Hurricane Katrina | TheaterFire

[-]

ChristyLovesGuitars@reddit

I was living in NOLA when Katrina hit. One of the most surreal experiences of my life. Waited till it was waaay too late to leave, only made it about 90 miles NE.

[-]

I was also living there when it hit, but happened to be visiting my BF at the time in Lafayette the weekend before, so I didn’t have to evacuate. But my parents did and it took them 12 hours to drive from NOLA to Lafayette. Normally a 2 1/2 hour drive.

[-]

ChristyLovesGuitars@reddit

Yep. That contraflow traffic was awful!

[-]

aliceinadreamyland@reddit

I was displaced out of Nola from Katrina. I haven’t watched the documentary yet. Even 20 years later it’s still too painful.

[-]

ThePicassoGiraffe@reddit

I have an uncle who lived in Gulfport and he lost everything. Moved home with only the clothes on his back

[-]

BeerAnBooksAnCats@reddit

I lived in Gulfport for several years as well, as an adult. I grew up in southern Alabama, all along the west coast of the bay. Have family from Louisiana to Alabama, and traveled up, down, and along the coast as a child and teenager before I left for college for family reunions, Mardi Gras parades, funerals…you name it. I was born in one spot, but the entire coast felt like home.

The damage along this whole stretch was something that the vast majority of coastal residents had never seen in their lifetime. What wasn’t damaged was obliterated. It looked like a giant had raked clean entire half mile stretches in a single motion.

20 years on, there are still vacant properties on which you can see concrete foundations, maybe stubs of brick chimneys or steps, places where trees used to be. A lot of family-owned businesses, e.g., decades-old restaurants that were local institutions, never recovered. If you made your living from fishing and shrimping, ditto.

My mom used to live about three miles inland from the northern Mobile Bay, and that area was about 20 miles away from the actual Gulf Coast. The storm surge was so violent that the tiny creek 200 yards out back ended up flooding the house so full that the washer and dryer were forced across the house and into the dining room.

I can’t rightfully say they got off easy; their house insurance ended up paying them only about 4000 USD, for everything (vehicles, motorcycles, vintage Les Paul and other music equipment, the house’s furnishings, jewelry, even the house itself). They had to live onsite in a FEMA travel trailer until insurance finally settled. But their families hadn’t lost everything, and they were able to get by. They weren’t left destitute, like millions of other folks.

If you lived paycheck to paycheck, or in complete poverty, you were fucked.

[-]

imnottheoneipromise@reddit

Yup. My parents live close to Pascagoula. I was in Iraq. I had no idea if my parents were okay. If all my friends were okay. I couldn’t get in touch with anyone for days and I was sitting in a war zone sick with worry while doing patrols and driving routes in my 113. I was so relieved when the phones finally came back and found out my parents were fine. I had 2 friends that lost absolutely everything in a beach house in Pascagoula and close to the beach in Biloxi. When I came home on environmental leave in December we drove through Biloxi and I just poured tears. I can’t even imagine New Orleans.

[-]

Parker_Hemphill@reddit

Damn, I totally forgot there was a time they let 113’s outside the wire.

I was at JRTC that month. They cut our rotation short a cpl days to get us out of the area of Katrina devastation since we were AD and couldn’t be called up to help (1BCT of 1ID from Ft Riley). I remember seeing the crazy looking clouds coming in. Being from Tennessee and 22/23 at the time I had never seen anything like it other than a mesocyclone in Kansas once.

[-]

imnottheoneipromise@reddit

Hey! I was 1/125 out of Riley!!! I was there from 2004-2007 except for the year in Iraq. 3rd BDE 1AD. When we got redeployed home and back from leave that’s when they disbanded 1AD!

[-]

Parker_Hemphill@reddit

I remember that! They reflagged as a BCT of 1ID or moved the whole brigade, I can’t remember which.

I returned to Riley from Iraq in 2007 and they disbanded my old battalion 1-34 Armor.

Then I PCSed to Ft Stewart, deployed with B Troop 3/7 cav which was disbanded when we go back from Iraq in 2010. I reclassed to signal when I reenlisted in 2010 and my old signal BN is still around 114 Sig BN.

When I was combat arms I guess I was just bad luck. Although, I was always in “the best unit / element / etc I’ve ever seen” according to all the officers I had over the years.

(I’m just making fun of officers now and injecting a little humor in this post in case anyone needs it)

[-]

imnottheoneipromise@reddit

Yup, I ended up being moved to 1ID because I was nondeployable as I’d been accepted to the AECP and was leaving for nursing school in May of 2007. My unit got deployed but I was on rear D for a few months. After I graduated from nursing school I did 3 more years as an officer and went to bliss. There I met my hubs and had my son.

I liked Ft Riley honestly. I liked going out in manhattan and I loved the big country music festival (can’t remember now what it was called), and had fun at some place in the woods where we could jump off cliffs into a river. Damn that was so long ago. Lots of good memories.

[-]

beingobservative@reddit

I was also in the ME (for fun not war) while my family was back in MS. Went to bed after talking to them saying everything was fine & they were ready. Woke up to the mess on CNN and not being able to reach anyone back home for days.

[-]

kgcatlin@reddit

I’m also a NOLA native and haven’t been able to watch any of the documentaries. I just don’t want to be reminded of it.

[-]

CosmicTurtle504@reddit

Same. Family home was destroyed, lost everything. I’ve been avoiding the news like the plague this week. All month, really. I don’t need to relive that trauma; it took me long enough to grieve, process and move forward.

[-]

sweetnsalty24@reddit

That's the same for me in 9/11

[-]

CosmicTurtle504@reddit

Funny you mention it, I was in Manhattan on 9/11 too. Two national tragedies up close and personal within four years. That was a difficult period in my life, to say the least.

[-]

sweetnsalty24@reddit

Wow, a double whammy of tragedy

[-]

Adventurous-Ice6109@reddit

Same. I was there. Still have ptsd and can’t watch a damn thing about it.

[-]

95blackz26@reddit

i wasn't there but i live in the northeast.. i tried watching one of the documentaries and made it like 10 minutes..i emotionally lost myself. it was just so sad.

[-]

nahmahnahm@reddit

Same, friend. Same.

[-]

ipsumdeiamoamasamat@reddit

I’m sorry that you went through what you did.

[-]

aliceinadreamyland@reddit

I’m so sorry. I’ve been doing the same the past couple of weeks.

[-]

Cisru711@reddit

Has it really been 20 years??

[-]

svu_fan@reddit

Yup. I just turned 40 - I had just turned 20 when Katrina happened and it dawned on me that this was half my lifetime ago now. Blew my fucking mind too. Doesn’t seem like that long ago now.

[-]

Known_Raspberry_8159@reddit

I can totally relate. Katrina hit on my 20th birthday. I lived north of the most destructed areas, but close enough that we were without power and water for over a week. It doesn’t seem like that was literally half of my entire life ago.

[-]

svu_fan@reddit

Happy belated birthday!! Welcome to your 40s too 🥳. Mine was nearly two weeks previous. I’ve never lived in the south, but I was in college then and a LOT of people from my state, especially the college folks, volunteered to go down to help y’all in Louisiana over the next few months following Katrina. I heard too many heartbreaking stories from people when they came back. 😭 I’m thankful to hear you were able to be spared the worst of Katrina’s destruction.

[-]

Cisru711@reddit

Happy Birthday!

[-]

johnrgrace@reddit

Yep, decided to have a kid right after Katrina and they are in college now.

[-]

ShotAtTheNight22@reddit

Haha the way I read this was that it was BECAUSE of Katrina happening. I was like well that’s wild lmao

[-]

johnrgrace@reddit

It was in part because of Katrina

[-]

aliceinadreamyland@reddit

I know. It doesn’t seem like it.

[-]

ladyattercop@reddit

I was talking about this with a client of mine who was displaced from Nola after Katrina. (I’m from Ft. Laud, and we were discussing hurricanes & the anniversary of.)

Her dad was a cameraman for a local news station. He still can’t talk about the horrific shit he witnessed. He gave her a DVD of the raw footage they shit at the time. She’s never watched it.

[-]

harswv@reddit

I know how you feel. I’m from Paradise CA and just saw an ad for the movie about it starring Matthew McConaughey. Not a tiny shred of desire in me to watch it and I doubt I ever will. Living through a disaster once is enough.

[-]

Odd_Negotiation3126@reddit

I watched a doc of the fires a few years back. I still have random moments of sadness and anxiety when the images popIn my brain. Walked around for a long time in a daze. My heart shattered for everyone. I’m so sorry you went through that and I don’t blame you

[-]

IchooseYourName@reddit

I befriended a woman who worked as a housekeeper at one of the hotels near Bourbon St. We bumped into eachother at the nearby McDonalds and sat for a quick chat, which turned into her telling the story of not just the hurricane, but her experience in the days afterwards. It was absolutely horrific what she had to do just to survive, just to find water. Her story rocked my world, made me question the very basis of humanity. That was the day I learned about vicarious trauma -- not the actual phrase, but its literal impact on someone just listening to someone else's story. I carry her trauma with me to this day. Wherever she is, I hope she's doing better.

[-]

DanishWhoreHens@reddit

I learned about vicarious trauma after seeing the video of a co-worker beheaded in the middle east. I struggled for almost two decades before my trauma psychologist (for a lived experience) told me about it.

[-]

plantsplantsplaaants@reddit

I also have vicarious trauma and know that it’s very real. I wish more people knew about it- had I known it was possible I might’ve sought help years earlier

[-]

ghost_shark_619@reddit

It’s been 20 years?!

[-]

aliceinadreamyland@reddit

Yep.

[-]

ghost_shark_619@reddit

That’s wild. It doesn’t seem that long but I didn’t live it. When it hit I was living in Florida and when it decided not to come our way it was good. Then it headed right for New Orleans. I felt so bad for the people there knowing how strong it was going to be. Then seeing the aftermath that awful feeling just amplified.

[-]

johnrgrace@reddit

Same, we’d just bought a house in uptown in June. We did ok but that was because we hustled hard and had resources, you really got to see how everyone was on their own.

[-]

shmiona@reddit

I was biking through the French quarter sometime in the last week and they were doing an official screening for it. The doorman asked if I was here for it and when he told me what it was I said “fuck no, why would I want to watch the city getting destroyed again” turned some heads

[-]

Sanchastayswoke@reddit

A simple no would have done just fine probably

[-]

beingobservative@reddit

Doorman probably responded “alright my baaby.” And didn’t have a second thought about it.

