"A most powerful hurricane of unprecedented strength...rivaling the intensity of Hurricane Camille in 1969...human suffering incredible by human standards..." were the words of a forecaster in the Slidell, Louisiana, National Weather Service office some twenty hours before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, five years ago this morning.
Those words were clear: this storm was unparalleled in modern history. The emphatic statement was this forecaster's last attempt to accomplish what they try to do every hurricane season...warn those in harm's way. The people of the Gulf Coast were a storm-hardened people, many having survived the storm of a lifetime, Hurricane Camille. Camille was the reference point for all family, community, and state hurricane plans. Her thirty-six year and twelve-day reign was about to give way to another August feminine storm, Katrina. Much like Camille, Katrina started out innocently, and quickly exploded into a monster in the Gulf of Mexico. There were differences, though. Camille was tight and compact, causing her winds to be much higher - with an official high recorded at 190 miles per hour. Anecdotal evidence points to substantially higher winds of 230 to 250 miles per hour, but we will never know. Katrina was a much broader, slower moving storm, which allowed her time to gather the ocean up ahead of her path and push it onshore, as much as a half-mile inland and 30 feet deep in some areas. Katrina's massive breadth inflicted a continuous band of damage along 100 or more miles of the Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama coastlines. She maintained her strength on her northward march, downgrading to a tropical depression in north-central Tennessee.
Beneath those angry clouds were our friends, neighbors, and relatives. Places we enjoyed visiting as children along the Mississippi Gulf Coast...all were simply obliterated. "Hiroshima" one headline shouted. Another simply said "Our Tsunami", referring to a recent disaster in the Indian Ocean that killed hundreds of thousands. The printed word and the pictures could not tell the story. Every mile of Mississippi coastline, and about a half-mile or more inland was utterly and totally decimated.
We were bunkered down, a half-mile from the shoreline, in what we felt like was the safest place we could be, and still remain close to those we were sent to help. Scattered reports came of various fire stations and county emergency operations centers being flooded or damaged by winds, with staff forced to evacuate. These weren't simply reports over the radio, they were information about people we had known and worked with for years. Professional colleagues, and personal friends when we weren't working. Yet there was nothing we could do. Nothing, but wait. It was as if we were deaf and blind. We could sense what was going on around us, but without firm information, we were grasping for straws.
Occasionally the phones would work, relaying frantic calls from families who, with a Camille-survivor mentality, decided to ride the storm out. They called from their attics, their last place of refuge from the relentless storm surge. They pleaded with us to come get them, as they could feel their houses moving underneath them....then a dead silence when the line was broken. Anger and anguish were our companions as we pressed the phones closer to our ears, hoping for the connection to be restored........
Our first venture into the post-Katrina world was a surreal experience; it was as if Salvador Dali had been let loose on the Coast, this time with real objects in hand instead of his brush. Where were the people who had called, begging for life-saving? Why were boats, shipping containers, barges, casinos now occupying the lanes of the roadway? Tractor-trailers were wrapped around tree trunks, appearing as if they were a natural part of this unnatural landscape. Household debris now washed into an interstate, miles away from any body of water; where had this come from? Death's smell, and taste, hung thick as the late summer humidity, offending the senses.
As quickly as the winds settled, the people of the Coast pushed out of their homes to begin checking on their families and their neighbors. There was no waiting for someone to come along. A job had to be done, and done now.
Doctors, nurses, medics, firefighters, police officers, security guards, dispatchers, coroners, electrical workers, National Guardsmen, elected officials....we were all simply neighbors now. Katrina was an equal-opportunity offender, sparing not the rich nor the poor, the sick nor the well.
We wrestled for the first day, maybe two, to grant some semblance of order to our new world. Much like the story of Easter, on the third day saw a new hope, in the form of help. You ask, "why so long?" Consider, though, the entire southern half of Mississippi was devastated, and it took that time to literally cut and saw the way through to a clear lane of travel.
We met many counterparts from forty-six states, neighbors in the national neighborhood who came to our aid. While we've repaid our financial debt to those neighbors for their help, we will never be able to repay the debts of one-on-one support. Bumper stickers quickly appeared, conveying the Hospitality State's message of gratitude: "Thanks, Y'all!"
Five years later, we still see the scars left by Katrina. Families who lost loved ones will carry those scars as permanent reminders of nature's power. Our coast was transformed overnight, but with the resolve to come back bigger and better than before.
Two days after Katrina, I had a brief chat with an elected official in Hancock County, a person who I also consider a friend. We asked ourselves how long would it take for this area to fully recover? Would ten years be enough? Twenty? Thirty?
I think the truth is that there is no "full recovery" to be had. To recover means to rebuild and re-become what we once were. Certainly the area is rebuilding, but they're doing it with a new boldness and a new vision. It will take another generation to determine whether we recovered. It is up to us to get it right, for that next generation to enjoy. For to them, Katrina will only be a lesson, a story passed down, just as Camille's story was passed down to us. Will we repeat history?
