Life can change in an instant. Or in a matter of hours.
That’s the way it happened for me 20 years ago today.
By the time I woke up early on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, I had already experienced a myriad of emotions as Hurricane Katrina roared toward my hometown of New Orleans.
The storm had intensified to a Category 3 on the afternoon of Aug. 27, prompting Mayor Ray Nagin to issue a voluntary evacuation of New Orleans.
But by 7 a.m. on Aug, 28, it had grown into a monstrous Category 5 storm.
By 9:30 a.m. that day Nagin called for a mandatory evacuation for all of the Crescent City.
And by that night, I had four friends, a dog and a cat from New Orleans occupying the spare bedrooms in my house, which I had recently bought out my sister’s half of following my mother’s death in October of 2004.
Those friends had all stayed in that house beginning years earlier, visiting when both my parents were still alive. Those friends were a family I grew up with — two brothers and a sister with Arkansas roots along with a close friend of us all.
They were family, and still are today.
Sleep be damned, we all stayed up late that night, well into the wee hours of Aug. 29. I went to bed around 3:30 a.m. while several friends stayed up the entire night watching the approaching hurricane via news coverage that was already dominating television stations both national and local.
It was all only just beginning.
And at first it looked like things might end up OK. On that morning of Aug. 29, Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 near Buras, Louisiana, around 6:10 a.m.
But reports of initial damage in those early hours of Louisiana landfall weren’t nearly as bad as anticipated, largely in thanks to the fact that Katrina had diminished to a Category 3 hurricane before roaring across the coastline.
Within a few hours, there was nothing to be thankful for.
Around 9 a.m., it became obvious that breaches had occurred in the city’s levees, leading to widespread flooding despite the fact that Katrina had skirted eastward after hitting the Louisiana coast, headed for a direct hit on the Gulfport-Biloxi, Mississippi, area a couple of hours later.
By then thousands of people were stranded in their attics or rooftops begging for rescue. Local newscasters had told New Orleans residents that stayed despite the mandatory evacuation orders to take saws and hatchets with them into their attics, because they were likely going to have to hack their way onto their roofs to avoid the still rising waters.
And by that afternoon, the Superdome, where thousands of New Orleans area residents had gone seeking shelter, had been obviously significantly damaged, with news helicopters showing live video of a massive hole in the roof of the iconic building.
Even worse, news coverage showed bodies floating face down throughout the streets of New Orleans, with 80% of New Orleans covered in water as high as 20 feet.
Still, it was only just beginning, especially in the Ruston home affectionately called Boatsboro by its residents.
The number of those residents had increased to 10 by the morning of Aug. 30 as another brother from the family sheltering with us, had to bring his family to Ruston from Jackson, Mississippi, where he had taken his family to stay with in-laws.
That was because Jackson had received storm damage similar to the damage we incurred here in Ruston 15 years later when Hurricane Laura did what I had previously deemed impossible — roaring across north Louisiana as a still strong hurricane.
And as 10 people watched the ongoing saga, tears freely flowing, we all realized that it was still only just beginning.
That was proven with a phone call received by the elder brother of the family staying with us on the morning of Aug. 31. The call was from his stepson, who had attempted to ride the storm out in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
His stepson said his father’s house where the stepson was staying had collapsed all around them and they were trapped under a living room dining table that had saved them from the debris of the destroyed home.
My friend, the stepfather, immediately started driving to Mississippi to find his stepson.
By the afternoon of Sept. 1, he returned to Ruston with his stepson, although he had to track that stepson from Bay St. Louis to Baton Rouge, where the National Guard had brought many of the evacuated south Mississippi survivors.
When it was all said and done, at one point I had 13 humans and seven pets living under one roof at that point. But at last we had a roof to live under.
Some of my “hurrication refugees” as they termed themselves in those stressful weeks following the storm returned to the New Orleans area within days. Some stayed as long as three to four months. It didn’t matter to me as long as I knew they were safe.
The New Orleans I’ve visited since still isn’t the same as I remember growing up there. It never will be again. My first return to New Orleans came the following spring for Jazzfest 2006.
Seeing all the destruction — thousands upon thousands of empty and damaged homes that had become more of a warzone than a neighborhood — was literally sickening.
I returned that September for the Saints’ return to the Superdome on Monday Night Football. It’s a memory I will never forget. For a few hours once a week that fall, the city that care forgot was able to do just that as they cheered on their beloved team.
The emotion in the Superdome that night was palpable — electric — with all in attendance openly weeping, first with tears of sorrow followed by tears of joy as the Saints uplifted an entire region for what would become years and years.
Twenty years ago the city of New Orleans was forever changed. I lost a friend in late 2005 after he developed a fatal staph infection incurred as he participated in the cleanup of destruction throughout the city.
But despite all that destruction, and death, left in the wake of the storm, maybe my biggest memory, and source of pride, following Katrina’s ravaging of New Orleans and beyond, was the resilience the city began showing in the hours, days, weeks, months and years following.
It’s a resilience that still exists today, and that’s something important to remember in a day and age where climate change has morphed Mother Nature into a weather Godzilla.
We know that all too well by now, even here in the piney, red-dirt hills.
But whatever happens, in the end all we can do is try to pick up the pieces and work on creating something new — something that hopefully might even make things better than before.
While that hasn’t completely happened, New Orleans did survive with hopes of maybe one day once again thriving.
And it’s that kind of resilience that has become my biggest takeaway from a life-changing event — 20 years later.
