The Storm

Before the Storm

We had a pretty easy life and we often joked about "stress busting" activities. Getting older in life and with no kids, we traveled a lot and planned even more vacations in the offing. In the two years prior to Katrina, we went to the Caribbean three times and we had taken several road trips including trips to the beach; Saints games and museum weekends in New Orleans and all over the mid-south region of these United States. We chased fireworks and roller-coasters but it wasn't much of a life we could sink our teeth into.

Our home on a shaded lot before the eye of Katrina came over it.

We met at Mardi Gras in 1989 and we come back every year to celebrate our anniversary. We worked on our costumes and gadgets. I worked on the house in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; looked after family and did volunteer work. My husband, Ricky works as an instrument technician and he is gone a lot with his job. He had just taken a two year commitment in the Chicago area about a month before Katrina came. I went back to school. If he was going to be gone for two years, perhaps I could fit in an Associate's Degree.

On August 26, it was a Friday and the National Weather Service was doing something highly unusual. They were apologizing to our citizens. It was not surprising that they were wrong about a storm, but they were admitting responsibility and expressing remorse. Over a million people in south Florida were without power and there were seven souls killed. The weather experts low-balled a big storm. We saw this in St. Croix where we were living when Hurricane Marilyn came through. But they never came back and said they were sorry or admitted how far off they were. And for Katrina, all bets were off.

Saturday morning, I took the car to have it readied for a road trip, just in case. I went home to study and watch the storm grow into horrendous proportions. As mentioned before, this wasn't our first hurricane. We love living near the water. We love boating, fishing, swimming, and hanging out on the docks or near the beach. We were playing it rather safe, in our minds, to be living over 60 miles from the coast. Yet, our number was about to come up.

Sunday morning I made a room reservation for Jackson, Tennessee on US Highway 45. Dixie Dogue and I left the house around 1:00 PM.

As I drove north, I listened to Mrs. Hippie Public Radio. A representative of FEMA was interviewed and I heard them say. "We will be on site, in the wake of the storm, within hours after it passes." Liars!

That night in some motel, I fell asleep to the Weather Channel.

Evacuation

Each evacuation story was unique. There were millions of these stories occurring at the same time. The chaos was nationwide. My first taste of the insanity to come was before The Storm ever hit. August 28th, Sunday afternoon, I was driving north on Interstate 59. As I approached the east/west route of Interstate 20, there were cars parked on either side of the road. There were dozens of people milling about in the late, summer grass; pacing and mostly talking on cell phones.

The Caribbean hippies were broke down on the side of the road in their 'round town cars all beat up and plastered with peace bumper stickers. I wished I was able to stop and help each one of them. I didn't have a cellphone yet and my car was full. The dog was in her prized location in the front seat.

My little station wagon was full of what I packed for a total mystery. I didn't bring pictures. I didn't think they would help much during an emergency so I brought extra food and bottled water instead. We had two suitcases full of pictures and I opted for winter clothes as I was heading north in a shroud of uncertainty. I left our wedding videos behind and brought work-out tapes. The paint is fluid and I am always replacing it anyway so I just brought my brushes and pens. I couldn't bring any artwork (There was no room for frivolity.) except the current piece I was working on at the time which was my Mardi Gras dress being sewn entirely by hand.

It bares repeating; each story is unique. At the time, Ricky was working in Chicago and had an extended stay motel room waiting for me where I could bring the dog. The cats were yard cats and we decided, not an easy choice, to leave them behind in their own environs. (As luck would have it, they were fine.) My neighbor asked me if I was leaving because of the storm or to go see Ricky. I said, "Yes." Tens of thousands of people left their homes with no idea where they would be on the other end. Some people had motel and hotel rooms reserved or sought out a room along the way; some had family to visit. Some went to shelters or to stay with friends. Many people stayed in various locations for a great length of time. As I write this, nearly three years after the storm, there are thousands still somewhere else. Slews will never return. And, yes, some stayed home in the path of the storm for, again; a multitude of reasons unique to each person's own circumstances at the time.

I want to address a few things about the City of New Orleans evacuation. Mayor Ray Nagin has been criticized and I think he does deserve some praise on this issue. First, he beat the model, Hurricane Pam, the fictitious hurricane created by the National Weather Service and FEMA as an indicator of what to expect before and after a storm. The model indicated there would be 25% of the citizenry stay behind in Orleans Parish. Nagin got over 85 to 90% of the city evacuated before the storm.

Next, there is the pervasive and thoughtless fantasy that buses could have been used to get people out. I'm not a lawyer (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.) and I don't think legally any mayor has the jurisdiction to load people up and take them across state lines. The questions need to be asked: where do these buses go; who is authorized to drive these buses across state lines or even out of the municipality; when is the first rest stop; how often and who pays for the gas, again, across state lines; where does one lodge the passengers overnight and what is the ultimate destination; how far will the buses go to find a shelter; when and where do they eat? Clearly, the bussing of evacuees is a logistical nightmare that could only have been handled at the Federal level and probably only using the resources of the military. I am not a huge fan of Nagin. We love him alright. We love him like a mother loves her retarded child. But Nagin was not the one who failed to provide transportation out of the city before the storm for those who were unable to do so for themselves. That was Presidiot Bush's job.

Nobody was "living it up in hotels." From the outside looking in, evacuees may look like they are on vacation. They are eating out a lot, they have their luggage packed and they might be getting maid service in their m/hotel rooms. It goes downhill after that. The constant cloud of uncertainty hangs over the evacuee's head and prevents the enjoyment of one minute on the road. I was a walking zombie and lousy company.