[-]

shmiona@reddit

the dude laughed and said he’s not watching that shit either. It’s ok if you don’t get it

[-]

deadduncanidaho@reddit

Fuck no.

[-]

visionofacheezburger@reddit

I'm from Houston and I don't even want to watch it

[-]

petit_cochon@reddit

It doesn't feel that long ago at all. Every anniversary does something to me.

[-]

Away-Pie969@reddit

Robin Roberts did a special about Katrina that touched on how kids were impacted and the trauma they still hold. If you ever feel up to it, it's at the end of the episode.

[-]

aliceinadreamyland@reddit

I doubt I will, but maybe someone else will.

[-]

ApoplecticDetective@reddit

I went to the 10-year exhibit at one of the museums in Jackson Square and it just resurfaced all the trauma (and created new ones tbh). I have no intention of watching/visiting anything for the 20th.

[-]

One_Beneficial@reddit

Same.

[-]

on_fleekwoodmac@reddit

Sending love.

[-]

johnnys_sack@reddit

Same and I don't intend to watch it. It sucked more than enough to go through it.

[-]

GuerillaRiot@reddit

I was just outside of Baton Rouge during Katrina. Just witnessing what was coming out of NOLA was rough, trying to get people what they needed on a day to day basis. It was soul-crushing seeing what was going on with people still there.

[-]

KeyFeeFee@reddit

That’s awful, I’m so sorry

[-]

aliceinadreamyland@reddit

Thank you.

[-]

Hypnot0ad@reddit

I’ll never forget Kanye saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on live TV.

[-]

doyoulikemyladysuit@reddit

I remember everyone was so shocked he said it and now looking back in context of the documentaries how honest of a statement it was. We think about how unhinged he has become, but that was one of the most sincere and authentic moments of his life.

[-]

elaphros@reddit

If ever there was a candidate for some who got MK-Ultra mind fucked to shut them up, I'd put my bet on Kanye.

[-]

doyoulikemyladysuit@reddit

If only. His mom clearly took excellent care of him and made sure he stayed on his mental health care regimen, whatever that was. After she died, he fell apart. He didn't have anyone left that actually cared about him, just his money and career. The story of way too many people that make it famous who struggle with mental health issues.

[-]

stormer1_1@reddit

Tbh he's an ass now but he was absolutely right

[-]

fleebleganger@reddit

And then Kanye ends up suckling at Donald’s teet

[-]

bikemandan@reddit

and being an antisemite

[-]

TheAskewOne@reddit

What shocked me most was how the government abandoned the people even before it made landfall. After the warnings people were left to their own devices to evacuate. Nothing was organized, it was like "don't stay here, but how you get out is none of our business, find a way". They didn't care at all.

[-]

Armin_Tamzarian987@reddit

"Heck of a job Brownie."

Literally anytime I hear someone say "heck of" my mind automatically finishes the line. And then I get mad all over again.

[-]

saladspoons@reddit

Unfortunately, the part about police shooting and killing people who were trying to escape across the bridge, was NOT a surprise.

[-]

svu_fan@reddit

That still gets me when I think about that too. So horrible.

[-]

Optimistiqueone@reddit

And gas stations were running out of gas, leaving people stranded.

[-]

maxdragonxiii@reddit

I watched the documentary. im aware its not accurate by any means, but they basically abandoned the poor people who simply can't leave and left them to die. the Superdome wasnt even enough to hold so much people for so long with the weather and the chaos it followed in the days after the hurricane.

[-]

ValancyNeverReadsit@reddit

The place I went for work so that I missed the storm was a hospital in the panhandle of Texas. Their materials management person, who was also an EMT, was literally at an emergency management conference in NOLA right before the storm hit. He was telling us that he barely made it to the airport because the buses shut down a few days before landfall. He had to take a taxi, and the driver scalped him of $60 but if he hadn’t paid that the driver wouldn’t have taken him. He said the city surely was going to be learning its own emergency management lessons from that storm.

[-]

Johnykbr@reddit

Theres multiple reasons for that. Nagin and Blanco were horrible leaders (Nagin was incredibly corrupt). Also the storm was turning towards Mississippi where it actually did hit as a Sev 5 and just destroyed the coast. If it wasn't for the levies bursting, it would have been just a few feet of water and bad wind in NO like every other storm.

[-]

kyliewoyote13@reddit

Only time I've cheered him on

[-]

Constant_Concert_936@reddit

I remember some people where I’m from saying “they should just drop a nuke on that city.” There really wasn’t a lot of empathy for the plight of black community in NOLA.

Even the news would show a picture of white people taking bread and water from a grocery store and call them “scavengers,” and call black people in the doing the same thing “looters.”

[-]

Smurfblossom@reddit

The only thing that shocked me about this statement was how many people didn't know that was true.

[-]

_hi_plains_drifter_@reddit

I remember watching this live.

[-]

Hellament@reddit

I’ll never forget the look on Mike Myers face lol.

[-]

Isaystomabel@reddit

[-]

BlacksmithThink9494@reddit

When he said that I was like hmm yeah he probably doesnt. I think that was the last time I agreed with Kanye.

[-]

EducationalOutcome26@reddit

I was on the ground doing recovery in mississippi, my buddy pork chop was the first man thru to the gulf because he was driving the lead dozer shoving vehicles out of the way down 49 i was the right side and tommy was on the left, pork would angle his blade to the right or left depending on which side had enough room and me and tommy would catch em a get off the road, we started at daybreak leaving from hattiesburg the next morning. with a convoy of national guard, medical and fuel and logistics behind us, it was a parking lot. and the closer we got to the coast the worse it got, there were places i grew up visiting and staying with relatives on the coast that i didnt recognize.. and still dont. the mississippi gulf coast as i knew it was destroyed. except for the flooding new orleans did fine that the crooks and thieves couldnt actually run a city or manage a rescue was no surprise to us. the high water mark on the church steeple in biloxi was 32 feet above ground. the walmart in waveland,, its 36 feet to the roof, the surge went over it and wind driven waves took the air handlers off the roof new orleans got a little flooding, and a lot of news coverage, it fucking devastated the mississippi coast and its a different place now..

camille hit when i was a child and i never understood the older people talking about what it was like before the storm, brother i understand now. its all gone.

[-]

immortalsteve@reddit

I had already come of age with a healthy dose of punk rock, so when I saw this happen it was confirming a lot of those themes. It pissed me off and made me hate paying taxes for what I perceived was no gain for anyone involved.

[-]

barefoot_sailor@reddit

gif

[-]

imnottheoneipromise@reddit

Yup, I ended up being moved to 1ID because I was nondeployable as I’d been accepted to the AECP and was leaving for nursing school in May of 2007. My unit got deployed but I was on rear D for a few months. After I graduated from nursing school I did 3 more years as an officer and went to bliss. There I met my hubs and had my son.

I liked Ft Riley honestly. I liked going out in manhattan and I loved the big country music festival (can’t remember now what it was called), and had fun at some place in the woods where we could jump off cliffs into a river. Damn that was so long ago. Lots of good memories.

[-]

Revolutionary_Gas551@reddit

I didn't realize that it was the 20th anniversary. I was coming back from leave for a deployment to Kosovo, and we flew out of DFW and went right over the top of it. It was INSANE turbulence, but still crazy to look down and be able to see it. It was so massive it just looked like clouds, and not like I had pictured a hurricane. We landed in Germany just in time to watch the news of it making landfall.

[-]

Thisisth@reddit

Being from Europe, I only knew little the basics and the Kanye quote. I watched the NatGeo Race Against Time documentary a few days ago and I honestly spent most of the 5 episodes in complete disbelief.. All I could think is wtf is wrong with Americans

[-]

KickooRider@reddit

You can also watch the Spike Lee documentary "When the Levees Broke" (2006)

And the fictional series "Treme" by the maker of "The Wire" for more deep insights.

[-]

Thisisth@reddit

Yes! The Spike Lee film is on my list. I didn’t know about Treme, but will look into it. The racial aspect of Katrina is really what separates it from other natural disasters and until I watched the doc I really didn’t realise how bad it was.

White people using a natural disaster to openly hunt black people in the street.. I mean what the actual fuck??? Europeans are also badly prepared, corrupted and mess up rescue efforts on many occasions but that is something else entirely! I really didn’t know it was that bad. Sickening shit

[-]

KickooRider@reddit

Treme is amazing. It takes place in post Katrina New Orleans. Like all David Chase shows it gives you many perspectives, such as vulturous real estate developers trying to take advantage of the situation, a family whose son was killed by a cop during the chaos, chefs trying to make their businesses work. Most importantly though, the show is about musicians and is a homage to the culture of New Orleans.

[-]

the_owl_syndicate@reddit

wtf is wrong with Americans

So many things

[-]

Intelligent_hexagon@reddit

https://youtu.be/FiLBY5UhpPE?si=gr7by5Z0bGO3AO-h

Katrina happened shortly after I got out of the army after a tour in the GWOT. Those two things radicalized me.

[-]

SoberDWTX@reddit

I started watching it last night and I remember Hurricane Katrina all too well. The scenes from the convention center, the news and rumors out of the superdome were horrific. It just seemed like no one was going to help when the military could’ve very easily gone in there to help and they just didn’t. I mean, I thought, military people built bridges and did large scale, evacuation operations, and that sort of thing as well as defending our country. I remember the buses from Louisiana to Houston and Dallas . My brother came to stay with me for two months. It took him l16 hours to drive from Lake Charles to Dallas. Service Stations were out of fuel. He showed up on my doorstep with his old beater car and 20 gallons of water in gallon jugs. We applied for FEMA and he got $2000.

[-]

Fabulous_Brick22@reddit

They released on HBO the documentary Spike Lee did in 2006

[-]

Medical-Tune676@reddit

Yeah, I didn't know our military was so into pointing guns at black people and accused them of theft when trying to survive but somehow couldn't lend a helping hand.

[-]

FollowingNo4648@reddit

I moved back to Dallas, TX, in 06' and at my job, I was so surprised how many of my coworkers were from New Orleans. They said they bussed a lot of people to Houston, and eventually, they made their way up to DFW to settle. Katrina displaced so many people.

[-]

95blackz26@reddit

the only thing i have ever watched about katrina was that mini-series five days at memorial.

[-]

Nerdyhandyguy@reddit

Katrina completely change the vector of my life. I was in basic when it hit. Destroyed the base I should have gone to for training. Ended up not being able to go and changed to going to a special duty assignment instead. Because of that my whole Air Force career went a completely different path and a better one honestly. So that hurricane actually made my life better over all in the long run.

