Hurricane Katrina and the resulting New Orleans flood is covered in this web page. It is a tale of nature's fury, people & animals suffering, heroic actions by some citizens and, yes, government incompetence, political corruption, bad engineering, and the loss, at least temporarily, of a great American city.
It is also the tale of my daughter and her boy friend who were trapped in New Orleans for almost a week. And most of all, it is a tale of New Orleans cats who suffered in the hurricane, the action of my cat, Max, in rescuing his adopted brother cat, and the heroic people who cared for cats and other pets marooned in New Orleans by the Katrina flood.
".....and, it's a hard rain, and it's a hard rain, and, its a hard rain gonna fall"........... Hard Rain Gonna Fall...Bob Dylan
I live in a New Orleans, Louisiana suburb so I witnessed much of this tragic Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans flood event close-up although my family and I evacuated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana the day before the hurricane struck and were unable to return home for two weeks.
The lives of New Orleans residents who experienced Hurricane Katrina and resulting flood will, henceforth, be divided into two phases:
Phase 1 - Events prior to Hurricane Katrina.
Phase 2 - Events after Hurricane Katrina.
Katrina (The Big One) is on the Way! For a week or so in late August, I daily checked on the progress of Hurricane Katrina as it formed near the Bahamas, crossed the Florida Keys into the Gulf of Mexico, and began to move in the general direction of New Orleans and southeast Louisiana.
I am one of those optimistic souls who kept expecting Katrina to turn eastward at the last minute and visit its fury on the panhandle of Florida. Hurricanes apparently headed for New Orleans usually do just that!
I am an engineer by profession and had worked in Louisiana's Coastal Restoration Division until shortly before the storm. Certainly, I was aware that Hurricane Katrina was on the theoretical path that the modeling experts had said would flood New Orleans. Still, I kept waiting for the eastward turn that always came.
On the day (Sunday) before the hurricane struck, I was sleeping soundly when I was awakened at 5:00 am by my wife and two of my daughters who jointly told me, they were evacuating to Baton Rouge with or without me. I bravely told them to get rolling - I was still waiting for the hurricane to turn away from New Orleans toward the Florida panhandle.
They did just that and I sat around, alone, all morning watching TV and waiting for the storm to turn away from New Orleans. At 2:00 that afternoon, I realized good hurricane news was not forthcoming and I took off for Baton Rouge in my Jeep Cherokee.
Flight From Hurricane Katrina: The Road Warrior Revisited. I know all the roads around the New Orleans - Baton Rouge area so I selected a route that was certain to be the least crowded route. Unfortunately, all the other late Katrina evacuees knew about the route and also took it. It was bumper to bumper all ninety miles to Baton Rouge.
The trip was like a slow-motion chase scene out of Mel Gibson's movie of the future "Road Warrior." There were vehicles on the road of a size and shape that I didn't even know existed. They dwarfed my Cherokee Jeep. Also, most people were traveling in packs of two to five vehicles. The packs were very aggressive and eventually took over the opposite lane of the two-lane highway even though there was an occasional vehicle traveling in the that lane toward New Orleans. Those vehicles heading in the opposite direction toward the doomed city had to move to the shoulder of the road or face a head-on collision.
I'll never forget that trip.
At 10:00 pm, I arrived at a daughter's home in Baton Rouge, having taken 8 hours to travel 90 miles. My nerves were shot but became even more shot as I learned my youngest daughter had decided to ride out Hurricane Katrina with her boy friend in mid-city New Orleans.
New Orleans Flood. Early Tuesday Morning, the day after the storm struck, my daughter and boyfriend were awakened by a stalwart neighbor who had also chosen not to evacuate. He was shouting:
"The levees have broken! The levees have broken!"
Up until this time, my daughter and boyfriend's homes had experienced heavy wind damage but no flooding.
They rushed outside and could see water heading down the street in their direction. They were observing, first hand, the great New Orleans flood caused by a combination of Hurricane Katrina and an inadequate New Orleans levee system.
Trapped in mid-city New Orleans! At the same time in Baton Rouge, my family and I had arisen early and were startled by a Hurricane Katrina bulletin on TV that said, indeed, the levees had broken and that a wall of water 9 feet high would soon cover New Orleans. Fortunately, the water only reached a few feet in my daughter's neighborhood so they were in no danger of drowning in the boyfriend's elevated home. Also, they had enough food and bottled water for several days. The problem was they were surrounded by deeper water. They were, in effect, trapped like rats! They were trapped in New Orleans as that great city drowned!
All phones were out, so we couldn't warn my daughter and my daughter couldn't communicate her problems and fears to us.
"......and nobody has ever taught you to live on the street and now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it." Like a Rolling Stone....Bob Dylan
Crime & Looting in Flooded New Orleans. Helicopters were already plucking people off roofs and my daughter and boyfriend could see them fly overhead every few minutes and knew they could signal to them if necessary. But another problem had arisen which kept them from signaling for rescue.
