Five years ago this morning, August 29, 2010, Hurricane Katrina hit just east of New Orleans.

Five years later, we still don’t feel like we’re really part of the United States. We don’t seem to fit into the rest of the country. We feel taken for granted and then forgotten. Then we get remembered and hope returns for awhile.

This is one of the worst things I have gone through in my life. It has left me with some serious mental and emotional scars, and a great deal of anxiety, especially when a storm is brewing that may make it’s way to us.

Rachel Maddow sums it up so well in the following clip from the end of her show’s two day coverage of the 5th anniversary:

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I’m still angry that in 21st century America, a catastrophic disaster led to anarchy. Those who could help stood by doing nothing for way too long. Those who were powerless were left to die, or fight for their own survival, hoping not to get shot trying to get food and drink from closed stores. Those who tried to cross the bridge to the west bank, to dry land, were turned back by men with guns who were unwilling to share at the expense of human lives. Not only were the New Orleans poor treated as second-class citizens, they were expendable. It didn’t matter enough to those who could change the situation to do so before lives were needlessly lost.

The fact is, we are still surviving. We still have a long way to go before we are back to pre-Katrina levels of business, tourism, population, public housing, bus service, public schools, Charity hospital and other health care for the poor, etc. New Orleans was a poor city and it is still a poor city today. It still has the same problems it did before the storm.

I’m angry about the city counsel deciding (pushed by the Bush Administration) it was time to socially re-engineer the New Orleans population. The poor, mostly black population wasn’t welcome to return because Bush thought social programs cost too much and should be eliminated in the new, re-engineered city. It didn’t work. Crime is still high.

Interview with James Perry, GNO Fair Housing Action Center:

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Tracy Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute had to sue to get public schools reopened:

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The New Orleans justice system completely broke down and prisoners were left to drown in the prison. Things here are a magnification of what the rest of the country is or will go through. This is a fight for American democracy. Interview with Billy Sothern, author of Down in New Orleans:

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Old school radio was the only means of communication. It was a life-line for weeks. Garland Robinette on WWL-AM radio:

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New Orleans is part of America.

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Flood Protection Update

Katrina is the worst natural disaster in American history to date.

But the New Orleans flood was not a natural disaster. It was man-made. The Army Corp of Engineers under-engineered, falsified data, and ignored the facts of the real dangers of the levee system. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) shipping channel funneled storm surge directly into the city.

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Please see my related article: Why Wetlands Are So Important

Interview with Dr. Ivor van Heerden, author of The Storm, about MRGO and flood protection:

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When will New Orleans be fully recovered? I don’t know. I hope by the 10th anniversary we will be talking about all the new things that were built to solve our problems, help the poor have real opportunities and an affordable life, and protect us well from future storms.

It is very heartening to see that there are strong people working on public housing, public schools, fighting for buses and public transportation and reopening the Charity hospital system. It is also heartening that there are people who are working to get the poor a living wage and restore the services they need so badly.

I know we’re making progress. It remains to be seen whether the new flood protection systems will protect the city and rebuild the wetlands. We must restore our barrier islands and rebuild our wetlands, and it must be done fast.

If we don’t rebuild our wetlands, New Orleans may not be here by the end of this century. The coastline may be as far north as Baton Rouge by then. We can no longer wait for progress. We must fight for it and do it before it is too late for New Orleans and the rest of southeast Louisiana.

Acknowledgment:

I’d like to thank Rachel Maddow and The Rachel Maddow Show on both MSNBC and Air America Radio for continuing to cover the Katrina disaster for the past 5 years, and for keeping us in the national news. This 5th anniversary update is invaluable in nailing down the real story and the progress we have and haven’t made.

Rachel, as far as I’m concerned, you are a full, native resident of the Who Dat Nation. Come and see us any time. You and your crew are always welcome.

Four years ago today, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf coast. By the end of the first week after the storm, at least a couple of thousand people lost their lives, 1400 in Louisiana alone.