[-]

Muzz27@reddit

gif

[-]

RogerClyneIsAGod2@reddit

It was probably the last time any of us agreed with Kanye too.

We visited New Orleans several years ago for a wedding & went on some tour that took us to the various places around NOLA but also into the 9th ward & when we went over that hill & into the ward I just felt sick & couldn't believe this was now a tourist spot & if we'd known we probably wouldn't have chosen that tour,

The minute we were below sea level I was just stunned, gutted & nearly started to cry. My very first thought was "These people had nearly no chance....just no chance."

Then everyone pulled out their cameras & phones & started taking pics. I wanted to just die & get outta there. here we were touring death scene.

I wish I could apologize to everyone there for making their tragedy a photo op.

[-]

BobbyP27@reddit

The image from that time that struck me most strongly at the time was news footage from a helicopter of a flooded parking lot full of school buses. There must have been at least 20 if not more school buses that were just sitting there. They could have been used to help evacuate people, but they had just been left to sit in a parking lot. People could have helped, but chose not to.

[-]

Overall_Purple_4714@reddit

I watched it. Heart breaking. I pray we don’t get hit with any big storms now as trains will be even worse.

[-]

Torchness9@reddit

I won’t be able to watch it. I remember seeing a documentary in the late 90s about the levees in New Orleans and about how a direct hit from a hurricane would take the whole city out. Then a few years later, just that occurred. FEMA didn’t respond well at ALL but lots of blame to go around to NOLA officials, too.

I sure am glad the city has recovered though.

[-]

doyoulikemyladysuit@reddit

Really depends on how you define recovered. So many people lost their generational homes and properties, businesses that were there since before New Orleans was anything more than a trading post that was wiped off the map and turned into a Claire's (though now that they're closing, who knows what'll it become). So much of the litter wars never rebuilt and so many people never returned... The city will never be what it was. The documentary on Hulu was truly brilliant and enlightening - I don't know about the Netflix one, but Hulus was so extensive and talked to rescue worked, members of the national guard, community members and talked about the bad faith "vigilantes" laying down sundown laws across the river where there was no flooding who were straight murdering people and getting away with it. To say the city recovered is to say economically, but that city is forever changed at its very heart and soul.

[-]

MillerTime_9184@reddit

I visited NOLA (I had never been there before) in probably 2018. To still be able to see so much evidence of Katrina made me so sad for the city. I can completely agree with why you say it didn’t actually recover.

[-]

magic_crouton@reddit

The post storm gentrification was kind of gross too. That didn't get heavily touched on in the hulu one.

[-]

doyoulikemyladysuit@reddit

They really did just focus on the immediate aftermath, a little bit in the recovery but mostly in the immediate days and weeks after the storm. There's so much to suspect with that one national tragedy you could make seasons of a docuseries, honestly, each one focusing on a different aspect of how the city and nation were devastated by the response and lack thereof.

[-]

Torchness9@reddit

That’s fair. I guess by recovered I mean that it still retained some semblance of its former self. At the time I feared it would never come back at all

[-]

Asleep_Excitement_59@reddit

Recovered? Where did you get "recovered" from?

[-]

KickooRider@reddit

Spike Lee's four part doc that came out a few years after was incredible. Each part addresses a different aspect of the terrible failure. Really well done.

[-]

davwad2@reddit

"Recovered" is a word I would struggle to use. I grew up in New Orleans East and this part of the city has limped along post-Katrina. It's a bit sad whenever I visit my dad.

The East was declining prior to Katrina, but it was decent. I left for college 25 years ago, and never returned to live here full time. Now, I see mostly closed businesses whenever I visit.

I have the When the Levees Broke DVD, but haven't had the emotional strength to watch it. Maybe I'll watch it this year.

[-]

Ididnotpostthat@reddit

Agreed. It was all a horrible shame. But it was a known risk and potentially preventable.

[-]

GenevieveLeah@reddit

Yep, I had a college professor that talked about this - 2002.

Terrible that people were allowed to build homes in areas that would be so hard-hit.

[-]

chadwickipedia@reddit

Don’t use the word ‘woke’. That’s a MAGA thing

[-]

Public_Journalist821@reddit

I’m Australian living in a area that has hurricanes. We call them cyclones. I watched this documentary and I understand how people end up like that. It’s all about money. If you are poor you probably can’t evacuate if you don’t have car, fuel and money for somewhere to stay. If your whole family is in a similar situation there’s no where to evacuate to.

I am fortunate to be privileged but due to some family issues I haven’t been speaking to my parents for some time. This year I was forced to evacuate in a natural disaster. I had my cat with me too. I am not working at the moment so I’m broke. This evacuation was difficult and different. I didn’t have money for lots of groceries and fuel. I was so forced to stay at a friends place but only just met her so it was not very comfortable. If my house had flooded I was up shits creek. I had insurance but not a lot of support.

It’s strange being able to relate to these people who were stuck in Katrina’s aftermath. I am white and from a different background and I know my experience was vastly different for that reason. But I also know know that we are all just lucky or unlucky the type of family we are born into and our circumstances. I no longer look at documentaries like this and feel confused by how poor black people ended up living in hell. Money, race and luck really do matter.

[-]

yourinternetmobsux@reddit

“George Bush doesn’t like black people”

Back when Kanye hadn’t lost the plot yet, he was right and hearing that on TV was eye opening.

[-]

Zickened@reddit

Well to be fair, that's when he was on his meds and hadn't killed his mom by proxy.

[-]

yourinternetmobsux@reddit

His momma dying is what fucked him up. He, like many artistic geniuses, needs someone to keep him grounded. Her death is what unmoored him.

[-]

Mata187@reddit

I was in Germany when the hurricane made landfall and I was heading to the desert the following week. When shit went downhill, there was a rumor spreading around that some of us would be rerouted to LA rather than the middle east. Didn’t impact me because I already had hard orders in hand.

[-]

Inspi@reddit

83 here.... Katrina was just "duh, what'd you think would happen to the city below sea level" after Andrew tore up South Florida. I said it days earlier as I saw the track, New Orleans was F-ed.

[-]

mangoman39@reddit

My wife was a Katrina refugee. We had met online a few months before, but had no intention of meeting, as she had her life in NOLA and I had mine in Tampa. But Katrina changed everything, and she ended up in a Fema funded hotel in the panhandle. One weekend I made the drive and the rest is history. August 29th has always been a sad day for her, but more recently we've been looking at it as more of a celebratory day, as it was the catalyst that brought us together. But we won't be watching any Katrina documentaries, as nothing good can come from it.

[-]

SuspiciousCranberry6@reddit

I'm glad you won't be watching any Katrina documentaries. I've lived my whole life in Minnesota. We didn't have many Katrina refugees, so my experience with Katrina was only through what I saw in media at a time in my life when I didn't consume much media. I've watched one of the documentaries and it shook me to the core, I'm still incredibly angry about what I saw, and it has stuck with me in ways I didn't expect. I do not recommend anyone who experienced it to watch any of the documentaries, frankly anyone who has experienced a major natural disaster probably shouldn't watch them.

[-]

dcgrey@reddit

It was such a visceral lesson into how racism can be multigenerational. Black New Orleanians didn’t choose to live in flood-prone areas, and leaders did choose to put flood mitigation projects elsewhere.

[-]

SuspiciousCranberry6@reddit

Racism permeated every failure with Katrina from where people were living, to where meaningful flood mitigation projects were put, to the utter pathetic (non) attempt to help poor Black people evacuate, to the criminalization of simply trying to survive (taking of food, water, clothes, etc being called looting when the images of people doing it were Black), to inaccurate violence reporting based on racism (they're trying to shoot down helicopters, no dummies they're trying to get attention to survive), to the murders of Black people by white people for being in their neighborhood going mostly unpunished, to the recovery funds going in much larger portions to wealthier white neighborhoods, and probably so much more that I missed. It's so fucking awful and not much has changed.

[-]

Sufficient-Quote-431@reddit

George Bush doesn’t care about Black people - Kanye West

[-]

Funwithfun14@reddit

Was it race or just standard government incompetency?

[-]

SuspiciousCranberry6@reddit

IMO, racism played a huge role in the extraordinary government incompetency. They didn't care nearly as much about Black people and made choices clearly steeped in racism.

For example, people were left with nothing, no water, food, clothes, shoes, medicine, etc. and when people took what they needed to survive from closed businesses, they called it looting. Soon, instead of helping the people suffering with minimal basic needs the police were reassigned to guard businesses. Sure, there was some opportunistic theft, but the majority was for survival. I remember images of Black people stealing shoes being showed as looting, people with one or two pairs of shoes in their hands. These people just walked through toxic water to find safety, of course they need shoes! There was nowhere open to buy shoes from and many people weren't even able to grab their wallet or purse when leaving their homes, what the hell else were they supposed to do? Racism, imo, is what made the aftermath so horrific. If not for rampant racism, people would have been treated more like the human beings they were.

[-]

TrustAffectionate966@reddit

It's really one big club that Americans are not in...

[-]

KickooRider@reddit

You mean presidents and first wives? Yeah most of us are not in that.

I know what you mean, but using this picture is tacky.

[-]

daizles@reddit

Even a crazy clock is right twice a day

[-]

KeyFeeFee@reddit

Hahah yes, even remembering it was him who said that feels like upside down land.

[-]

throwback842@reddit

The worst, most underreported atrocity of Katrina were the serial killers who took advantage of the chaos and went on killing sprees across the city. The vast majority of unsolved cases never were reported in the media and I think only one or two people were actually ever brought to justice. It’s horrifying to think how there are killers among us who will take advantage of disasters like that for their own sick and twisted goals.

[-]

SuspiciousCranberry6@reddit

In the National Geographic (on Hulu) documentary, they cover white people flying confederate flags (aka racists and likely white supremacists) in Algiers murdering people for being in the neighborhood, even Black people who lived in the neighborhood. I believe they said only one person was ever convicted.

[-]

Away-Pie969@reddit

I've never heard of this. Are there any particular names or cases to look up?

[-]

ManbadFerrara@reddit

So I’m from Houston, where Katrina refugees went to in the largest numbers after escaping NOLA. I’ll never forget riding the bus a few weeks later with a couple guys who’d been in the Superdome, who were telling me how dead little kids were turning up regularly, literally just tossed in trash cans.

One of the National Guard members basically told a group of them straight up that “look, we’re stretched way too thin to do anything about this, but if you ever see someone ‘messing with’ a kid, do what you gotta do.” These two guys — who hadn’t met before this bus ride — then regaled each other about different child predators they’d caught, beaten to death or close to death, then thrown in the river.

