Tag Archives: Katrina

Tomorrow makes five years since Katrina hit land. Five years since the storm, since the waters rose and the levees failed and so many people died. Not just in New Orleans – all over Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama. It seems like people forget about the other places. I don’t know why, since they were just as affected. No levee failure there, just storm surge. The water came in, and it took everything with it when it left.

I think about Mississippi. My family is from there. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Longview, Texas, in hysterics because my mom called and said that they couldn’t find my grandmother. (I believe she ended up in a shelter.) The home my Paw-Paw built was wiped out. Maw-Maw passed away in October of 2007. Sometimes I think that storm took her too, only a couple of years later. I missed her so much on my wedding day.

Every year at this time New Orleans goes through the same thing – we look at photos, we remember lost things and lost lives. We pray, we drink, we mourn, we laugh and cry at the same time. We talk about those places that “ain’t dere no more”. We watch the news and bite our nails, because it’s always around Labor Day that hurricane season goes into overdrive. Katrina and Rita. Gustav and Ivan. Right now it’s Danielle and Earl. Far from us but when those weather reports mention the names we all sit up and pay attention. We know that if they get closer, we need to start packing up our papers and pictures and as many clothes as our suitcases and cars will handle. We don’t pack just a few days’ worth of clothes anymore, because there is a possibility that those may be the only clothes we have. We put boards on our windows and doors and clear out our fridges because the idea of coming back to a fridge full of rotten food is so unappealing, we would rather just pay the money to stock up when we get home. We gas up our cars and look for back roads to drive on because no one wants to get caught up in that contraflow mess and be stuck in gridlock for 10 or more hours.

Too many people across the country sneered at us. “Guess they just shouldn’t have lived there.” “Why are you bothering to rebuild?” “Anyone who goes back there is stupid.” Even a United States senator commented that it made “no sense” to rebuild a city under sea level. Comments like that made us set our jaws and become even more determined to rebuild. We also reminded ourselves and others that natural disasters can happen anywhere – flooding rivers, tornadoes, and earthquakes. All things extremely destructive, but we don’t curl our upper lips and tell the world that they “just shouldn’t have lived there” when a disaster occurs.

I’ll admit, I didn’t want to come back. When we drove back in through Kenner I cried. As time went on, though, I saw my friends come home, I started working again, and I realized just how much the city was ingrained in me. I love New Orleans, I love the area, I love its people and places and things you just can’t find or do in other cities. As Chris Rose put it:

We dance even if there’s no radio. We drink at funerals. We talk too much and laugh too loud and live too large and, frankly, we’re suspicious of others who don’t.

Here’s to five years of fighting, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Keep fighting the good fight.