Reflections

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita:

Katrina Diary

By John Polk

I. A long line of black faces snake out the front door and into the hot, humid Louisiana afternoon - men and women, young and old. Clearly segregated into couples and family groups, each one clutches a cheap suitcase, a black plastic trash bag or a pillow case filled with personal belongings. Each takes his turn going through the metal detector and endures wanding by a National Guardsman with a shoulder slung M16 rifle and some kind of pistol on his hip. The process looks humiliating but the people do not look humiliated. They endure. Just beyond the entry, there are three long tables with a hand-lettered sign that says, Red Cross Shelter, Register Here." One at a time, each sits and tells his story to a Red Cross volunteer and provides vital information needed to update the computer. Many are from New Orleans; they stuck it out after the storm but could not stand the flood waters as they rose into their houses or the lack of food and facilities when they fled to the Super Dome. Others had escaped to Houston or Shreveport or Birmingham only to run out of money and then had to ride buses back to Louisiana shelters. The drill is the same with each person. Once registered each gets a Red Cross bag with soap, toothpaste, tooth brush and other sundries and is escorted into the sleeping areas where a cot, a blanket and a sheet is issued for each person. The room is gigantic, a place of conventions and tractor pulls, but today it is a sea of cots with rainbows of castoff blankets, quilts and sheets. Families pull their cots together in a manner that looks like control over their lives and an attempt to have some privacy. Seen for the first time, a person's mind cannot take in what has happened here - cannot accept the presence of 3000 people who have lost everything, 3000 people who don't even seem pissed off. I wait at the end of the registration tables. My job is to escort people into the shelter and get them a cot, show them where the rest rooms are and bring them Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MRE) if dinner has already been served. They call me a "runner." Like many, I am here because it seemed like the right thing to do. I wanted to help and did not allow my motives or personal analysis to reach very far beyond that basic idea. The most important thing I have to do in my job is smile and not to cry. For each family I take into the shelter, each expresses gratitude and says "God bless you" and for each I swallow my need to cry…it has no place here. A sun-browned, sixty-ish man in a fatigue cap and no shirt sits before the registration lady, a beefy old bat from Connecticut who seems to think it is her job to make sure none of residents steal any of the Red Cross' precious supplies. She seems to relish giving these people a hard time. One of the man's arms is bound tightly to his side in a sling and he states that he was injured in the storm when a tree limb broke and fell on him. When the Red Cross lady asks him for an address he says he is homeless and weathered the storm outside. His name is Griz. At first, I don't want to engage this man. It is obvious that he is drunk and probably got that way on the bus ride from New Orleans to the shelter. He isn't my mind's picture of an evacuee. And, I judge this man named Griz to be a homeless person who was a drunk long before the storm injured him but then I am surprised when the homeless man says, "My name is Griz, what's yours?" Before I can answer the man, Griz goes on and I am hooked, "I was doing okay in the storm until a tree limb fell and busted my arm. It got better for about a week but then I hurt it again. I came here from New Orleans because I been sittin' in the sun for a week. I had to get inside - out of the sun. I'm hurting now pretty bad. I need to see a doctor. That's all my stuff over there. Will you watch it for me? Don't let nobody steal it. Can I go get a smoke in before I see the Doc?" After a trip to the clinic in the back of the shelter, some dinner and two more smoke breaks, I get Griz settled into his spot in the shelter. This isn't easy with 3000 people milling around, picking up anything that's loose. His cot is surrounded by bags of personal belongings - all amazingly neat, clean and well-organized. Sitting on his cot, Griz says, "Hey, John, I really appreciate you helping me out…I really do." Leaving, then stopping to look back I watch Griz sitting on his cot eating his dinner, in a sea of cots, in a giant room surrounded by thousands of strangers with one thing in common. I checked on Griz two more times -- once to blow up an air mattress for him and the last time to give him some money. Griz says, "You don't need to give me any money, John. You don't have to do that, John." I answer, "I want to do this." And Griz replies with something that cannot be captured with words but feels like gratitude. When I left I did not look back this time, but I could not stop smiling. Go figure.