I thought these anniversaries would get easier, but overall, they haven’t. I used to be depressed, but now I’m depressed, anxious and angry. Gustav last September seems to have added some PTSD to my mental health fight. I’m angry that the end of every summer brings anxiety now on top of a bought of depression.

Emotionally, my life is changed forever. Nature is a far greater force than man can control in any significant way, besides cause its long-term demise very slowly. We experienced first hand what it really means to be insignificant, to be like an ant a man randomly steps on. In the face of such a huge, powerful storm, we were all ants and our civilization nothing more than an ant hill, easily wiped out without a lot of effort. Like surviving ants, we continue to rebuild our ant hills. But in the big picture, we’re still ants, powerless to the whims of nature.

Financially, I’m still not back to where I was before the storm. However, this year should be the turning point. I closed the business I had then and have gone through bankruptcy because of it. After the tutoring business I worked for since 2006 closed this past June 1, I have a lucrative tutoring business of my own that will provide well for my son and myself once it has a few months to grow, and I have a little bit of income from some internet websites. I can build on that as well, but very slowly. Online income is a very long-term goal I have to passively supplement my earnings and retirement for the rest of my life. With most of the debts wiped out, I can get on with things, pay off the debts I couldn’t bankrupt (taxes, co-signed student loans), and rebuild my savings. My financial life has been in shambles since Katrina and it’s taken 4 years to begin to gain some real ground again. The financial situation and lack of health insurance haven’t helped my mental health either.

I’m angry that there was so much corruption in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita and so much money that could have done some real good was stolen. I’m angry that the Bush administration hired out the demolition and reconstruction of New Orleans to government contractors who did not come here to hire local workers and rebuild the city in ways that reflected its past. A big part of the healing process is being able to clean up your own land and rebuild your own homes and city. That was largely taken from many of us, and I still have the nagging feeling of work unfinished and rebuilding incomplete. So much has been rebuilt, but so much remains to be rebuilt. At least we have the reigns locally now.

I’m angry that the New Orleans public school system was scrapped and replaced by privatized charter schools. I don’t know if they are better. But why couldn’t that money have gone into fixing the public schools? New Orleans only has a handful of public schools left. I care because I graduated from a New Orleans public high school, went to college and graduated with a B.S. degree as well. So did a lot of my friends. How can it be right that a major U.S. city doesn’t have a public school system ready to serve its residents? Public schools have problems everywhere. We need to fix the problems and not contract out government’s responsibilities. The charter school owners could shut down and leave if they choose to. Where would that leave New Orleans’ kids?

Contractors and the whole Bush administration’s disaster capitalism complex didn’t and doesn’t work long-term. The contractors aren’t locally invested in the community. Their families and lives aren’t anchored here. Their hearts do not long for this to be their home. Ours do.

I’m really angry that in the 21st century, the American government could fail so miserably to help its own citizens; save their lives, evacuate them efficiently, and bring them home quickly to rebuild. Who is in charge has become clearly important when it comes to good policies and excellent implementation of those policies. The Bush administration failed at policy, personnel choices and policy implementation. A lot has been learned, but the expense was extreme and unacceptably high.

One lesson is their is a clear racial divide between African Americans and whites about why things went so wrong. Many whites chalk it up to extremely poor management and idiots in charge. African Americans agree with that, but also believe had New Orleans’ refugees been non-black, a lot would have been done a lot faster to save lives and evacuate the city before the storm. Living down here, I agree with the African Americans. Had New Orleans not been so heavily populated with African Americans, especially those in extreme poverty, a lot more things would have gone right. And where is all that work on ending poverty President Bush promised? They were just more empty words out of a government who couldn’t care less.

Some people in the right wing-nut media have the gall to go on TV and radio and say the purge (deaths) and diaspora of very poor African Americans from New Orleans was a blessing. And they claim to be Christians. Where is their pro-life stance when it comes to poverty and non-whites? They are hypocrites and they are only pro-life when they can push totalitarian control over populations not as powerful as they are. Non-white lives are clearly not as valuable to them as white lives. Disgusting.