Sometimes I wonder if those two were just telling tales, but I really can’t think of any good reason for them to fabricate that.

[-]

MusicalTourettes@reddit

Most crime like rape and sexual assault are opportunistic, so it's not surprising really. Sad AF, but totally believable.

[-]

sailcrew@reddit

I was in the hospital having my son when the news was showing Katrina hit Florida. Then I watched all the news coverage in a hormotional, sleep-deprived state. To this day, when I see anything on TV about after-effects of hurricanes, I cry. I often think about the mom and baby they interviewed outside the stadium. Are they in the documentary?

[-]

SuspiciousCranberry6@reddit

There was footage of a few parents with babies in the National Geographic (on Hulu) documentary. They interviewed one man with twin newborns and showed footage of him in the aftermath of the flooding.

[-]

Late_Being_7730@reddit

If you haven’t, I really recommend 5 days at memorial on AppleTv+

[-]

EmmerdoesNOTrepme@reddit

Or at minimum the article it was based on, which Sheri Fink later turned into the book the show was about.

TW's in advance, it is a HARD and heartbreaking read;

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-deadly-choices-at-memorial-826

[-]

SuspiciousCranberry6@reddit

I've had that book for years now. I read the first chapter and haven't been able to pick it back up because it was so horrific.

[-]

casapantalones@reddit

I’m a doctor and cannot even imagine what these folks went through. Can’t help your patients, can’t help your family, can’t help yourself.

[-]

Late_Being_7730@reddit

I was a hospital CNA, but at the time I watched this, I was undergoing cancer treatment. It wasn’t hard to imagine myself or one of my AYA cancer compatriots being the person they opted to euthanize. Or my older brother with severe cognitive impairment.

When I worked as a CNA, I had nightmares where I worked out what would happen if a really bad fire were to hit the assisted living facility or the hospital unit and evacuation were to be deemed necessary.

Now I have a degree in Public Health and a masters in public administration in a couple of months. Figuring it out is squarely in my scope.

[-]

EmmerdoesNOTrepme@reddit

Glad that you made it through, AND Congratulations on those degrees!😁🤗🥳

[-]

EmmerdoesNOTrepme@reddit

Yep, it was completely heartbreaking.

[-]

MusicalTourettes@reddit

I read the book thinking they'd only euthanized patients they couldn't evacuate...

[-]

KickooRider@reddit

What does that mean?

[-]

EmmerdoesNOTrepme@reddit

Long story short, At Memorial Hospital, after the generators flooded, the hospital ran out of power, and they realized that help & evacuation weren't going to happen on any reasonable timeline, decisions were made to basically inject some of the most critically ill patients with medicines that would kill them.

There's more to it than that, but basically certain patients were killed because the staff in charge thought that would be "kinder" than trying to keep them alive.

[-]

dcreddd@reddit

Also, The Atlantic’s Floodlines podcast

[-]

WoodenTemperature430@reddit

The "Big Charity" documentary is really good too. It's such a shame they let the old hospital rot while so many people needed it.

[-]

SuspiciousCranberry6@reddit

I watched the National Geographic documentary on Hurricane Katrina. I didn't regularly watch the news then, so while I remember it, I don't remember all ton of detail. The hurricane was historic, but most of the worst of what happened imo, was directly or indirectly the result of racism. It took me days to process that documentary. I plan on watching the Netflix one, but I'll wait a bit since I just watched the other one two weeks ago.

[-]

KeyFeeFee@reddit

I had to stop halfway through because it was so upsetting. The government failed those people SO HORRIBLY. Martial law when babies were dehydrated?! The actual fuck?!! You can’t divorce it from race and can’t from dumbass politicking which would be 1000000 times worse today even than it was then. It’s not too often that docs really stir me up but that shit is horrible.

[-]

Character_Heart_3749@reddit

The only positive was that army sergeant guy, who was actually trying to help people.

[-]

Cool-Signature-7801@reddit

That footage of the baby passing out and coming to repeatedly is haunting. I can’t get it out of my head.

[-]

Aethyr42@reddit

Well, your comment cements it- ain't watching that shit. Nope.

[-]

commandantskip@reddit

I remember watching the news about that baby while holding my first born son, who was three months old at the time, and started sobbing for that baby and mother. I will never forget or forgive how our government let babies languish like that.

[-]

Poison_Ivy_Rorschach@reddit

We lost family friends in the storm and I don’t think I can watch the documentary.

[-]

ipsumdeiamoamasamat@reddit

I think examining the impact of this is overwhelming.

People ended up displaced and all over the country. The scatter brained nature of it means it’s kind of hard to fully absorb.

I know Houston took a lot of Katrina refugees, but do we know how many of them are still there 20 years later.

The initial reports were the levees held. (I remember this because that was the day I closed on my first new car… the things we randomly remember.) That situation very quickly changed.

[-]

PorgCT@reddit

It was hard to see NOLA literally destroyed and suffering while so much of our resources were in Iraq and Afghanistan

[-]

KickooRider@reddit

The years of W's presidency (2000-2008) were terribly dark. Katrina and "the war on terror" were the worst. It felt so bad because we still had some hope then. It's weird because this era doesn't feel as bad but I think it's because the hope we held then is gone.

[-]

greens_n_blues@reddit

My son was born during Katrina, and I sat in the hospital and home newly postpartum breastfeeding and watching the chaos and destruction. I feel very connected to that tragedy.

[-]

MotherofaPickle@reddit

I remember when Katrina hit, though I was too young/naive/into myself to really care (though I did donate my change at the coffee shop).

I remember thinking, “Those levees were built 50(?) years ago, of course they wouldn’t hold up. And OF COURSE the government wouldn’t give any fucks for the poor black people protected by the old, decaying levees.”

I am still pissed off about how the whole tragedy was handled.

[-]

Moeasfuck@reddit

Living in Mississippi the coverage to this very day is so insulting

[-]

Hammer_the_Red@reddit

My FIL was a civilian employee for the US Navy and volunteered to help after Katrina. He was assigned to "Demort" duty, which was to build huge temporary mortuaries, find the bodies that were still floating in the flooded parts of the city and bring them there for identification. The stories he told us when he came back were terrible.

[-]

anakracatau@reddit

I know, let's build a town below sea level.

[-]

mardigrasmoker@reddit

New Orleans is older than the United States. Many of the people who died; many of those who lost their generational homes had never even seen the Gulf of Mexico.

[-]

dkcyw@reddit

Are you 82 years old, or were you born in 1982?

[-]

jayne-eerie@reddit

The whole thing was such a terrible tragedy.

I’m never going to forget the shock of Kanye West saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” — both that he said it on live TV, and that I thought he was right.

[-]

trextra@reddit

Yeah I started to watch it but I just can’t.

[-]

ThatEvanFowler@reddit

It is reconfirmed to me again and again that I was well-served by my punk rock background. I just don't remember ever being as disconnected from the realities of America as some of our peer group managed to be. I think I was just exposed to punk albums and John Carpenter movies at an advantageously young age.

[-]

CreepingDeath-70@reddit

I was deployed with the 26th MEU, somewhere at sea on the USS Kearsarge, and it was all any of us paid attention to on the news. My wife at the time and her entire family were from or still live in Lake Charles. It was horrific to see. The government (all of them...federal, state, local) response was criminally inept and incompetent. I went to New Orleans in 2010 for a conference, and there was so much that still hadn't been cleared, repaired, or rebuilt. The 9th Ward was still utterly destroyed. I don't know if I can watch it all over again, but I probably will. For some reason, despite how traumatized I was at the time by various events in my life (Iran Hostage Crisis, the rise of terrorism in the 80s, the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon, threat of nuclear war, Chernobyl, 9-11, Katrina, etc), it reminds me of seminal moments in our lives that some people will never understand. I still, however, can't watch any war movies about Iraq or Afghanistan. Nope.

[-]

PuppyJakeKhakiCollar@reddit

When it happened, I watched and read the news coverage and was both horrified and outraged. Our food bank was collecting food and supplies to send down and I bought a bunch of stuff to donate. The animal.shelter where I worked sent a team down to Louisiana to help with the displaced pets. They said it was worse than you could even imagine.

National Geographic recently had a good limited series, Hurricane Katrina: A Race against time. I also recently finished the older HBO series Treme. It's a functional show set in New Orleans after Katrina but it addresses real events like the bridge shooting, the NOPD misconduct, the killing of Henry Glover, and the predatory home restoration programs that were telling people they would fix or rebuild their homes but tore them down instead.

[-]

Tramp876@reddit

I am a lineman and I was working in Florida at the time when Hurricane Katrina hit landfall. We worked in Homestead Miami for 9 days then went to Vicksburg Mississippi for two days and then three days in Jackson Mississippi before traveling to New Orleans. I have worked many hurricanes since and I don’t think there can ever be anything worse than what we witnessed. The first thing I saw as we crossed the causeway across lake ponchatrain was all the blown out windows of the high rise hotels. That’s when shit got real. As we came off the bridge the destruction I saw was just unimaginable. After being hit with 150 mph winds and a 30’ storm surge there was nothing left. The amount of cars, debris, boats, big ships and yachts, utility poles and wire that were scattered all over I-10 is permanently ingrained in my head. We stayed at boom town casino in the parking lot in huge tents that housed at least 2500 people in each tent. The hotel to the casino was open but had no water so that’s why we stayed in tents. This my first time dealing with FEMA and man camps. The smell in the city was so putrid with the amount of food that rotted due to no electricity, the bodies floating in the water and lying around in the ground. As we would drive out to our job sites we would have to drive around caskets in the road since the mausoleums all got flooded. We had to get in the water to retrieve wire and hardware to rebuild the power lines it was so gross. We balked at first until they got us hepatitis shots and hip waders. I witnessed so many crazy things like boats in trees, four wheelers in trees and we even used electrical tape to plug a hole in a boat to go save some dogs that had been left behind when people evacuated or died. The worst was when we worked in Buras on 9/11 and we walked through the town trying to see what we could rebuild and there was only two brick buildings still standing. Everything else was destroyed by wind and floods. We were confused looking at the X’s and O’s on the houses that had been knocked off their foundations and searched by the national guard; some that day. As we walked the streets you could see everyone’s belongings lining the streets. I saw pictures, marriage licenses, money, guns, clothes, jewelry and told my crews working for me don’t touch or take anything; these people list everything and we don’t need anything there. That was an emotional day knowing people died right where we were standing. We weren’t able to do much when it came to rebuilding at the time as there was nothing to build back to so we headed back to Florida after a week. I have been back to New Orleans 4 times since for other storms and the water lines are still on the buildings and only a few homes have been rebuilt in the areas we were. Sorry for rambling this is the first time I have shared any of this. I am not woke but I am an empathetic human being.

