Those aren't the kind of words that you ever forget, but they bore no fruit. By the time the middle of the next year's Atlantic hurricane season had rolled around, there was little left to sweep away.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in lower Plaquemines Parish near dawn on August 29, 2005. Meteorological buoys at the mouth of the Mississippi River recorded waves at heights of 55 feet. A storm surge of 30 feet was expected. Throw 15 foot waves on top of that, and you're talking about a 45 foot wall of water! The amount of storm surge we actually got has been highly debated, mostly due to lack of data. One measured height was "in excess of 14 ft." I think its a pretty fair assumption to make that the maximum surge did indeed strike our home. The twin levees overtopped, filling the little strip of land between like a fishbowl.
A friend of mine was among a group that stayed aboard a large pogie-fishing vessel owned by Daybrook Fisheries in Empire. He confirmed that when the water came, it was all at once, a 40 foot tidal wave that swept away everything in it's path. He also refuted the claims that it had weakened to a category 4 (or the later ones that it was weaker still - a 3). He told me that sustained wind speeds near 200 mph were measured just before the windows in the wheelhouse began to flex in-and-outward, causing him to cower on the floor in terror. When the eye passed overhead, granting them a temporary respite from the vicious winds, he climbed to the crow's nest with a pair of binoculars. The only things he could see were the tops of the tallest trees. In the canal that ran under the overpass, some boats had been secured with up to 20 ropes. During the initial bad weather, when the northeast quadrant of the storm was passing overhead, most of the boats stayed moored in place. When the southwest portion struck and the wind and current switched direction, nearly everything that hadn't moved before was swept into a pile. One boat that survived had only 3 lines left, of an initial 22. The Empire overpass became a boat graveyard.
When the storm surge finally subsided, those that had remained were stunned at the amount of wreckage left in it's wake. The south side of the overpass was completely blocked off by fishing vessels. Two of the large pogie boats sat atop the median wall at the foot of it. On the river road, the combination hardware store/post office wound up floating in the canal. Houses and boats littered the highway. Every gas main had been severed, their places marked by the mini-geysers that were simultaneously erupting out of the water.
Another friend had been on the way out of town the previous evening, only to be stranded in Port Sulphur when his car broke down. Once the water began to rise, he met some people that were breaking into the Catholic church with the balcony on the second floor in mind. Said balcony only proved useful for a short time. When rescuers found them, they were on top of the bell tower, holding on to the steeple in terror as the water raged mere inches below their feet.
Just two streets away, my dad's elderly neighbor had stayed in her two-story house. Eventually she had to seek refuge in the attic, but by the time the storm passed, she'd had enough of the rising water and cramped conditions. She chopped her way out with an ax, and was swimming when the airboats passed through in search of survivors and/or victims.
Yes, the water was that high. Another survivor, from the Diamond area, attempted to swim to the levee on the river side when the water overtook the tree he'd climbed, but was unable to stay there because it was too far underwater. He went to the pumping plant on the Gulf side levee, and clung to the roof until the water went down.
After passing over us, Katrina continued moving inland, making it's third landfall at the Louisiana/Mississippi state line. Still packing 125 mph winds and a 20' storm surge, it obliterated the Mississippi coastline on the east side. On the west side of the eyewall, winds of 100 mph were recorded in New Orleans. Water poured into Lake Ponchartrain, inundating St. Tammany, St. Bernard, and finally New Orleans - when the levees began to fail - with water. It then traveled through northern Mississippi, knocking down most of the trees in it's path, and into Tennessee before being downgraded to a tropical storm.
It didn't stop there, either. Severe weather was experienced as far north as Canada.
Katrina was the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. Damages have been estimated at $108 billion. Over 1,800 people have been confirmed dead. Many are still unaccounted for.
We sat in Abbeville during the pre-dawn hours - my wife weeping all the while - watching a line of tornadic activity sweep the southern half of Plaquemines Parish on the radar. We heard very little about our home after that, because the reports from New Orleans began to flood the airwaves.
The Superdome had been outfitted up as a shelter of last resort. It quickly filled beyond the planned capacity (people unexpectedly gathered at the Convention Center, as well). Food, water, and toiletries were in short supply. No power or running water added to the air of despair. When the ceiling began to leak, despair was joined by her good friend Hysteria.
