Features

A Reporter Confronts the Nightmare Left by Hurricane Katrina By JAKOB SCHILLER

Friday September 16, 2005

Last Sunday night I stood with another reporter in the middle of the street in a neighborhood near downtown New Orleans. I had been sent to capture photographs of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, but at that moment all I could see in front of me was blackness, interrupted only by the occasional lights from a passing police car and the yellow glow from a nearby light run by a generator. 

We were exhausted from a day of slogging through the submerged cities and towns around the region and felt overwhelmed by the devastation we had seen. This was the first moment we had to try to make sense of what we saw, but none of it seemed real as we stared into the blackness. 

When we drove through downtown the day before, the streets were filled with trash. Big spray-painted signs that read “Looters will be shot” had not saved most stores. The only cars on the street were army Humvees. Troops and BlackWater security workers stood guard on empty street corners. 

You could close your eyes as you drove through the city and tell when you passed a fast-food restaurant or grocery store. The smell of rotting meat was overpowering. 

The smell of the water was just as bad as I imagined. Feces, oil and chemicals made the water turn dark green, brown and sometimes black. We all knew that the stray dogs wandering around were going to die from disease because that was the only water they had to drink. 

A couple of days earlier we had been in Empire, La., a small town in the bayou, about 60 miles south of New Orleans. The town, and several others like it, was built on a narrow strip of land between the Mississippi river and the delta. When the hurricane hit, the winds and flooding waters from either side destroyed almost everything. 

As we drove down, I couldn’t process what I saw. House after house was flattened into piles of wood. A large delivery truck lay resting in the top of the tree, its trailer pierced by the trunk. The town church had moved completely off its foundation and come to rest over a tree that jutted out of its front door. Inside a muddy statue of Jesus lay on the ground looking up at the ceiling as if in disbelief. 

In the Empire harbor, 40- and 50-foot boats were stacked on top of each other. An RV lay smashed under a house that had floated off its stilts. Emaciated stray dogs hung around, begging for attention and food. 

Helicopters constantly passed overhead, shuttling National Guard troops and search and rescue teams to remote areas. Two New York City police cars passed by late in the afternoon. 

Sometimes the rescue effort seemed organized and efficient. Rescue teams piled through debris looking for bodies, dead or alive. They marked houses with spray paint signals that let people know if the house was clear, or whether they found a body. I never saw a dead body, but I had no doubt that many were hidden under the debris of the houses we passed. 

Other times it took rescue teams hours to get anything done. It was mid-afternoon before some teams got to work because they spent the whole morning loading their equipment and trying to map out where they were going. 

I had never been to New Orleans before. As I stood on that dark corner in the hot and muggy night, I wondered what the city once looked like with lights. 

In the roadway median I saw a few beads from Mardi Gras. Instead of the bright metallic gleam they usually give off, these beads were covered in the green/brown muck left over from receding water. 

I wondered, how long it would be before tourists and residents walked down this street again instead of National Guard troops? I heard some locals dispute whether there will be a Mardi Gras next year. Some say it will take years before Mardi Gras comes back. Others said Hurricane Katrina was an excuse to make this coming celebration the biggest yet. 

We were standing in a middle- to upper-class neighborhood on the border of where the flooding stopped. On the street there were downed trees and cars destroyed by the water; most of the houses seemed inhabitable. Clean-up crews had already started to clear the debris. 

Meanwhile, 50 percent of the city was still under water two weeks after the hurricane hit. Just north of where we were, we saw entire houses that had collapsed. I heard that in a neighborhood near one of the levee breaks only one house was still inhabitable. The water was receding several blocks each day, but I knew it would be weeks before it was all gone. 

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