Hurricane Katrina: Then and now
23rd August 2020 · 0 Comments
The wind screaming like a banshee and rushing up the mouth of the Mississippi River on August 29, 2005, didn’t alarm New Orleanians who had lived through Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Many thought riding out the storm, hurricane parties and other survival tactics – boarding up, stocking up on canned goods, candles, water – was par for the course in a city that has seen its share of hurricanes. Not even the panicked voices of reporters and wall-to-wall interruptions of television programming with warnings to evacuate, saying a 100 year storm named Katrina was coming, moved many residents from their homes.
By the time Hurricane Katrina punched New Orleans in the gut at 8 a.m. on that fateful Monday morning of August 29, 2005, what was thought to be a Category 5 hurricane, which came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane, that Hurricane Katrina was not a natural disaster but a man-made catastrophe that could have been averted. When the levees broke, filling up everything east of Canal Street with upwards of 20 feet of water, those who couldn’t swim drowned, others chopped holes and retreated to their rooftops, painting HELP on the roofs and waiting for white knights in shining armor (or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Guard, anyone) to ride to the rescue.
Hundreds of thousands waded in waist high water to the Superdome, Convention Center, and on the I-10 to save themselves and their families.
Help would not come for at least five days. Communications were cut off, save one radio station; WWL radio continued to broadcast. Mayor Ray Nagin, who called for a mass evacuation the day before Katrina hit, had tears in his eyes when he demanded that the state and federal government help the people of New Orleans.
Many people died while waiting to be rescued, bodies floated down residential streets, while alligators, possums, and other creatures swam in what one survivor dubbed Lake New Orleans. The official death count was approximately 1,836 but no one really knows how many people perished.
Then, there were the innocent unarmed people who were killed by police and white vigilantes.
On September 4, 2005, seven New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) cops, who were allegedly responding to a call of an officer under fire, shot and killed two civilians,17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison, on the Danziger Bridge. They were unarmed, as were four other civilians who were wounded. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back.
Susan Bartholomew’s arm was partially shot off and later had to be amputated. Her husband, Leonard, was shot in the back, head and foot. The Bartholomews’ teenage daughter, Lesha, was shot four times and Jose Holmes Jr., a friend of Brissette, was shot in the abdomen, the hand and the jaw.
The officers involved included Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Sgt. Robert Gisevius, Officer Anthony Villavaso, and Officer Robert Faulcon. The cops arrived in a Budget rental truck; none were in uniform, and they were armed with rifles including AK-47s, at least one of which was unauthorized, and an M4 carbine assault rifle, according to news reports.
Two brothers who fled the scene, Ronald and Lance Madison, were pursued down the bridge by officers Gisevius and Faulcon in an unmarked state police vehicle. Faulcon fired his shotgun from the back of the car at Ronald. The autopsy found that Ronald Madison sustained seven gunshot wounds, five of them in his back.
The NOPD attempted to cover-up the murders, falsely reporting that seven police officers responded to a police dispatch reporting an officer down, and that at least four suspects were firing weapons at the officers upon their arrival.
Six years passed before any sign of justice appeared. On August 5, 2011, a federal judge sentenced five of the former police officers to prison terms ranging from six to 65 years for the shootings. Faulcon, the Black cop who killed Ronald Madison, received 65 years. Bowen and Gisevius, both white, received 40 years. Villavaso, another Black cop, received 38 years. Another former cop, Arthur Kaufman, received six years for his role in the cover-up.
An attorney for the Justice Department described the case as “the most significant police misconduct prosecution [in the U.S.] since the Rodney King beating case”.
But the convictions were overturned on September 17, 2013, due to prosecutorial misconduct involving prosecutors posting anonymous online comments about the New Orleans Police Department and the Danziger bridge case.
Four more years passed and in 2016, after pleading guilty to charges, the killer cops’ sentences were reduced to 7, 10, and 12 (for Faulcon) years, and three years for Kaufman. The other four officers had been in jail since 2010 and were credited for time served.
