February/March 2007

Creating Green-Collar Jobs
Van Jones & Ben Wyskida

Bringing Democracy to Life
Frances Moore Lappé

The War Within Islam: Interview with Reza Aslan
Arnie Cooper

US Gas Tanks and Iraq's Hydrocarbon Law
Stan Goff

Restorative Justice: The New Hope for Reviatlizing Community
Pip Cornall

A Unique Model of Green Architecture
Jody Woodruff

Exploring Uncertainty and Paradox
Marla Estes

The Energetic Properties of Crystals
Robert Simmons

The Storm Hasn't Stopped: A First Person Account of the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Rita
Carol Hwoschinsky

Healing Energy: In a Vibrant Field, Energy Medicine Flowers
Gaea Yudron

Intuition and Heart
Swami Dhayana Giten

Walking Meditation
Thich Nhat Han & Nguyn Anh Huong

Mixed Media Reviews
Debi Weiss

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

BACK TO TOP

The Storm Hasn’t Stopped

A First Person Account of the Aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

By Carol Hwoschinsky

The stories started before we had even reached our guesthouse in New Orleans. We asked our cab driver how he was faring after Katrina. He recounted the day without any hesitation. “I was fortunate enough to have access to a vehicle and could drive my family out before the storm hit,” he explained. “They are still living in Texas with my in-laws. My family has lived in New Orleans for generations, and we are now scattered. My wife no longer has a job and there is no childcare even if she found one. I don’t know when they can return.” He told us they have no home left and he is having trouble rebuilding. He said what we would hear over and over again: they are still waiting to see how much they can recoup from FEMA before they can go forward. He thanked us for listening.

It had been just over a year since hurricanes Katrina and Rita that our group of six from The Compassionate Listening Project (TCLP) went to New Orleans, Louisiana. The TCLP is a non-profit organization dedicated to listening to cultivate healthy relationships, heal polarization, and build bridges between people, communities and nations in conflict. Our work and curriculum has grown out of 15 years of reconciliation work on the ground in Israel and Palestine. We believed that listening to the grievances and difficulties of the people in New Orleans would bring healing.

We had been invited to teach one workshop on Compassionate Listening, but we didn’t have a clear idea of what else we were going to do. I knew a number of people personally who had gone to New Orleans to gut houses and to rebuild. But we were a group of elders who were not physically able to tear buildings apart or wield a hammer. As we drove into the city, I was wondering if listening to people was really going to be enough.

The cab drove past the Superdome, imprinted in-delibly in my mind’s eye as the place where thousands of New Orleanians found everything but the refuge they were seeking during Katrina. I had just read in the paper one week earlier this newly renovated Superdome had hosted the well-loved football team, the Saints. They had rewarded their city with their first win in years. This renovation cost millions but was considered a priority in order to raise morale and bring back the tourists and their business. This downtown area looked unscathed to us. We didn’t notice that just next door to the stadium is the high end department store Lord and Taylor. It was taken over in the early days of the storm when the people in the Superdome needed medical help. It still continues as a hospital to serve New Orleans’ poor. We drove past the freeway bridge over the Mississippi where hundreds of hungry, thirsty and desperate people were turned back from the next parish by armed police. I had just seen the Spike Lee documentary, When the Levees Broke. The stories were fitting into the geography, and into a people. In short, I was beginning to see the picture.

The cab turned into the Garden District, filled with huge Southern mansions, anti bellum artifacts now inhabited by some families, private schools and organizations. They look relatively untouched. However, I would soon notice how many new roofs there were. I would never learn how many trees were missing: 70% of the canopy by some reports.

Our guesthouse was one of these old buildings on the edge of the district—definitely down a notch or ten from the homes like the one down the street owned by Anne Rice, the famous vampire mystery writer. Our guesthouse owner was offering reduced rates to volunteers coming to help. We were grateful. His gracious hospitality made up for the faucets and lamps which didn’t work, and for the less than well-cleaned rooms we occupied. The only help Dennis could afford was a black woman in her sixties who had trouble walking. Ruby, who lost everything she owned, now lives in one of the rooms in the basement, prepares the morning coffee and biscuits and does all the cleaning. She survives on her tips and her bible. I found her reading the scriptures each morning while waiting for the biscuits to come out of the oven. Business has been slow for Dennis at the St. Charles Guest House. Now the tourists are returning.

We toured the city on our first day, starting with the undamaged 20% of the city—the historical sites, the museums, the French Quarter, the downtown, the cemeteries in which people have to be buried above ground because of the very high water table. We had been promised we would see the damaged areas, as well. We drove across the bridge into the now famous Ninth Ward. What we saw was indeed shocking.

The foundations were still evident where the houses had been torn off and destroyed by the surge of water from the broken levee. Some demolished homes were still there in the heap where the water had deposited them. The Ninth Ward has been abandoned. There are rumors that developers are offering large amounts of money to poor homeowners for their property. They have been trying to move casinos and new development into this predominantly black area for years. Katrina may have offered them the perfect opportunity. The city has not repaired the utilities nor reconnected the water in this area. Since one cannot have a FEMA trailer where there is no water or sewage, no one can live there. Those poor, predominantly African American families are scattered all over the United States. There is nothing to come back to. Now there is little hope to rebuild a neighborhood.

