Hurricane Katrina: A First Hand Look at New Orleans and Biloxi Three Weeks Later

My father and I left New Orleans in December of 2004. My mom passed away that month, and Dad and I returned to central Florida, where our family is located, to hold the funeral. We put everything we owned into storage in Kenner, LA, just west of New Orleans, intending to return shortly. We decided to stay for awhile after the funeral, to rest and recover among family and friends. Dad is retired on disability, and I was a business owner in New Orleans. So for the next few months I lived on savings and he on his retirement income. When it became apparent that we would be here through the summer, I took a job at Disney, intending to return to NOLA at the beginning of fall. Then Katrina changed everything.

On a side note, before my mom’s death forced a return to Florida, I had been looking at options for expanding my business. One of the ideas I considered was a move to Biloxi. My cousin Jim is a general contractor there, and I knew that he could help with contacts and business expansion. My then-husband and I (we split in January 2005) had looked into buying a house halfway between New Orleans and Biloxi, where we could manage business operations in both cities. Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Waveland, and Gulfport were among the cities in which we looked. This will become relevant later.

“The One We Have Always Feared”
Back to Katrina. On August 28, I went to work at Disney as usual. I had heard bits and pieces about a developing hurricane in the Gulf, but having just arrived back in FL following a vacation in Chicago, I was not up-to-date on the latest track. The TV was on in the break room. I watched in horror as the enormous, swirling images filled the screen and the newscaster stated that “the big one” was headed straight for New Orleans. I spent the day in fear, managing to do my job but rushing to the break room TV at every available opportunity. At this point, I began to feel different, isolated, from those around me. A co-worker asked why I was so upset. I explained that I was from New Orleans, at which point he stated, “Better call your friends and say goodbye. New Orleans is toast!” This general feeling of unconcern, and that it was the people of New Orleans’ “fault” somehow would become a theme around my workplace.

I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I spent the evening glued to The Weather Channel and the nola.com website. I reported to work as scheduled the next morning, arriving around the same time as the first levee breach. Too upset to perform my job, I talked my supervisor into letting me go home. Again, I returned to The Weather Channel and nola.com. Gradually the reports came in. Up to 20 feet of water in portions of New Orleans. The horrific images from the Superdome and Convention Center. The list of communities destroyed: New Orleans, Biloxi, Waveland, Gulfport, Bay St Louis, Pass Christian. The list of cities in which I had almost bought property, matched exactly by Katrina’s destruction. Chalmette and St Bernard parish – my mother passed away in St Bernard State Park, and her cremation was handled in Chalmette. I had a personal tie to every one of these places that I was now seeing on TV. Also, as a remodeling contractor, I had done work in many of the different neighborhoods throughout the Greater New Orleans area. I worried about my customers. Had Paula in Old Metairie managed to sell the house yet? Robert in the Lower Garden District, who was disabled and had to borrow against his life insurance to have the windows redone. Frank and June in Slidell, the church on Esplanade….so many people, so much of my creative self in all these places. I also worried for my friends. Jerek, my priest. Elderly, severely diabetic, lacking a car or even a state ID. I knew he would never leave. Street kids and tarot readers and bartenders and exotic dancers. The working poor of New Orleans, whose means were limited to paying the rent and buying a little food. They certainly couldn’t evacuate. Where were they, what was happening to them? The final breaking point, for me, came with the images of Mid-City New Orleans. I saw rescuers in a canoe paddling down my street, past the rental house in which I had lived. I cried for my neighbors – Gina, whose family had been in NOLA for generations and had told me a year before during the Ivan scare that she would never leave – “If it gets too bad, I’ll walk to the Superdome.” Kim and Dano, who believed that “vertical evacuation” (checking into a hotel room on a high floor) would save them. Lenny across the street, who worked for the utility company and so was compelled to stay for a disaster.

I spent the next couple of weeks feeling helpless and alone. At first, I did not realize I was a victim. After all, I was in Florida when it hit. Gradually conversations with friends and relatives convinced me otherwise. Everything I owned was still in Kenner. I was staying in Florida sharing a 27 foot travel trailer with my widowed father. That hardly counted as a permanent relocation. So on the advice of the union rep at work, I took administrative leave from my job and applied for Red Cross funding. Thanks to the Red Cross, Dad and I were able to drive to New Orleans and stay in a hotel in McComb, Mississippi (the closest available room to the city) from Sept 21 – 27, 2005.

