I don’t think I’ll ever forget when I heard on the news that Hurricane Katrina was expected to make landfall in New Orleans. Anyone from the Coastal area knew that a Category 3 hurricane had the potential to wipe out New Orleans if the levy’s broke, but here was Katrina, the monster storm headed towards New Orleans, almost assuring that the New Orleans that so many knew and loved would be no more.
Sometime or another before making landfall, Katrina turned, with the Mississippi Gulf Coast as her landfall target. As she made landfall, she literally obliverated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, taking almost everything in her path with her, including many historical homes that had survived during the devastating 1969 storm, Hurricane Camille.
By this time, I no longer lived on the Gulf Coast, but I watched Fox News and cried as I heard stories about the Coast that I know and love being ‘wiped out’, and the levys breaking in New Orleans, flooding part of the French Quarter and the lower 9th ward. Even though I grew up a short 15 minute ride from the beach, my parents moved inland after we graduated high school, and now live close to an hour from the beach I spent so much time at growing up.
I had limted cell phone contact with my parents, but enough to know that they, along with my brother and his family had made it through the storm without any damage, but the same wasn’t true for so many others. So many had lost everything, and I do mean everything, walking away with the clothes on their backs and llittle more.
Anyone who was on the Coast during the time has a Katrina story. I have videos, and I have a book, neither of which I’ve ever been able to watch or look at in their entirety because I just can’t stand to see that much dispair, devastation and pain. I’ve heard stories, many stories from family and friends, of how they made it through the storm, and the stories never cease to amaze me at the power of the human spirit.
It wasn’t until a year later that I actually visited the coast with Marcel, and I remember driving down Highway 90 and realizing that the news reports and the articles had been nothing compared to what I was seeing at that moment, and it was a year later. I couldn’t and still can’t wrap my head around the days after the storm, and what the people of the Gulf Coast and of New Orleans had to endure. I do know for certain that what we saw on the news, doesn’t even come close to showing us the real story.
Katrina did show us the power of the human spirit, as people the world over came to the aid of those in need. Even as I type this and the tears are streaming down my face, I know that in spite of the evil in the world, that good always prevails, and hope is a powerful thing.
Many have been able to rebuild their lives when they were left with little more than hope, a sure sign that with hope anything is possible. Four years later, there are still those who are struggling to find their way, to rebuild their lives, but progress is being made. If you visit the Coast for the first time today, you may not notice much evidence that Katrina ever practically destroyed everything, but for those of us who have made the Coast or New Orleans our home- we know.
We may be moving forward, but we’ll never forget.