Hurricane Katrina – Ten Years Later

I don’t live in New Orleans.  I never did.  Because of that, I never felt like I had the same ownership of the Hurricane Katrina story that my friends who survived the hurricane did.  I don’t have the stories of personal belongings or loved ones lost.  Nothing I share can ever reach that magnitude or diminish that story.

Still, it touched me personally.

Here are the things I remember

1. I was more personally affected by the first landfall of Katrina.  The first hit Miami several days before it strengthened over the Gulf. I was on the last flight to leave as Katrina was hitting there.  I was in first class on a three-cabin American flight. The gate agent commented that we had almost 700 people on standby trying to get a seat that evening.  We rocked and rolled down the runway as Katrina made landfall. The airport closed to inbound and outbound flights shortly after we took off.
2. I remember sitting at home watching round the clock coverage as she gathered speed to make landfall in Louisiana.  It seemed to be media overhype as most of my friends in the Gulf had ridden out many storms.  My cousin’s husband was the commanding officer of a Navy ship that went out to sea to ride out the storm.  It seemed like business as normal despite the scary predictions.
3. I was in Buenos Aires with friends when the levees broke.  We couldn’t get good coverage but knew from the international reporting that it was a bad situation. I had just been in New Orleans for a stretch of time in the previous month and couldn’t believe that yet again I had personal proximity to an international situation. Many of my friends were evacuated and thus couldn’t return home to assess the damage to their homes.
4. I hosted a fundraiser later in the month to raise money for the Navy families who lost everything in the storm.  I wanted to do something for all the families on the Delta who suffered due to the storm as the damage was much wider spread than New Orleans.  I hosted a wine tasting, silent auction, and charity trunk show in my home that was attended by travel friends from several states.  Along with family members also raising funds, we contributed over $15,000 to purchase Wal-Mart gift cards for enlisted members who had immediate losses requiring replacement.
5. I went back to visit as soon as tourism was up and running (probably six months later).  Hotels were still minimally staffed because their employees had nowhere to live.  Restaurants were starting to open again but running a minimal schedule of Thursday dinner through Sunday brunch to accommodate tourists. Staff at Emerils were staying several to an apartment with others were driving in daily from Baton Rouge to work the double service. We tipped generously and ate out as we could to support the half-full restaurants.

Conclusion

I have continued to return to New Orleans but will never be able to erase the memories.  Driving in after Katrina and seeing the blue tarps, hearing stories about beloved bar servers who drowned in their own homes, observing the devastation. A place I love directly hit by disaster, and only four years after the shellshock of 9/11, was a personal blow.

One memory stands out to me years later. I walked barefoot in the French Quarter for four blocks on my return trip.  A blown out flip flop was to blame but I also did it out of defiance. I wanted to show my friends elsewhere how clean the streets were. I wanted to feel the ground beneath my feet. And I wanted to know that New Orleans was back.