[-]

GrimmBrosGrimmGoose@reddit

My dad & my uncle worked the ground crews cause they had chainsaws & knew how to get dangerous trees cleared for the line crews. They were gone for a full year & they still can't talk about it.

Thank you for the work you did,

[-]

Tramp876@reddit

Your father and Uncle probably uncovered things under them trees that they don’t want to talk about. There were a lot of bodies of humans and animals that didn’t survive the floods. We lineman can’t do our jobs when the storms hit without the tree clearance crews so I appreciate the work they did as well.

[-]

Reeko_Htown@reddit

Houstonian here so Katrina definitely hits close to home. Lots of Nola residents moved here after the storm and I feel like it changed the city in a good way (after the criminals got rounded up).

[-]

Vivid_Sprinkles_9322@reddit

It always amazes me that as a society we have turned being informed into an insult. But yea, after being told our whole lives about how we are the greatest ever to exist and that was the best response we had was an eye opener for me as well.

[-]

daizles@reddit

Isn't it wild? I care more about humans than I do about corporations. I must be 'woke' 🤮

[-]

AngryTree76@reddit

Caring for humans is fine and all, but how does that increase value for shareholders?

[-]

Gloom_Pangolin@reddit

Greenwashing and rainbow-washing. I sincerely believe that businesses now use both sides of the culture war as a calculated means of free advertising. It takes little to “announce” via Twitter that you’re “supporting” X cause. The bots and agitators go to work sharing screenshots of the post to FB and Reddit in groups and subs where it’ll do its work. Now, they don’t actually give a shit about any cause except “which side will flock to our brand, the ‘woke’ folk who think we’re on their side, or the ‘anti-woke’ who will buy us because the ‘woke’ are boycotting us?”

Cracker Barrel needs a cheap way to remind anyone under 93 it still exists- “go woke”. Sydney Sweeney needs to get her name buzzing for an Oscar bid and AE needs to remind us it still exists- “go anti-woke”. A couple of well calculated posts and the rest of the internet blitzes your name for free for a few weeks, if you’re lucky. There is nothing that capitalism can’t use to profit and there’s no shortage of talking heads on both sides who will ride the rage to clicks and payouts without ever lifting a finger for their respective causes.

[-]

Zickened@reddit

Ehhhhh.... using Cracker Barrel as an example is a pretty far stretch.

I mean, I get the whole, "bad publicity is still publicity" angle, but people actively boycotting your brand and not buying your product isn't really conducive to good business.

I'm pretty sure that Cracker Barrel was trying to cater to a bunch of folks that were young and attending grey McDonalds vs their restaurant experience with a dimly lit group gathering of vocal old people with strong opinions that they didn't want their kids around.

Not everything is a psyop bro.

[-]

gitismatt@reddit

no, this doesnt work anymore. if you say you're supporting X cause, and that's something more favored by liberals, then the conservatives pile on. same goes the other way. so you're never really 'winning' anyone over by tweeting support for something. target exemplifies this best because they did both and now they have no one's support

[-]

Gloom_Pangolin@reddit

It is definitely losing steam, which is why I think they’ve amped up what used to be legitimate rage and are trying manufactured and force fed rage. News of “libs triggered by Sydney Sweeney” dropped before most anyone had even seen the ad. If you look at the top posters in the subs where the ragebait makes trending they’re all propaganda posts, some accounts new, some old but dead for years and recently reactived but inactive except to post rage bait.

Over in the Manosphere and nerd subs the rage is subsiding, somewhat. The dudes who made bank complaining about Rey and She Hulk have either been dropped because they’re sex pests or are still just regurgitating complains about movies from half a decade ago- they get no traction. But I have been seeing a new target. They’re over making click bait about “showing dinosaurs with feathers emasculates them” and complaining that any science pointing to elephants living in a matriarchy is “radical feminism”. They’re desperate but they’re still trying.

My personal struggle to get others to unite despite slight ideological differences has never been with our cohort though. I feel like we in particular have long been skeptical of corporations, government, and words without meaning. It’s younger Mils and Zs I have a hard time connecting with. I get it, we had different upbringings and experiences that have shaped our world views, we engage media differently. I still see a fair amount of people get sucked in to the “all or nothing” mindset for determining allies because there’s the idea that any compromise is an abandoning of morals or the inability to prioritize what can and needs to be done now and what we can wait to be dealt with once the Nazis are gone. I try and direct people to the history of the French Resistance, multiple groups of people, some of who had wildly divergent ideals, but who united because the one shared threat needed to be met; afterwards they could fight over the rest of the politics.

[-]

_gonesurfing_@reddit

They keep us fighting amongst ourselves, so wet don’t notice the politicians serving their own interests.

[-]

Gloom_Pangolin@reddit

They’ve quite effectively divided us not just left and right, which is a typical division, but within those groups as well. The right has been largely able to overlook purity tests for their leadership; all that matters is results. Meanwhile liberals, leftists, and anyone a shade bluer than Himmler gets hung up on finding any consensus for a solution because they’re either stuck in old ways, desperately clinging to the idea we can legislate or peacefully protest our way out, or that a certain voice who shares 99% of their views on what’s important can’t be supported because that 1% is insurmountable, even if we’re all about to be annihilated. Were out here replying to reposts of whatever hot take some nobody on Twitter made that was reposted by a conservative bot in a “liberal” sub. People are too in love with the ideals of their versions of liberalism and leftism and not concerned enough with the direct action application of fighting for it, and we’re in direct action times.

[-]

mr-beee-natural@reddit

I agree.

[-]

Butthole_University@reddit

Won’t somebody please think of the shareholders!!!! /s

[-]

jojocookiedough@reddit

But didn't you know that corporations are people too??

[-]

blackhorse15A@reddit

I was deployed in Iraq when Katrina happened. It's interesting to hear people talk about how bad the US govt response was. I'm not saying it couldn't have been better. But the Iraqis....well, had a very different take in things.

They were absolutely amazed at the level of response, and how quickly the US government was able to do it. From the Iraqis perspective, it was beyond belief that a government could provide that much relief that quickly. Thousands of soldiers into the affected area in the first few days bringing truckloads of supplies. Naval ships right off the coast ferrying supplies. Helicopters rescuing common people. Cleanup and reconstruction happening within weeks. Then tens of thousands of trailer homes- not even just tents but hard walled mobile homes- within a few months.

They could not imagine their current or former government having the ability to do anything close to that. It was an obvious sense of awe at what the US was capable of. They were also a little bit annoyed by it. It showed the US government did have the ability to do such a thing, yet after about two years so much less has been done there in Iraq for their cities and neighborhoods that had been devastated by the US invasion. Some of them still looking like a gravel parking lot the block buildings had been so destroyed.

[-]

FCStien@reddit

I actually knew a couple of Guard guys who were in Iraq and got called back home in the long-term response to Katrina.

[-]

lalalaicanthereyou@reddit

I suggest you watch one of the documentaries. There was a lot of misinformation about the response at the time.

[-]

deadduncanidaho@reddit

I am going to take your buddy's story with a bucket of salt. If he lived in the sticks he didn't need a gun to protect him from his neighbors.

As far as the speedy recovery that is pure bull shit. Not being able to enter the city for a month made shit a lot worse. The only reason he was able to go take care of his property was because it was not in the path of destruction.

Argh this is why people don't want to talk about Katrina. As I type this a black hawk flew over my house and now I am remembering 2 years of living in a military police state.

[-]

heykatja@reddit

Such an interesting perspective. Thank you so much for sharing.

[-]

worlds_okayest_skier@reddit

I remember my reaction was that this event exposed the idiocy of Republican policies. Our military was overseas, unable to help. And our leaders failed to understand climate change and that storms were getting worse, and even with 5 days of predictions of the levies breaking, nobody did anything in advance to prepare. Like they just didn’t have “catastrophic storms” on their list of potential threats to the country.

[-]

strongbob25@reddit

It’s also like how they think “antifa” is a slur when it means “anti fascist”

[-]

BlacksmithThink9494@reddit

Its a slur because theyre fascists hahahaha

[-]

tim78717@reddit

I was on a cruise ship in the Gulf when Katrina hit for my nephews graduation trip. A lot of seasick and vomit everywhere.

[-]

bjgrem01@reddit

I was living in Baton Rouge during Katrina. Some friends from New Orleans were staying with us to ride it out. We saw their roof on the news.

The response from the federal government was terrible. Our governor at the time freaked out and disappeared for a day. The aftermath was handled so badly that many people here still want nothing to do with FEMA even if we get hit like that again.

[-]

GuerillaRiot@reddit

I was living in Butte La Rose at the time. Had only been in Louisiana maybe a year. I'm not gonna lie, through all the divisions and political separation, not to mention the complete incompetence of state/fed officials, I'd never seen an entire state pull together like that before. Didn't even think it was possible.

[-]

DesertEagleZapCarry@reddit

My aunt lived there at the time, small world

[-]

GrimmBrosGrimmGoose@reddit

My dad & uncle helped with the clean up. They were gone for a full year, working with the line crews to clear downed trees. They still dont talk about it.

[-]

bjgrem01@reddit

If it ever comes up, tell them we're grateful for all the help we got from everyone around the country. Those volunteers worked hard to get us back to semi-normal.

[-]

EmmerdoesNOTrepme@reddit

The Cajun Navy basically came out of the mess, because of how screwed uptrend response was, didn't they?

[-]

Revolutionary-Yak-47@reddit

The response is isn't much better. The Cajun navy and a group called "Marco island patriots" are still around. They still show up when disasters hit the southeast with boats. They're actually REALLY well coordinated at this point. Blanking on the storm, but around 2021 when a storm hit western Lousiana they were working with volunteers who would dig through social media for posts for help, log them on an interactive map with GPS coordinates and then get the map to the rescue teams. Their work was easily 24 hours ahead of the government response. I haven't been on Twitter in years but the one software engineer was in Ohio, she stayed up for 3 straight days logging posts for help and sending the to these guys. She sent it to the government and posted it publically too but only the Patriots and the Navy were close enough to do any good.

[-]

FCStien@reddit

The Cajun Navy really shone in the 2016 floods.

