Good Site for Post-Katrina Photos

As we swelter through The Month That Contains the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (better known to most of you as August 2008), I may be posting only Katrina-related entries. Or maybe not. For right now, I'm linking to Pontchartrain Pete's blog, in which he's recognizing The Anniversary Month by posting a new Katrina photo every day of the month--his theme is "One K a Day."

Hurricane Preparedness?

After posting a serious entry on Hurricane Katrina's aftereffects earlier this week (Katrina Tattoos), I'm going for the funnybone now.

A friend who lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast sent me the following humorous e-mail. (Her hometown of Pascagoula was devastated by Katrina.)

This is a witty sendup of the many "hurricane preparedness" tip sheets distributed this time of year. It's going around the Internet via e-mail, with nothing to identify the original author, so I assume it's not subject to copyright protection and reprint it in its entirety.
_______________________________________________

Special Message from the Gulf Coast FEMA Office
Subject: Hurricane Preparedness 2008

To ex-Gulf Coastians, present Coastians, and future Coastians or those who know a Coastian: Hurricane season is upon us. It begins June 1 and ends November 30.

Any day now, you're going to turn on the TV and see a weather person pointing to some radar blob out in the Gulf of Mexico and making two basic meteorological points:

1. There is no need to panic.
2. We could all be killed.

Yes, hurricane season is an exciting time to be on the Gulf Coast. If you're new to the area, you're probably wondering what you need to do to prepare for the possibility that we'll get hit by "the big one."

Based on our experiences, we recommend that you follow this simple three-step hurricane preparedness plan:

STEP 1: Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at least three days.
STEP 2: Put these supplies into your car.
STEP 3: Drive to Nebraska and remain there until Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this sensible plan. Most people will foolishly stay here on the Coast.

We'll start with one of the most important hurricane preparedness items:

HOMEOWNERS' INSURANCE

If you own a home, you must have hurricane insurance. Fortunately, this insurance is cheap and easy to get, as long as your home meets two basic requirements:

1. It is reasonably well-built, and
2. It is located in Nebraska.

Unfortunately, if your home is located on the Coast, or any other area that might actually be hit by a hurricane, most insurance companies would prefer not to sell you hurricane insurance, because then they might be required to pay YOU money, and that is certainly not why they got into the insurance business in the first place.

So you'll have to scrounge around for an insurance company, which will charge you an annual premium roughly equal to the replacement value of your house. At any moment, this company can drop you like used dental floss. Since Hurricane Katrina, I have had an estimated 27 different home-insurance companies. This week, I'm covered by the Bob and Big Stan Insurance Company, under a policy which states that, in addition to my premium, Bob and Big Stan are entitled, on demand, to my kidneys.

SHUTTERS

Your house should have hurricane shutters on all the windows, all the doors, and -- if it's a major hurricane -- all the toilets.

There are several types of shutters, with advantages and disadvantages:

• Plywood shutters: The advantage is that, because you make them yourself, they're cheap. The disadvantage is that, because you make them yourself, they will fall off.
• Sheet-metal shutters: The advantage is that these work well, once you get them all up. The disadvantage is that once you get them all up, your hands will be useless bleeding stumps, and it will be December.
• Roll-down shutters: The advantages are that they're very easy to use, and will definitely protect your house. The disadvantage is that you will have to sell your house to pay for them.

"HURRICANE-PROOF" WINDOWS

These are the newest wrinkle in hurricane protection: They look like ordinary windows, but they can withstand hurricane winds! You can be sure of this, because the salesman says so. He lives in Nebraska.

"HURRICANE PROOFING" YOUR PROPERTY

As the hurricane approaches,check your yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters, patio furniture, visiting relatives, etc. You should, as a precaution, throw these items into your swimming pool (if you don't have a swimming pool, you should have one built immediately). Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn these objects into deadly missiles.

EVACUATION ROUTE

If you live in a low-lying area, you should have an evacuation route planned out. (To determine whether you live in a low-lying area, look at your driver's license; if it says Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, Bay St. Louis, Gautier, Pascagoula, Waveland, etc.you live in a low-lying area.)