II. Summers in the Gulf mean hurricanes and everyone who lives there eventually takes their turn in the barrel. It can be 40 years between storms that affect a place, but it's always just a matter of time until you lose a roof or get flooded. The storm entered the Gulf after coming ashore near Ft. Lauderdale as a Class 1 storm and crossing South Florida. I did not pay much attention because there had already been fifteen storms and we had not yet hit the peak of the season. Besides, everyone knows the media makes a circus out of hurricanes. I was in Texas on the Saturday when Katrina became a Class 3 storm and appeared to be heading for New Orleans. I had gone down from Ohio to put our Texas house on the market and was out of touch with the weather - and up to my elbows in fire ants, weeds and spider webs. On Sunday, my wife, Karen, called and said the storm was upgraded to a Class 5 and the entire region around New Orleans was evacuating. The order was for mandatory evacuation because a direct hit meant the levees would not hold. My mother-in-law, Lois, lives in New Orleans or at least close by in Metairie and she was evacuating to Texas with one of the nieces. She was "leaving within the hour," she said, and this must have been around 10:00 on Sunday morning. All seemed well. Around 4:00 I wrapped up the clean-up of the house and called Karen to check status on the storm and the family. Her mother had lied she said and was going to sit out the storm - now a solid Class 5 -- at her brother's house. They had plenty water and food she said. Very short memories from a bunch of people who had to be rescued from rooftops 40 years previous when Betsy had come ashore. Katrina came ashore just east of New Orleans, the eye passing over Slidell. On my way home I had a layover in Charlotte and I went to a bar and caught up on the news. It looked like New Orleans had dodged a bullet. There was flooding in the 9th Ward and some roof damage in the city, but things looked good compared to Biloxi and Gulfport Mississippi that were flattened. We checked on the family and they were fine. Minor roof damage and a little water in the house but that was all. The cats hated the storm. Sometime on Monday, the 17th Street and London Avenue canals breached and the water from Lake Pontchartrain poured into the city.

III. When I set out for the shelter it was still dark, the sky just beginning to show pink in the east. At the old Kelly Air Force Base front gate I saw a city bus. Its destination panel flashed alternately, "Downtown" and then "Katrina."

IV. There is something gratifying about feeding people, I think as I ladled chili on to one plate after another as an endless line of people needing to be fed passed before me. When I volunteered I wasn't sure what I could do or what the Red Cross would want me to do. As it turned out it was simple, "we need 20 volunteers to serve food now," and I and a host of other wide-eyed volunteers headed down the long hall past the sleeping areas to the cafeteria. The drill was pretty simple - plastic gloves, plastic head covering and a plastic apron - stand behind a giant container of beef patties, fried chicken tenders, chili, green beans, corn or rice - and serve the people food. Somehow the simple task of saying "good evening" and the equally simple response of "thank you, God bless you," was enough for me to know it was of the most important thing I had ever done in my life. I did not need to know more than this about why I had chosen to be here. In looking back, I did not understand why I thought this simple task had so much meaning - but it surely did. There were moments when I connected with the person being served - no doubt - but there wasn't enough of that to be enough. It was something else.

V. One evening after the dinner had been served and the kitchen closed, I reported back into the assignment desk and asked what else needed to be done - where did they need help? The Red Cross lady said, "they just called and said they need help at the men's showers," so off I went - down the long hall again, past the sleeping areas and medical clinics and outside - to the showers. The showers were housed in large blue tents set up in the middle of an asphalt parking lot. As he rounded the corner to the showers I saw a young black man hiding in the shadows - or was it a black woman? I checked in with another white guy who was in charge of the showers. He explained the duties - hand them a plastic bag for their dirty clothes, give them a towel and a piece of hotel soap. The white guy's name was Doug, a veteran of two hours. He said he was at the shelter with members of his church just helping out. Doug asked if he had seen the person hiding out back and I said that I had. "He's a guy with breasts who thinks he's a woman but they won't let him shower with the women," Doug said. He went on, "and he's afraid to shower here because he has breasts, so I'm watching the front here to give him some privacy. So, hold the rest of these guys until he-she finishes." A line of black men -- young and old - line up for showers. Most have towels around their middles, some are too fat to cover with the skimpy gym towels and stand awkwardly and some stand naked - frankly proud. I talk with each man standing in line in his turn. Two stand out. Both are angry and suspicious. The first argues for the injustice of it all. He tells that his family got out, but his girlfriend, the mother of his child, chose to stay. He tells of waiting out the storm and watching the water rise first to the ground floor apartments and then to the second floor - driving the three of them on to the roof. He says he signaled a helicopter with a flash light at night and the next day a boat showed up, rescued and delivered them to the Super Dome.