This problem was the radio (TV was out of action) reports of wide spread looting, rape, and mayhem in downtown New Orleans. My daughter is a tall blonde and would have stood out like a sore thumb in the crowd of people gathering at the Superdome and Convention Center. The reports on the radio frightened her so bad, she and her boyfriend decided to stay put.
The reports of widespread looting, murder, rape, etc spread by the national media, e.g., FOX News, CNN, etc, and, of course, right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, were, at least, partly exaggerated but my daughter had no way to know this. There was little Hurricane Katrina news from other sources. The New Orleans Newspaper - The Times Picayune - was out of action as were the other Louisiana newspapers and all TV stations in the area.
(Note: Despite all the obnoxious and poorly informed remarks Limbaugh made about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans citizens, I understand he participated in fund-raising activities for hurricane victims. Give the devil his due!)
So my daughter and boyfriend stayed put in New Orleans. On Wednesday, three days after hurricane Katrina struck, my daughter and boyfriend were able to retrieve an abandoned canoe and paddled to a drainage water pumping station where MRE's (military meals) were being dropped from helicopters. During the trip, they heard gunshots. Also, they had to paddle through neighborhoods where flood water was up to the roof gutters. Feeling fearful for their lives, they hurriedly paddled home through the battered but still-standing ancient oak trees of New Orleans' flooded City Park.
That afternoon, the telephone rang at my evacuee home in Baton Rouge and my trapped daughter was on the line. The family was hysterical with delight to hear that she was O.K. A rescuer had arrived by boat at her home and loaned her his satellite phone. He was ready to take my daughter to a rescue point but advised her not to go because he would have to drop her at a pre-selected rescue point where stranded citizens had been waiting for days to be removed from the city. He said conditions were very bad. Once again, my daughter decided to stay put. (It should be noted that the rescuer, a civilian, was armed with a pistol. Most rescuers were armed because of the accounts of violence being reported by the media.)
My daughter's tale had a good ending. The day after she called, her boyfriend's brother managed to reach them and the three of them were able to escape the city by wading through filthy water, hiking along an elevated railroad track, and, finally, via a car. They arrived late that night in Baton Rouge, battered and hungry but in good spirits. They were survivors!
Was I ever glad to see someone! The family had all survived Hurricane Katrina!
Hero Cat, Max, Rescues his Brother Cat. We had to leave our three cats in our home in the New Orleans suburb where we live when we evacuated from New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina approached. We left plenty of water and about 3 days supply of food for them. We thought we would be back by then.
Eight days after Hurricane Katrina struck, we were finally allowed to visit our home in New Orleans, assess the damage, pick up essentials and then were required to leave again. My younger daughter (the one that had been trapped) was with me and we were certain we would find the house badly damaged with our two huge trees (1 pine, 1 oak) down on the house. We estimated that at least one cat would be dead. The most likely suspect was Max, the sensitive and sometimes ill-tempered cat.
As we approached our street, my daughter began screeching loudly. She could see, at a distance, the tops of the two trees so we knew they were not down on the house. She screeched even louder when we opened the side door to the house and a very happy Max was in our face as healthy as he could be. His adopted brother, Monroe, though, was frightened of us and ran upstairs to hide. The third cat, Marshmallow, was under a bed and ignored us.
Eventually, the timid Monroe began to creep down the stairs but stopped half-way down. Suddenly, Max ran to him, nuzzled him and seemed to be telling him:
"Come on! Come on! They came back for us! I told you they would come back! Let's go! Let's get the hell out of Dodge! The thunder and lightening might come back!"
Monroe finally got the message and followed Max down the stairs. The cat rescue was complete! We took the three cats back to Baton Rouge with us where a vet extracted a large amount of cash from me to board and treat the cats.
It took Monroe weeks to get over the trauma of the storm. The family often speculates as to how the cats behaved during the fury of Hurricane Katrina without the family around. Monroe must to have been beside himself with fear! He has never liked bad weather and jumps under a bed when it thunders.
Max's stature rose, of course, with his heroic performance in helping rescue Monroe and he is now the number one cat in the family. A hero cat! (He still gets grouchy when not fed properly, though.)
My apologies to those of you who aren't cat lovers. But we are a family of cat lovers and we have always had multiple cats living with us.
For weeks after the storm, my youngest daughter, periodically, worked her way back into the flooded New Orleans and fed stray cats and dogs. On one trip back to New Orleans with a friend, a small female kitten would not leave their side so, naturally, the kitten ended up at my older daughter's home in Baton Rouge. Katrina (many, if not most, female cats rescued after Hurricane Katrina are now named Katrina), now almost a fully grown cat, is very popular with my grandchildren. The vet also loves her as he, again, extracted a substantial sum of money from me to take care of Katrina
I was proud of my daughter for taking care of refugee cats and dogs. She reported seeing other bowls and plates containing pet food and placed at strategic points. Other people were doing pet rescue, also.
