If you need anything, let me know.
This statement is powerful. It happens in response to distressing matters that may require an extra hand to help process emotionally, physically, or for simple matters-- because sometimes, two heads are better than one. Either way, in the wake of Isaac, who seems to be making his little home in the backyard of the Roy home in Jesuit Bend, Louisiana, I sit here thinking of how often I have heard those words in the past 48 hours: “If you need anything...” It’s come from the family who I just met last week, and have now taken up residence with, to their friends who may experience more dire circumstances. I've heard it from their family members to them in response to their decision to stay through it. Within community where disaster strikes, this rolls off the tongues of those affected with the utmost sincerity. No one comes out unscathed. It’s Wednesday morning during Hurricane Isaac. The fences here are piecemeal now, the water so high on the levee, you could jump in, and many homes will be inches or feet deep in water nearby. The Roy house stands on ten-foot stilts only yards from the Mississippi river, and their backyard is quite literally a levee.
My roommate Michael gave me the option to come here or go to Texas with him while he worked on some business. Staying in New Orleans was not an option to my new best friend/veteran of Katrina: “I’ll have a hotel room, Alice can come. You can wander around town while I’m at work and there’s no hurricane.” My cat had been a source of concern. Like many of the residents who stayed in New Orleans because they worried about their pets not being able to evacuate with them, I suddenly felt a pang of upset at the question of whether I could take her with me if I had no other place to go… Thank goodness I had options. I asked what the pros of Belle Chasse were, “Resources. My family has been through Katrina, Gustav—they know who to contact and what to do if anything happens. It’s a Category 1, so they aren’t evacuating. My mom sticks to the idea that if it’s under 100 mph winds, they stay.” I nodded, “The sick fact is—I want to see it. I want to experience what it means to be in a hurricane if not only for curiosity but also to pay attention to what happens as a participator for my studies. So,” I decidedly shrugged, “Belle Chasse!” That was Monday. Sunday I had spent the day reading for class, thinking that a tropical storm was headed nearby, but not straight to us, and I had over sixty pages of readings to get through. Michael and I were dropping off his brother’s truck at the house that would soon be my temporary home, and decided to stay for pot roast dinner, courtesy of his mother, Miss Jane. She said it then, “Well, we’re staying. If anything happens or you just want to stay here, you bring the animals and come here.” We both nodded and I didn’t know what to think. Michael figured there was no way he’d have to go to Texas for business if his hometown was under hurricane threat. I figured if we did have to evacuate, it wouldn’t be until Monday night because the storm wasn’t coming until Wednesday morning—according to the Weather Channel.
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| The Roy family backyard, Sunday night before the storm |
Monday, 8:30 a.m. I walk downstairs. Michael looks at me in the kitchen, “It’s not looking good.” “What does that mean?” “It’s headed here.” “Ok…” “I have to go to Texas.” “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That’s completely unreasonable. You have a duty to your home and they can’t understand that?” He shrugs, “I can find someone else if you are scared.” I sense the uncertainty in his voice. “No, no… go. That’s very nice, but I’ll be fine.” Our conversation then proceeds as to what I “want” to do. Before I weigh my options, I tell him I need a few minutes to process. Having just moved here, absolutely green on what it means to live life in this city, yet feeling welcome all the same—I do not want to leave or stay. I don’t yearn to be home in Phoenix. I just felt completely out of my element. “Shit,” it hits me, “This is what I’m in for…”—indicating not only the current hurricane situation, but also my intended profession. Master of Science in Disaster Resilience Leadership Studies. For those who ask, “Why do you want to go into that?” “Job security,” I love to half-jokingly reply.
“When would we leave?” I ask Michael. “By about 3 p.m. I’m going to lunch with my uncle. Wanna go?” I laugh at how cavalier this all is to him. “Sure,” I respond. We had an absolutely delicious and normal lunch, free from panic and worry in a city that has every reason to feel that way. I pretended my worst problems at the moment were choosing which hot sauce to dip my delightfully fresh Cajun chicken fingers in. We sit, eating and chatting about their family affairs when Michael asks his Uncle Mickey, “You staying?” indicating whether he would stay through the hurricane at his house in Belle Chasse, south of New Orleans. “Yeah. I’ll never leave again.” I ask, “After Katrina?” He nods, serious, “After Katrina.”