The intensity of the storm began to weaken, and the spirit of the occupants were lifted by the thought of returning to their homes. Their hopes proved ill-founded. The hurricane protection levees, poorly engineered at best, burst in several places. Water poured in, flooding 80 percent of the city. The sane cowered in fear. The rest? That's when the looting began. And let's not forget the dying.
Sad as things were there, it got to be infuriating. The war zone that New Orleans had become eclipsed all other news. Almost nothing about the Mississippi coast. Had the beaches & casinos not been there to attract tourists, there would have been zilch. It felt like our community didn't exist, despite being the site of the most intense landfall.
It biased the rest of the nation, as well. These people would watch the mayhem on the morning news, then go to work and encounter us. At the beginning, we were welcomed with open arms. Now when they heard we were hurricane victims, they were more apt to back up a couple of steps and ask, "You're from New Orleans?!?" in wide-eyed half-fear. It was hard enough for me having to go everywhere with my hand out. I'd always been a self-sufficient sort. What did they think we were going to do? Pick their pockets? Shoot them?!? (Pffft! I've never even owned a gun.) It changed the way I felt about New Orleans for several years. I'd always had a good time when there, and furthermore, when asked where I was from, it had been easier to reply with "NOLA" than having to explain about DTR. Now I was quick to point out that we hadn't lived there.
I focused on applying for assistance with grim determination, and went to great lengths getting everyone else to do the same. Some of them were cooperative, while others ranged from apathetic to "Who cares? I'm more concerned with tracking down my next high."
At a Salvation Army thrift store that was giving essentials to victims, we ran into one of Dad's co-workers.
"What are we going to do?" she asked me. "We have nothing."
On her face was the blank, zombie-like look of shock that had been on ours for a year. It was an astonishing reminder of how surreal that time had been.
Dad decided that he wasn't going to wait on the government to pick him up. He left one morning in search of job, and didn't get home until that evening. They were so impressed by his self-sufficient attitude that they left him clock in immediately. His new employers gave Cody a job soon after. One of the managers introduced us to his daughter, who promptly offered to buy school supplies for my children. My dad met a customer there with an apartment for rent. He let them move in right away, insisting that they pay no rent.
The original living arrangement didn't last long for the rest of us, either. My stepbrother & his girlfriend were kicked out by my wife when they invited friends and pulled a loud drunk in the front yard at 2 a.m. Her "brothers" & their parents showed up soon after, bringing more chaos with them. We were desperate to find a place to live.
Mom & Steve offered us the deposit and rent money for an apartment above a dentist's office in Delcambre. He didn't allow pets, but would be willing to let us keep one in a cage on the balcony. We ultimately wound up backing out of the lease because we didn't think it would be fair to make our children give up any of their cats. They had let everything else they owned go to ruin just to hold on to them.
(I'm suddenly struck with the memory of my daughter's grief when her fuzzy kitten was run over by a neighbor one night when she was 5. That's one thing they don't tell you about aging... you become an emotional mess. Some memories drive you to tears - whether they be of joy or sorrow.)
It was nearly a solution, but it caused some family tension. Dad suggested that with he, Cody, & Carol moving out, Jeffrey could stay with us until he found a place.
"Absolutely not!" said my wife, slamming the door on that notion with finality.
"Ok," said Dad. "Just a suggestion. He can sleep on our sofa for now."
But Jeff had heard enough.
"Aunt Debra's been urging me to come to Florida. I think I'll take her up on it. I can tell when I'm not wanted around. She did the same thing she did to Michael."
And that's just what he did. My brother gave me his pocketknife, left his car at Aunt Linda Kay's house in Youngsville, and boarded a flight east.
I saw him very infrequently over the next four years.
Our prayers were answered when FEMA began setting up 30-foot travel trailers at the RV park that Mom & Aunt Betty had evacuated to in New Iberia. We were supposed to call in and be put on a list of families that were waiting for shelter, but my mother and stepfather pled our case, rationalizing that they could rest easier knowing my family would be next door so they could look after them when (or if) I could go back offshore. My rig - a jackup - had been moved to Main Pass, right in the path of the storm, when I was last there.