VI. Back in Ohio on the Tuesday after the storm I sit on my sofa and watch New Orleans die in high definition, 42-inch, wide-screen vividness. The magnitude of the situation begins to dawn on me as the CNN camera pans the flooded landscape of rooftops and stranded people. Most are black and most have escaped their flooding neighborhoods by breaking through the attic onto the roof where they now await rescue. Some helicopters come and dramatically pluck whole families from watery traps. Maybe it is about now that I realize the situation is out of control. No one knows exactly when the canal walls broke but it was clear when they did that the last line of the city's defenses was breached. Survivors spoke of water rising from their knees to their waist in five minutes and barely getting into the attic before the water touched the ceiling. As news crews from across the nation flew back and forth across the flooding landscape it became obvious that the city was being destroyed before our eyes. At first, it's about watching something bad happen to someone else. Then the faces and the stories begin to emerge that make it all personal - like it's happening to someone you know. No one can forget the black man who holds his young daughter and reports that he was on the roof with his wife and the storm stripped her from him. His grief and his loss are palpable. CNN shows the scene over and over and it tears at me. It tears at my heart today - months and months later. All of us think the situation will soon improve - it must get better.

VII. On the first night at the San Antonio shelter I serve hamburgers and potato chips to an endless stream of hungry evacuees. They are still fresh from their journey here and some bear bandages on their arms and on their legs. Many are in flip flops because there is a shortage of shoes. Virtually every male has on a donated T-shirt that must have come from the back of someone's closet. Best Dad - Father's Day 1997 and Festival - 2000 are popular examples, as well as lots of logo'd golf shirts. All of these people have one singular trait - they are grateful. Each in their turn says "Thank you and God Bless You." One man asks a volunteer, "Do you have any my-on-aise for this hamburger?" Confused, the volunteer asks "My-on-aise? What is that?" to which the dark man says, "You know, you spread it on bread." Now he gets it. Later I go to a grocery store and buy commercial sized containers of mayonnaise and brings them to the kitchen the next night. On this night another black man stops and says, "What is that?" and points to a plastic bowl of mayonnaise. I answer, "Why, that's mayonnaise" to which the black man asks again, "What is that?" Initially puzzled, the light eventually comes on and I answer, "You know, my-on-aise!" Some kind of breakthrough in basic understanding has just occurred. On Wednesday of the second week, a detachment of the Mexican Army presented itself at the U.S. border offering humanitarian aid to the victims of Katrina. For the very first time since Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande in 1836 to straighten out a bunch of unruly and rebellious Texans at the Alamo, the Mexican Army entered the United States. The soldiers camped near the shelter and made food for the evacuees in their field kitchen. On the first night the Mexicans attempted to feed evacuees, U.S. soldiers got in the way and made a general nuisance of themselves. I was embarrassed by the arrogant display of one-upmanship on the part of our team. The next night was rewarding and gratifying as Mexicans fed Americans. Fortunately there were Costa Rican missionaries present who provided some of the translation. In the end, it was good. Everyone took turns posing with the Mexicans as pictures were taken. I took pictures with all the guys, towering a foot or more above most.

VIII On Thursday of that first week in San Antonio, I call Karen and tell her she has to come - that it's important to do this. She arrives Friday evening late and we work the shelter on Saturday and Sunday. I do my usual stint in the kitchen and Karen works the day care center. On Sunday afternoon I work in the distribution center and try to find clothes that fit people in a mountain of donated goods; it's impossible. One of the guys I met at the shower comes by looking for shoes - he is still in flip flops. He's a big guy and says he needs a 15 shoe. I look but there is nothing. As I search, I wonder what people must think when they donate a pair of old sneakers that are no longer suitable for mowing the yard. What must they believe about the value of their action? And yet another pair of smaller shoes still in good condition has a note tucked inside that says, "God bless you all." It's too much.