The purpose of having an evacuation route is to avoid being trapped in your home when a major storm hits. Instead, you will be trapped in a gigantic traffic jam several miles from your home, along with two hundred thousand other evacuees. So, as a bonus, you will not be lonely.

HURRICANE SUPPLIES

If you don't evacuate, you will need a mess of supplies. Do not buy them now! Gulf Coast tradition requires that you wait until the last possible minute, then go to the supermarket and get into vicious fights with strangers over who gets the last can of Spam.

In addition to food and water, you will need the following supplies:

• About 23 flashlights.
• At least $167 worth of batteries that, when the power goes out, turn out to be the wrong size for the flashlights.
• Bleach. (No, I don't know what the bleach is for. NOBODY knows what the bleach is for. It's tradition, so GET some!)
• A 55-gallon drum of underarm deodorant.
• A big knife that you can strap to your leg. (This will be useless in a hurricane, but it looks cool.)
• A large quantity of raw chicken, to placate the alligators. (Ask anybody who went through Katrina; after the hurricane, there WILL be irate alligators.)
• $35,000 in cash or diamonds so that, after the hurricane passes, you can buy a generator from a man with no discernible teeth.

Of course these are just basic precautions. As the hurricane draws near, it is vitally important that you keep abreast of the situation by turning on your television and watching TV reporters in rain slickers stand right next to the Gulf and tell you over and over how vitally important it is for everybody to stay away from the Gulf.

Good luck and remember: It's great living in paradise! Those of you who aren't here yet, you should come.

Really!
_______________________________________________

Once again, I can't take credit for this clever parody. Kudos to the Unknown Wit who composed it.

Katrina Tattoos

I live in Metairie, a suburb that suffered far less than New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. As we approach the third anniversary of the storm, I can drive around Metairie and see few signs of storm damage except some empty lots where buildings have been razed, and the occasional FEMA trailer still remaining in someone's yard.

If I go into New Orleans, however, it's a different story. No matter where you go in the city, except perhaps the French Quarter, you cannot escape evidence of Katrina. First, many devastated homes and businesses remain, neither rebuilt nor razed. Second, the streets--in bad shape before the storm--now are truly dangerous, with enormous potholes, sinkholes, and other damage either unrepaired or worsened or recently developed. Third, there are the Katrina Tattoos remaining on many homes, even those that have been restored and are reoccupied.

(Photo from the International Journal of Health Geographics, http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/5/1/44)

What I call the Katrina Tattoo is the marking made by Search-and-Rescue teams as they made house-to-house searches for humans and animals in the months after the storm. If you saw pictures of New Orleans in the months after Katrina, you'll have seen the S&R markings on houses. S&R teams supposedly searched every building in all the flooded areas. Many houses were searched twice, by official teams and by animal-rescue teams. To notify others that a house had been searched, S&R teams marked each building with spray paint in a specific manner.

First they sprayed an "X" on the front (or roof) of the building. In the photo, it's on the roof, which means that the water was so high that searchers could access the house only through the roof. You can see they had to hack through the roof to get into the attic of the house.

(In other cases, people hacked through the roof from the inside after being trapped in their attics by rising water. I know people who keep a hatchet in their attic for precisely that purpose.)

The letters/numbers inside the quadrants of the X have specific meanings. In the top (north) quadrant is the date of the search; in the left (west) quadrant is the search-team identifier; in the right (east) quadrant is a notation of any hazards or unusual conditions in the building; in the bottom (south) quadrant is the number of victims found and their condition, e.g., live or dead. You can find an official explanation in the Army's Catastrophic Disaster Response Staff Officer's Handbook.

Interpreting the X in the photo by these guidelines, we can see the house was searched by team CA-8 on September 11, the team had to break into the attic, and they found one victim, who was dead. I interpret the arrow at left of "1 dead" as indicating to subsequent searchers that the victim can be found inside the attic, through the hole nearby. On the right side of the photo are the pieces of wood the searchers removed when they hacked through the roof. It's obvious the hole is too small for the searchers either to have entered through it, or to have removed the body at that time. The initial searchers were looking for the living; the dead were removed later.

The second X, on the front wall of the house, would have been made after the water subsided. It indicates the body inside was removed on September 19 by "Kenyon."