Monday afternoon, 4 p.m. “Winds are coming in at 70 miles-per-hour and the eye looks like it will come straight over New Orleans!” The Weather Channel is on non-stop from the moment I arrived. I set up Alice in a bedroom upstairs and came down to watch with Adam, Mr. Mike and Miss Jane. Michael left for Texas already, “Call if you need anything,” of course. The speculation is constant and overwhelming. Reports asking questions about the size and shape of the tropical storm—it can’t seem to get its shit together. When will it reach landfall? How fast is it moving? The answers change on a regular basis, which frustrates me, yet we stayed glued in. There is no scientific formula to these storms. There is, of course—a very dedicated study to it, but like everything else, there is no absolution. Adam shows me pictures of damage from Katrina after they have mentioned it on television and in the news, repeatedly. I remembered seeing some of them, yet that was seven years ago, from a distance, when my only connection to New Orleans or Tulane was meeting the occasional student or professor “refugee” that took residence at ASU during the months following the horrific storm and its aftermath. I shook my head, completely unable to respond. It is a sunny day, barely a cloud in the sky and yet the texts from friends and family began to roll in, “Are you ok?” “Where are you staying?” “Keep us updated!” I vowed to do just that. I cannot process what may come or how to prepare. I keep asking questions here and there, “Is there enough water?” “Are they getting the generator?” I got up from the chair and came to the back window and stare at their beautiful yard where we had just had a crab boil last Sunday. My first weekend here seems like months ago as I realize the landscape will be forced to change in the coming hours. I know I have a look of frightened uncertainty on my face, but that comes with facing the unknown. I’d probably had this look on my face for months, really. A big move to a new city for graduate school and evacuating from my new home due to a pending disaster, all in a two-week time frame. I am on autopilot. Don’t process, just do.
Tuesday, 5 p.m. “Do you wanna go for a ride?” says Miss Janie, just as the wind and rain are really starting to pick up. Power has been out for two hours at this point. We watched as a tree branch, swinging to-and-fro, finally came in contact with the power line and started to smoke before a loud “POP!” shook the air more than the storm, and took the power with it. The surrealism is overwhelming. I cannot wrap my mind around the concept of extreme weather and I am embarrassed at the fact that I decided to forgo staying in New Orleans, where I’d come to study disaster resilience, after all, but instead came down to my roommate’s family home in a parish that ended up being hit hard all-the-same. I stare at Jane and her son Adam with big eyes, “Wait, what? Are you serious? Is that something people do?” They laugh a bit and I suddenly wished I hadn’t said it, for fear of offending my sweet new friends. Miss Jane just nods, “Yeah, we are.” I nervously say, “Oh ok, then yeah, I’ll go,” and almost immediately mistrust my decision. We hop in Adam’s company truck and plod along slowly down the wet road. Earlier, Adam took me to see the levee and the marina so we could look at the water levels. They were rather low this season, so we figured it had a bit of room to come up and that made me feel better. Now, as the wind threatens to knock us over (or so my dramatic mind thinks), we come to the same spot not two hours ago hadn’t seemed so threatening. It seems threatening now. The water is inches from coming over the mouth, and the levee suddenly doesn’t seem high enough. “That’s enough to get my heart racing,” says Jane. I just stare and buckle my seat buckle as Adam gets back in the truck from taking some photos. We get back to the house and winds pick up, pressing trees down as if they were sprigs of grass under a shoe.
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| Scenes from our drive |
Wednesday, 11 a.m.: The third floor of this home is drenched due to the AC turbine flying off at 11 p.m. last night—allowing the water to start collecting inside and come through the vent system. The two youngest sons aren’t here though. It is expected they are helping someone nearby as they have been gone almost two hours. 56 parishes have declared a state of emergency. We may have to evacuate because it will be Friday before “we’re out of all this,” according to Gov. Jindal. Miss Jane says, “We’ll see if anyone comes knocking on our door. It’s affected different areas of the parish pretty harshly.” I just nod. Ok. Nothing left to say to that. If you have to move, you have to move. She keeps doing the dishes as we do what we’re forced to do since the power went out, listen to the rain and the wind. We’re still out of power due to the fact that the generator is missing a couple of pieces. Jane reassured me then, “We have food. We’ve never had power in any of the hurricanes. Not Betsy, not Gustav—we were out of power for 10 days for Gustav. We went to my sister’s house. Generators can be risky anyway, because of the fuel.” I was up late last night drinking wine and beer with the family, talking about non-hurricane-related things. We drank because the heaviest part of the hurricane was projected to come between 2-6 a.m. Thus, I wanted to sleep through it the best I could. I successfully drink three glasses of wine before I figure I’m going to pass out soon enough. I think of whether it’s better to sleep downstairs or upstairs, and decide finally that upstairs provides the most secure feeling for me and Alice. The rest of the family is downstairs on couches or in the bedroom. The rain and wind wake me up again around 2. I have turned off my phone to conserve battery since the power went out around 3 p.m. yesterday. I get up to switch out some of the towels that are picking up water leaking from the third floor. Adam’s room, where I’m sleeping, is free from leaks. I stay up for a while, listening to the sounds, as the wine, still in my system, lures me back to sleep.