IX Wednesday through Friday of that first week just seem surreal. This is America! People crammed into the Super Dome and the convention center without water or food and surviving in incredibly unsanitary conditions. Where was the government? Where was FEMA? The responses from the President's team seem clownish and unmatched to the situation. I sit and watch in my safe home a thousand miles away and watch with horror and disgust. Someone do something! I don't know exactly when it happened but there came a point when I knew I had to go. I had to find a way to get down there and do something - help - do my part - something. On Monday, I packed and left for Texas. I would stay in San Antonio for a week and then go on to Baton Rouge. Alex Camacho and I would cover the disaster for ACS. We had at least one staff member - the Louisiana project director, Trina Richardson, who had lost her home in New Orleans and needed immediate support. I would cover Alex in San Antonio while he went to Baton Rouge, then I would spend a week in Baton Rouge helping Trina in any way I could. When Alex arrived Trina was a wreck. Her entire extended family was homeless and sleeping on the floor of a vacant house her mother owned that they considered unlivable before the storm. All 22 of them were living in the house with only basic needs being met. Alex set out to find a place for Trina to live - no small task in this town two weeks after the storm. Alex found her a house and negotiated a six months lease with the owner, Debra Simmons. He went out and charged a $12,000 cash advance to his credit card and paid Ms. Simmons six months rent in advance plus deposit and bonus. More important, Alex got Ms. Simmons to let us sleep on the floor in her husbands study for $40 a night and the right to take a hot shower each day.

X. Every person on the plane from Dallas to Baton Rouge is talking about the storm and what their job is when they get there. Many speak of not getting a shower during the previous week until they got home. In some weird way, it is exciting to go there and be in the middle of this chaotic event. I feel like I am on the team. While waiting for my bag I turn and Anderson Cooper of CNN is standing beside me planning an interview for that evening's broadcast. I want to tell him that I think he is doing a great job down here, but I don't. Yet, the closeness to this news reporter who has been on the front line with the storm for the last two weeks inspires me in some strange manner. I don't want to think it's the excitement of being close to something big that's happening, but it may be just that. At our office in Louisiana, I catch up with Alex Camacho who is headed back to Texas that day and he tells me the tale of finding a house for Trina and his two nights on the floor at various places. It is a hilarious tale of staying with two middle aged hippies who get drunk and cook gumbo all night and then listening as Ms. Simmons inebriated brother try to get through the front door on Sunday night. He would report later that he was messed up from attending an all day barbeque.

XI. After work I head downtown to the Baton Rouge shelter which is housed in the convention center. Baton Rouge is different than Kelly. In thinking back I think the way it seemed then was that Baton Rouge was a place to escape to and San Antonio was a place to start over from. There was much less hope in this place and more a sense of futility with the system, the rules and the attitudes that governed these displaced people. FEMA and the Red Cross disappeared at 5:00 and left 4,000 evacuees in the hands of volunteers and the National Guard - not the Louisiana Guard because they were in Iraq. We did the best we could for people who stayed in their homes hoping the flood waters would recede; or for those who ran out of cash and had to move out of hotels in Houston and Shreveport; and those who had been living in their cars. The line of people checking in was endless. One young couple had been living in their car and had returned to Baton Rouge to try to pick up paychecks. It's amazing what happens when there are no phones, you have no home and you are out of money. As I checked them in the woman asked if there was a chance we could find a stroller since she had been carrying her child everywhere for a week. I went to the supply area and found one. And, I found a teddy bear too. When I returned with the blankets, cots, stroller, teddy bear and MREs the woman cried in gratitude or relief. I found them a quiet corner to set up their temporary home. These are the points of light I remember, when my small actions were received with gratitude and I felt like I was really doing some good. I was surprised at the ungraciousness of the people of Baton Rouge toward their own State's displaced people. I guess I might feel different if my Ohio city doubled in size overnight and every person was unemployed and looking for a rest room. After I left the shelter for the night, I went to five ATMs before I found one with money and to three or four stores before I found one with linens and pillows. No grocery store had ice or bottled water. Baton Rouge was under siege mentality and the people acted like it!

XII. It is truly weird to go to a person's house you have never met and sleep on their floor. Robert and Debra Simmons made it doubly… no triply weird. It was like Alex had made some deal with them but they really did not want to follow though…but I was determined. I paid Mr. Simmons the $40 and put my air mattress and quilt on the floor. Thank goodness, Alex had contributed a pillow to the cause. They were an interesting family…Debra was black and Robert was white. Two of their very young grand children lived with them and slept in their bedroom. Her brother and his sister, who also seemed to be a couple, also lived there. But her brother slept on an air mattress in the laundry room and Robert's sister and her 8 year old son slept together in the bedroom. The place was a bit like a bus station. They instructed me to park in the front yard which is what I did. So, there I was trooping in every night after working the shelter each night. I think they thought I was nuts but made no comment about what I was doing. Only Debra's brother who was running a janitorial crew at the local mall had anything to say - that he was "tired of cleaning up the mess left by all those New Orleans people." On Thursday night, I said good bye to the Simmons and they opened up a little and asked me a couple of questions about where I lived, why I was volunteering and my thoughts about the state of things in Louisiana. We parted on friendly terms. But it was weird.