It was frustrating during the first few weeks. All traffic was prohibited from returning home, and we were hearing nothing but "New Orleans" on the news. We finally found WWL radio, the only media that seemed to know - or give a damn - that other parishes had been affected. The first news that we heard from home was disheartening. The reporter was standing on the levee in Port Sulphur. It was littered with everything from household appliances to coffins. Yes, coffins! Our worry over our loved ones that were confined there eternally had just increased tenfold.
Mom went back home first. Steve had brought pictures from flyovers he'd made, and her stories were no better. Nothing, however, could prepare us for what we saw when we got there.
We began to see tarps on rooftops in Jefferson Parish, and it was more of the same in Belle Chasse. We stopped at my cousin's house, where we left my car and loaded one of his pirogues in the bed of the truck. When we got south of the Alliance refinery, boats littered the top of the levee. And the broken places! I don't know how many their were altogether, but I counted 15 on that first trip.
The damage began to increase in Point a la Hache, but when we got south of the ferry landing we finally realized how catastrophic it had been. Our first indication was a house floating in the canal.
I don't think there was a dry eye in the truck for the rest of the trip.
Lower Plaquemines appeared to have been bombed. Most businesses had been washed away, leaving little more than metal frames. Neighborhoods differed greatly depending on the cause of damage.
In those affected by storm surge, houses and mobile homes were scattered like bowling pins. Some were piled together, others littered the streets and the woods.
Then there were those that had been struck by tornados. In most cases, they were 50 foot piles of wreckage from one end to another.
On the southern end of Port Sulphur, the main highway - built up somewhat higher than the rest of the landscape - was the only area passable by automobile. Being so far below sea level, our community had many drainage pumps. Most of them would take months to repair. By the time we were able to go, some 3 weeks after the storm, only two of them were up and running. With all the levee breaks, water continued to pour inside of the levee protection area, and the working pumps could barely keep up.
We got no farther than Homeplace, where the roads were still blocked.
Dad's house was sitting on top of a Dodge that Michael had been tinkering with the previous year. I stepped out to speak with a former neighbor. He'd been under the impression that my dad had stayed behind and drowned.
I happened to look into the street, which was a regular thruway due to the police, National Guard, Red Cross, and news crews that passed ceaselessly. For a moment, I saw Sheriff Hingle through the polarized glass of a four wheel drive SUV. He looked quite haggard.
(... and rightly so. I won't go into the poor planning, mismanagement of funds, & finger pointing that went on. This post would turn into an entire book. All of that's been documented countless times anyway, so I'll just illustrate a few points pertaining to Plaquemines Parish. During and just after the storm, all Federally-appointed responders were sent to New Orleans. No one came to lower Plaquemines, so police deputies were dispatched on airboats for rescue and recovery. I don't remember how many, but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 11. Alone they scoured the southern half of the Parish. One of them called my stepbrother's girlfriend on his Nextel(?) 2-way to break the news to her about her house. He stated that he currently had 2 survivors & a dozen casualties aboard his boat. All the people I've known personally that volunteered said that only a small fraction of what was going on in the affected areas was being reported. Our Parish recorded 3 deaths, yet a family member claims to have bagged 6 himself. Another reported 12. One story, be it truth or fantasy, was that someone was bringing fuel, generators, and shrimp for the officers to eat, when FEMA stopped them at the Parish line. The supplies were confiscated and sent to the city. This much is true: when the Feds finally stepped in to offer assistance, they were politely told that their help would not be needed. They could turn around and leave. Soon after, the New Mexico national guard showed up unsolicited, and were welcomed warmly.)
We rode back up to Mom's street, where we met Yale. He was pretty irate that they wouldn't let him past the roadblocks. His home and the boats (his livelihood) were down there somewhere. He simply had to find them. He resigned himself long enough to go with Mom to her house.
Nothing in her neighborhood had gone unmoved. Some lots had no houses. Some had three. The roads and canals were littered with homes. Hers sat in the street. The power line had stretched nearly to the point of snapping. A four-wheeler hung from it like the victim of a lynching.