New Orleans is not all sin city! There are some good people here. Animal lovers are all good people. If the Tribulation started with the New Orleans flood as some born-againers claim, God has left some good people behind in New Orleans to fight against Satan in the final great struggle between good and evil.
My Daughter & Cats Since the New Orleans flood. It is worth mentioning how my daughter and New Orleans cats are making out since the flood.
New Orleans - Susceptible to Hurricanes. New Orleans was originally built on low land located between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. Drainage of the land caused the soil to shrink and the land to sink and only the construction of levees along the Mississippi River prevented annual flooding with accompanying sediment drop-out. Without the normal solids input from the flooding and sediment drop-out, soils continued to compact and sink. This process continued for several hundred years until much of the city is now 10 feet or more below sea level. In effect the city is a "bowl" waiting to be filled. Only the presence of a strong (we thought!) New Orleans levee system kept the city dry during normal times much less during the high river and hurricane seasons.
Hurricane modelers at the state universities and at NOAA have long known that a strong hurricane, if it approached New Orleans at the right angle was a great danger to the city. But, although the city has been struck a number of times by hurricanes, they have never approached the city on precisely the angle needed to overtop the levee systems with storm surges. In 1965, Hurricane Betsy came close to being the "perfect storm" and some of the city was flooded. Over a hundred people in the New Orleans area were drowned by Betsy. Still, much of the city did not flood and it was difficult for those of us who rode out Hurricane Betsy to imagine a stronger storm.
A few years later, powerful but small Hurricane Camille devastated the Mississippi gulf coast but only gave New Orleans a glancing blow. The same thing happened time and time again over the next 30 years as hurricanes darted at New Orleans and then, at the last moment, turned either to the east or the west. New Orleans was living a charmed life!
Four items added to the danger as time went by:
First, on a relative basis, the land was continuing to sink at an accelerating rate. Sea level rise combined with land subsidence, discussed above, caused this. New Orleans is now a foot or more lower in relative elevation than when Betsy struck 40 years earlier.
Second, the marshes around New Orleans have been deteriorating for decades. These marshes had historically helped trip storm surges before the surges reached New Orleans. Coastal erosion was taking a deadly toll on the New Orleans hurricane defense system.
And third, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a shipping canal located in St Bernard Parish (southeast of New Orleans) was widening daily due to bank erosion. It finally was over half the width of the Mississippi River. The MRGO provided a speedway for the storm surge to strike St Bernard Parish where every home in the Parish was flooded by Hurricane Katrina, many homes to the roofs. The MRGO also allowed Katrina flood water to enter portions of adjacent Orleans Parish.
And finally, it is generally accepted that Global Warming is heating the oceans to higher than normal temperatures. Certainly, very warm Gulf of Mexico water fueled the explosive growth of Hurricane Katrina and, later in 2005, Hurricane Rita. (The coming problems with the energy crisis may further aggravate conditions that produce Global Warming in the future as the refineries turn to lower and lower grades of oil, e.g., tar sands and shale oil, which will produce increased pollution.)
The defective New Orleans levee system is not discussed as a cause above since the investigation into the levee breaches is ongoing and the jury is still out.
And so, as hurricanes continued to narrowly miss New Orleans, the city was becoming more susceptible by the year.
New Orleans has been called "the city that care forgot." This was certainly the case over the decades as the hurricane dangers increased. Mardi Gras celebrations and French Quarter "sin city" activities, e.g., women "flashing" at Mardi Gras, continued even as the powerful hurricanes began to move closer and closer to New Orleans.
All that was needed for disaster was the right storm traveling the right path. Hurricane Katrina was that storm.
Other web pages of this site will cover the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, FEMA, the examination into why the New Orleans levee system failed, and why 80 % of the city flooded and why over a thousand people were drowned, and the ongoing heroic (but possibly futile) attempts to rebuild New Orleans.
New Orleans Saints. Of course, a big question to answer in the rebuilding effort is: "Will the Saints stay in New Orleans?" The New Orleans Saints NFL football team is critically important to the city and Louisiana and losing them would be a terrible blow to both. With a declining population due to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans would never be able to attract another NFL football team to the city.
New Orleans Future. New Orleans will recover from Hurricane Katrina but will it ever be the same? I will be doing all I can to make sure we don't become a coastal Tyler, Texas or Wichita, Kansas as some of the bible thumpers would like. We deserve better! (Apologies to Tyler and Wichita. They are great little country towns but they are not New Orleans!)
Thanks for visiting this web site!
Web Page Review of New Orleans | Hurricane Katrina | New Orleans Flood |Trapped in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans flood put a beating on New Orleans and on me personally, but we are both recovering.
Home-Conservatism vs. Liberalism
Last Updated: 10/09/07
e-mail me at: vanc13@cox.net