XIII. When I decided to write about the storm I thought it would be interesting to describe the storm and the damage to homes and property - the power and awe of nature. I guess in the end it works out about like you'd expect. Katrina is not a story of wind and storm surge, broken levees and flooded neighborhoods or any of those physical things. In the end, Katrina is a story about people - at their best and at their worst. At first, I wanted to write about all the destruction and when I reached New Orleans that weekend I sure could have done that. Every kind of destruction a person would want to see and describe was there for the taking. Gary Doyle and I would ride all over New Orleans in his wrecker that Saturday and pick up cars that had been flooded and needed to be delivered to some car dealer or body shop. We saw the full range of the strange - boats in front yards, cars on roofs, and signs, "You loot, we shoot." Take your pick - from 100 electricity poles blown over like matchsticks to an area scoured flat to the foundations. In the end, that story has been told - a lot. I think people have become desensitized to that picture - just another disaster story on which we can marvel at the power of nature and our puny efforts to withstand the inevitable. The sensations that were so overwhelming at first are just commonplace now. The images with sticking power are those about the people - the ones in the shelters and the ones of loss and of lives undone. I can never forget the first night in the Kelly shelter and the wall of thousands of notes asking for whereabouts of lost family members and that same night of truly grateful people - mostly black - who thanked me for serving an apple, or a pear or a banana. And, in my mind will always be etched the Mississippi man in a yellow T-shirt on CNN just hours after the storm who told of being on a roof with his wife and daughter. He wails that his wife was pulled from his arms by the water and was lost. His words tear at me still, "She's gone. She's just gone." I tell people who ask me that it was never one thing - the storm and its impact on the people was many things. For some it brought out the very best in people looking out for each other, risking for each other and making sacrifices to help each other. Trivial tasks were the work of heroes. And, there is a really ugly side to Katrina where people - black and white - behaved like animals. From looting to euthanasia, from greed to profiteering, from racial supremacy to racial rage. Katrina was never just a big storm.

XIV. I don't claim to be right. I just watch television and read the papers. So, my assertion that Katrina unsettles us because of race may not ring true with everyone. My idea that Katrina hitting Minneapolis would have had an entirely different effect and engender entirely different responses may not be shared by all. I believe that absent race Katrina is just a really bad storm. Because of race, the storm tears at us and rips at our ethical and emotional foundations. As a people, we remain unsettled. We still have unfinished business. New Orleans is a black city - no genius required for that conclusion. Unfortunately, the mayor actually said this obvious fact out loud in a speech and was widely criticized. The city is surrounded by white suburbs like Metairie and Kenner. It is a fact that the levees and the canals broke on the black side, inundating the portions of the city where mostly black people lived. Call it luck or something else - Metairie and a lot of other mostly white areas stayed dry and quickly recovered even if they did have some water initially. So, maybe black people lived in lower lying areas and got more of the flood. Or maybe they just had bad luck. However you cut it, the greater majority of black people suffered more than the greater the majority of the white people in New Orleans and its suburbs. Life went on for Jefferson Parish - it was changed forever in New Orleans. Taken as a whole, Katrina's aftermath looks a lot like a black-white thing to me. I don't mean black, brown, and yellow versus white. I mean black versus white and all that has implied for 200 years. The roots are ugly and deep. Katrina stripped bare and exposed deep racial hatred and not just between folks in New Orleans. Indeed, people all over the country, including some of my relatives, blame the people for what happened to them. It seems ridiculous even to write it - that somehow the losses and indignation of a predominantly black population is in some way their own fault. It's as if people believe Katrina targeted black people. As the busses pulled out of the Super Dome headed for Houston and San Antonio I can imagine people in Jefferson Parish standing on the side of the I-10 with signs that might have read, "Good Riddance and Don't Come Back." I think it must be very hard to be black in our nation today. I think we are deeply scarred by all of this and healing will take a long time. Yes, I think Katrina is a crystalline example of what it is like to be black in America.

