Words Whispered in Water. Sandy Rosenthal
Finally, President George W. Bush was going to make an appearance in Jackson Square. A gesture like that meant a lot to all of us—to those who evacuated and those who stayed.
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Away in Texas, Harvey Miller had, at last, reached safety. At the house, Pat showed Harvey to a guest room with a connecting bath. Harvey refused food but took a hot shower. He went to bed and fell immediately to sleep. He woke up an hour later, got up, and took another shower. A few hours later, he took another shower. Months later, in therapy, Harvey said that he felt like he needed to wash everything away. Harvey slept until almost noon on Friday (September 2). When he awoke, he got the word that Renee was in Lake Charles, safe and sound.
***
With Stanford now registered in a school, we returned to the Drury Inn. As we walked down the long hotel hallway, we could hear our little dog barking. Reunited with Chester and our older son Mark, we returned to the obsessive-compulsive activity of watching television.
By now, Wal-Mart was in New Orleans,46 and supply trucks were making regular runs to the Louisiana Superdome and newspaper reporters and television news crews were moving around the city.47 But FEMA’s Red October still had not arrived, sitting now in Baton Rouge eighty miles away.
In contrast, our world, while turned upside down, was quite comfortable in a Lafayette hotel. Our biggest challenge was competing for its single coin-operated washer and dryer. In other words, our troubles were small and petty compared to the majority of the Greater New Orleans’s survivors.
Dinner that night was an excellent meal, stewed turkey and gravy over rice, courtesy of the Red Cross. Over our comfort food, we discussed how we had succeeded in figuring out two of life’s most basic things: where Steve and I were going to work and where Stanford would go to school. It was now time to figure out where we would live. Indeed, we should have been working on this much sooner, but that was impossible without knowing where Stanford would go to school. Unfortunately, it was already too late. Everything rentable was snatched up. Our only option was to purchase a house or condominium. And even then, we were behind the eight ball.
***
Saturday morning (September 3), after breakfast in the crowded hotel restaurant, I was startled by the sound of my cell phone ringing. It had become a “texting machine” and not a phone. I answered and heard the voice of my youngest brother Mike, a firefighter in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. This contact was the first I had with any of my family members since the levees broke.
I quickly explained that my own family and my husband’s relatives were all safe and that none of our homes had flooded. Then I asked my brother if he had been following the news reports about the flooding in New Orleans.
“Sandy, you’ve got to be kidding!” Mike almost shouted. “That’s all we do! That’s all everyone is doing!”
Unbeknownst to us, practically every person in the nation had been glued to the television since Monday (August 29). This was especially the case now, five days after the levees broke, because it was the Labor Day holiday weekend. I told Mike that I was glad that this was getting a lot of national attention. With the community-oriented attitude that seems universal in firefighters, he wanted to come to New Orleans and help with the rescue. I explained that the feds were now present in the city and that everyone was being evacuated. I believed that the best thing he could do was assist the evacuees in his region.
“It’s a terrible disaster, Mike. Everyone is in shock. People will be talking about this flood ten years from now.”
I had no idea that the resulting 2005 flood would likely be talked about for the next hundred years, no different than the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 which took the lives of 1,517 people, roughly the same as the 2005 disaster.48 And, like the Titanic, the levee-breach event was a pivotal moment in history. Directly due to it, changes to US law were passed that improved life for the 55 percent of the American population living in counties protected by levees.49 But, of course, I knew nothing of these things yet; I was still in survival mode.
All across the City of New Orleans, floodwater was penetrating more than homes and buildings; it was invading electrical wires, fiber-optic cables, and natural gas lines. Nearly all the city’s pumping stations were damaged. Hospitals lost emergency power when generators and fuel tanks flooded in basements. City and state building codes required generators, but codes made no specific mention that the generators should be located above the floodplain, as should electrical switching equipment and fuel.50 About 134,000 housing units were severely damaged in New Orleans alone.51
***
Harvey Miller finally learned that Monet was safe at a kennel in Baton Rouge. Another one of Pat’s brothers drove there and fetched her. On Saturday morning (September 3), Harvey was reunited with Renee and a very happy Monet in Lake Charles. The following Monday (Labor Day), the Millers relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas, because they had a daughter and son-in-law there. The Red Cross offered to put them up in a motel for two weeks.
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All day Saturday (September 3) and Sunday (September 4), we drove around the city, looking at impossibly expensive houses to live in until we were allowed back home. They were all much too large. We were too late in starting the hunt. However, at 7:15 a.m. on Monday morning (September 5), a lucky break came our way. Steve had been watching real estate notices online, and on Labor Day there was a new listing—by owner—at a less outrageous price. We ran to the car and sped off to a house on North Roclay, in a subdivision west of Lafayette. At precisely 8:00 a.m., we rang the doorbell and the owner—a young woman with a cheerful, bright face—answered. Her name was Mrs. Thibodeaux, and she showed us around the home. The asking price was more than we wanted to spend, but we signed the paperwork on the spot. Just as we were signing, another couple pulled into the driveway, also intending to look at the house.
Later, Ms. Thibodeaux would confide that the couple, upon hearing that we had just signed a contract, had said to her, “Whatever price you agreed on, I will pay you $10,000 more.”
This illustrates how desperate people had become while trying to put a roof over their heads. Ms. Thibodeaux could have taken the larger offer, but she didn’t feel that it was the right thing to do.
We now had found solutions to our three basic questions: Where would Stanford go to school? Where would we work? Where would we live? All were decided upon at breakneck speed. But we were lucky in our quickness to act. Many people were so shell-shocked that even thinking was just too much to bear, never mind acting.
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The Monday after the 17th Street Canal levee broke (September 5), the breach was sealed with seven thousand sandbags, each weighing ten thousand pounds.52 Dewatering the city was originally expected to take months, but the weather remained hot and dry and a significant fraction of the water evaporated.53 Even so, the Army Corps reported pumping out 250 billion gallons of water.54 Meanwhile, businesses in New Orleans were scrambling to find employees. Burger King was offering six thousand dollar signing bonuses to anyone who agreed to work for a year at one of its New Orleans outlets.55
Had the levees not broken, my older son Mark would have returned to college the following Thursday (September 8). However, Mark decided to return to Denver early and stay with his grandmother until the university opened for the 2005–2006 academic year. He was not enjoying life at the Drury Inn among hundreds of traumatized people. The airline allowed us to book a ticket out of Ryan Field in Baton Rouge to Denver without a penalty.
On Monday afternoon (September 5), I drove the one-hour trip to drop off Mark. I offered to stay with him until the flight, but he insisted that he was fine and I shouldn’t wait with him. As I hugged him goodbye, I sensed that Mark wanted—as soon as possible—to put the whole traumatic mess behind him.
We all wanted to. Few could. Some never would.
***
The Millers were allowed to use the motel’s breakfast bar every morning, and local church groups brought dinner for them each night. They were safe and surrounded by caring people. But Harvey was not himself. He spoke little