Katrina and The Cajun Navy - 7 Years Gone By (Prologue)

Prologue

The main character in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was uncontrollably driven by a compelling, unknown force to construct what turned out to be a model of the alien Mother Ship's landing site at the climax of the story.

I have mentally analogized that unidentified and relentless compulsion to the irresistible internal forces that drove me to do two things after the passage of Hurricane Katrina through southeastern Louisiana in late August of 2005.

First: Something indescribably powerful dragged my heart to my hometown of New Orleans after this killer storm.  It was comparable to any internal force I have ever experienced.  YES, ANY! 

Many felt the same, but I was fortunate to have resources to actually get my body into the city through the compassion and generosity of my client and friend, Ronny Lovett, owner of R&R Construction, Inc.

Second: I was also overcome after returning home, with the urge to document what I had seen, heard and experienced.  In the days immediately following Katrina, inside the ravaged confines of the City of New Orleans, the only information available to us and to residents was live, local radio.  Stations had converted exclusively to talk radio format and callers shared stories and circumstances similar to those we were encountering from the foot of Canal Street to the flood waters of New Orleans East, Mid-City and St. Bernard Parish.

Head-quartered at the foot of Canal Street, we were trying to function inside of an isolated, distinct and totally self-reliant universe with limited resources under outrageous conditions.  For a few days, everyone inside was mostly ignorant of the depiction of events being seen nationally in the media.

What I saw and heard in national media in the weeks and months following Katrina painted a different picture than what we experienced while we were there.  I cannot say the reporting was exaggerated, because what was there cannot be exaggerated.  My perception is that what was passed off as “information” during the days immediately following Katrina, was often conjecture, if not fabrication in media's quest to get the story first and present it dramatically to gain market share.  That is unfortunate and was unnecessary as what was there was dramatic enough.

I hope that anyone reading this brief journal of experiences will gain an accurate idea of what was reality in those first few days after the storm, and that they will appreciate the magnitude of the impact on the millions of individual lives significantly changed by Katrina.

I kept this journal to preserve what I saw and to dedicate it to the people, the culture and the attitude of my hometown of New Orleans.  I never published it as many more talented writers produced thousands of pages in the aftermath of the storm to the point that people actually got tired of reading about it.  (Doug Brinkley's Great Deluge is shown above, not as advertising, but because he mentions our efforts in the book, and he's a pretty nice guy). 

Now, seven years later, with the perspective of time and recovery, I will present this in the context of this blog for those of you who want to know and want to remember.

The spirit of the City of New Orleans and its people lives on!