XV. Just days after the storm I watched a piece on CNN about how the people of Bay St. Louis would walk to the remains of the Highway 90 bridge to use their cell phones. With no clear reason except that this spot in the middle of total destruction provided contact with the outside world, the spot became a news focal point. Anderson Cooper allowed us to listen and watch like voyeurs as people called friends and relatives to tell them they were okay. It's now December and I stand in that very spot now. There are no cameras or television reporters - just an expanse of bridge pilings as far as the eye can see and no bridge. There is one thing - standing by itself on the approach to the bridge is a fully decorated Christmas tree. Unmanned and unguarded, the tree stands as a testament to hope, to shared experience and a willingness to try to make things right once again. Beneath that tree on this windswept point are wrapped presents for any person to take - if they can search their heart and say they deserve them. I turn in a circle and see devastation in every direction and I know that each one who lived here and through this has earned the right to deserve.

XVI. Even in the South, dark comes early in December. It's our first Christmas here since the storm and we have celebrated well, if only incompletely. We are going home - back to Ohio. Hurrying along on I-10, we cross the high bridge over the Industrial Canal that separates the city from its eastern-most reaches. At the summit, a sea of darkness spreads before us all the way to the distant lights of Slidell. What must have been a city of 200,000 in September now lies dark and dormant in December. It's eerie to know that just beyond our car lights are the bones of the city. We can just make out shadows of stores and high rise buildings against a fading twilight and they are both sad and strange. And they stand as sentinels with no hope and with little assurance of a better tomorrow.

XVII. The trauma of Katrina fades from our minds and from the news. Like other emotional events we try to hang on to, Katrina loses its grip on our minds. We forget what happened and how we were affected and wonder if our emotions even out-stepped reason. Am I embarrassed for how I felt? Today, back in San Antonio, I circle the shelter slowly where I volunteered and where 4,000 people from New Orleans re-established their lives. The building is empty now. The last of the evacuees were placed in apartments or with relatives about a week ago. Workmen are dismantling the showers and supplies and mountains of donated items are being loaded into rented trucks. I am uncertain about what I feel.

LAST Katrina fades from our consciousness; we turn away from the news as Anderson Cooper returns to New Orleans one year later. We see American resilience at play - we get over Katrina, 9-11 or the assassination of a president. We are not so unlike the wildebeest who grazes peacefully not 20 yards from a pride of lions who are devouring one of his brothers. I can almost imagine the wildebeest saying, "I'm glad it wasn't me." That is how we go on. That's how we forget. Westerville, Ohio August 29, 2006

A View From the Middle of a Disaster

Clifton Barnhart

I arrived back in Texas a week after Rita hit the Texas coast. Shelters that had already been set up for Katrina victims were now experiencing an unexpected burgeoning as the new wave of evacuees filled any empty space. Among the most traumatized were victims of Katrina who had been transported to Texas coastal areas, only to be assaulted again by another monumental hurricane.

Kelly Air Force Base was one of the larger BRAC closures of the 1990s, leaving millions of square feet of building space unused. A combined effort of FEMA, the Red Cross, and the municipality of San Antonio rapidly converted much of the space into temporary shelter for 25,000 evacuees.

What began as a fairly orderly implementation of support - cots, food, information sharing, and medical attention - began to deteriorate as the unexpected flood of humanity continue to arrive on buses commandeered by FEMA. The makeshift organizations started to flounder as we all realized that without preparation, we were flying by the seat of our pants.

For the first couple of weeks, volunteers were abundant. The outpouring of concern from the citizens of San Antonio led to local people actually being turned away for lack of need. Many of the hurricane victims had no medication, no money, and, in some cases, not even any identification. Those who had Medicaid were learning for the first time that the program is a state run, not a federal program, and had no value in Texas.

Physicians of every specialty showed up to triage and treat as best they could. Rules of confidentiality, defensive medicine, and information gathering protocol went the way of most standard operating procedures initially instituted by the various agencies in charge. Urgent care preempted common medical practice protocols. Those fearful of litigation and liability quickly disappeared.

By the third week, most community volunteers were feeling the need to return to their jobs. Working at the shelter was no longer sexy. Medical support was reduced to three of us: a woman who was a retired internist from the Navy, a gentleman who had been a dermatologist with the Public Health Service before his retirement, and me, a psychiatrist with a smattering of training in OB/Gyn and neurology years ago. The county health department and local public hospital were inundated with their usual citizenry plus the demands of these new patients, mostly from New Orleans, who did not technically qualify for care. Specialty clinics tried to work-in these new emergencies, but by the end of the first month, appointments were often weeks out.

