Vision Circle

NOLA: A Hurricane Perspective

This is an email I received from someone who lived through the disaster of Katrina.

I was going to post only a part of the email, but after I read it again, I decided to post the entire email.

Jesse means what he says he believes and shows it. Xavier University students were rescued by Operation Rainbow. They had run out of food and water. Xavier is about 12 blocks from our house. THe area floods ona regular rainy day. Add to that, Bayou St. John is merely six blocks away and so is City Park (our 1000 acre park) that can be renamed City lake.

I have not cried yet. None of us have. I am joyful for the best of humanity that have reached to to my family and many. many other families from the city. I deeply appreciate prayers, good thoughts and more materials things such as money, clothes, showering and food that people are doing for survivors like us. I don't know if you realize how real our gratitude is. Even if you left the Friday before the hurricane the majority did not take enough stuff tro tide them over for tyhhis extended period. By the time we had agreed to leave, I packed my mother and myself in about two minutes with the intent to be gone away from home for 3 days at the most. We were entirely prepared for structural damage, roof, siding, windows, feld trees...but we aboslutely never expected that the canals would breeech the levees. We never expected the 17th Street canal to be damaged. That is the canal that cause the extensive damage to the city. The Lower 9th Ward or the Industrial canal levees cau! sed major flooding in a old working neighborhood that has only three bridges that allow you to exit the area. That flooding wiped out the entire 9th ward and the west side of St. Bernard Parish. The Lake and Gulf hit St. Bernard's eastside. That people survived is a true miracle.

Now, you might understand most true urban black New Orleanians aversion living near water and owning ranch styled homes. Flooding is always on our minds. This time we simply "did not believe all of these things would happen at one time.

I was glad that Jesse Jackson was there. I was glad that he said what he did. It made me proud of him. I haven't felt proud of him for a long time.

Finally, most black men stood up. My nephew was our family leader and he successfully got us to his cousin's house. It was agreat feeling to have a young black man do his thing. He decided we would leave and he choose the route and we made it well ahead of the storm to Jackson. There were more black men like him who did whatthey had to to help people other than themselves get to safety or get help. It was to me better than the Million Man March to see them taking charge. My hat is off to you black men regardless as to whether you were in such a situation but by example I know that each of you would do the very same given the circumstances.