Don’t Know Where to Begin

So I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Or at least where I perceive that to be. Friday was a normal day for us. Katrina was in the Southeastern Gulf and all indications were that she was heading to the already well-battered Florida panhandle. By late in the workday, some of my coworkers were fearing that the models were starting to show a NOLA landfall. But the models were changing widly at that point. The lack of consistency in the models at that point was worrying, but not too much. Not yet.

Jennifer and I grabbed our Cafe Degas coupon from the Gambit and headed out for a great dinner. Late that night, I got home and took a peek at the noaa.gov NHC page and the forecast track had moved. The storm was projected dead center over NOLA. I felt a ball in my gut. I didn’t say a word to Jennifer hoping that it would be moved by the time the 5am or 11am Sat morning tracks came out.

It was not to be. At 7:45am my phone rang. It was work. We needed to batten down the hatches and transfer our operations to the disaster recovery site. The fact that we hadn’t done so as soon as Katrina crossed Florida is in an indication of how low the expectation was that she was heading towards New Orleans.

Work was frantic and tense. We’d tested this numerous times and even done a few real runs, such as for Danny earlier in the year. But this felt much different. People were tense. Many folks I called to coordinate with were already on their way out of town.

I scrambled to get things set up. I managed to pack a box of tapes that were missed and have those sent out of town too. Probably should have loaded up the tape drives as well but you just don’t think that fast.

I got home and consulted with my friend and neighbor Greg about our wood stash. We spent the rest of the day boarding up his house and part of mine. (I have some shutters) We commented on how alarmingly routine this was all becoming as he had boarded up several times now since moving in.

Greg would actually leave overnight. Jennifer and I wanted to hang in and see if the storm would do as all the others have and veer off to the east. We were tense. At this point I was more anxious to just go than Jennifer. We went out for Sushi and actually found Sake Cafe on Magazine was open and fairly busy. We argued over evacuation at dinner. We had a glass of wine at the Bridge Lounge on Magazine and headed for home. I wondered if those bartenders, waiters, and cooks had begun packing.

3:30 am and we were both wide awake. Jennifer went to the front room to read. I got up and tiptoed to the back bedroom to check all the weather details and forums at wwltv.com. There would be a morning news conference and it was speculated that Mayor Nagin would order the first ever mandatory evacuation of Orleans Parish. The storm had blossomed in the hot waters of the Gulf to what would be it’s highest strength: A Cat5 with 175mph sustained winds and central pressure at 908mb. There was no more debate or even discussion, we knew we’d start final packing at first light. It was monsterously huge and unlike other powerful hurricanes, the eye was an expansive 30 miles across with hurricane force winds extending something like 125 miles out from the center. This was the storm they’d always warned us about. It was close enough that New Orleans would inevitably take a severe hit.

At 6am Jennifer and I hopped in the car and drove out to her office in New Orleans east hoping that we could get in and get her license and diplomas off the wall. The roads were empty at this point. Surprisingly, we got in to the building and got the critical stuff. All the while planning what we would pack from the house

The news was on. Even as we began loading up suitcases and making decisions, the time of our departure kept moving up. The storm was moving faster and enlarging. We would have left later to dodge traffic but that strategy didn’t seem smart anymore. We got all our important papers, photo albums, work clothes, wedding dress, and suit. You make some pretty quick decisions about what stays and what goes. Of course we also had a German Shepherd (Callie), our pug(Bugsy), our friend Jimbo’s pug (Etta, he had already been out of town) and my cat Tobey. All of this to pack in a 4 door Saturn.

Even as I was doing the last minute boarding up and yard clearing, the neighbors behind us were relaxing in the yard and seemed to be snickering at me a bit as they smoked a joint. By 11am we were loaded down. My parents were running too. Everyone in my family. I boarded up the front door and even as I did various characters were pedaling by on their bicycles, eyeing us up. I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t looted before we even left.

We started to get on the I-10 before Elysian Fields heading north to the contraflow on I-59 and then up through Hattiesburg to Jackson. But Nagin had delivered his mandatory order and roads that were clear just an hour before had filled up. I exited I-10 at Franklin and we took Hayne as far out east as I could before entering the fray. That little trick probably saved us an hour off of our evacuation.

I was worried about two things now. Gas and our tires. We were heavy loaded with us, 4 animals, and our luggage. I had filled up two nights before thinking this was a remote possibility and I wanted to have a tank of gas, but we’d done a bit of running about. I knew that sitting in traffic would eat our gas supply down.

The first battle was just getting to the contraflow start point at the I-10/I-12/I-59 split. That trip would’ve taken 30 minutes tops from New Orleans East but took us somewhere over two hours. Traffic was moving, just really really slow. Just getting over the twin spans and the already surging water was a relief. It was still early but clouds were rolling in. And on the radio we were hearing of the huge tangle now leaving town. How many would even make it out, we wondered.