[-]

aroy220@reddit

Can’t upvote this enough. I have a core memory of watching the Katrina news coverage and straight sobbing. I was pretty liberal at this point just having graduated a cushy college and getting absolutely shocked by the real world. But watching how my country straight up doubled-down on their obvious carelessness and unnecessary cruelty made me a liberal for life. Like, you don’t care about people? I always start every political discussion “do you believe it’s the government’s responsibility to help people? If the answer is no what’s the point?

[-]

IProgramSoftware@reddit

It was because they were black for the most part

[-]

johnnloki@reddit

The news stories showing pale folks searching for food above those with Melanin "looting" was fucking ridiculous. Private military Blackwater with recent history in Iraq being deployed by the government against their citizens was.... "Oh, everything we suspected about racism still existing is totally demonstrably true."

It pulled the wool off our eyes.

[-]

p90rushb@reddit

I remember that. White people "finding" bread while black people "stealing" bread.

[-]

chartreusepapoose@reddit

I remember screaming at the TV about the looting coverage. THEY'RE TRAPPED, THEY HAVE NO FOOD, THE COUNTRY LEFT THEM TO DIE. Who gives a fuck if anyone loots anything!!!

And then a few years later a bunch of the rich hipsters from my college moved down to New Orleans and just like... Took people's houses and "fixed them up" and got angry at the "injustice" when people came home and kicked them out.

Matter of fact I've been angry about this for decades.

[-]

Pheeline@reddit

And then a few years later a bunch of the rich hipsters from my college moved down to New Orleans and just like... Took people's houses and "fixed them up" and got angry at the "injustice" when people came home and kicked them out.

Wait wait wait, those hipsters just took the houses? Didn't buy them, just assumed they were up for grabs? Then got angry when they found out the houses still actually belonged to people? Am I reading that right? What, they felt entitled to the houses because they "fixed them up" despite not being asked nor having permission to do so...?

[-]

chartreusepapoose@reddit

You're 100% reading it right

[-]

FCStien@reddit

Somehow I'm betting that their off-market reno work had to be ripped out to deal with mold they sealed into the walls.

[-]

peritonlogon@reddit

I had a serious girlfriend a long time ago, her dad was a helicopter pilot in the Texas Air national guard. He would tell about real looting that he witnessed to the real wealth (not tvs) done by the people he was flying, fema sorts of people, those without much melanin.

[-]

johnnloki@reddit

Going way back to the 80s, and old decidedly not PC friend of the family: "A broke hoodlum might steal your car stereo. A businessman will steal your house and retirement fund."

[-]

JettandTheo@reddit

Oh bullshit, the pictures were of people taking tvs

[-]

johnnloki@reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/6wtlym/whats_the_difference_between_looting_and_finding/

[-]

JettandTheo@reddit

Are you really using 1 photographer as evidence of everything? There's hours of tape showing people stealing electronics

[-]

johnnloki@reddit

https://aeon.co/videos/who-is-looting-and-who-is-finding-food-how-image-gatekeepers-shape-the-news

Whatever cuck.

This tendency to label one group as food finders while others were looting grocery stores sparked a real conversation about underlying racist tendencies.

[-]

JettandTheo@reddit

There were a lot of people looting.

You made it racist

[-]

Acrobatic-Rush-6352@reddit

“Those with Melanin” — has the word “Black” been canceled?

[-]

johnnloki@reddit

Anybody darker than Irish. Equal discrimination for all Natives, Mexicans, Blacks.

[-]

cityshepherd@reddit

There will inevitably be a lot more of this regarding weather related catastrophe in the future thanks to budget cuts in particular areas, and it is really unfortunate that this is what is what it will take for a lot of people to wake up.

[-]

Mike__O@reddit

I was in college at U of Miami. That shit spun up from an afternoon thunderstorm to nearly a category 2 hurricane in the span of less than a day. We got blasted and lost power for a week. We heard bits and pieces of what happened after we got whacked, but it was nearly a week before we had a solid idea of how bad it got in the Gulf

[-]

Deathclown333@reddit

I keep hoping people will remember that New Orleans was not the only place affected. Entire communities in SE Louisiana and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast were obliterated, including my hometown.

[-]

GrimmBrosGrimmGoose@reddit

My father's family is from East Texas & we moved back, specifically because of Katrina & Rita. My dad was terrified for my grandma & my granny.

[-]

1ConsiderateAsshole@reddit

It’s a popularity contest and New Orleans is much more popular. The people stuck in the Superdome, the convention center, and those stuck on rooftops was more compelling television. I’m sorry that’s the case but we (New Orleans) are still feeling the effects.

[-]

Deathclown333@reddit

You’re absolutely right on all accounts. I know too well. My heart will always be with every New Orleanian who was affected. New Orleans remains my favorite city in the world, second home to my first in Biloxi.

[-]

1ConsiderateAsshole@reddit

I’ve gone to the coast for plenty of concerts. I remember what it was like over there pre storm and it’s a lot better today. New Orleans was exploited and it’s not what it was.

[-]

Deathclown333@reddit

New Orleans has always deserved better. All you native New Orleanians always made me happy when I was in town, a spirit unmatched.

[-]

Savy-Dreamer@reddit

What is the name of your home town?

[-]

Deathclown333@reddit

Biloxi, MS

[-]

GasStationChicken-@reddit

This is what did it for me too. Watching the sheer amount of suffering happening and hearing family members calling the people horrible names and making awful accusations flipped the switch. I just could not understand how anyone seeing the devastation of humanity could be so hateful.

I actually live in New Orleans now. The city still hurts every day because of the storm and the fallout after. New Orleans is a very generational community. It’s not uncommon for a family to have lived in the same home/property for 100+ years and so many of those homes were washed away with no insurance to rebuild.

Terrible decisions are made at a national, state, and local level that continue to keep people from finally recovering after years of trauma. The state puts the shoreline and levees at risk with terrible legislation preventing maintenance, new builds, and mitigation. The infrastructure here is fragile. Power outages are shockingly common along with water advisories. The water failed pumps you heard about all the time? Yeah, they still don’t work right. An afternoon rain shower often floods roadways a foot or more. FEMA is basically dead. The worst part is that another Katrina could happen at almost anytime and likely will sooner than later and this city is not at all prepared.

[-]

Foxy_locksy1704@reddit

My friend’s grandmother refused to leave. Her other grandchild’s husband was a parish deputy, he had to go in and physically remove grandma, after the storm when the water receded they took her back to her house, or rather what was left of her house. If she had stayed she would’ve been killed. She lost everything except her life and her wedding pictures that she grabbed before leaving.

She never recovered from the loss and lived with her grandchild and the deputy husband until she passed away.

[-]

LeviathanIsI_@reddit

I just watched this one last week and learning about all the dirty shit the government did was heartbreaking.

[-]

Practical-Ad-8492@reddit

Hurricane Katrina is stuck in my memory because I lived through it.

[-]

Creamy_tangeriney@reddit

Crazy, I just said this to my partner last night while we were watching that documentary. It was eye opening, and my O’Reilly watching my parents reaction was horrifying.

[-]

MdmeAlbertine@reddit

The worst part is, it's going to happen again. The way FEMA has been decimated...it's only a matter of time.

[-]

Bombadier83@reddit

I’ll always remember it as the time when Kanye cemented himself as the voice of reason (especially with race relations). A legacy that, I assume (not keeping up with current events, myself), persists to this day.

[-]

-desertrat@reddit

Mine was watching the Rodney king trial and protests at 12 yrs old.

Been a political punk ever since ✊🏽

[-]

aRealDumbGuy@reddit

This event transformed the way you see the world but you couldn’t remember it?

[-]

Canesjags4life@reddit

The Hulu documentary was so sad. I remember being in Miami when Katrina hit after coming through us. All the news that I remember seeing was simply that there was nothing but looting going on and how dangerous New Orleans was at the time. The national coverage was completely hijacked.

[-]

SouthernNewEnglander@reddit

The timing really enhanced its radicalization potential. Our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan were going extremely poorly, to put it lightly. The aftermath of Katrina showed that we couldn't hold our own territory or take care of our own people either. It was hard not to see the aftermath as a consequence of priorities and it became a lens through which to analyze everything else.

[-]

jackedfrog@reddit

I was 9 when Katrina hit. Living in North Louisiana, a lot of people were given shelter in an old Walmart in my town. The thing I remember most was how angry and racist my grandparents were about the situation. I guess I kinda woke up then too. I was wondering why they were so mad when all I saw on the news was how fucked up their lives had gotten.

[-]

viridian_moonflower@reddit

Ugh. I’m from Nola and happened to be away at grad school when Katrina hit. My entire family was there and I couldn’t get in touch with them bc phones were down. Facebook messenger was how everyone communicated and I learned where my family was displaced to.

I became “woke” during 9/11 and was severely jaded by the time the atrocities of the Katrina aftermath became known.

I always recommend the book “Zeitoun” for anyone who wants the real story of Katrina by a survivor

[-]

kokujinzeta@reddit

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

How did he go from that to where he is now?

[-]

cmgww@reddit

It was exactly 20 years ago today that the levees broke. I remember the storm hitting, and the news showing the French Quarter and things didn’t look to bad. People drinking in bars and others outside cleaning up….then the levees gave way and all hell broke loose. Absolutely ridiculous they weren’t more prepared and also complacent bc of so many others that didn’t do as much damage….the documentary is eye opening bc I remember it in real time, but had not seen the video of before the storm hitting, the fact so many couldn’t leave, etc. just a terrible tragedy that NOLA has never recovered from in a lot of ways

[-]

brandiLeeCO@reddit

Living in Houston I remember us housing a lot of the refugees here. So I was aware of it. But the documentary really opened my eyes to how horribly people were treated. Guns pointed at them by the national guard like they were criminals? These people were starving, dehydrated and dying and they get guns pointed at them? Deplorable and sad that this could be happening in 2005. I don’t know if this nation will ever treat everyone equally. I just don’t see it. It’s like once we take one step forward it’s 100 steps back out of nowhere.

[-]

dingleberryzzz@reddit

you didn't turn woke. you turned into a caring emphathetic human being.

[-]

danger_bears@reddit

This definitely added to it for me. Mine was 8th grade learning about the Holocaust and Anne Frank, and then To Kill a Mockingbird. The surge of racism after 9/11 and Katrina really solidified my "wokeness", but learning to do unto others as I would want done to me.as a child was the start.

[-]

Get_Back_Here_Remi@reddit

If you ever get a chance to get to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, I 100% recommend it. You have to be able to billy-goat it up the stairs but the whole feeling is so... heavy. I remeber the more we walked through, the quieter everyone became until all you heard was footsteps and the creaks in the floors. I thought I understood what it meant to survive... that place proved me wrong.