Entering the Pits of Hell
We started noticing signs of destruction as soon as we entered the Florida panhandle. Few and far between as first, a few downed tree limbs here, a damaged roof there. At the Florida welcome center, we stopped to use the restroom. They gave us bag lunches from a big table with a sign: For Hurricane Evacuees. Please Take One. By the time we made it to Alabama, we began to appreciate for the first time the full scope of the disaster. The Alabama visitor center was closed, and looked to have suffered some pretty serious damage. We stopped for dinner somewhere in Alabama off I-10, and decided on a Popeye’s Chicken. Then we realized that the inside area was closed. The drive through was open with a limited menu, and in the window hung a bright pink sign, certifying that it was licensed to open under emergency conditions. That was a real eye-opener, realizing that restaurants that far away were still affected.

Our first scheduled stop was Biloxi. Jim, the general contractor, had stayed for the storm. We had been in contact with him through relatives, and planned to stop in with supplies. Never having been to his house, we got directions from his mother. Exiting I-10, we drove past the No Entry signs and into the city of Biloxi. I have never been as shocked by anything I have seen before or since. The best description I can give is “Bombed out, third world war zone.” I kept repeating this phrase as we attempted to navigate the streets. The directions we had been given were useless, as street signs no longer existed. Streets no longer existed, for that matter. A cloud of choking black dust and dirt hung in the air, obscuring visibility and causing respiratory distress. Everywhere we looked were piles of rubble that we could only assume had once been houses. We passed local police officers and National Guard members. We tried to ask directions. They seemed as lost and disoriented as we were. The roads were impassible to the point that we eventually realized finding the house, or what was left of it, was not likely to happen. However, we knew that he had stayed in town to head up the rebuilding of the Beau Rivage Casino. We could see that the oceanfront road leading to the casinos was fairly clear and passable. We knew that if we could just make it to the Casino, we could find Jim there. Stopping to speak to the officer at a blockade, we explained the situation. He waved us through and gave us directions. At last, we approached the casino. It was horribly damaged, the “bombed out” analogy again came to mind. But it stood, its name still proudly displayed on its flank.

Less than a mile from the Casino, we came to another blockade. Again, we explained the situation to the officer. This one was not so understanding, however, and forced us to turn around. By this point we had been in Biloxi for over an hour, gotten within a mile of our destination, and now we would not be allowed to continue. With tears streaming down our faces, we said a prayer for our cousin and continued back onto Interstate 10.

At last we approached my home, my city, my beloved New Orleans. I knew the city was still under a mandatory evacuation order. I also knew that I had hold-out friends who would not have left, and I was determined to get into the city by any means possible. But first, we needed a place to spend the night. We drove into Slidell, hoping for a room or campground. No luck. We found ourselves at a Walmart, in a long line of cars. This turned out to be a drive-through National Guard feeding station. We were given bottled water, 2 40-lb bags of ice, and a case of MREs, all delivered to the car window by Guardsmen carrying automatic weapons. We told them we were looking for a place to spend the night, and they directed us to a Red Cross shelter. We went in and looked around, and dropped off the ice as it wouldn’t fit in our cooler. But we couldn’t see taking beds in a shelter when we had the means to go elsewhere. A lot of headaches and useless phone calls later, we managed to locate the only empty room in McComb, Mississippi. Quite a haul, but what can you do?

The next day we headed out to Kenner, where our storage unit was located. Kenner and Metairie were reopened to some extent, so we were able to get to the storage unit. Compared to what we had seen in Biloxi, those areas were truly blessed. There was damage, under normal circumstances I would say extensive damage. But there were already signs of life, of rebuilding, of hope and renewal. The water was still questionable, so we elected to use bottled for handwashing, and gas stations and restaurants had not yet reopened in Kenner. But there we were, approaching our storage unit for the first time since Mom’s death. The building looked okay. At first we thought we were in the clear, among the lucky ones. Then we opened the unit, to be greeted with the noxious stench of extensive mold growth. We saw the water line, at approximately the three foot mark. Needless to say, almost everything was ruined. Heirloom silver, jewelry that my mother had handmade, antique furniture, all fell victim to the floodwaters. We did manage to salvage a very few, exceptionally sentimental items including my mom’s collection of music boxes. That was it. Everything else was gone beyond repair. We cried, and cried, and cried. In a way, it was like saying goodbye to my mom all over again, because now we were saying goodbye to her memories. Not knowing what else to do, we locked the unit back up. It would be the last time we ever saw those items.

We then went looking for an open restaurant. We stopped at a still-closed gas station, where we spotted a couple of Red Cross workers. We figured if anyone would know what was open, it would be them. We asked about restaurants and they stated that they didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. We were directed to an ambulance in the parking lot, where they were distributing hot, freshly cooked meals. We got dinners for both of us, plus a dozen apples and more bottled water. It was then that I truly began to appreciate our hotel room in McComb.

