Never Forget - K+14

Fourteen years ago.  When you say it like that, it seems like a long time.

When you've experienced it - the storm AND the aftermath (still going on) - it seems like last week.

Katrina - the storm that keeps on giving.

My direct experiences were more on the outer edge, but witnessing the pain and suffering and the devastation is enough to leave an indelible mark on your heart.  

Yes, strides have been made in rebuilding, lessons have been learned and implemented.  The American people and the WORLD showed us the good in humanity.  Much appreciation to all of those people.  But - as is the case every time - the cruel people who lie in wait for a situation like Katrina to happen so they can bash those affected to satisfy their black souls showed their ugliness.  Their time will come.

Anyway, I have dug through my blog here to find pictures and stories of the aftermath of Katrina so we never forget how far we've come.

Here's a video taken right after Katrina in Slidell where it meets with Lake Pontchartrain.

Photographer Edward P. Richards documented Katrina devastation in New Orleans on this webpage https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/html/index.htm in extraordinary black and white photography.

This car was suspended over the marsh in Slidell for several months before it succummed to the mud.

NOLA Blogger Michael Homan posted about his experiences as he stayed in New Orleans during the storm.  Here's the link:  http://michaelhoman.blogspot.com/search?q=katrina+diary

Slidell Cleaners in Olde Towne Slidell flooded and never re-opened as a cleaners.  The building has been an art gallery, an art school and is now a Wine Garden.  

One of the wildest things I saw after Katrina was the boats that were moved by the winds and storm surges.   To see more, here's a link to a page I created after the storm: http://www.angelfire.com/la3/judyb/orphan_boats.html    

The boats shown above were pushed over the levee from Lake Maurepaus

NOLA.COM put together this graphic to show how Katrina's surge pushed through the area as she passed by on her way to the Mississippi Coast

 Click on this link to watch:  https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_238e35b0-e52a-5ed8-aed1-ec5da3ef16da.html.

"There were over 50 failures of the levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans, Louisiana, and its suburbs following passage of Hurricane Katrina and landfall in Mississippi. The levee and flood wall failures caused flooding in 80% of New Orleans and all of St. Bernard Parish." (from wikipedia)

1,833 people lost their lives to Katrina, as a result of drowning, injury, trauma and heart conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi.  Katrina's diaspora spread all over the country.  Many people never came back.  Some just walked away from their homes.  You can still drive through parts of New Orleans and see where time stood still.   Here on the Northshore you can find lots overgrown and if you look thru the growth you will find old, dilapidated homes that have probably not been touched in 14 years.  

Conversations often come around to peoples' Katrina experiences - still.  We think of time as "before" and "after"  the storm. Katrina is many times referred to as "the storm".  While searching the internet the other day I discovered that "Katrina Tours" are still active.  Anything for a buck.  

People still live with PTSD from their Katrina experiences.  My late brother was stuck in New Orleans for the storm.  He was a raging alcoholic and stayed at a casino on the lake where he was working. He was flown to Massachusetts in about a week after the storm, but he came back in a year.  He only fit in in New Orleans.  PTSD and all.

I named this blog "Thanks, Katrina", which is something I said a lot after the storm.  Katrina took a lot away, and whenever I'd reach for some something, or look for something at the store, or want a certain food then realize it was no longer there, I'd utter "thanks, Katrina".  

Sure, there are things that were born in the storm's aftermath: stores, restaurants, hotels, etc.  But we'll never get back the people who were in our every day lives.  They're gone, moved on, passed on.  And that sucks.  But we move on.

Monday Morning Smile

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via GIPHY

Dandelions

“I am born as the sun,

But then turn into the moon,

As my blonde hairs turn

Grayish-white and fall to

The ground,

Only to be buried again,

Then to be born again,

Into a thousand suns

And a thousand moons.

HYMN OF THE DIVINE DANDELION by Suzy Kassem

Copyright 1993-1994 - A SPRING FOR WISDOM” 

― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

RIP KATHLEEN BLANCO

 Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the first woman to be elected governor of Louisiana, has died at the age of 76. Blanco, a Democrat, served as Louisiana’s 54th Governor from January 2004 to January 2008. She died around 2:54 CT on Sunday, August 18, 2018.

Governor Blanco will forever be interwoven with the historic winds of Katrina. Both good and bad and both leaving an indelible mark on Louisiana.

With the weight of so many lives hanging on her, Governor Blanco seemed to age almost overnight. A criticism she responded to on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

“Well, there always is that, ‘oh well she’s a woman, it’s more than she can handle,’ you know that kind of business? But I would tell you, I think I was the clear headed one and people from outside of Louisiana are the ones who noted it the most,” Blanco told WAFB in 2015.

In the first hours after Katrina hit and the levees broke, and just as stories about looters in New Orleans threatening people and rescue efforts started to surface, Governor Blanco shocked even those closest to her when she deployed her national guard and gave this warning:

“These troops are fresh back from Iraq. They are well-trained, experienced, battle-tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets... They have M-16′s, and they’re locked and loaded. When hoodlums victimize and inflict suffering on people at their wit’s end, they’re taking away our limited resources, or whatever resources we have, to save babies, or save children and to save good people. I have one message for these hoodlums. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will,” Blanco said at a press conference during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Looking back on Katrina, Governor Blanco shared, having lost a child of her own, there was one encounter with a man that stuck with her as she walked through the disastrous shelter of last resort in the (then) Louisiana Superdome.

“He was just holding his baby up and he was saying, ‘Governor my baby hasn’t bathed in three days, Governor I need to have food for my baby.’ And I said, ‘we’re going to get you to safety, we’re going to get you out of here and we’re going to bring in supplies in the meantime.’ But, it was just heartbreaking.”

When asked if she ever lost her cool behind the scenes in the chaotic aftermath of the hurricane, Blanco told WAFB’s Greg Meriwether, “Did I lose my cool on the air? No, not really. I tried not to do that at any point in time because, so many people were we’re losing their cool, I thought somebody better look like a sane person in Louisiana or nobody’s going to want to help us.”

Both the state and federal response to the historic storm seemed bumbled at times. Something President Bush and Governor Blanco would eventually apologize for. In the midst of the storm Blanco shared with us that privately she had a “come to Jesus moment” with her staff:

“I said, we are wasting our energy. Those who are attacking us are sitting in a nice air-conditioning, comfortable chairs planning public relations initiatives to go after us. We on the other hand do not have the luxury of that. We are fighting to save lives. So, I want you to stop. I want you to stop now and I want you to use your energy to do what our main mission is. And they looked at me and they were pretty upset with me telling them they couldn’t fight the White House and the national media outlets that were challenging us and they said, ‘they are going to destroy you governor’ and I said the truth will prevail.”

In 2011, Governor Blanco, now private citizen Blanco, revealed she had been diagnosed with a rare eye cancer. Her prognosis then was a good one with the caveat the rare cancer could show up again.

And it did, right in the middle of enjoying what she called ‘A life rich with a mega-sized family’ complete with 13 grandchildren.

The aggressive cancer returned to her liver.   Before her death, Governor Blanco wrote a letter to Louisiana asking for prayers.

By Greg Meriwether, Nick Gremillion, and Kevin Foster | August 18, 2019 at 3:40 PM CDT - Updated August 18 at 7:15 PM

STAIN REMOVAL CHART :)

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