Ray in New Orleans blogged about these markings a few months post-Katrina, with a couple of photos. I'm sure many other bloggers and articles have discussed the S&R markings, but I'm not going to take time to do a full Google search.

After Katrina's second anniversary Travel and Leisure magazine wrote in "Soul Survivor":

Even in mostly recovered neighborhoods, you’ll notice the persistence of "Katrina tattoos," the X marks spray painted on façades by rescue workers after the storm, noting when the property was searched, by whom, and whether any survivors—or bodies—were found. Most have been painted over, but some are intact, left deliberately as symbols of perseverance. One Marigny resident has even had his cast in iron and mounted by his front door.

They were documented most famously in Chris Rose's columns for the Times-Picayune, which he later turned into 1 Dead in Attic, a book chronicling the aftermath of Katrina on the populace as well as on Rose himself. (I did a blog entry on Chris's work when the book was nationally released.)

What makes me think of this? Well, of course, it's only a few weeks until the third anniversary of the storm. (We are daily reminded by local news media, even if we wanted to forget it.) And, as I said earlier, you can't drive through New Orleans without seeing Katrina Tattoos still present on buildings. Some people, even after renovating their homes and returning to live in them, have left the S&R markings on them.

What message are they sending? I think it's something along the lines of "Remember the Alamo" or "Remember the Maine": We suffered and we survived, but others died; we came back, but we won't forget, and we'll keep a reminder ever-present.

For those of you who thought this entry would be about body-art, rest easy. Tattoo parlors, both local and around the country, have reported a huge number of requests for Katrina remembrances since K-Day (8/29/2005). You can see some of the results here and here.


Finally, I came across this while searching for links for other things: the most poignant reminder of Katrina--Unidentified Victims from Hurricane Katrina.

Nero-esque Perspective

"Bush Fiddles While New Orleans Burns"

I came across this collage accidentally while net-surfing. The poster was created by Lojo in St. Louis and her partner a few days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and was posted on Flickr on September 9, 2005.

In case the photo doesn't enlarge when you click on it, you can see the large version here. Or, if you don't have time to go there, the text on Bush's forehead says, "As thousands of hurricane victims suffered and died, the leader of the richest nation on earth went to a concert."

The artist encourages anyone to download it and post it wherever they like, so here it is.

K+2Y: I got by with a little help from my friends

As you know, Wednesday (August 29) marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Here in the greater New Orleans area, it was commemorated by dozens of events--prayer services, memorial ceremonies, solemn convocations, art shows, musical performances, brunch/lunch/dinner gatherings, and assemblies of survivors. I observed the day by meeting a group of friends for lunch at VooDoo Barbecue (in New Orleans, nearly every event starts with food, ends with food, or centers on food). We adjourned for dessert to the home of one among us, Laura Joh Rowland. Laura's home, in the Gentilly neighborhood, sustained major damage, but has been restored. Originally we planned to head out from Laura's for a tour of some of the worst-affected areas--Chalmette, the Ninth Ward, Lakeview--but the sky was pouring rain and some of us were feeling our arthritis too much to go farther afield.

It was a good day. Being with my friends comforted me and lifted my spirits. There's an underlying sadness now to gatherings in this city; we always are aware--sometimes subliminally--of those who didn't survive the disaster and those who haven't returned from afar. Yet with each gathering we celebrate that we're still here, we still have friends here, we still have life. Love and human connections and our bond with This City are what keep us going.

In a followup to my August 28 post on Chris Rose, here's a link to "As Not Read by Oprah," his column published on Wednesday--the day he was to appear on the Oprah show. He was bummed out because they would not allow him to mention his book in any way. (They only wanted him because he went public with his bout of depression.) With his usual sardonic wit, he points out why they were wrong.

