Do I have PTSD because of Hurricane Katrina?
3rd September 2019 · 0 Comments
By Te-Erika Patterson
Contributing Writer
“I was only 11 then,” Velasquez remembers. “We were one of the last people to leave the Superdome. They were trying to clear out the Superdome and my stepdaddy broke his ankle on the escalator so we weren’t moving fast enough. There were the MP’s, those troops, they had the big guns, the M16s and 12 gauges. They told us that if we don’t leave the Superdome they would shoot us.”
Fourteen years after Hurricane Katrina, Velasquez has not forgotten what it felt like to be rescued and subsequently trapped inside the New Orleans Superdome. His family was held there for 14 days when they did not have the resources to evacuate before the storm. He remembers walking around the Superdome holding hands with his brother and sister, his mother’s fist gripping his t-shirt. There was no food for the first five days and they were forced to break through the wall to get into the concession stands to get to the food in the kitchen. There was no electricity in certain parts of the Superdome, which meant they were walking in complete darkness sidestepping dead bodies sitting in the corner, laying against the wall with sheets on them, being careful not to step in bodily waste. Velasquez remembers people stealing, being hungry, hearing screams from frantic mothers whose children had gone missing.
“Then, I was a child. I thought it was just something that was regular. As I got older, I remember what I saw and what I went through and I see it differently,” Velasquez says. “I wasn’t watching it on TV and came back to see that I lost property. I was there. I was in it. The thing I went through took part of my mind, my heart. I would not wish that on nobody city.”
Velasquez’s family made it out of the Superdome and eventually to safety in Alabama where they spent the next 13 years. This month Velasquez, now 24, returns to New Orleans as an adult to try to create a life for himself outside of the shadow of Katrina, a shadow that he says, has followed him every single day since 2005.
The Fear Is Real
Velasquez isn’t the only Hurricane Katrina survivor attempting to dodge the haunting shadow of their shared tragedy.
Commonly referred to as PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder occurs after a person experiences a shocking, scary or dangerous event. Fourteen years after Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana and the levees in New Orleans broke, flooding the city and causing the loss of thousands of lives, the city has yet to recover completely and neither have the survivors.
Commonly triggered by the onset of each hurricane season, survivors of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation may experience mentally, emotionally and physically distressing symptoms of PTSD that appear and subside randomly. A mere mention of the life-altering event elicits clenched jaws, lowered eyes and hesitant replies. More than a decade later, no one wants to talk about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina but its after effects may last a lifetime.
PTSD impacts roughly eight million adults in the U.S. According to the National Institute for Mental Health’s website, people suffering from PTSD may experience flashbacks, bad dreams, have difficulty sleeping, feeling tense/on edge or be prone to angry outbursts. People at increased risk for PTSD are those who have lived through dangerous events and traumas; were hurt, saw another person hurt or saw a dead body; dealt with childhood trauma; felt horror, helpless, extreme fear or experienced extra stress after the trauma such as a loss of a loved one or the loss of a job or a home. In essence, every single person whose life was impacted by Hurricane Katrina is at an increased risk to experience symptoms of PTSD.
Symptoms of PTSD are also more likely to surface for those who have returned to New Orleans to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina because each summer, each storm, each puddle, each rainfall, is a stark reminder that it is possible to re-live the trauma again.
I’m Never Moving Back
Safe and sound in Stockbridge, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, 42-year-old Diana Williams heard the weather report and frantically called her sister who lives in New Orleans. Williams’ daughter had been enjoying the summer with her father in New Orleans but news of Tropical Storm Barry’s impending confrontation with New Orleans was an emergency interruption. Williams insisted that her sister pick up her 8-year-old daughter and leave New Orleans before Tropical Storm Barry made landfall.
“I don’t play games when it comes to these storms. I have to protect my baby,” Williams explains. “A lot of people took it lightly before Hurricane Katrina and look what happened.”
In 2005, Williams and her 5-year-old son followed the advice of civic leaders and evacuated New Orleans three days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. She watched in horror along with the rest of the country as the devastation of the flooding in New Orleans headlined the news. After the storm subsided and the floodwaters receded, Williams tried to return home but was told that she could not. It took a year before she was brave enough to return to the city that nurtured her since her birth. She had lost all of her belongings. She had lost contact with friends and family who were displaced. She broke down in tears when she realized that home would never be the same again.