[-]

toreadorable@reddit

I went when I was like 10 years old but I still think about the pictures she hung up. There were only a couple but it was just such a normal thing that even I did at the time.

Apparently they later got the wallpaper and did a huge restoration and there are a bunch of the pictures now.

[-]

Nisi-Marie@reddit

Very worth it. My cousin and I did a backpack trip down to Rome and went to Dachau as well. So heartbreaking.

[-]

Funwithfun14@reddit

Katerina was about government failure/ incompetence and not racism. It's also really hard to relocate an ENTIRE city's population on 3 days notice.

[-]

JFull0305@reddit

Oh, I remember that one. I was there in MS not too far from the beach, and had a newborn in a nearby hospital. Everything around that hospital was flattened except for the hospital itself.

Definitely not a day I can forget. That, or the days, weeks, years after while the entire region tried to recuperate.

[-]

doyoulikemyladysuit@reddit

I would recommend watching the 6 part (5 last? I forget) documentary series on Hulu. It really dives into every aspect of the storm from every single view point, the first responders, the community, the areas of the city that weren't flooded but suffered under racist "vigilantes" letting down sundown laws and murdering innocent people without any consequences, the loss of generational properties - it is so illuminating to what was happening behind the powers that be as much as in the community as well. It is hard to watch, but I think to know our nation and what we as Americans are capable of doing to each other, and what we are capable of doing FOR each other, everyone should watch it. We have to know or mistakes and our failures to not make them again, and this was probably some of the biggest our country has made in modern history. Period.

[-]

Level_Improvement532@reddit

I was just a couple years into the maritime industry when it happened. Dodged the storm rounding Florida on a container ship and ended up close enough to Cuba to see the lights of the shore. Skipped our port call to New Orleans when it hit. 5 weeks later we were the second ship to come up the Mississippi. What I witnessed on the river alone was unbelievable. Full size barges, upside down and thousands of feet inside the levies. Utter destruction from Pilot Town up from Southwest Pass. The city was under curfew and most of the lights were still out. It was a surreal experience.

[-]

Optimistiqueone@reddit

My husband and I decided to use our anniversary vacation to volunteer cleaning up and rebuilding the ninth ward. I can't remember if it was 1,2, or 3 years after Katrina. But it was at least a year, and the area was still absolutely devastating. The organization we started with was poorly organized and underfunded. We didn't want to leave having done anything, so we ended up volunteering with Habitat for Humanity for 3-4 days. It was crazy how the French quarter looked fine but not too far away the houses were sitting in disrepair, people living there with no electricity. One house had part of its front side missing, and they said that was where a barge had hit it during the hurricane. (Think a huge boat, floated into the house). Many other houses were completely abandoned and unliveable. The fact that no one was really stepping up and rebuilding the lower 9th ward was why we were there, but there was only so much we could do.

[-]

InCOBETReddit@reddit

so many lives could have been saved if Ray Nagin actually listened to Bush and evacuated

but noooooo... can't give a Republican a win

[-]

Formal-Cut-4923@reddit

It’s odd to me. I was in Marine Corps boot camp during the storm. We couldn’t get Sunday newspapers for a month. We found out after boot camp. Watching video after that it was so unreal to me because I didn’t see it while it happened. Even after I watched this same Netflix doc. It still doesn’t feel real. It’s a missing 3 months of my life. My oldest went from 6 months to 9months and he didn’t remember me.

[-]

Fragrant-Actuary-391@reddit

Damn. I love and hate this. Working the pandemic as an icu nurse and witnessing the lies from the news first hand made me "woke". May we always stay woke!

[-]

ValancyNeverReadsit@reddit

I’m from the Mobile area but was out of state on a work assignment, so I didn’t have to go through it directly (for those who haven’t experienced a hurricane, Katrina was a geographically LARGE storm. Mobile is at the inner end of a fairly large bay which had major storm surge from Katrina) but I saw lots of aftermath on the news and lots of flooding and blue tarps on roofs, from the air, whenever I flew between Mobile and Houston. Devastation from Katrina is still visible from the ground if you know where to look.

I’ve been through a number of hurricanes in my life and I have to say, I’m not sure I’m ready to watch the Katrina doc either. I keep eyeing it and picking something else.

[-]

stykface@reddit

Owner of my company back in the day was from there and dealt with Katrina, his own house was absolutely ransacked by the hurricane. He gave his account on all that happened. It was VERY informative and I believe him 100% although it definitely falls under the "unpopular opinion" category. It didn't happen at all like the documentary.

[-]

casapantalones@reddit

I was in school in Austin, where I had transferred a year prior from Tulane. My best friend happened to be both studying abroad and graduating a semester early, so she became one of the small number of Tulane students to graduate in the wi tee of 05.

It was absolutely horrific to see what was happening. To see this amazing city full of people just destroyed and abandoned by the government.

A bunch of Tulane kids were able to enroll at my school to keep their education going, and I ended up running into some guys I’d known from my freshman dorm who happened to be renting the apartment right above some of my other close friends. Small world.

[-]

anOvenofWitches@reddit

Katrina was when I realized we were one of those shithole countries. The footage shook me.

[-]

gwladosetlepida@reddit

My parents were counter culture types who has told me these things but Katrina made me understand it was real.

[-]

Revolutionary-Yak-47@reddit

They sent empty trains and busses out of the city. If I love to 100 I will be angry at that. They could've taken so many more people. And they didn't because it was cheaper to go without them

[-]

FoppyDidNothingWrong@reddit

No matter who was in the White House the government was going to do a shitty job in Hurricane response. Having the same old post WWII infrastructures in place (+20 years now) and the reactive nature of government is a recipe for destruction. Pun intended.

[-]

TrustAffectionate966@reddit

The united slaves of american't has absolutely no problem mobilizing and funding a genocidal apartheid state on the other side of the world to the tune of billions of dollars a year. They don't do a shitty job there. They bailed out all the corporations and wall st. banksters with taxpayer money and kicked people out of their houses. They didn't do a shitty job there. It was a plan and it worked perfect. The govt. can most definitely protect ALL people. The oligarchs and plutocrats in power just don't care about certain people.

[-]

gwladosetlepida@reddit

Just like every famine is an artificial famine basically since the industrial revolution. There were artificial famines before that but there were legit weather based famines back then. Not anymore.

[-]

hip_neptune@reddit

Also the way FEMA works. They coordinate resources once a region actually asks for it. The offices that New Orleans and Orleans Parish leaders were at flooded, causing them to not be in contact with FEMA. They were the same leaders who didn’t issue an evacuation call until the day before, when the other parishes did a day before them.

Not to defend the Bush Admin at all, because I’m sure there’s also ulterior regions why Republican-governor Mississippi recovered quicker than Democrat-governor Louisiana did. But simply the way the system was set up, a lot of the fault lies with Orleans Parish.

[-]

Just_Spinach_31@reddit

I was born and raised in Metairie. Luckily I just moved a year before. It took forever to get ahold of my friends and family. No one I love died, and I'm still traumatized

[-]

MellifluousRenagade@reddit

Literally watching it right now. What they did with the ppl in the arena is disgusting.

[-]

McNasty420@reddit

Hurricane Katrina is the worst thing I have ever seen in my lifetime

[-]

Away-Pie969@reddit

When I was a kid, my Dad and I went down with our church group to help with reconstruction a few months after. We went to the 9th Ward, I will always remember the water lines inside the houses left behind, they were up to the ceiling. I'm sure the water went higher on some, I just have limited memory and exposure as a kid. Complete destruction of some homes, quadrants with numbers spray painted on the buildings. I remember going to the FEMA trailers and hearing how distressed people still were. My heart goes out to everyone directly affected by the storm.

[-]

magster823@reddit

That's a tragedy that really stuck. My daughter was born when it started, and I remember being at home with fresh post-partum hormones raging, watching the coverage while nursing her, bawling and wishing like hell I could feed every baby who didn't have formula in Nola.

Like others, I started the doc but turned it off. I can't imagine what the people who went through it still feel to this day. It's a real black (pun intended) stain on US history. And we as a nation clearly haven't learned a damn thing.

[-]

Get_Back_Here_Remi@reddit

Same on the starting and then turning it off. I was in a similar situation with being pregnant and having a 9 month old. Hormones were going and I think I cried the whole time it was on the news.

[-]

Get_Back_Here_Remi@reddit

My husband and I were just talking about the new doc. '80 and '82, and I was saying how that was a surreal time for us. I was pregnant with our second and we were in a Dodge dealership in NJ. We were signing on dotted lines while watching bodies be left in wheelchairs up against buildings. It was a terrible feeling. People floating down streets, putting their children in drink coolers to keep them afloat and out of the fetid waters. And there we were... buying a fucking truck.

[-]

jessipowers@reddit

My sister and nephew were displaced. Thank god they were able to just come back to our hometown. But, with that personal connection I paid very close attention both before, during, and after the hurricane, so it really sticks in my memory and ended up having a much bigger impact than I would have expected. It was the first time I really, truly understood how quickly things can go off the rails, like in terms of order and society. It really solidified the feeling that living in an advanced society with all the comforts and luxuries that we have doesn’t really make a difference, and safety is an illusion. Before Katrina, it felt like disasters and catastrophes and tragedies happen, and they’re awful, but life goes on and we always find a way. But seeing what happened in New Orleans really ripped off the rose colored glasses for me. Our leaders and our government can and will fail us, our safety precautions can and will fail us, we as humans can and will fail each other. I think what really drove it home for me was hearing about the mercy killings at Memorial hospital. Knowing that that level of such extreme, unrelenting desperation and hopelessness is possible where just a week ago life was totally normal and its place that I have been to IRL and where people I cared about were living is pretty earth shattering for a 19 year old.

[-]

No_Association_2176@reddit

My wife worked at a call center at the time, and people would call in complaining that their cable didn't work. It took all her strength to not shout back "people are trapped and dying an hour away from you, and you're yelling at me about your cable!?"

[-]

Bear_Salary6976@reddit

I didn't watch the documentary, but that following winter I was preparing taxes and I had two clients who were displaced by Katrina, but didn't even live in Louisiana. They both said that nobody gave a sh*t about them. It seems that most of America thought that only New Orleans was affected by it.

One of those clients lived in Mississippi and said that they even tried to by flood insurance when they bought their home, but was denied because they didn't live in a flood zone.

My wife lived in Gulfport, MS as a child and saw that her old neighborhood was completely wiped out by Katrina.

