Remembering Katrina

I took this photo in April 2006 in the lower 9th Ward. When I went back in March 2008, it looked the same except the flag was gone.

This week I'm remembering Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath.  I've read a few of the Katrina-five-years-later stories, but I've studiously avoided almost all of the TV coverage.  It's too easy to become enraged or maudlin.

New Orleans is the closest thing I have to an adopted home town.   I love the place, and I feel more comfortable there than I do almost anywhere else.  I've been in enough eateries and gin mills that I nearly feel like a local--only without the regional dialect that sounds like a Brooklyn accent on quaaludes.  I love the premium that New Orleans (and most of southern Louisiana, really) puts on hospitality, food, music and showing people a good time.  I like their goofy stories, and the way they tolerate eccentricity.  Being from Cook County, Illinois, I also recognize and appreciate the breadth and depth of their public corruption.

When the levees broke and the city descended into chaos, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I started calling places like the Red Cross to see if I could volunteer in some way--yeah, I have no real skills but I'm good at dealing with hysterical people and I'm cool in a crisis, and I had a gun and 17 years of law enforcement experience, which it certainly appeared was needed at that moment.  The Red Cross suggested I sign up for a volunteer orientation-- the next month.  Yes, in October 2005.

I was eventually lucky enough to be part of a group of police officers who volunteered to go down there.  We answered a call put out from Saint Charles Parish through the national Fraternal Order of Police seeking volunteers.  To make a long story short, we spent only two days in Saint Charles parish, securing the Boutte (pronounced Boo-TEE) Walmart.  Then we met a detective from NOPD, and decided to go where our presence was needed more urgently.  We spent the week working in the 2nd District of New Orleans (the Uptown/River Bend area), one of the only areas in the city that wasn't flooded. 

I was blessed again with the opportunity to go to St Bernard Parish in March 2006, gutting houses with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity as part of the St Bernard Recovery Project.

 
Work and family life being what it is, I'm not sure if I'll be able to post anything else about my experiences there.  One of the great untold stories of Katrina is the response of hundreds of cops and firefighters from around the country who rushed to the assistance of southern Louisiana.  If I don't get to it, shoot me an email; I'll be happy to sit down over a couple of Sazerac cocktails and tell you all about it.