21 Years Ago: Hurricane Katrina

I was a freshman at LSU and we had moved in just before. Kirby Smith, family in Lakeview though. Didn't seem that bad where we were at, but I was also shite faced drunk... It really started to sink in after the wind and rain was passed, and in the days, weeks, and months that followed.

I checked out mentally. Crazy to think about now though

I was working as a RN at the time and we admitted a fellow who had evacuated but didn't have his medication, which led to him decompensating. When they evacuated his house, he got in one boat and his wife got in another. They lost each other at that point and had no idea about the status of the other. He was terrified that he might have lost her. I was able to do some detective work and figure out that his wife had family over in Texas, so I called that town's police department and ask them to go by and see if there was there. Within an hour she called him and we arranged for him to get to her. I will never forget the happiness in his voice when he got her on the phone. That storm wrecked so many lives it is unbelievable

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It killed a lot more than that indirectly

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Stress, disruption, grief, delayed healthcare…

I worked that storm , we were working in upstate New York , got a call saying a giant hurricane was going to hit new Orleans. We usually would get their a day or two before most hurricanes and ride them out and be ready to work as soon as they went through. We were headed there and to do as such but my supervisor called and said y'all just go home and wait till it hits and we will head that way after , because this thing is 150 mph wind speeds and we don't feel safe riding this out.

I watched it on the news and glad we didn't because it was a bad one. We left the next morning and couldn't find diesel once we hit Mississippi, every store was two hour waits, it took us a day and a half to get to new Orleans from Alabama. We finally got to new Orleans and the smell was horrible, all of the septics were flooded and floating on the water. They put us in downtown New Orleans to work right across from some football practice facility, they were helicoptering in dead bodies after dead bodies storing them in a giant 18 wheeler cooler. We saw dead bodies floating on some of the streets next to where we were working.
We stayed in tents 300 people per tent , we had three tents , slept on makeshift beds they provided
No ac just big fans , we worked 6 am to 10 pm 28 straight days . Didn't know what day it was every day seemed like the same, this was before everyone had phones. We stayed until hurricane Ian hit Texas then left and stayed another two weeks there before finally coming home.
Won't ever forget that (bitch of a storm ) as our Louisiana power guy told us in his thick Cajun accent.

The scenes around the superdome in the days after Katrina are very haunting..

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Yep….and Baton Rouge hasn’t been the same since. Thanks Katrina

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Houston says 'Hold my beer".

I got called into work on that Sunday before.. The two other co-workers didn't work.. One had a nervous break down and started crying and the other just plain said no.. I can't believe these two still had a job after...

Anyway, one of things I remember was that I finally got in touch with a neighbor, that stayed, at 9:30am..which was the reported time when the London Avenue canal broke.. That is the canal that wiped out our neighborhood and surrounding areas.. He reported that I had a hole in my roof and a neighbors huge oak tree had fallen across our yards... 3 years later I would run into him in the warehouse district by chance.. He said after we had hung up the phone that morning the water had risen so fast that he had to swim across the street to the neighbors 2 story house... There was 12 feet of water in our area.

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The biggest clusterfrick of a Governor in charge too. It was a pathetic response.

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To be fair, she was immediately the fall guy. Washington worked hard to make her look as incompetent as possible to cover up their own incompetence. It was easy, too. And then they had probably the stupidest mayor in NOLA history, at least until Latoya came along. Agree though, sad response all around. Master class in poor leadership.

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Yep….and Baton Rouge hasn’t been the same since. Thanks Katrina

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Baton Rouge, in particular Third Street and downtown was absolutely flourishing post Katrina, especially from about 2007-2014. I’ve said that numerous times on this board.

I feel like around 2015-2017 the downtown wasn’t as busy and the novelty had sort of disappeared.