Clinical services were provided in makeshift spaces that reminded me of what a MASH hospital in a third world country would have: sample medications (often expired), bandages, Tylenol, stethoscopes and flashlights. Mental health had three laptops, but one was stolen the second week. Landline phones worked less than half the time, and most us relied on our personal cell phones for outside contact.

San Antonio's local MHMR provided a team of two secretaries and three social workers. A child psychiatrist came for the first three weeks, and then vanished. I worked pro bono under the auspices of the Red Cross, as did the other two physicians. We did our best to channel patients to the doctor who had the most experience in a certain area. I took care of psychiatric patients, neurological disorders including seizures, drug and alcohol withdrawal and AIDS patients with central nervous system involvement. The internist saw most infections and chronic medical disorders. The dermatologist did a little minor surgery. We all three treated diabetics.

It seemed to be a surprise to most that mental health cases were the most abundant. The character of these patients evolved over the three months the mental health clinic remained in the shelter. In the beginning, two predominant groups emerged. The first were individual with the consequences of the acute and severe stress of the hurricane and subsequent flood. The second were patients with chronic mental illnesses who had lost their support systems and medications.

The former needed psychotherapy we were ill-equipped to provide. The latter were usually on regimens of drugs we did not have. In both cases we winged it, talking and listening when we had time and struggling to provide dose-equivalent psychotropic medications we could get our hands on. We had prescription pads, but no good charting process to track outcome. For those who had insurance cards or a little cash, we wrote prescription to a couple of pharmacies that seemed user friendly. I all cases we crossed our fingers and hoped we weren't making matters worse.

The state of Louisiana failed its citizens. We learned that there was no state money to pay for the prescriptions we were writing. People came back from bus rides to the local pharmacies furious, although they could not quite figure out who they were mad at. We began to call any pharmaceutical rep we knew, begging for more samples or better yet, coupons and vouchers that could be used at the pharmacies. Our efforts were only partially successful, but any help was better than what we were getting from Louisiana Medicaid and FEMA.

Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, made a judgment call. He permitted the state to begin issuing Texas ID's to Katrina victims, so they could at least be traced in our patchwork of assistance systems. To me, this move seemed out of character for our conservative governor. I will always be appreciative of his decision to step up and take responsibility for part of a human tragedy Louisiana was incapable of handling.

Those experiencing the sequelae of severe acute stress usually presented with a picture of anxiety and insomnia. Some of these people meet the criteria for a mood disorder; virtually all meet the criteria for severe anxiety disorders. Predominant symptoms included nightmares, initial and terminal sleep disturbances, and no appetite.

Most of the hurricane survivors from Katrina were from the Ninth Ward and had spent days awaiting rescue. Among this group were horrific stories of death and destruction. Initially, our interviewers seemed skeptical that so many such stories could be true. There was a sense that perhaps the clients were exaggerating or embellishing their stories with extraneous events reported on the news. However, after a short while, it became apparent that the consistency of observations and the details of the events were not typical of exaggeration or dissimulation. It is fair to say that the Ninth Ward survivors of Katrina experienced trauma of a magnitude not reported previously in this century, and most resembled the eyewitness reports from the 1900 Storm in Galveston, Texas.

A man told the story of spending three nights in the rafters of his home as his furniture continued to bang against him once the ceiling totally disintegrated. Another told of spending three days and nights on a rooftop with a box of garbage bags. He would blow them up and then swim out into what had been the street to pass them to people floating by. Two unrelated men told of awaiting rescue on the flat roof of a commercial building with a crowd of people. When the helicopter arrived, they stood by helpless as a man pulled out a pistol and demanded that only he be rescued.

People were angry and agitated. There were hundreds of frantic people trying to find lost relatives. The more resourceful began to locate someone with whom they could stay, thus escaping the wall-to-wall cot community at Kelly. Tables were set up with a sign above that read, 'Job Placement'. Unfortunately, all the volunteers were doing was perusing classified ads, then printing off unintelligible directions from MapQuest that job-seekers were supposed to use to find the right bus.

Those who had spent their lives on welfare were now like small children, expecting someone to step up and care for them. For the rest, the unskilled and undereducated victims of New Orleans' social fabric, they were doomed to futile searches for non-existent jobs. A longshoreman once asked me if there were any boats that needed unloading in San Antonio. An oyster shucker asked me if I knew of any oyster bars in town that needed help. I did find a part-time job for an elderly lady who had been an ironer at a dry cleaner that was washed away in the flood.