Determined to move forward from the lingering pain of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Williams decided that she would never move back to New Orleans. “I’m afraid,” Williams explains. “I don’t want to go through that again. I won’t.”
The Katrina Generation
With more than half of New Orleans residents dispersed across the country immediately following one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in U.S. history, people who lived through the Hurricane often measure spans of their lives as “before Katrina” and “after Katrina.”
“Hurricane Katrina was especially traumatic for many because it included trauma from the natural disaster that was extended with the flooding afterwards, but also the breakdown in the system and the loss of community that resulted,” says Traci W. Pirri, MSW. “Any trauma that involves both threat to a person’s body and a loss of trust and support from the system and communities that support you has a higher likelihood of developing into PTSD. The people I have met and worked with following Katrina have been devastated by the loss of their community and angry at the way the system failed them.”
Omar Casimire, the founder of the Katrina National Memorial Park Charitable Foundation lost his mother, Louise Thecla Jones-Casimire, during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. Casimire explains that his mother did not drown during the flooding, she stopped eating as a result of the shock and stress of the event and died seven days after the storm.
Casimire has spent the last 14 years documenting the photos and the chronological history of the tragic events following Hurricane Katrina. He recalls when Frederick Douglas High School, a school in the Lower Ninth Ward, reopened several months after the storm. The reopening of the school should have been a joyous occasion since the Lower Ninth Ward experienced more flood damage than every other neighborhood in New Orleans, yet the presence of armed private security guards in each classroom cast a shadow over the momentous occasion. Confused about the presence of armed guards on a high school campus, a friend explained to Casimire that the guards were necessary because the students were unruly and the teachers could not handle the behavioral issues.
“The kids were stressed out. They had post-traumatic stress,” Casimire shares. “They lost relatives, friends and their neighborhoods were torn up. There was only that one school open in that area. A lot of those kids who were in school then are either dead or in jail now. If you look at the young people who are committing the crimes today, they are Katrina babies.”
Letting Go and Remembering
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a form of treatment that has been shown effective for many suffering with PTSD symptoms. Some therapists suggest PTSD support groups coupled with long term counseling to help relieve the symptoms of PTSD. Robert Green, a Lower Ninth Ward resident and activist, offers a much more streamlined healing method.
“Life moves on,” Green explains. “Get to the point that you don’t ask why God did this to you. This is a part of life. It could happen to anybody.”
Green and six members of his family found themselves stranded on the roof of their home when the broken levees flooded the Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. Green’s home lifted off of its foundation and floated down the street carrying the entire family with it. His 73-year-old mother and 3-year-old granddaughter both passed during the flooding yet Green insists that he does not have PTSD.
“We could have been stuck in that same mode of anger and pain but we realize that if you let that tragedy go and move forward, that’s a better life for you,” Green says.
On Aug. 29, Mayor LaToya Cantrell along with other elected officials, funeral directors and residents, joined together to commemorate the 14th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Katrina Memorial on Canal Street. The commemoration was sponsored by the Crescent City Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association, the Katrina Memorial Foundation and the City of New Orleans.
By proclamation of the City Council, last week’s ceremony will now serve as the official event marking the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina for years to come.
During the ceremony, Mayor Cantrell offered words of caution regarding Hurricane Dorian, which is now moving across the Atlantic, and words of remembrance and healing about the storm that was.
“As Hurricane Dorian approaches Florida, we are mindful of what we experienced here during Katrina on the 14th anniversary. Let us all remember how far we have come, be grounded in love so we can move forward together,” said Mayor Cantrell.
Others who spoke at the memorial event were District A Councilmember Joe Giarrusso, the Rev. Robert Jackson (providing the opening prayer) and Sandra Rhodes Duncan (The Katrina Memorial Foundation). Artist Tommye Myrick performed a spoken-work piece. Dr. Michael White, Nayo Jones, and the Congo Square Preservation Society also performed. Norman Robinson served as Master of Ceremonies.
This article originally published in the September 2, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
