A Taste of Disaster

Ironically, I sheltered during the disaster in a dreamy mansion on Royal Street, in the heart of the French Quarter, a property owned by my boyfriend’s wealthy father and stepmother. My boyfriend Frank managed the property and we took over an empty furnished apartment and sheltered there with his elderly mother Peggy and my dog Peanut. What we went through was a far cry from what I would have experienced if I’d stayed at my home in NO East but it was troubling nonetheless.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall near daybreak on Monday, August 29^th, 2005. The 53 levee breaks / failures that destroyed 80% of New Orleans (including my neighborhood) began early Monday morning but we in the French Quarter, which remained dry, had no understanding of what was happening around us until Monday afternoon. What you have below represents the moment I knew we needed to flee the city.

Early Tuesday afternoon, a bunch of young, tough-looking white guys—the kind of guys you’d expect to see working security at a Pantera concert—took over a boutique hotel a few doors down from us. They were shirtless, sporting dark colored shorts lined with pockets and sturdy-looking work boots. Three of the seven guys were strapping, shiny guns in holsters at their chests or along their legs. I watched from the balcony of the Royal Street building as they built a debris barricade at the corner of Royal and St. Phillip Streets, not far from C.C.’s Coffee House.

“Hey, what are you doing? What if emergency vehicles need to get through?” yelled a caretaker from a Bed and Breakfast across the street. Ah, the ironies of experiencing the apocalypse in a high-end tourist district.

One of the tough guys eyed the caretaker.

“Mister, don’t worry,” he yelled back, “we’re gonna protect you from the niggers. They’re shooting off guns down on Rampart Avenue. They’re looting the stores.”

“What about emergency vehicles?” the man yelled in return.

“What emergency vehicles?” another of the guys answered, “Don’t you get it yet, man? Nobody is coming to help us. We have to help ourselves.” He laughed.

“Fuck you,” yelled the caretaker, “I don’t want your protection.”

During the length of the argument, I tried to send telepathic messages to the caretaker. I stared over at him, trying to think as loudly as possible:

“Mister, get inside. Can’t you see these guys have guns? They’re playing out their Mad Max Beyond the Superdome fantasies and I don’t want to have to run in the street and to give you first aid after they’ve shot you. Don’t do this to me, Mister. Get back inside.”

Finally, my messages seemed to get through and the caretaker shuffled back inside the B&B as the guys continued building their barricade. I still sat on the balcony, trying to fly under the radar.

A few minutes later, I looked down and recognized a girl walking down Royal Street. I couldn’t remember her name but I’d met her at the Rose Nicaud Coffee House in the nearby neighborhood of Marigny. She was wearing a beautiful 1950s, green checkered, cinch-waist dress with a matching headband holding back thick curls. Downtown New Orleans girls have such impeccable taste in clothes even during disasters.

“Hey,” I yelled down, catching the girl’s eye, “You ok?”

She looked up at me and I remember thinking that her eyes looked feral. As she stopped to talk, she leaned against the two by four she held in her right hand. That was when I noticed that the back of her dress was coated in sweat and the wood she held was encrusted with nails.

“I’m ok,” she yelled up to me, “but the police just told me we’re on our own.”

“We’re on our own?” I yelled back.

“Yeah,” she answered, “Somebody tried to break into my place last night and I went to report it and the police told me they had bigger problems to deal with. They said we’re on our own now.”

Oh My God, I thought, the guys with the guns were right. We are on our own and no one is coming to help. What, I wondered, could have happened to the rest of the nation that a disaster like this could be ignored? Was this really the apocalypse? Had our government failed while our city filled with water?

The girl and I talked a while, exchanging rumors about conditions in the city. I threw her a bottle of water. Then she walked away toward St. Anne Street where she planned to stay with friends.

After she left, I continued watching the street from the balcony. I spotted two young black men down the block, each pushing a shopping cart. As they got closer, I saw that one basket was filled with ice, the other with chips. My heart started beating faster. The crazy guys were now standing proudly beside their barricade.

Please God, I prayed, don’t let the crazy guys shoot the black guys. I ran inside and started searching for materials I could use as bandaging in case anybody got hurt. I fixed on the big floor to ceiling curtains in the front room and then ran back outside to see what was happening.

That was when I knew we had to find a way out of the city. I didn’t want to be in a position in which I had to choose between my safety and the necessity of helping someone who’d been shot.

Amazingly, the toughies with the guns ignored the two black men walking down the street. Instead, the caretaker from the B&B surprised me by coming back outside and yelling at them.

“Hey, where’d you get that stuff?” the caretaker said gesturing toward the baskets, “Did you steal it?”

The two young men ignored him and continued walking. Finally, when they’d passed our part of the street, one of them looked back and yelled.

“Mister,” he said with concern in his voice, “We got this stuff at the Robert’s Grocery over on St. Claude. Things are getting crazy. You better get you some food before there’s nothing left.”

The next day Frank, Peggy, Peanut, and I fled the city. Frank and I ran up the car ramp of the high-rise lot where I’d parked my little red Hyundai Accent before the storm. We traversed nine floors without getting winded. Talk about an adrenaline rush. When we started the car, I remember feeling invisible, like Wonder Woman.

We convoyed out of the city in my Hyundai followed by friends in a jeep. As we drove away from the Quarter, we worried that there might be no dry route out of our city. After all, if we could easily drive out via the Crescent City Connection—the big bridge spanning the Mississippi River, wouldn’t help have already arrived? But, luckily, we hugged the river and crossed the bridge without anything blocking our way. A few other vehicles joined us on the bridge, while pedestrians strolled across, all of us making our way out of disaster.

And that was when it hit me! If we could make it out of the city this easily, surely the combined forces of the U.S. government could have entered at any time. They could have driven in across that bridge just as we’d driven out, and launched rescue boats where the flooding began. They could have set up emergency relief stations along the river. The federal government could have helped. They’d simply chosen not to.

I don’t think I have any words to explain how much that realization hurt me. Prior to the disaster, I don’t think I’d realized how much faith I placed in government. I’d truly believed that, in the case of a true disaster—one in which people’s lives were endangered, the government and the people of our nation would come together to help. Now, I realized, at least when it came to my city’s suffering, this was not true.

So, readers, this is just a little taste of how it felt to be in the city for the disaster. I tell these stories to purge them from my soul. I tell them to banish the anger and guilt. I also tell them because they are part, not just of my city’s history, but also of the American story. Many New Orleanians have had at least some chance to tell their stories of the disaster but so often few have listened. I hope as I continue to tell my story on this blog and offer my reflections on the disaster, others will come forward to discuss their experiences as well as offer questions and comments. Post stories and ideas in the comments section here or email me at katrinareverb@gmail.com

See you next week! Donna