Wednesday, 2 p.m. Brittany, Adam’s fiancé, Adam and I were sitting at the table when we heard a knock at the door. Jane opened the door to a National Guardsman politely notifying us that the levees “down the road” in the citrus fields, the roads are flooding and we need to get out or risk being stuck for days. I stand, mouth agape, “Is that really the National Guard?” Brittany laughs at me, five years my junior and an old pro at hurricane aftermath. “Yep. You ok?” I say all too quickly, “YEAH!” However, I have no panic, no worry—this is a totally different feeling. The feeling is a mix of uncertainty and frustration towards the situation, complete with a side of absolute lack of control. Jane starts talking to her sons, Taylor, Adam, and Gabe, asking what they would like to do. I even get asked my input. I say I don’t know what’s available to us, and everyone deliberates for a few minutes about where to go next, who to go to in Jane’s family. Mickey’s house is the most obvious choice, since he is further up the road and thus out of the danger. I feel less uncertain now since I did have the pleasure of doing lunch with him before all of this mess really got started, so I pack everything up, Alice included, and get in Gabe’s truck. We do a few errands, running the truck through two-feet of water to the yard to get ice, and to the canals to pick a friend up and drop him off. We get there to an uncertain Paula, Mickey’s wife, who already has a full house, including their son, two of his Tulane friends and Jane’s sister, Maggie. Under normal circumstances, I would stop to talk about school or make friends—“I go there too!” but I’m not interested in small talk or bullshitting right now. It is decided we are to go to Maggie’s house to sleep, it is empty, however, powerless, but that solves that issue. Before we leave, I chop up some avocadoes for a salad and chat with Paula and Maggie about my experience so far. They’re all such lovely and funny ladies. However, there’s a curfew tonight—7 p.m. We’re reminded when we start to get ready to eat and realize it is already that time. I didn’t know a curfew was in effect, and feel silly but realize how necessary it is. Gabe and I grab our food and leave as it’s already dark, “What happens if you’re driving home after curfew?” “They threaten to arrest you.” I laugh, but there’s no joke. The array of ambulances, police cars and Army utility vehicles in the streets are absolutely mesmerizing—as I feel I’ve been transported to a war zone or a strange dystopian society. It is a war zone. The blasts and rubble not from bombs, but from the whimsy of forces of nature that have the ability to organize and shift with frightening strength thus causing incalculable devastation.
I stopped writing about the hurricane then because there was clean-up to do and less time to think. It's a month later now and I am just taking the time to return to this to post because it's been a whirlwind of catching up, both in school and discussing the aftermath. The estimated damages are $1.5 billion. Michael returned that Friday and we came back home to power in New Orleans, yet there were many that never lost theirs-- and many others who were out for many days longer. The angry cries for power were tuned out when Michael and I went to Braithwaite-- a town absolutely devastated when the levees there breached, and some areas flooded up to 14 feet of water. We saw entire homes picked up and dropped onto the streets, dozens of yards from where they'd sat, housing families for decades. The areas devastated, the people tired, yet together they are working hard to pull through.
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| Braithwaite damage on the levee |
Huge strides have been made since Katrina here, so fresh in the minds of those who lived through it, and yet there is no end to disasters here-- and people stay. Mother nature has no agenda nor bias. Thus, communities will still, as they always have, rely on the bonds with family, friends and neighbors for a helping hand and receive them. It's the beauty amid the broken. I was so grateful to have these people, and I will never forget the generosity shown to me and can only hope to pay it forward. Now, more than ever I know I will always say: "If you need anything, let me know."