I would love to be in charge at the Pearly Gates of Heaven when these folks make their appearances to be allowed in. I’d send most back to Earth to be reincarnated as snakes. The truly evil and hypocritical can have their places in Hell with no chance of redemption. I’m in no way perfect and I have sinned in my life. The difference is I don’t claim to be any better than anyone else, or claim my moral standing is superior in any way to anyone else. I also don’t claim my race to be superior to any other. I’m white, but I’m often ashamed to be white because of all the hate other whites spew against so many non-whites and non-Christians. WTF do they think they are?

The saddest lesson is most of the extremely disastrous outcomes could have been avoided or significantly reduced if the wetlands had been restored and maintained over the past 50 years instead of allowing them to erode and subside further. Wetland buffer zones and barrier islands are the only way to prevent cataclysmic hurricane damage. Adequate natural barrier islands and wetlands make the other protection measures work as designed. The New Orleans flood protection system worked well when there were several hundred more square miles of wetlands and a significant number of barrier islands that are now all gone. There aren’t clear answers to exactly what needs to be done to rapidly rebuild those natural barriers or how much has been done in the past 4 years. Getting to the details on these issues is my next research project for this blog.

Katrina was a 400 year storm. In the past 50 years we have had six 100 year plus storms, so I think the term needs to be redefined: Betsy (1965), Camille (1969), Andrew (1992), Katrina (2005), Rita (2005), and Gustav (2008). Other areas of the Gulf Coast and U.S. southern Atlantic Coast have also been hit with really bad storms. The ones I listed hit Baton Rouge, LA.

The ultimate question is what will it take to put my life back together completely. For me, it’s the ability to provide well for my family; take care of my house and other physical property; and do a far better job of protecting our lives and property from such disasters in the future. I’d also like my depression to be milder and less frequent, and to even go away completely. I don’t know that that will happen since I’ve suffered depression all my life, but I know it can get better than where I am now. Affordable health insurance and real coverage would help a lot. Sometimes I get worse because I can’t afford all the medication I’m supposed to be taking. I stretch it out, and that causes a downhill slide that takes a few weeks to come back out of when I have all the medication I’m supposed to take and take it every day as prescribed.

Were you hit by Katrina or Rita? Have you survived another major hurricane? Tell us which storm and how you’re doing today. What needs to improve to make your life more whole again?

Technorati Tags: 4th anniversary, another katrina anniversary, Hurricane Katrina Pictures

Update 6/11/09: I’m sorry this film is no longer available. As soon as I can find it I will repost it here.

Filmmaker Matt Faust of Louisiana State University looks at Louisiana Post-Katrina:

For someone who lives in South Louisiana, “Home” is haunting. We have not recovered sufficiently from the devastation of Katrina, physically or emotionally.

I am extremely happy that this film was made, that it is part of the Tribeca Film Festival, and it won in the short film documentary category. One of the jurors for this category was Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. I am grateful that she cares enough to keep talking about Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, and the Gulf Coast. She seems to be the only mainstream TV pundit to keep the story alive outside our area. Thank you, Rachel, for keeping us and our plight in the prime time news.

The feelings I am experiencing seeing the film are “sad” and “surreal” Being reminded of how devastating Katrina was and how much it still affects so many people here in 2009 still brings on the feeling that somehow this is a nightmare, and some morning we will awaken from it. But I know it’s real. It’s not a nightmare. I haven’t figured out why I continue to feel this way even though I have seen, touched and smelled the devastation first-hand, not once, but repeatedly, as I helped my mom get ready to move away from New Orleans after the storm. I will never forget the smell…

I am also extremely angry that one of our senators, David Vitter, is blocking the confirmation of the new head of FEMA under the Obama Administration, and hurricane season is only 21 days from now. WTF is Vitter thinking???

Technorati Tags: Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Katrina Pictures, Hurricane Katrina recovery, Louisiana Post-Katrina, Matt Faust, Tribeca Film Festival Short Film: Home