1 Dead in Attic

I write to extol 1 DEAD IN ATTIC: AFTER KATRINA, by Chris Rose, just released by Simon & Schuster. Chris Rose is a columnist for the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans. Before Katrina, his column covered celebrities, entertainment and popular culture, with a humorous focus. After Katrina, he left his family in Maryland, where they had evacuated before the storm, and returned alone to New Orleans. He sweated, he struggled, he sorrowed, and he suffered like the rest of us in the days and weeks after the apocalypse. Writing about New Orleans’ struggle to recover from devastation, he recounted his own experiences, feelings, and despair in lucid and colorful words that brought tears to our eyes. He underwent a breakdown, falling into a pit of desperation out of which he struggled to climb. He was honest with us: after disappearing from the newspaper’s pages for weeks, he explained what had happened to him, and how he was recovering. He started back with his column, gradually reinserting the humor for which he had been known pre-Katrina. He kept on keepin’ on. We enjoyed his columns before Katrina, but we grew to idolize him for his post-Katrina essays. He wasn’t born here, he didn’t grow up here, but he knows and understands this city and its people as well as we know ourselves. He is one of us.

Five months after the storm, he self-published a book that collected his columns from September through December 2005, the first four months post-Katrina. He began selling it out of the trunk of his car, sharing the proceeds with a couple of charitable foundations. In a little more than a year, he sold 60,000 copies—extraordinary numbers for a self-published book. As he began planning to self-publish a sequel, Simon & Schuster contacted him. S&S repackaged 1 DEAD IN ATTIC in a new edition, adding what had been planned as the sequel as part of the book. The new version now includes a selection of his columns from right after Katrina through sixteen months post-Katrina—that is, from September 2005 through December 2006.

This is how Simon & Schuster blurbs the new edition:

1 Dead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Celebrated as a local treasure and heaped with national praise, Rose provides a rollercoaster ride of observation, commentary, emotion, tragedy, and even humor -- in a way that only he could find in a devastated wasteland.

They are stories of the dead and the living, stories of survivors and believers, stories of hope and despair. And stories about refrigerators.

1 Dead in Attic freeze-frames New Orleans, caught between an old era and a new, during its most desperate time, as it struggles out of the floodwaters and wills itself back to life.

Last night I attended a library program at which Chris Rose spoke and read from the new book. In a large meeting room—actually two rooms combined—he had a standing-room-only audience, which gave him an ovation as he walked into the room. He spoke a little, showed a wonderful and deeply saddening DVD of post-Katrina photos by his friend Charlie Varley, read two essays from his book, spoke a bit more, then spent almost two hours signing books for the huge crowd. He was to leave New Orleans today to appear on the Oprah show tomorrow—Wednesday, August 29, the two-year anniversary of Katrina—along with other locals, to speak about New Orleans after Katrina. (He says the Oprah people won’t allow him to mention his book, however.)

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you: He was runner-up for an individual Pulitzer Prize in 2006, and also shared in the group Pulitzer awarded to the Times-Picayune for its coverage of Katrina-related events.

If he comes to speak near you, go to hear him. He’s a terrific speaker, and has a profound story to tell. He’s funny, too. You can learn more about the book at the publisher’s website and at the Chris Rose website. Apparently he does not have a publisher-sponsored book tour, but his own website lists the following appearances:

• Murder by the Book (Houston, TX), Thursday August 30, 2007 7pm; for more information call (713)524-8597
• Barnes & Noble (Westheimer Rd. Houston, TX), Friday August 31, 2007 7pm; for more information call (713)783-6016
• AJC Book Fest (Atlanta, GA), Sunday September 1 & 2, 2007; more information to come
• Ole Miss (Oxford, MS), Tuesday September 4, 2007 1pm; for more information call (662)915-5896
• Square Books (Oxford, MS), Tuesday September 4, 2007 5pm; for more informaton call (662)236-2262
• Reed's Gum Tree Books (Tupelo, MS), Wednesday September 5, 2007 12pm; for more information call (662)620-0838
• Turn Row Books (Greenwood, MS), Wednesday September 5, 2007 5:30pm; for more information call (662)453-5995
• Lemuria Books (Jackson, MS), Thursday September 6, 2007 5pm; for more information call (601)366-7619
• Page & Palette (Fairhope, AL), Friday September 7, 2007 6pm; for more information call (251)928-5295
• Baton Rouge Gallery (Baton Rouge, LA), Sunday September 9, 2007 4pm; for more informaton call (225)383-1470
• Books-A-Million (Hattiesburg, MS), Tuesday September 11, 2007 7pm; for more information call (601)583-8612
• Louisiana Book Fest (Baton Rouge, LA), Saturday November 3, 2007