are still murky -- to this day none of us knows whether she died surrounded by relatives or if she perished in one of the hospitals that was without electricity after the storm.
In either case, the aftermath of the hurricane severely limited the type of funeral she could have. It could only last an hour, and very few fresh-cut flowers were available for her casket, from any of the local florists we called. To add insult to injury, my cousin, her son Joe (who, from Avondale, was himself evacuated) was frantically trying to plan the funeral. Needless to say, he was a bit frazzled. I tried to step in wherever I felt it was appropriate. But doing so without stepping on a few toes proved to be problematic. When I made suggestions about the wording in the obituary, they were brushed aside. However, my corrections in punctuation and spelling were accepted -- if not happily.
At least the funeral kept the focus, if temporarily, off worrying about my home in Katrina’s wake.
In keeping with the grand tradition of deep South funeral dinners, my relatives cooked a gigantic feast, with more food than one could imagine. One thing non-natives must know about the deep South is that funerals and their accompanying dinners often are not sad occasions. They are celebrations of a person’s life and legacy. At eighty-three, my aunt certainly had plenty of both.
Among the scores of family members who streamed into my other aunt’s house were Ray and Betty Grant, cousins I had never met. My mother told me Ray was the son of one of my uncles, who died well before I was born. I would learn through conversation that they fled New Orleans on Saturday afternoon, two days before Katrina hit, and only took a few articles of clothing and a couple of assorted mementos. Like all of us, they had been watching the news reports with dismay and horror, and anxiously watching to see if their home survived the deluge that inundated most of the city. They were afraid that since they lived in eastern New Orleans, that they were more likely than not to be homeless.
We exchanged phone numbers and I told him to call me as soon as he got any word, and also to call me if he needed anything.
A few minutes later I gathered the courage to walk the few steps to the little church where her funeral was taking place. If hearing about her death didn’t bring it home for me, then seeing her in the casket definitely did. The reality of it was finally sinking in. She was dead. She was going home. She was at peace. We, of course, would not be. Not for a very long time.
The long road home
That afternoon, after the funeral and the dinner, mom and I took the nearly hour-long ride back home from Baton Rouge. It would be the first time in two weeks. I was more nervous than ever. What would I see when I went there? Would my neighborhood look the same? Feel the same? Would my house be standing?
As we rode past neighborhoods full of downed trees and power lines, and passed by utility trucks headed to affected areas, my heart raced. At least the areas we passed through sustained minor damage. But what about my area?
Finally I reached my parish. Parts of it looked the same, but then again, I knew things were different. I saw many downed trees and power lines. I saw helicopters flying overhead and relief trucks driving past.
A few moments later we turned down the avenue that led to my street. Signs were ripped, trees were down. Sure looks like a storm came through here, I thought, but I expected much worse.
As we turned down my street, and I caught sight of my house, I cried. Not because my home was gone, but because it was still standing. Upon inspection, we discovered a watermelon-sized hole in the roof, the tree in my backyard snapped in two, roof shingles blown off, and pieces of siding blown off, but it could have been much worse. My next-door neighbors sustained more damage than I did. I'm certainly counting my blessings. At least I have a home to go back to. Even so, the repairs that are necessary on my house will run into the thousands. I cannot imagine what it would be like for us to have to completely rebuild our house if we needed to.
No such thing as normal
Though I am back home, nothing has resembled normal and probably won’t for some time to come. I have electricity, running water, a roof over my head. I was lucky. A lot of people -- some of whom are in my extended family -- were not.
A certain suspension of belief is necessary to imagine the chaos this storm has caused, even in areas that only received a glancing blow, like mine did. For example, traffic to and from the area has been much heavier than usual. There has been an influx of people from the hard-hit areas east of me, some of whom lost everything they owned to Katrina. There are Salvation Army vehicles from all over the country inundating what used to be our Delchamps parking lot, offering temporary shelter and free meals and clothing.
The stores here are busier than ever, and that’s saying something, considering we opened a Super Wal-Mart last October and the crowds there had been virtually nonstop ever since. Our particular Wal-Mart was already known for being a local hub for grub, greetings, groceries, and gossip. These days, though, only one thing was being gossiped about -- Katrina -- and the complete and utter chaos she’s caused. To add to the incredulity of the situation, about thirty army guys -- all wearing fatigues and some fully equipped with machine guns strapped to their backs -- strolled through the store as if they were strolling through downtown Baghdad. They weren’t all together though; they separated into groups of five or six. A chill ran up my spine.
Many weeks after Katrina’s passage, stores that used to stay open 24 hours a day now close at 8 pm. There are long lines and shortages of everything. There are “help wanted” signs everywhere, particularly in construction. Army vehicles still occasionally pass by, and the Salvation Army trucks still fill our shopping center parking lot. Every day when I go out, I hear one heartbreaking story after another. An elderly couple from St. Bernard Parish lost everything they own, including their retirement nest egg. A young nurse from Metairie had nine feet of water in her house. A middle-aged woman from Metairie came back to four feet of water and lots of mold in her house. The common thread running through these stories is the determination to survive and the courage to go on.
What now?
My view of hurricanes has been completely and irrevocably changed since Hurricane Katrina devastated the southeastern part of my state and the state next to it. Before her appearance, there was still that childlike sense of wonder and awe at their power and majesty. But now, that emotion has been replaced with the first-hand knowledge of the destruction the most powerful of storms, land-falling in the right spot, can cause. It has also been replaced with a grim but healthy respect for what these storms can do.
I was removed from hurricanes. They happened to other people in other places. They didn't happen to me in my state. Katrina happened in my state. That's what was so jarring. I was so paralyzed with fear that I wanted no part of her. The city I was so proud to live close to is gone. The city I was born in, gone, its people scattered in all different directions across the country. This whole experience has been numbing, to say the least.
Katrina didn't happen to one person, one state, or one region. She happened to all of us. Maybe we will come together the way we did after 9/11. Maybe the tragedy will lead to increased hurricane education efforts for our less fortunate individuals living in coastal areas. Maybe it will lead to greater opportunities for our displaced citizens. Maybe we will engage in a national dialogue about the issues that plague us, the issues that Katrina brought to the forefront. Whatever happens, we must take the lessons that we have learned from this tragedy, and we must make sure that a catastrophe on this scale does not happen again in this country.
LAwxrgal
