Katrina

by Bryan

4 comments

1 Anya { 08.30.22 at 10:18 am }

I remember the day. I remember the entire event. It was the time that my capacity to to be outraged reached its limit and died.

(Yes, Trump was, and still is, awful, but he never quite reached the same level of outrage. I think that by now it has become schadenfreude.)

To top it all off, me sweet Mother-in-Law passed away during that time. I was numb for a long time afterward.

2 Bryan { 08.30.22 at 10:17 pm }

It was one of those events that becomes a checkpoint in life. We got some rain but not much wind when Katrina passed South of us on its way to Waveland, Mississippi where it made landfall. The aftermath and response was so bad that people in hurricane country will never forget. Rumsfeld blocked the military from responding. Locally we had military units that had responded to hurricanes in other countries, but they weren’t allowed to help for weeks.

Things do tend to come in bursts whether bad news or good.

3 hipparchia { 09.03.22 at 5:15 pm }

i worked a ton of overtime after katrina, all of it focused on waveland, which had been absolutely pancaked. i didn’t have much time to eat or sleep for a couple of weeks, let alone watch tv, so for at least the first week i really had no idea how bad it was in new orleans too.

i know it’s illogical, but i’ve always felt guilty about katrina and the people in new orleans. ivan was supposed to go there the year before but veered at the last minute and came here. a bunch of those in new orleans who had evacuated for ivan, and consequently spent the hurricane stuck on the road in their cars, stayed home for katrina.

4 Bryan { 09.03.22 at 10:18 pm }

Rule of thumb: always go inland to avoid a hurricane. They directed my Mom towards Georgia when we evacuated for Opal and the storm followed her. I went to Huntsville and was able to buy a generator, gas cans, and a chain saw before returning. My biggest problem was driving in a Toyota pickup with a cat who hated being in a vehicle and howled her displeasure the entire time.

Waveland was ground zero for the worst of the storm surge. New Orleans was in good shape until the storm surge took out a levee and flooded the Ninth Ward.