Katrina

 

   On August 29th, 2005 Hurricane Katrina took almost everything I owned and washed it out to sea. The storm took my family memories, photos, letters, my father's paintings, and my own artwork I'd saved since I first learned to paint and draw. More than memories and personal belongings; hurricane Katrina also took the lives of three of my neighbors. A young married couple and an older man -- who over several backyard fence conversations (as southerners are wont to do) told me that he was too old to run from hurricanes.

   Heather and I had "battened down the hatches", like we had done many times before that Saturday, August 27th.. We closed the storm shutters and fortified them each with a 2x4 nailed across the middle. We'd also secured the garage in a similiar manner and placed old rugs around the base of the doors and garage door to ensure any driving rain didn't find its way in. We were planning to ride this storm out like so many others we'd stayed for in Pass Christian. Pass Christian (or locally known as just "the Pass"), may sound familiar to some, in 1969 it was directly struck by hurricane Camille. My Uncle Joe Wittmann was mayor at the time -- to my knowledge, he was the last person in my family with politcal ambitions.

   It wasn't until maybe 1:00am on the 28th of August, we got a phone call from my mother that the storm had made a turn toward us and looked like it was going to directly impact us in the Pass. We hastily moved those things that we had downstairs to the second floor (the news was still saying that we'd only get 16 - 20 ft of water) that would put 2 - 6ft of water in the house even though we were close to the water. I know that this seems like a lot of water, but there are much lower areas on sea level along the Gulf Coast. All things are relative -- I suppose. After moving what we could upstairs we grabbed a few odd things and the basics: some documents, a suitcase of clothes, the cat, and the playstation. Also, I grabbed my degrees, I don't think I'd ever included them in the documents to take before, because I figured that I could replace them relatively easily. But as I passed the front door, I thought that they wouldn't take up a lot of space and tossed them in the trunk of the car. The pick-up truck we were unsure about mechanically and ultimately we figured we needed to all be together for the trip. We fully expected to be caught in traffic, even as early as it was in the morning. It had happed to us once before when we'd evacuated; it had taken hours in traffic just to go a few miles. Iit was always a traffic disaster. However, this time, there wasn't a soul on the road. Nobody. Heather and I had a quiet and dark trip to Baton Rouge, LA. I guess I sort of remember seeing some cars once we got close to Baton Rouge, but I couldn't say if they we early evacuees or just typical early morning traffic.

   What happened next? Well, that has been played out repeatedly across the news and internet. I guess I thought that something would have been left when we finially returned in September. Even having seen all the awful news footage. It was a brick house, it was higher than most, it wasn't that old, built after Camille. It was gone. Totally - completely - gone. People we spoke to later said that there was almost 30 feet of surge and waves that registered 20+ feet. This meant, at times, the house, a two story house, was completely submerged. We would have died if we had stayed. I'm certain of that; the roof of our house looked like it was blown off, then the house likely filled with water like a bowl, then bloated out like a water balloon, finially exploding leaving a ring of bricks around the foundation. Other houses appeared to have washed away, ours probably stood -- for a little while.

   Do I consider myself fortunate? In some ways I do and in others, not at all. It is very complicated. It was my home, not just the buildings, but the entire area. I was born in New Orleans, I grew up in the Pass, spent summers with my Uncles, Aunts, Grandmother and Grandfather there. I worked in New Orleans. I have friends and family in New Orleans and the Pass. My great grandfather, Frank Wittmann, built many of the houses along the coast in Pass Christian, much of what he'd built survived Camille only to be lost in Katrina. My grandfather, Charles E. Weston, taught history in the High Schoolin Pass Christian. My dad, Dr. Charles Wittmann Weston, went to High School in Bay St. Louis. It isn't just the stuff, my things, the whole place has been scrubbed clean of my memories and places. Buildings, whole buildings are now no longer there. I commented once, that except for a few pieces of paper I have no evidence that I existed at all. I'm not even sure I can make that statement about where I lived, where nothing stands to remind us what was there, but an empty space. A few slips of paper is a very poor testament to what was there.

   Below are some of the images we took when we first went back. The entire area was blocked off for miles by military police and razor wire was placed in some areas. I'm not sure if I hadn't known the place so well; we could have even found where we had lived. i returned to where my home was only twice now after Katrina. It is unlikely I will ever return to the Pass.