She was pretty upset when she came back. They'd forced her French doors at the rear of the house, where she found things she was sure she'd taken. Family pictures, bronzed baby shoes, our schoolwork... Those things you can never replace.
Yale was drafted to come with me as well. Our progress was impeded not far from the remnants of Duece's house. We had to detour through the woods, which were also blocked. A house that had originally been next to Mom's (my brother rented it for a time) had crossed two streets through the woods, and now sat across the ditch from my place. I couldn't fathom how high the water had been.
Until I got inside.
As we crossed the drainage ditch, I noted that our mobile home had been pushed southward into the lot on the next street, and turned at a 90 degree angle. It canted drunkenly toward the trailer hitch due to being knocked off of the blocks. At the highest point, the master bedroom, the water was still up at the window line. Towards the hitch, at my daughter's bedroom, it was much higher.
On our way to my room, we stumbled across the cinderblocks with our paddles. I noticed that the upper window pane of one of our windows appeared to be the only one broken. I kicked the bottom one out with my boot and climbed through to tie the boat off.
Yale refused to go in. He sat at the bedroom window the entire time, screaming, "Don't go in there, cuz!", then "Come on out, man! This place is shot! It's done for! Something could collapse! Or there could be snakes!" He could have saved his breath. I had to see.
Every surface was covered with mud & oil. I got an answer as to how high the water had been before taking a single step. The twin box springs stood against the wall, and judging by the clean imprint of the ceiling fan on the king sized top mattress, it had been trapped firmly against the ceiling for a longish portion of the 3 weeks we'd been gone. The same proof stood to reason in the kitchen. The refrigerator was balanced neatly across the center island countertop. There was a hole in the sheetrock where it had been pushed through the ceiling. I made it through the living room to the hallway and my children's rooms. There I stopped. The water at my daughter's end was waist deep.
The only way I can come close to explaining was that it looked like a tornado had come through our home. We had taken one television and a DVD player. The rest of the tv's had all migrated to the living room. Our sectional sofa was seeded throughout the house - a piece in every room. The coffee pot lay on the kitchen floor, full of some foul black substance. The sugar cannister sat atop the kitchen cabinets, near the ceiling. The last thing I noticed before I left was the soggy pile of goo in the corner of my bedroom. It had been one of my bookshelves, full of first addition hardcovers. It appeared to have melted.
We were only interested in going to one other place that day: St. Patrick Cemetery. In the center alcove of the mausoleum lay the mortal remains of friends, classmates, acquaintances, and - most important to us - Aunt Iona, Uncle Richard, & my younger brother Michael. He'd been there a few weeks shy of a year. It may seem a little selfish, but most were worrying themselves sick with wonder about where they would live now. My immediate family were definitely concerned, but our minds (and hearts) were mostly clouded with the fear that we'd finally make it home, only to find that Michael was gone. We simply couldn't let him go yet.
But it seemed our need to know would be thwarted. The word had been making the rounds that cemeteries were off limits due to the alarming number of open tombs, and that anyone caught going back there would be arrested. I told all interested parties that I was going to find out if my brother was there before the day was out. They could lock me up. I did not care. I had to lay my nightmares to rest.
As it turns out, the stars aligned and we picked the perfect moment to be standing at the roadside contemplating our trip past the church to the gravesites. The priest and a sheriff's deputy approached us to see if we had a boat they could borrow to check the tombs. Earl's other two boats sat at the side of the road in front of his property.
Mom and I blurted the same phrase together. "We have three. Let's go! My brother (son, for Mom) is back there!"
Mom and Aunt Betty jumped in a pirogue, closely followed by the police officer and the priest in the second. Yale flat out refused to come this time, so I wound up bringing my sister-in-law with me. She wasn't very skilled at maneuvering with a paddle, so we wound up being the last to arrive.
When we rounded the corner, they were sitting just outside the mausoleum with their arms around one another. Each sob was a stab in the heart.
"Oh, Mark! They're gone," said my sister-in-law.
Mom looked up and called out, "They're fine. Be careful. We saw a snake in there."
This was news to me. We hadn't seen so much as a fly. The water had mixed with oil, natural gas, sewage, & gods know what else, creating a toxic sludge. The reflection of the sun on this foul soup caused a greenhouse effect unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Ask something that was there during those first weeks, and more often than not they'll tell you it was surely 200 degrees.