At first, every evacuee was given a plastic wristband as identification. Local police manned all entrances and exits, ensuring only authorized personnel were permitted access to the shelter. However, it didn't take long for a few clever folks to discover their wristbands had street value. Local drug dealers were paying $200 for a wristband and had undeniably infiltrated the shelter. Suddenly, one afternoon the shelter was put in lock-down mode. Along with this surprise move was the institution of a new identification system: each worker and resident would receive a picture ID. The idea was noble, but no one considered two obvious flaws - first, they actually gave legitimate picture ID's to a few drug dealers who were caught inside the shelter during the lock-down. Secondly, there were several hundred people outside the shelter looking for work when the lockdown occurred. When these people returned, there was no foolproof way to guarantee they belonged inside. The next twenty-four hours were chaos.

By the second month, the tenor of the complaints began to change. People were reporting flashbacks, panic attacks, and anxiety triggered by the sound of water or even the dark. Moreover, our first suicide attempt in the shelter occurred. The stories also changed. Anxiety and insomnia were supplanted by guilt and despondency.

A couple came in together, both depressed, although the man was far more impaired. They told of waiting in waist-high water for rescue for days. During that time, the man had managed to snare and rescue three people, a very old woman who probably had Alzheimer's and two very small children. One of the children died before rescue.

A johnboat eventually arrived with what appeared to the couple to be two rescuers on board. The man had the old woman in his arms; the woman held the child. They waded out to the boat to discover that there was an unconscious man lying in the bottom of the boat. The two men in the boat looked at each other, then without speaking, threw the unconscious man overboard. They loaded the two women and the child into the boat. Later, they came back and rescued the man. The couple was coming in because neither could eat nor sleep. Almost constantly, they talked to each other about the dead child and the man thrown overboard. Neither had ever witnessed death, and both now harbored unanswerable existential questions. The man was suicidal, and the woman could not stop imagining her husband dead.

Such stories became commonplace, and to some extent their telling led me to a state of some insensitivity. I welcomed the urgent case of a psychosis that only needed medication, detox, or restraint. These were 'biological' and demanded only an organic approach to a solution. Meanwhile the other two physicians were referring more and more patients to me as they learned that lupus, arthritis, or bad colds were taking a back seat to the intrusive thoughts of our thousands of denizens in the micro-city of Kelly Air Force Base.

In late October, my wife and I took a trip to New York to see our son. I expected the distraction to take my mind off what I'd been experiencing. Instead, I was calling my co-workers, especially the social workers, every day. I found myself in a hurry to get back. As bizarre as it may seem, I was addicted to the shelter. On my return, our little mental health team had constructed a ten-foot banner, welcoming me back.

A few weeks later, forces beyond my control extracted me from the shelter. A new management organization I'd never heard of, Shaw, took over operations from Red Cross and FEMA. It became immediately clear their mission was to cut the cost of the operation and steer the shelter toward closing. New time limits for shelter residents were put in place. Food service made conspicuous changes. And along with all this, the medical personnel were notified that Shaw would be instituting new measures with independent contractors to provide medical services under their direction. The three of us physicians were offered such jobs. All of us declined. I was informed when my last day would be - tomorrow.

As I departed, the social workers were told they were being reassigned to do 'home visits' to hurricane victims now in apartments, hotels and churches. The focus of the shelter's social workers would now be placement, not mental health counseling.

My wife was relieved, and frankly, so was I. I now had an excuse to leave - I was fired (if you can be fired from a non-paying job). For the next few months, I probably talked too much about my autumn in the shelter. I knew there were some bad people who had left New Orleans and were making trouble in Houston, San Antonio, and elsewhere. Nevertheless, I was shouldering the reality that the people I had cared for were not like that. They were honest, common people - mostly black, mostly poor, mostly ignorant, and mostly stuck.

The trauma of the hurricanes was contagious. Those of us who worked at Kelly that long somehow incorporated the tragedy into our own lives. The few I've talked to since those days still get emotional talking about it. Before Katrina, we thought such horrific events only happened in other parts of the world. Now we know we are not immune. We are vulnerable - to the whims of nature, to the serendipity of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and to the aching realization that our nation is flawed when it comes to helping our fellow man.

I live in Galveston part of the year, so I track tropical storms and keep plywood boards to cover my windows. I know there is danger living on a coast. But it was not a hurricane that created the fiasco in the fall of 2005. Indifference did.