The next day, we decided to drive into New Orleans. We went through Metairie first, where I was ecstatic to see that the Subway restaurant was open. It sounds silly, but my husband and I had a tradition of dinner at that Subway and movies from Blockbuster at least once a week, and in the middle of the hell that surrounded me, that piece of normalcy was like a blessing from the gods. I couldn’t have been happier with a filet mignon than I was with my chicken teriyaki sub that day.

The Forbidden Lands
At last it was time. I was afraid. Afraid that we would not be able to enter, and afraid that we would. Afraid of what we would find. Afraid of confirming the news reports. But I was determined. Now it was simply a question of how. We guessed (correctly) that Metairie Rd/City Park Avenue was still flooded. We knew that I-10 was completely barricaded through the city. Eventually we decided on the Earhart Expressway. Sure enough, we quickly met with a National Guardsman. He pointed an M16 in our faces and asked what our business was. We told him about Jerek, my priest. I knew that I was correct in thinking Jerek had stayed in the city, as I read an interview with him in a California newspaper a few days before the trip. I also knew that he likely needed food and medical supplies, and I wanted to check up on him. The Guardsman was unable to authorize our entry, but referred us to his supervisor. The supervisor took down Jerek’s name and address, and allowed us to proceed. We were in!
The first thing I noticed was the eerie quiet. Remember, this was three weeks following the storm, before even business owners were allowed into the city to check on their property. In stark contrast to the clouds of choking dust in Biloxi, in New Orleans everything had settled. It was like we had entered a freaky time warp. Twisted steel beams in what used to be gas stations sat untouched since the waters had receded. Cars, abandoned and scattered, lay where they fell. Debris was everywhere, making road navigation hazardous at best and impossible at worst. Mighty oak trees, stripped of their leaves and branches, in some cases completely uprooted, showed proof of the storm. Newspaper racks, miraculously still standing amongst the destruction around them, still held papers bearing the date “August 28, 2005”. It could have been the day after Katrina, from all the physical evidence, had we not known that the day after Katrina these areas were underwater. On and on we drove, through Mid-City where I cried in relief to find that the shell of my house still stood, though I knew that the water had come up to the roofline. Through the Central Business District, past the battered Superdome where I knew so many, including people I knew, had lived in hell. Down Tulane Avenue, where so many of the landmarks I knew so well had been laid to waste by the power of wind and water. St Charles Avenue, where many of the old estate homes still stood, remarkably undamaged, but empty of residents. Empty of life. A murky brown colored Esplanade Avenue, where once it had been green and vibrant and alive with promise. City Park battered and beaten. A great city, my city, my mother’s city, brought to its knees by the power of nature.

We made the decision not to visit the Lower 9th or New Orleans East, as we knew that sections of those areas were still underwater, and we knew that security was especially tight there as well. But everywhere we went we passed police, FEMA, and the National Guard. None of them seemed the least bit concerned, curious, or upset that we were there. It seemed that the attitude was that if you got past the checkpoints, you must belong there.

Eventually we approached the French Quarter. I was relieved beyond compare to find how relatively unscathed it was. Some broken windows, some cracked railings, a bit of a mess of tree debris in Jackson Square. But comparatively to the rest of the city and the Gulf Coast, the Quarter was truly fortunate. Again I cried as we exited the car. Again I noticed the eerie stillness. The fountain in Jackson Square was trickling a nasty brown water. The clock on the Cathedral had stopped at the moment power went out and had not yet been restarted. Again I saw newspapers bearing the date “August 28, 2005”. But here there were signs of life stirring. Hope for the future raising its head tentatively, to peek out from behind the wall of despair. A small group of people emerging from a car, taking pictures and looking around in disbelief, just as we were. A few residents, wandering down lower Decatur on their way to Molly’s for a drink. The famous Cafe du Monde coffee stand, no tables or chairs outside but the structure completely intact, including the awning. Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shoppe bar, with the recent remodeling work not even touched. And my parents’ apartment. The last place that my mother ever lived, an historic 1800s building on the corner of St Philip and Bourbon, looking just as it did the day she died. I cried again for that one. Unfortunately, we never found Jerek, despite repeated pounding on his door. I can only hope that he got out safely at the last minute.

Final Thoughts
I returned to Orlando at the end of September, with a renewed sense of what is important and a perspective that I simply could not get from watching the news. As of this writing, June 5, 2005, I am still in central Florida. I am trying hard to return to New Orleans, but inflated rents make it difficult. However, my pursuit continues, and I believe that, in time, I will return. The rebuilding continues, slowly but surely. New Orleans will rise again, stronger, prouder, and better than ever. In the meantime, I hope to give people who weren’t there, and haven’t experienced it first hand, a personal perspective on what the news station couldn’t cover. Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?