We hit the split and suddenly we were moving. Our phone worked again and we called family to let them know we were on our way. They’d been trying to reach us but couldn’t The relief didn’t last, unfortunately, we got 12 miles into Mississippi and hit a huge snarl that held up all 4 lanes of contraflow. We figured that they must’ve ended contraflow somewhere up ahead. It was only 2:30pm and it wasn’t supposed to end until 4 and it was supposed to go all the way to Meridian.

Sure enough at Poplarville the traffic all merged back to normal lanes. People were pulled over everywhere stopping to let kids and pets take a pee break. It was spongy and slow. I was watching the gas tank warily. Clouds were building up behind us. We were starting to hear frantic tales of people running out of gas on I-59. People still stuck hours behind in New Orleans, not even to New Orleans East yet. If we had waited, perhaps we would have been stuck in the dome too….

We were able to talk with John — we were heading to his home in Madison, MS north of Jackson — and get some possible alternate routes. I got off of I-59 at Hattiesburg and onto Highway 45. We stopped and got gas and took our first break. We tried to get a subway sandwich but they were out of bread. As we let the dogs take a breather, it started raining hard. We got in the car and started heading north on a surprisingly empty road. The clouds were moving and angry. It felt now like we were literally running away from the storm.

We took a couple of back highways into Jackson and all of it was smooth sailing. Our evacuation took us 8 exhausting hours. John and Stacey and the kids welcomed all of us into their home. We watched TV until after midnight as the rain started up.

Jennifer and I didn’t sleep much. The weather started moving in. The storm would still be a Cat2 by the time it got to Jackson/Meridian with 100mph winds. None of us had ever heard of a storm retaining that much strength that far inland. The news had the usual footage of idiot reporters at towns on the outer edges of the storm standing in the street. The only thing from New Orleans we’d heard was about the dome springing a leak and several hotels losing Windows. The Mississippi coast at this point was an unknown.

The winds outside were powerful. I was wondering if we shouldn’t close the storm shutters. The most jarring moments came when we first heard the tornado warning siren. John, Stacey and the kids huddled in one closet and us and the dogs in the other. I thought how awful it would be to evacuate all the way up here only to get waylaid by a tornado.

Surprisingly, we never lost power up here. We were one of the few neighborhoods in greater Jackson that did not. Thus we had the internet and news on the whole time. Late in the day reports began to trickle in. New Orleans seemed spared a direct hit. The silence from the MS Gulf Coast, though, was telling. We got raw flyover footage on the news channel up here. I was correcting WDSU reporters on the locations they were seeing, yelling at the TV. Things weren’t looking all that bad. Late that night, though, we’d heard about the breach in the 17th street Canal. Whatever hopes we had for our home were fading because we knew what that meant (Even if public officials, apparently, did not).

Of course, we didn’t sleep. Sleep has been a rare event since this all started over a week ago. By morning we were watching the news. The 17th street canal breach and the subsequent flood was the big talk. Seeing a CNN meteorologist refer to “Bucktown” as he pointed out the breach brought me to tears for the first time since the storm. I feared that everything I had ever known in the town that I was raised in would be lost. CNN reporters aren’t supposed to know what “Bucktown” is, or “Mid City” (some didn’t, the called it “Midtown”), or the Marigny, the Bywater, the Ninth Ward (“Ward Number Nine”) etc.

Of course, everyone knows what happened next. Or, rather, didn’t happen. Everything fell apart. Our personal drama continued and heightened when we discovered Jennifer’s uncle Berkley had chosen to remain at his home in Riverbend. He had hoped that his engineering skills would be useful and needed after the storm. Instead he found himself in a dangerous sitatuation. The neighborhood was dry, but now there were gangs of looters. We received intermittent contact from him via 3rd hand information sources. He had a vehicle and wanted to make a break for it down River Road into Metairie but knew he would likely be dodging carjackers.

We posted to numerous online forums, explaining the desperate situation. TV was focusing on the dome and convention center, but dry ground anywhere in New Orleans was unsafe ground. We received numerous offers of help and kind words. Jennifer’s Dad and uncle, Berkley’s brothers, had other ideas. They started driving towards New Orleans. Berkley, in the meantime, planned an escape. I frantically sent out text messages to both parties, trying to give known routes out of New Orleans, and directions to where we were. Amazingly, they got those messages and eventually we found that they had indeed decided to converge on Madison. They arrived from opposite directions at almost at
the same time.

Berkley had hauled another local family with him. When we got back to the house, it was clear he had been frightened by the chaotic scene. He had had more stare downs in the streets in two days than he had had in his entire 20+ years in New Orleans. When I told him he could unload now, he pulled out two separate pistols, and there was a shotgun behind the truck seat as well. We could all sleep for once. In fact, the following night Jennifer and I got our first full night’s sleep

Suffice to say, we really haven’t rested easy since. The deluge of images on the television and the hard reality that our home is full of water has set in. The anger at useless politicians and government stupidity has set in as well. We have OK days and days that are less than OK. We know how much more fortunate we are than so many others affected by this, but it’s still harsh. We’ll be fine, though. In the long run, we’ll be fine.


Scott Harney

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