Last summer, as Americans watched the worst natural disaster in U.S. history strike the Gulf Coast, the news settled into a familiar framework, and a cast of characters emerged. Even as Hurricane Katrina evolved from natural disaster to human-rights catastrophe, the same list of names--Ray Nagin, George W. Bush, Michael Powell, Michael Cherthoff, Kanye West, Sean Penn, Anderson Cooper--continued to dominate the news. From this group of a dozen or so voices, we separated heroes from villains, and formed an image of the situation in New Orleans from their accounts.
Yet, the more things deteriorated in New Orleans, the clearer it became that the truth being gleaned from our sources was incomplete, that the real story was far more complex.
The Voice of Witness book series aims to illuminate human-rights crises around the world through oral history. Voices from the Storm is the second book in the series and focuses on New Orleans residents who survived Hurricane Katrina only to find themselves abandoned--and even victimized--by their own government. These thirteen men and women represent the anonymous thousands who lost everything to Hurricane Katrina. Each bears his or her own unique story. When examined independently, the stories are powerful accounts of survival under the darkest circumstances. Viewed together, they reveal a more complete truth about Hurricane Katrina.
Dan Bright, a New Orleans native, spent almost nine years in prison for first-degree murder before he was exonerated of the crime and released from prison in 2004. The night before the storm, Bright was arrested and taken to Orleans Parish Prison under misdemeanor charges. The morning of the storm, guards left Bright and his fellow inmates to die in their cells as floodwaters swallowed the building.
It was early. You can see the water is constantly rising. You gotta remember, we're stuck in these cells. Guys on the first level, on the bottom level, man they hollerin' and screamin'. No one comes. They were hollering for the guards to come. Begging, pleading. You had guys who had broke windows out, burning sheets and blankets, flagging them to try to get some attention. In fact, helicopters was flying over, and guys was holding blankets out the windows, burning blankets to try to get their attention. And no one came and help them.
The water had done got from chest-high to chin-high. So guys was on the top bunk with their head stuck out the ceiling to get air. They couldn't hold their breath that long. So everybody, the whole tier's hollering. You had men that you thought was kids down there hollering, because that's how they sounded.
Bright eventually escaped by kicking his cell door of its hinges and chiseling through a cement wall, only to be picked up by guards waiting with boats outside the building. He and thousands of other prisoners from around the city were brought to Hunt Correctional Facility--a maximum-security prison in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. Among those being held at Hunt was Abdulrahman Zeitoun.
Zeitoun is a Syrian-American father of three. During the storm, Zeitoun remained in New Orleans while his wife and children evacuated to Baton Rouge. For a week after the storm, he paddled a canoe around the city helping stranded neighbors and friends. However, on the seventh day after the storm, while Zeitoun was calling his wife from one of his houses--he owns several properties in New Orleans--armed soldiers arrested Zeitoun and three other men under suspicion of terrorism and held them in a bus station that had been transformed into a makeshift jail.
When they brought us to the bus station, we see something like overreacting. Like these guys have a catch, it feels like. A very high security. When I first see it, it reminded me of Guantánamo Bay. Exactly look like Guantánamo Bay. Nothing different. The way you have to sit, you have to sit open your legs. You can't relax. You can't sit on this chair, you have to sit a different way. And the one guy's watching us, every move. And I see something not normal.
We thought we would be a few hours or something. We stayed there three days. One of the guys called, "You guys are Taliban. You guys are terrorists."
After three days at the bus station, soldiers transferred Zeitoun to Hunt, where he remained without contact with his family for over three weeks.
Stories like those of Zeitoun and Bright are alarmingly common among Hurricane Katrina survivors in New Orleans. Yet, to assume that all New Orleanians share the same post-storm sentiments would be incorrect--indeed, to make any generalization about a citizenry as diverse as that of New Orleans would be a mistake.
On one side of the spectrum, there are those like Patricia Thompson, who, in the face of the horror and hardship of Hurricane Katrina, look forward hopefully.
Katrina was truly a disaster, but for me Katrina was a blessing 'cause Katrina turned my life around. I've been wanting to leave New Orleans. You're not treated right in New Orleans, you're not treated fair. New Orleans is the city that forgot to care, and the city that care had forgotten about. You hear about the Big Easy, you hear about Carnival. But man, we go through hell in New Orleans.
Me, all six of my kids, my sisters, every family member--we're talking about at least twelve, maybe fifteen households--everybody has left New Orleans. This is our chance to get out.
On the other hand, there is the perspective of Anthony Letcher:
Everybody talkin' 'bout "back home." Even us poor people who've been renting, I wanna come home to what I know. They say a lion's gotta come back to his lair. He can go travel clean across Africa, man, but he's the king. He gon' come back to the place that he know.
I just talked to my Aunt Joanie today in Abbeyville and she was tellin' me go in her house, go look by her house and see if she can get the family graduation pictures. That's all she's thinkin' about, them pictures. I guess that's probably all she could think about.
Letcher is a powerful storyteller. He recounts his experiences with humor and disarming sincerity. It helps that his story is a remarkable one. During the storm, Letcher braved swirling floodwaters in the Ninth Ward to rescue a pair of children. Over the next few days, he and his family collected stranded neighbors and brought them in for shelter at his aunt's home where they were cared for until help came.
Still, Letcher's story, like those of most New Orleanians, went untold in the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina. Even now, more than a year after the storm, as debate continues over who is to blame for the government's mishandling of the disaster, the people of New Orleans remain underrepresented. If this rift is to be resolved, we must pay attention to the experiences, beliefs, criticisms, and ideas of those directly affected by Hurricane Katrina. From their perspectives, we stand to improve our own, and to reveal a more genuine portrait of a crucial event in our nation's history.