I felt like I was at a Sunday afternoon picnic on a lovely, summer day; and suddenly spewn, like a watermelon seed, off the face of the planet into some dismal abyss of stunning mystery and misery.

During the Storm

Monday morning, I woke up and watched the storm tear into the city. The roof was coming off the Superdome and I still had a long drive ahead of me to get to Chicago to Ricky's extended stay motel.

When I arrived, we watched the TV all night. New Orleans dodged the bullet and we were jubilant. I don't recall thinking much about our own home in Hattiesburg that night. I went to sleep thinking New Orleans was going to be okay and the big scare was all over.

The house didn't look the same with all the sun shining on it.

After the Storm

Most hurricane related injuries occur in the aftermath of the storm during the clean-up.

Tuesday morning, Ricky was getting ready for work and in the bathroom when CNN announced there was a leak in one of the levees. I told him what I heard.

For the next four days, we watched like everyone else in the country.

At the end of the first week, Ricky went home to check on the house.

We lost 16 of our 25 trees.

He called and said, "Remember the sky-light you wanted to put in the dining room? You have one in the bedroom and one in the foyer now." Funny guy.

I spent two and a half weeks in the Chicago area. I watched the news like everyone else and felt hurled from my own world.

Ricky was in Hattiesburg having the trees removed from the roofs and getting the house tarped. The master bedroom roof was so heavily damaged, it couldn't be tarped very well so he built a pond where the water that was so determined to come in could rest. We locked that door from the remainder of the house and moved into the guest bedroom.

Ricky returned to Chicago and I returned to the mess in Mrs. Hippie. I set out to get the house fixed. The landlines were out and I was using, nay; learning this new GD cellphone. So I put a sign up on the corner, "Now taking bids for clean-up and construction."

Those were bleak days waiting and waiting for the insurance adjuster to show up. Then waiting for him to come back and waiting on hold to hire a contractor and waiting to get supplies and waiting and worrying. I found a new voice to test on the insurance agent. It is a mixture of shrill and gravelly tones with long sirens. "I need to fix my house." it was five weeks after the storm. During that time I got drunk with my neighbors for the first time.

As one would expect I tried to check online about the status of my school while I was evacuated in Chicago. Now that I was back in Mrs. Hippie without landline or cable, I was offline and getting no information. I went to the school to find out if they were open and it was my worst nightmare. Everything was going on without me. I went to the dean's office and as I sat in the chair in front of his desk, I tried to articulate the words. "I have to rebuild my house and I don't want to jeopardize this semester of school." I have to drop out of college again I thought to myself as I sobbed at his desk. Somehow, this patient and gentle man guided me through all the signatures and I made it home that day.

Later the same day, Hurricane Rita feeder-bands arrived and blew the second tarp off the roof. This tarp was covering the living room, foyer, kitchen and den. We didn't have leaks that one could put a pot or pan under. Our leaks poured down the walls. I tried to call the tarp company and the phones were down. On a Friday happy hour, in the middle of hurricane feeder-bands; I drove around the tarp man's neighborhood for two hours looking for the house he described with no real address. On the way home I got through on the phone. He and his assistant came and worked for three hours on the roof, in a storm, for our house.

There were long terrible days like this all through the aftermath of the storm. We were hearing terrible things about New Orleans and we were torn up in our own various stages of recovery. New Orleans was a place I wanted to escape to. I wanted to take a short day off from all this misery and go to the French Quarter, take a walk on the river, or go to the museums or the Aquarium. Something, anything normal! Or we might go to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to have lunch, shop, gamble or just have fun. The coast was erased. Gone like tsunami. New Orleans was closed for business. I was sick of the guest room and I cried because I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I would close my eyes and see New Orleans and cry more and more. How could this be!

The first Mardi Gras after the storm was stressful indeed. I didn't feel like traveling. The new Katrina roof was leaking like a sieve and the contractor left town. But there was no not going.

Ricky suggested I contact the local television station about the bad roof and the Gone Contractor. I said, "Get in line." Since nobody had a life outside of recovery, they didn't seem so interested in sports these days and the local sportscaster was assigned to investigate Gone Contractors. We were not alone in our plight. There was a new episode of Gone Contractor every night on the evening news.

We went to Mardi Gras in 2006 and we saw New Orleans East first ... empty. The interstate had a few cars. We have stayed for many years at the same hotel and we are bonded with the staff at the Omni Royal Orleans in the middle of the French Quarter. We lost so many of those wonderful people we had greeted with hugs so many times. While the numbers were down, everyone who came to Mardi Gras that first year after The Storm, was glad they did.

I finished my semester at school in the spring and Ricky and I manifested the stress of the broken roof in marital discord. In the process of patching things up, we began looking at property in New Orleans. We talked so much that week Ricky lost his voice.

We went to Lakeview to find a house with a list of about 30 homes. It was unlike any house hunting we have ever done. The houses were all wide open and we simply walked through each place without appointments. After we made a pick, we called the agent and made the offer.

I wondered about the owner of our new house for two reasons. The house has an expansive space and I imagined they might be a dancer. And of course I wondered if the resident(s) were in the house during the flood or did they get out ... in time. I was able to Google his name and the Times Picayune report of his whereabouts came up. He is fine; we have bonded with our former owner and we cherish his friendship. And he is an actor!

We closed on the house the day before the one year anniversary of Katrina.

The house is a mid-fifties modern, post and beam; with a touch of Philip Johnson and Frank Lloyd Wright.

"My name is Jennifer Porter and I'm an urban pioneer."

I pulled a generator cord for five weeks. It was three months (mid November) before we got hot water. I made my laundry at the "Shateria." The "W" and "a" were missing.

Mold remediation is a fancy term for housework.

... to be continued.