re: Craziest/Shadiest/Scariest thing you saw in Katrina Aftermath

I remember on Monday when the first report of levee breaches came in, I was hopeful that flooding would be similar to what Betsy caused. By late Monday afternoon there were reports that water was rushing out of the Jeff Davis end of Bayou St. John, and I knew right then that New Orleans was totally screwed.

It was Blackwater

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It was some Israeli team.

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That’s correct. The Israeli team was hired privately by a few residents in Audubon Place. They were not working for Homeland Security

My post is a story of a friend and some good things in the aftermath. I apologize in advance for the length.

I had an old black friend that I met when I was 16. He was raised in the lower 9th but wanted more from his life. He had worked hard, had a good reputation, and lived in a house in the east, a few blocks from the Lakefront.

I had left LA but still called about every 2 months and we would catch up. His family found it odd that he spent so much time on the phone, cursing at, and laughing with a white boy in FL. He never did anything with computers so there was no email. I used to tell him that he couldn't play with the other kids when he was a child because he had to stay in and shave his mama's back. We were tight.

He and his family saw the water rising and moved supplies into the attic. As the water approached ceiling levels, he cut a hole in the roof to evac to the outside. They spent days on the roof, eating bread and cold canned goods. They were finally spotted by a helicopter and evacuated out to UNO.

From UNO, they got on a bus and were told they were going to BR. When they got to BR, they were told that all the shelters were full and that they would continue to Shreveport. It was packed also and they ended up in Dallas.


When they got to the shelter it was cots, bad food, and a ton of people. I say that because that is what it was, not to denigrate the efforts and hard work of those in Dallas that worked hard to help the refugees. He decided it was not for him or his family. He got on the phone and called a few guys he knew that he had worked with in the past. One had an available rent house and hooked him up. Another came in a van and gathered them up, brought them to Target, and got them $1k worth of clothes and food. (It was him and his wife, two children, and two grandchildren.)

They then took him to a lady they knew whose family owned a bunch of BBQ restaurants. She gave them a stack of meal vouchers and told them to call her when they ran out.

They got settled in the rent house, then he went to work with the guys he knew there. He had savings but wanted to keep the income flowing. His wife dealt with Allstate. He had homeowners, flood, and car insurance through them and was able to avoid the insurance nightmares that many faced after Katrina.

They were able to get the house repaired and moved back about 8 months later.


His phone had not survived the storm and he was unreachable. I was searching the different charities websites after Katrina and found him in Dallas. His sister in DC had been leaving messages asking for any information on them for weeks. I was able to find his new number, call her and pass it on.

They finally got moved back to their house in N.O. and settled in. The family was doing well and actually thriving. He lived about 6 more years until the cancer came and got him. His legacy is that his kids work and are happy. He lived long enough to see the grandkids almost get through high school, which they did after his death. They are all healthy, happy and becoming successful in their own right.

He may have been raised in the 9th ward by a welfare mom but he ended up a baw. Y'all would have liked him.

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It was blackwater

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Looks like it was both, ISI used black water air support

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Yadin and his people were flown by private jet from Houston to Baton Rouge, and airlifted from Baton Rouge directly into Audubon Place by a Blackwater helicopter.

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I remember reading about the guy who hired ISI tried to get others in Audobon Placeto split the bill and they told him to pretty much pound sand.

TLDR

I’m not exactly sure which day it was, but it was within about a week of the storm when I went into the city. I had a friend from high school that lived down there who called me up and asked if I could go down and help him out.

I’m not from the area, so some of the location details I wouldn’t know without asking him. I met up with him and we rode down to someone’s house in a town west of New Orleans. We were supposed to try to leave at 6:00 am to try and get into the city, but ended up drinking all night and deciding that a 2:00 am departure was a good idea.

The first thing that I will never forget was the smell that we encountered miles outside of town. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it was a distinct rotten smell that let us know we were in for a surprise.