The bus drove by the levee where it had broken, flooding out the Ninth Ward. The force of the water had swept most houses down the streets, often with their occupants clinging to the roofs. The water was so deep it often left piles of rubble, still visible, on the roofs. The levee is now prepared for a class five storm in the area where it broke. But right down the road, it still stands prepared for a class three storm. I soon learned that levees vary. Around the Ninth Ward it looked like a stone wall about fifteen feet high. In other parts, I was soon to observe, a levee is a huge pile of dirt with low stonewalls holding it in place. At the end of that day, I thought I had seen the worst.

On another day we were driven through the Lakeview district. It was in this region that the water rose to twelve feet and above. The levee there was holding back Lake Pontchatrain, but when a barge was tossed by the wind, it ripped a hole in the levee. The whole region, which was at a lower elevation than the lake, was inundated. Lakeview became the lake! This was more visibly shocking. Some of the houses—those that could—were still standing. The yellow waterline was visible on the walls. And the now famous marks indicating who had inspected the buildings for bodies were clearly evident, and chilling. This had been a middle class, racially mixed neighborhood of working professionals—the backbone of New Orleans—and it was on its knees. There were some FEMA trailers evident here, which meant the utilities were in place. Some houses were restored and occupied. But most of the residents are still waiting.

The whole city is waiting. Waiting for help. Waiting to return. Waiting to find out how much of their losses will be covered by insurance and FEMA. The catch is whether flooding or the hurricane caused each person’s damage. Very few people had insurance for flood damage. It is hard to tell whether the flood or the hurricane did the most damage and the insurance companies are arguing their case. The rebuilding has to include current homeowner’s insurance, which costs $700 to $800 annually. It is required before any loans can be granted. And in the lower areas, the houses must be elevated to a second story height before people are even eligible for insurance. Where is the place for poor people? New Orleans will be waiting a long time for many to return.

Help continues to come in the form of gutting homes. The city is still filled with volunteers—young peoples’ groups, faith communities, and good-hearted people from the United States and beyond. They have gutted thousands of homes which had stood in up to twenty-five feet of water (often referred to as “soup”) for weeks. It contained oil, toxic waste, sewage, vermin, alligators, snakes, and dead human bodies as well as all the city litter one could imagine. The yellow/brown “bathtub ring” can be seen at various heights throughout the city.

Our first scheduled engagement was the presentation of a workshop on Compassionate Listening for the social workers employed by the United Methodist Church Disaster Relief Agency, the largest faith-based group doing work in the region. Twenty-five Case Managers and their Supervisors from six Parishes gathered in Baton Rouge for the day. They came from all over the state.

The campus of the United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge is enormous. We were led through corridors of offices, meeting rooms, class rooms, a gymnasium and a preschool into our ample classroom where 26 social workers sat quietly in a circle. I was heartened to see such a racially diverse group of professionals since I come from a predominantly white city. I wondered what we could possibly teach these people about listening. They had been on the front line for over a year. I continued to struggle with my own anxiety about making this experience worth their time and effort. Some of them had driven three hours to be there.

It is the responsibility of these social workers to do a complete needs-assessment for individuals and families. They assess needs for food, shelter, medical care, depression and levels of frustration. There are few psychiatric services available and no inpatient care. Medical records have been destroyed and the doctors are gone. Health care is still a nightmare. There had been two hundred psychiatrists in New Orleans and now there are nineteen serving the whole city. The challenge for these social workers is how to be supportive as well as effective. Some people call them frequently and just need to talk. The social workers feel overwhelmed. We were told 70-80% of these professionals were struggling with their own recovery.

We asked them to sit with another person and each complete two sentences. Their instructions were to “Please listen to your partner. There is no need to respond or to try to fix anything. Just listen with an open heart.” The sentences are:

“In these challenging times, what disturbs me most is …; In these challenging times, what gives me hope is …”

As I watched the intensity of the listening and their engagement, I knew this was just what they needed. Everyone had a story to be heard. I breathed a sigh of relief.

One of the case workers who was eight months pregnant when Katrina struck spoke of losing all her possessions. “I can replace everything else,” she explained, “but my family is all that matters. And they are safe. I am so grateful.” Her baby is healthy and thriving.

Another told us he is settled, finally. “After I rebuilt my own home, I totally rebuilt my mother’s house and then her neighbor’s. I have done little else but work and build in the past year.”

We heard how another man’s son had had a terrible accident in another state at the very time of Hurricane Katrina. He didn’t know about it for days. He and his wife were able to travel to him once they were finally contacted. His son is now paralyzed.

As the day proceeded with more listening exercises and an appreciation of their tremendous dedication, they relaxed. They were able acknowledge the healing they bring to their clients by listening as well as delivering services. They appreciated having the time to share with each other and to learn some new skills to help with listening to their clients. They thanked us profusely.