Then you had white vigilantes in Algiers Point, a self-appointed patrol militia that indiscriminately shot to kill, by some accounts, 11 unarmed Black people.
Donnell Herrington recounted his experience of being shot in the throat and back by white vigilantes in Algiers Point in Spike Lee’s documentary, “When the Levees Broke.” Herrington, his cousin Marcel Alexander, and a friend, Chris Collins were all shot by a pack of racist white men who shouted, “Get that nigger,” after Herrington ran for his life.
As it is now, it was the same back then. The racial divide loomed large. People fleeing on foot from New Orleans, whose population was 60 percent Black, tried to cross over the Crescent City Bridge into Algiers, the only New Orleans town on the Westbank of the Mississippi River. They were stopped by cops. Makeshift signs proclaimed, “You loot, we shoot.” Black People who stormed into grocery stores looking for food were called looters, while white people who did the same were called survivors in search of sustenance.
The rebuilding of New Orleans, 15 years after the hurricane’s landfall, in 2020 is still a work in progress. Although 90 percent of New Orleans’s pre-storm population is back and much of the city has been rebuilt, neighborhoods such as in the 7th, 8th and 9th wards have not had the same amount of post-Katrina growth. The empty lots, some overgrown, some manicured, are constant reminders of communities filled with people getting on with their lives.
What we have now is a city rife with gentrification, many of the volunteers who came to the city’s aid became permanent residents, bought homes and filled the jobs left behind by those who fled, never to return. The complexion of the city has changed. New Orleans is a much whiter city than it was pre-Katrina. Although Blacks are still the majority at 59.3 percent of the population, Black people are still fighting for economic parity and inclusion in this city’s economy.
Louisiana has no state minimum wage law, so employers have the option of setting their own beginning with the federal minimum of $7.25. The state and the city of New Orleans have a long way to go with 18.6 percent of households in poverty and a per capita income of $27,027. A household of two adults must each make $18 an hour to earn a living wage. The only way this will change is if voters elect Democrats to the state house and to Congress.
However, aside from the occasional flooding in a city still struggling to get back on its feet, there is cause for cautious optimism. The New Orleans population is at least 93 percent of what it was before Hurricane Katrina and problems with our pumping stations, Sewerage and Water Board, and other long-standing problems are being addressed. Last week, Mayor Cantrell announced a grid of emergency generators at nine NORD facilities for power sustainability during hurricanes and other disasters; $500 million in bonds for infrastructure; streets and drainage; maintenance; public safety; community centers; and affordable housing.
The emergency generator project is important in light of predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predictions that 2020 could deliver a total of 19 to 25 named storms. Seven to 11 of this year’s named storms could become hurricanes, including three to six major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.
While progress was made, albeit too slowly, the advent of COVID-19, another natural disaster mishandled by inept leadership, is threatening to turn back the clock to 2005.
As it was during Hurricane Katrina, the city is shut down, except for essential services during Phase 2 of the reopening plan. Public school children are taking classes online and will be learning virtually, at least until Labor Day (September 7). And, as of last Tuesday, of the 568 deaths that occurred that day in Orleans Parish, 421 Black people lost their lives.
The city is also facing a loss of 20 percent of its workforce. Mayor LaToya Cantrell is considering a 20 percent reduction in city jobs because the city is not getting its fair share of COVID-19 relief funds held by the state.
Nonetheless, there are sparks of hope in the air. 1,500 tests per day are being conducted and more than 35 percent of our community has been tested and the city has reached a milestone of sustained decrease in new cases. “Since the beginning of August, we have been below the five percent threshold that experts report is safe for reopening schools,” according to the Health Department Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno. Other than Cameron Parish, Orleans has the lowest rate of new cases in the state.
We can get through COVID-19, as we did with Hurricane Katrina, but we have to be smart, not stupid. We have to come together as a community and look out for each other. We must mask up, wash our hands, physical distance, and stay home, those of us who can, until the virus is under control. If 8.3 million New Yorkers can do it, we in New Orleans, with a population of 390,128, can too.
This article originally published in the August 24, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