First we went into some part of town and had three destinations, his house, his girlfriend’s apartment, and his girlfriend’s parents house. It was eerie driving in and not seeing anyone at all, and absolutely no signs of life. We were stopped at one point driving in by a single law enforcement officer (not sure what jurisdiction), but were allowed to keep driving after telling a plausible story about an elderly family member we hadn’t heard back from in a couple of hours and were going to look for.

Besides the water and places where we turned around in areas that were still flooded, the “sidewalk wall” was the strangest sight I saw. We went to his girlfriend’s parents house and as we were driving on some streets it was like a wall had been put up on some parts of the street. There were so many trees that blew over in the same direction whose roots lifted up the sidewalks to where they stood up and formed a wall on one side of the street. I have never seen anything like it and hope I never will again.

At this point all we knew about what was going on was from the stories people were telling and news reports. We fully expected to run into roving bands of thugs out stealing and looting, so we had a small armament with us. As we got to his girlfriend’s parents house we stopped in the middle of the street and left the truck running while I stood guard as he ran inside to get paperwork and valuables. I have never been so scared in my life, and it’s probably good that I had some sort of liquid courage still in me. It was silent except for the running truck, there was no light, and I was fully expecting to be ambushed while standing outside the truck.

We never saw anyone there and as we were on our way to the next stop we drove by a shopping center that had a mobile NYPD Command Post set up in it and numerous other NYPD vehicles parked.

I’m not sure whether we went to his house or his girlfriend’s apartment next, but we ended up going to both of those without incident to collect belongings. His house had had about 2 feet of water in it, while her apartment was on an upper floor.

We finally left the city as the sun was coming up and never saw any sign of life other than the one officer who stopped us on the way in. I feel lucky that I had the opportunity to see some of the destruction first hand, and some of those sights, smells, and sounds (lack of it in Nola) will stay with me forever.

I wish I could find some of the firsthand accounts posted online in the weeks after Katrina. They were fascinating. One guy in Lakeview thought water in his street was rainwater until he realized it smelled like lake water. That had to be terrifying.

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I wish I could find some of the firsthand accounts posted online in the weeks after Katrina. They were fascinating. One guy in Lakeview thought water in his street was rainwater until he realized it smelled like lake water. That had to be terrifying.

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If someone would dig up the threads from here they were incredible. I remember reading forecasts by Rummy and this board until my power went out in BR the day of the storm.

Then the help this board provided in the aftermath was really something to read. If you needed an answer it was discussed here. Strangely exciting times.

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That was Baptist on Napoleon. If I remember correctly a doctor and nurse gave drug cocktails to some patients who already to far gone and would not be able to be rescued. The attorney general brought charges before a grand jury but there was no indictment. (IIRC)

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That was political grandstanding by Charlie Foti. The doctor was Anna Pou. (I can't remember the name of the nurse, Buda or Buddo, perhaps.) Dr Pou got a raw deal and didn't deserve the BS she was put through by the Attorney General. (A guy who was Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff forever before he got elected AG. He once drove over a light pole while driving drunk in his city vehicle and left the scene of the accident. However, even NOPD was able to solve that case, as he tore a hole in his oil pan on the base of the lamp pole and left a trail of oil to his driveway. D'OH!!!)

I had a house in Slidell, and stayed at my parents’ place in BR during and after the storm. I drove back and forth a lot to work on the house.

Hammond was like a frontier town, or the edge of civilization, for a while. I knew that when I passed Hammond, there were no modern conveniences, and that if I got in trouble there was no 911. I remember eating at a Chili’s there in Sept 05 and thinking the clientele looked like something out of Soldier of Fortune. Met a Nat’l Guard convoy at a truck stop there, bound for NOLA, and warned the kids (they looked to be teenaged) about the craziness going on. Illinois Nat’l Guard - I have no idea how activation works nationally to get Illinois guys down here.

The craziest thing, though, about Katrina is it ended up being the single biggest financial windfall of my life at the time. I had good insurance, including flood, and did a lot of the restoration work myself. Then sold the house at a big markup because the housing market was still so depleted.