The level of disruption in the region is amazing. I also learned how many additional people Hurricane Rita had affected outside the greater New Orleans area. Rita, which struck a week after Katrina, did not bring flood damage but was a class five hurricane (Katrina was a three). Rita had moved through Baton Rouge west of New Orleans and headed north, cutting a swath much greater than that of Katrina. The people affected by Rita are resentful of the lack of knowledge we have about the difference in the two events.

Another statistic coming to attention concerns the official count of Katrina victims—1,464 who died within a month after the storm. A Columbia University scholar who is researching recent deaths from illness claims many of them can be counted as Katrina victims. They are dying of diseases and conditions they had under control prior to Katrina, but their symptoms reappeared and they have died—many from heart attacks.

No one, certainly not Homeland Security, had planned for such a disaster. This was a complete breakdown of a society. Official records of every kind were completely destroyed. I was told, for example, that people who were in jail were transported to security prisons and incarcerated without records. Anyone in jail temporarily for a traffic fine or a minor offense became a prisoner indefinitely. The young people in the adolescent treatment center were transported to Texas where the law forbade them their medications without prescriptions. No one had prescriptions. All their records had been destroyed. These are just a few of the snafus mentioned. Imagine the whole system breaking down and having to wait so long for help.

The spirit of the people will return in time, but now there is a pervading numbness. Depression has become an open conversation. The homicide rate has doubled this year over the previous year—mostly involving residents of black neighborhoods. The suicide rate is high. People who had had work no longer have jobs. Among the poor and the middle class there is a loss of hope.

We met a man at a Quaker meeting who told us he wanted to tell us his story. We met in a coffee house the next day. He was struggling—seemed low in spirits and very tired. He told us of his efforts to have Charity Hospital reopened to serve the poor. He seemed really upset that there is no adequate medical care available for the poor, yet this hospital, somewhat damaged by water in the basement and the first floor, is not being reopened. He is familiar with this particular hospital and claims it is currently in operating condition, yet the county and city will not open it. He spoke for a long time, his eyes tearing up frequently. “I’ve been writing letters, attending council meetings, organizing demonstrations, visiting the legislature and I can’t get anyone to move on it,” he told us. Someone from our group reflected back to him that perhaps his intensity about this issue stemmed from his own sense of vulnerability. He had told us just months before Katrina, he had been a patient himself and had had a serious heart operation in that hospital. He knows what it is like to be medically vulnerable and he wants others to be well cared for. He burst into tears at this recognition. He had been heard and understood.

Though Charity Hospital remains closed, many services are back in place now. One does not see the mountains of trash, which were out on the streets. The abandoned and wrecked cars have been removed and destroyed. The thousands of downed trees have been cleared. Most of the traffic lights are working. The transit system will be operating by this December. Things are looking pretty good to the unaccustomed eye.

However, at dinner another night, after we had presented a workshop to the city of New Orleans school social workers, one woman said, “All the people are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and adrenalin exhaustion. The children are jumpy. They cry a lot. It doesn’t go away. How can you adapt and stabilize when everything is still in a state of flux? The changes are really subtle.”

She may have been speaking of herself. Her home was completely destroyed. She and her fifteen year-old daughter have found an apartment to live in but the rent and utilities are so high coupled with the taxes she is still paying on her damaged home, she can barely make it.

“But I must,” she tells me. “At least I have my job. But I can’t rebuild my house now. I can’t afford it. I’m just waiting.”

That same evening another school social worker told me although she doesn’t like the situation, and she would never want to go through another storm like that, it has changed her for the better. “You live a richer life flushing yourself out rather than living a scripted one,” she told me. “My life has more meaning. This experience has been transformative.”

People are trying to look at the bright side. They are angered if anyone suggests the city should not be rebuilt. It is their home. The French Quarter is still intact. The tourists are coming back. On Bourbon Street the “Hurricane” drink is selling briskly.

On the darker side, there was another murder in a bar the night before we left town. One of the social workers had told us, “Some people are returning, including a lot of young black kids who are back without their families and are living on the streets and dividing into gangs.” The woman selling the papers on the corner has returned. She had fled with her teenage daughter to California, but her daughter wanted to come home. She smiled showing gums almost devoid of teeth. What were left were black with infection. There is no medical care, but she is happy to be home and her friendly smile shows it.

As we drove to the airport, our cab driver explained in a French accent that he was originally from Switzerland. He had come to New Orleans ten years ago, married and had two children. He was working on a degree in computer sciences when Katrina struck. He escaped to Houston, Texas, with his family and claimed he was well cared for there. People were generous and sympathetic, but he observed the people in Houston just went to work every day and home at night and watched TV. “I had to get back. I’m driving the cab each day and studying at night. I want to be here. There is life here. There is spirit. New Orleans is special.” I reflected on our six very full days in Louisiana and had to agree.

“Please come back,” another new friend had told us. “You give us hope. It is good to have new ears to listen to our story.”

Carol Hwoschinsky, MA, is Training Director for The Compassionate Listening Project (TCLP) and holds Masters Degrees in Special Education and Psychology. She is a licensed counselor in private practice, an educator and a mediator. Carol serves as Training Director for TCLP and is author of Listening With the Heart: A Guide for Compassionate Listening.