We paddled around the right corner, then entered from the back. There was a light current running through the corridor. I snapped a picture to show to my father, then tossed her the camera and let my hands slide across the surface of Michael's tomb as we drifted past. Others that had opened littered both sides of us like missing teeth. One - the oldest tomb, if memory serves - contained a horror. A wooden casket lay shattered. From the stuffing that had burst out of the liner peered a blue sleeve, and beneath that the glaring ebony of bone.
It seemed that all our loved ones had remained in their resting places... right until the moment we went around the left corner. Her mother-in-law was one of the missing.
When we got back to the road, everyone split up for a while. Aunt Betty went to her house, on the northern end of Port Sulphur where the water had gone down. My wife wanted to go to our house and see if there was anything we could salvage. Mom had the same thing in mind. And Yale? He parted company with us then, once again giving us his word that he would get to Buras that very day - or go to jail trying.
As we approached our house, she did something that had never crossed my mind. She began to call for our lost cats. To be honest, I thought she was wasting her breath. I didn't see how anything could have survived.
That's what I get for thinking. A cat began to answer. We managed to get the boat turned around and returned to the house in front of ours. The cry seemed to be coming from the back yard. And so it was. From tree that hugged the exterior of the house, Kiamaya (so named by our daughter before she had many words in her vocabulary), our oldest, came down the tree at an Olympic sprinter's pace, jumping the last few feet to my wife's open arms.
Dehydration had reached critical stage. Her white coat, once a blinding white, was a dull, flat grey. It stretched taught against the bone. She had grown light as a feather. The pads of her paws were burned by 3 weeks spent on a rooftop.
We brought her inside and sat her on the kitchen counter. My wife found a can of Vienna sausage, then cleaned a bowl with a disinfectant wipe to dump it into. She ate ravenously, but turned her nose up at water. I think she was a little afraid to after being forced to drink from the poisonous flood waters. It took her a few hours to find the courage to try some.
In an attempt to let a breeze in, I kicked out every window in the house. I threw a television at our rear sliding door 3 times, but it was double-paned and reinforced by steel between. I could only break the inner glass that day.
With that, we turned our attention to finding anything that might be salvageable. Not that there was very much, but having come in a small boat, we were forced to take even less. She wound up with a few knickknacks. I salvaged maybe a dozen records that I couldn't bear to part with. Everything else was useless. Our cookware was probably unsafe to use. My bass had been twisted into an unrecognizable shape, then left in the living room. I'd had my turntable repaired two weeks before we left. I might've listened to 3 records.
When we got back outside, we were greeted by our next door neighbors. Regarding the paltry items we were loading into our pirogue, Mr. F said, "It's a goddamned shame to be forced to take a boat to your house, only to find that what's left of your possessions fits in a pillowcase and a laundry basket."
No argument from me on that point. What a nightmare!
We eventually got back to Mom, then ate a quick lunch, delivered by a Salvation Army van.
After that, we stopped at Aunt Betty's on the way up. Her house, a two-story built by Freeport McMoran that had survived Hurricanes Betsy & Camille, now sat in the middle of her street. The garage, a long addition that ran the length of the house, was gone. The living room wall was now a makeshift ramp.
She turned down the offer to follow us up, assuring us that she'd return to Matt's house in Jesuit Bend before dark.
The trip back to New Iberia was a quiet one. There was so much to take in, so many decisions to consider.
The next day, Hurricane Rita entered the Gulf. Due to the levee breaks and the abnormally high tides, the water rose another ten feet. We were unable to return for another 3 weeks.
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I'm going to stop here for now. The road to recovery was a long and often frustrating one. I intended to keep going until I got to that point, but something pretty traumatic happened this week. My brother was seriously injured at work. He's on the mend now, but it's been quite exhausting shuffling the job, the hospital, and helping him due to his limited mobility. That much being said, it's probably the 8th wonder of the world that I got this much out.
A pause may be just what the doctor ordered, anyway. Truth be told, I'm afraid to write the next part. What I'd like to do is "unwrite" it. To put the words on the page and alter history. Erase the pain. Is that kind of magic too much to ask for?
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