[-]

loubones17@reddit

It does take being a woke individual to be outraged by the travesty of Katrina! It just takes being a human!

[-]

TheDevil-YouKnow@reddit

Katrina is what made the great alliance between Houston and New Orleans, Louisiana and SE Texas. It changed a lot of things in the South, terrifies Texan politicians, and started the drive towards a lot of the woes still hitting both states.

[-]

jessek@reddit

It made me furious over how badly Bush bungled Katrina. It’ll be even worse when we get hit with Katrina II this year.

[-]

Savy-Dreamer@reddit

My now husband was deployed to Katrina with the Colorado National Guard. He spent a month in St Bernard person searching houses for bodies. He found a lot of deceased individuals unfortunately. His last week there was spent recovering all the caskets in the National Cemetery.

I spent that Labor Day weekend glued to the TV watching what was going on at the convention center and yelling at the TV. I couldn’t believe no one was helping all those poor people. Like, not even dropping fucking pallets of water. People literally fucking died there waiting for help. It was shocking this could happen in our country. And now, 20 years later, I’m not shocked at anything that happens here anymore. It just gets worse everyday. If another hurricane hit New Orleans and the levies broke again, the same poor black people would be discarded by our country again. And this time the federal government would be even more incompetent or unwilling to help. It’s a disgrace.

[-]

_AffectedEagle_@reddit

I remember it happening live, and becoming more horrific each day as more and more details emerged. I don't have any desire to watch the documentary; I've heard enough heartbreaking personal stories in the years since then that indulging in media about the subject seems masochistic.

[-]

LH1010@reddit

I lived there, we evacuated at the last minute so were safe. What it mainly changed for me was my trust in the media- only a few people there were covering it accurately and fairly (Anderson Cooper, Shep Smith stand out to me). It also highlighted the difference of how my daily life there was vs people with a lot of money and power.

I blame the governor at the time at least as much as the Feds, she absolutely froze and didn’t handle anything well from the start.

[-]

farfanseaweevil@reddit

Agreed. However, there was a lot of focus on NOLA and very little on the landmass between LA and AL. I deployed to the MS gulf coast in late September for recovery/support operations, and man…NOLA flooded but the MS gulf coast was gone! Apocalyptic scenario, can’t really accurately describe the devastation. Maybe the total destruction made it easier to rebuild…

[-]

Hi-Scan-Pro@reddit

I remember eating dinner at a restaurant where we were seated in such a way to be able to watch the tv in the bar. Before the water had receded there was some news channel covering the immediate aftermath. Video shot from a helicopter showed that there were survivors stuck on their roofs, cars and debris strewn about, and bodies floating in their front yards. We were 1000 miles away and didn't know just how bad it was until we saw those first images.

[-]

IchooseYourName@reddit

For me, it was the Iraq War and Bush getting reelected even AFTER everyone knew he lied about WMD's to get his forever wars. But Katrina struck a chord deep within me. The only thing I could figure to do was help with the clean up. I just couldn't sit on the couch watching the depravity unfold. So I volunteered to help gut houses and cut trees off of rooftops in the upper and lower 9th wards. Was one of the most impactful experiences of my life if only because of the people I met, both locals and others volunteering out of state like me. The experience shaped who I am now today (also '82). The real gut punch was the later realization that many of the people we were trying to help had no interest in returning to their homes after all the work we put in. But I absolutely empathized with their decision not to return.

[-]

Bunmyaku@reddit

I was in New Orleans for Katrina. We luckily were able to evacuate, and we lived in a hotel room in Atlanta for four months.

[-]

nucl3ar0ne@reddit

I was in Atlanta at the time and I remember the cars coming up in droves, some of them completely busted. Gas prices went through the roof until the mayor put a cap on it.

[-]

kurtstoys@reddit

83...it was waco for me. Even back then I knew the FBI started that fire.

[-]

Ordinary_Aioli_7602@reddit

I moved out of college the day Katrina hit.

[-]

Walton-E-Haile@reddit

They grossly understated the death toll. Had to. Don't wanna make Dubya and his corporate FEMA director look bad.

[-]

EmmerdoesNOTrepme@reddit

"Heckuva job, Brownie!" and Barbra Bush's quote were amazingly tactless unforced errors b the Bush folks!

Barbara's quote was said on Marketplace, a show on NPR:

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas.

Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this ... this is working very well for them."

And YES, she really did say it!🫠

https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/barbara-bush-new-orleans-and-hurricane-katrina-its-complicated/article_e64431ed-a882-5e47-b35c-f9c2133fdc33.html

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barbara-bush-astrodome-quote/

[-]

capthazelwoodsflask@reddit

"You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie"

And that was the last time an unqualified political donor was put in such an important position... All of the worst people got such a pass after 9/11

[-]

Bluevanonthestreet@reddit

I had a first grade student who lived through it transfer in later that year. She was such a sweet girl but she had some trauma. We had a tornado warning and had to evacuate to the hall with everyone else. The weather got really bad. She was a mess and it broke my heart. I had one of her brothers the next year and he would just zone out half the time. Our counselor was pretty worthless when I asked for resources for the family.

[-]

Consistent_Law_3857@reddit

They had hundreds of school busses they could have used to evacuate people. Mayor Nagin said school busses weren't good enough for "his people". So they stayed there or in the astro dome. But it was Bush' fault.

[-]

EmmerdoesNOTrepme@reddit

Bush was the one who thought "Brownie" was doing a"heckuva job!" though.

There was a ton of incompetence alllll the way around.💔

And the fact that it was folks like Harry Connick Jr going around with a camera crew (apparently from reading these links, it was NBC, not CNN like i'd thought) to show the rest of the US and the world the truth of what was occurring on the ground.

His raw, honest emotions, were what helped many of us to understand how awful things really were down there.

I still remember how righteously angry he was, at finding the bodies of the people outside the Convention Center--who'd simply been wheeled outside and covered with blankets, like pieces of abandoned trash.

And how he called out officials, who knew where those bodies-and iirc some others were, because he'd reported them himself--when he came back days later, and they still* hadn't been taken to a morgue.

And the other story that i'll*always remember, when i think of those weeks--aside from Shari Fink's article "Deadly Choices at Memorial" (which later became the Book "Five Days at Memorial": https://www.propublica.org/article/the-deadly-choices-at-memorial-826),

Is the video clip & story of Hardy Jackson, looking for his wife Tonette Waltman Jackson.

Hardy passed away, back in 2013, years before anyone realized Tonette had been found.

She was "Jane Love" discovered on September 5th, 2005.

She was finally identified as Tonette, last year. It was announced on May 16, 2024;

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tonette-jackson-hurricane-katrina-victim-identified-decades-later-dna-mississippi/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gratefuldoe/comments/1cv4vde/jane_love_katrina_victim_has_been_identified_as/

[-]

atlantagirl30084@reddit

I think there were trains leaving NOLA empty too.

I think about people at the astro dome…there was a FEMA employee trying to get through to Michael Brown and Brown’s secretary said he was at dinner and needed time to choose wine, etc. The employee said great, I’ll just eat another MRE and take a shit in the hallway.

[-]

Lancaster1983@reddit

I was down there for two weeks while in the USAF as part of JTF Katrina. I was in the Gulfport/Biloxi area. The destruction still haunts me to this day. All the casino barges washed ashore and gutted. Old colonial homes down to the studs. An entire Walmart just a shell. I saw the slab of a McDonalds and the only reason I knew it was a McD's was because the Ronald McDonald statue was still standing although leaning slightly north.

The smell, the darkness, the absolute quiet at night... I felt so bad for those that lived there.

[-]

HipHopGrandpa@reddit

It’s when I learned that FEMA was a joke and the gov isn’t looking out for you.

[-]

gimmeslack12@reddit

Anderson Cooper could only do so much.

[-]

MortgageRegular2509@reddit

This doc hit way too hard at times.

[-]

Jaws_the_revenge@reddit

Chris Kyle got to lie and “brag” about sniping looters from the roof of the superdome and got to be ‘memorialized’ with some bullshit Oscar bait movie.

[-]

TrustAffectionate966@reddit

Lead Belly, the Blues musician, is attributed as coming up with that word or phrase and he knew first-hand what a fucked-up place the US was at that time for people of color and poor people.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/blues-guitarist-invented-the-phrase-woke/

Almost a century later and nothing has changed: The second gilded age is back, fascism is back, apartheid and genocide are back. There are opportunist and parasitic fraudsters who co-opted a genuinely good message to meet their own nefarious ends, whether on the "right" or "left." They will adapt that language and transform it to water down or destroy the original meaning. It's a kind of Newspeak - and it is meant to keep people ignorant and stupid (the opposite of staying woke).

🧉🦄

[-]

Designer-Bid-3155@reddit

I flew down to Mississippi from Boston..... to rescue animals after Katrina/Rita. It was a life changing experience. I'm specifically trained to rescue wild, domestic, and farm animals in disasters. I'm a volunteer with a national disaster rescue organization.

[-]

Dirtycurta@reddit

Similar here, I remember seeing the poverty of people on TV and their treatment after the hurricane. I contrasted that with the billions of dollars being spent on useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also became more interested and aware of climate change and environmentalism around that time.

[-]

wild85bill@reddit

I was 7 when Ruby Ridge happened and had a father who explained it to me accurately with no anti-government rhetoric, just the facts. Made me pretty anti-fed at a young age. Love my country and all the people, but I hate my government. No matter who's in office. We're tax cattle that line their pockets while people die in horrendous ways from their lack of response or caring. Pretty sad natural disasters are rated with the "Waffle House Index". FEMA has based their system off of their efficiency to respond to disasters. A private company can give aid faster and more efficiently than a beast of a govt with unlimited access to funds. Pathetic.

[-]

Jets237@reddit

yeah - it was a real eye opener for me too.

[-]

AddNomAndThem@reddit

Woke, lol. So I was in Iraq when Katrina hit. It was bizarre. An entire company of Marines slammed into the chow hall watching it unfold on satellite tv. We all just couldn’t believe we hadn’t heard about any of it until it hit. I was with 1st MarDiv outta California, so we were primarily a west coast unit. But there were 2-3 dudes from the NOLA area that were SCRAMBLING to get a sat phone to call home. Felt terrible for them. Ughh, what a time.

[-]

SalukiKnightX@reddit

It sticks out to me because my enlistment date was 2 weeks to the day after landfall. Because my tech school at Keesler AFB at Biloxi was hit with Katrina’s storm surge, my time arriving at BMT was pushed back almost 6 months from August ‘05 to March ‘06.

[-]