re: 21 Years Ago: Hurricane Katrina

was in my last year of pharmacy school at Xavier... was going to go into work at Lindy Boggs, b/c i figured they had generators and what not, and the last "big one" type of hurricane we were supposed to get, i did work and not a drop of fricking rain fell... figured that was going to be the case with Katrina too...

but my mom and my girlfriend (now my wife) showed up at my apartment and just started packing my shite for me and said i was leaving the city... so i finally gave in and left...

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
-Kanye West (9/2/05)

21 Years Ago: Baton Rouge was ruined forever

On Saturday I went “hurricane grocery shopping.” The air was still, the sky sunny, and people in the store quietly shopping. I remember thinking it was eery, just a feeling. Boarding up windows. Then Sunday morning, Nagin urging … “get out now.” So, we loaded up and left. Stayed at relatives in Baton Rouge (my birth city) and life went on bc we both had offices there and also enrolled the kids in school until we could get home months later after our offices reopening. Thankful we escaped much damage but know many who didn’t. And I remember the quiet and smell of Metairie for a good while after. Not much open even a couple months after getting home. To this day I hate the word “Katrina.” Was working on downtown BR when Rita hit. All I remember is driving home in horrible rain. Rita turned out to be as bad as Katrina in her way when she was done.

It was nice. When our office opened back up, New Orleans CBD was a ghost town. And ironically, HAD never felt safer. Th commute was great, too.

I remember trying to get back into Jefferson Parish because the news said they were allowing residents to go check in their homes. My brothers in law and I wound up spending a couple of nights in the beds of pickup trucks we parked under a Hibernia Bank drive through in Laplace.

Soon others joined us, and before long we had a thriving shanty town of Katrina refugees.

People in the area were extremely accommodating. A dude pulled up with a huge pot of jambalaya. People were constantly coming by with cold waters and food to make sure we were doing ok. One lady offered to let me use her shower, since I was dirty as a Frenchman.

The entire Katrina experience was crazy and surreal, and I hope to never go through something like that ever again.

That didn't take much anyway..it's a shithole long before they got there.

Surreal seeing a city change overnight. Baton Rouge.