Hattiesburg Mississippi

This is a memoir of my evacuation from New Orleans during hurricane Katrina and the events that followed.

           

Hattiesburg Mississippi

By: D. Patrick Yeck

 The Sunday morning news broadcast showed Katrina had not weakened or changed course and in light of this brought some encouraging words from the local meteorologist who precisely stated, “You need to leave New Orleans.  If you do not leave New Orleans you are going to die.”  This apparently got everyone’s attention and those of us who had chosen to wait for Katrina to go away now scrambled to move out of her path.  We loaded what we could into the back of my pickup and began the journey to I-10 heading west towards Texas.  In three hours we had traveled approximately 4 miles and were not even out of New Orleans yet.  It was then that my truck had a change of heart about the long trip ahead and died.  We were stranded and Katrina would make landfall in less than 14 hours.  

            We waited on the side of the highway with the corpse of my once faithful vehicle.  Cars carrying fellow evacuees crawled past us like some sick fear based parade.  In the 5 hours it took my father in law to reach us, 2 people had asked us if we were OK or if we needed help.  We loaded what we could carry from my truck into my father in law’s pickup and then did what no one else dared and drove back into the heart of New Orleans.  My father in law nonchalantly dropped us back off at our apartment and then went on his way.  With time slowly dissipating we did the only thing we could and loaded what very little we were able to salvage from my truck into my wife’s little 1993 Chevy Corsica.  We were lucky enough to find a gas station that still had fuel and was still open so we exhausted our last $30, filled the tank up and tried to head back to I-10 and towards my family in Texas.  By this time I-10 West had been shut down and all evacuating traffic was redirected east.  The drive was reminiscent to the one experienced earlier that day and moved at a snails pace.  Once we crossed Lake Pontchartrain both sides of the highway were opened to eastbound traffic (thanks to the ever-popular Contraflow) and, at times, we reached speeds in excess of 20 miles per hour. 

By 11pm, we had reached Hattiesburg Mississippi and almost the bottom of our fuel tank.  We stopped at a grocery store for information and were directed to a Red Cross shelter that had been set up inside the multi-purpose center, a concrete building with an arena in the middle large enough to host maybe a small rodeo.  The complex was relatively new and felt secure enough.  It was just about midnight when we signed into the shelter, along with a few hundred other people, and about midnight when the far outer rim of the approaching storm was expected.  With the exception of a few gusty winds, I had noticed little difference in the weather.  In the next few hours that would all change.

By 3am the winds had picked up to a steady gust but nothing you would expect from a hurricane.  Every hour brought stronger winds.  Shortly after 6am, the power went out.  By 10am we were getting the full brunt of the storm.  The surreal screams of the destruction unfolding outside enveloped our ears and unsettled our stomachs.  The roof began to peel off the backside of the complex as people scurried and strained to hear orders bellowed by state troopers through megaphones muted by the storm.  I clutched my wife and stepson in what I assumed to be some primal instinct to protect my loved ones.  The storm raged for hours with fear flowing as constant as the debris slamming into the building.  By 3pm the storm had settled as the last of the storm bands passed throughout the night.  I did not sleep but perched myself on the bleachers and watched my family.

Morning brought with it the most beautiful day I had ever seen in my life.  The sky was cloudless and possessed the purest color of blue.  The wind whistled a humble song and the clean air flowed seamlessly through your lungs.  Only death could taint such beauty.  The next 3 days were filled with chaos.  The water supply was contaminated and supplies cut off.  Our meals consisted of honey buns and pop tarts.  My stepson was in heaven.  I didn’t eat but withheld my rationings for my family as I knew the food supplies was running low.  By day 2 after the storm the food was gone and the bottled water scarce.  People began to panic.  From the time we signed in until the early part of the storm another 800 people had come into the shelter.  There was no running water and human waste was rampant.  A small squall developed and rain poured through the torn roof.  People began collapsing from the sticky heat and an elderly diabetic woman was slipping in and out of consciousness while two men were stretched out on the bleachers with chest pain.  A supply truck had managed to get through the debris and brought pots of red beans and rice.  This ensued a small riot as people fought to get to the front of the line.  There were actually people there who had a problem with woman and children eating first.  The Red Cross staff was minimal, the state troopers had abandoned their post to assist in rescue operations throughout the area, and things were getting out of control.

Day 3 and, once again, no food.  The shelter had become a hive of anxiety, anger and primitive instinct.  It was time to leave.  Dismissing the advice of paramedics and a state trooper that had arrived we loaded into my wife’s car (which faired much better through the storm than my truck) and drove.  We came across a gas station with the roof half blown off.  The front door was kicked in and all the windows blown out.  I kept the car running, crawled through the door and, for a brief moment, was disappointed that someone had already looted all the beer.  I quickly grabbed the only remaining items; a box of melted almond joy bars and several bottles of hot Nehi Blue Cream Soda.  I brought the offerings to the car and gave my stepson his “lunch.”  He was, once again, in heaven.

Unfortunately, for me all I ever saw of Hattiesburg Mississippi was a grocery store, a Red Cross shelter and miles of enormous pine trees all decapitated at the same point.  Despite my limited familiarity with this town, it has become a place that is permanently etched into every aspect of my current being.  It was a place that offered me something without requesting anything in return.  Though the lessons it taught were painful, they were indeed lessons that could have never been taught in a lesser environment.  

Life after Katrina was a slow, miserable decent into hell for me.  Though my wife survived the storm, a lot of her died during that time.  The town she had never been away from her entire life was now underwater and coated in a layer of toxic sludge.  Her family and friends, who once spent every waking moment together were now scattered across the country.  A hole formed deep in my wife’s heart that I could not fill and, over the next year or so, our marriage fell apart.  Where I am in life today is because of Katrina.  It carved a muddy road that lead me away from a woman that I loved and a city that had captured my heart.  It reunited me with my children and with a piece of me that I thought was long dead.  It brought a pillar of hope rising from a river of great despair.  I think about Katrina more than I ever imagined I would.  This is the first time I have spoken about what happened during that time and unfortunately am not able to tell everything.  We all have experienced an unexpected event that has changed our life as we know it.  We have all undergone a forced transformation that our souls have slowly adapted to; an evolution of sorts rooted in pain but leaving, in its wake a stronger person than was there before.  That was Hattiesburg.