10 Years After Katrina

On this 10th anniversary of Katrina's devastation of the City of New Orleans, the Washington Post has been running a series of daily essays related to the City, the storm and it's aftermath. Monday's article was about a lone guy in a boat who just motored around in a PTSD fog trying to convince people to leave. He was responsible for the single-handed rescue of hundreds of residents and his boat is now in a museum.

Tuesday's essay was written by a journalist who was a teenager at the time, whose mother wanted him to skip a party and evacuate to the Superdome. He wasn't having that, and when he couldn't reach his father to go stay with him, he wound up staying at a relative's house playing video games, which was much cooler than what his mother had in mind.  His father showed up just before the storm hit and loaded him in the car and headed off to Mississippi.  He never saw his mother again.  They found her in November, when the water receded, face down in the front hallway of her home. She never made it to the Superdome.

The stories of survival are disturbing and enlightening all at once. And so are the stories of restoration.  So many left their homes, having lost everything, with no intention to return.  And so many that returned, did so to find their City unfamiliar, their homes lost to gentrification. 

I think I need to take a trip to The Big Easy ...