Friday, June 01, 2007
Hurricane season officially started on June 1. I spent several days leading up to that date wanting to find a story that tied into Hurricane preparations. Mostly I thought about focusing on the official preparations in St. Bernard Parish. Although I don’t live in the Parish anymore, I still spend the majority of my time there. That probably won’t change anytime soon. My bond with this place is too strong.
I wanted to speak with the Parish President, Henry Rodriguez, Jr., about strategy and approach, what’s different now as compared to pre-Katrina. More specifically, I was really interested in their communication plan, and how they would ensure that all residents know the Parish’s procedure and protocol when a Hurricane (or strong Tropical Storm) was approaching.
While Mr. Rodriguez’s schedule precluded me from getting any time with him, I came to find out early Friday morning that the Flood Protection Alliance of New Orleans was holding a press conference later that afternoon at a downtown hotel in which the Executive Directors of Emergency Preparedness from each Parish would be updating the media on their preparation and planning. Col. David Dysart, who holds that position for St. Bernard’s Parish and who was the one who let me know about the press conference, would be speaking, as would representatives from FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers (which is responsible for the levees) and the Red Cross.
But before I went downtown for the 2 o’clock show at the Sheraton, I thought it was really important that I go talk to a few residents, and get their feelings on this first day of Hurricane Season, what it meant to them and what was on their mind. In a few hours I’d be hearing the appointed officials, the so-called professionals, give their take. But first, I wanted to hear from the people who are really affected.
I’d talked to quite a few residents about this topic before, and already had a pretty good sense of where their heads were at. Who knows if my dozen or so conversations is even a fair representation, but the majority I’ve talked to just looked at June 1 as another day, and this Hurricane Season as just another in their annual exercise in storm preparation. Most people in St. Bernard’s Parish are lifers. The start of Hurricane Season down here is like the start of winter in Minnesota: people just load up on water and flashlights like they do shovels and snow blowers up in the Great Lakes region, and they don’t even bat an eyelash, after effects of Katrina notwithstanding.
My experiment on this day found nothing different. I talked to one guy in a convenience store, who just shrugged and wished for the best when I asked him what he thought of it being the first official day of Hurricane Season. I then went to a street where I had worked on a couple of houses before, and found the usual late morning activity. A couple of homes had a dozen or so volunteers working on them. Residents milled around in the street, and a few were hanging out in front of their house or FEMA trailer. I parked the car and approached one of the houses.
Andrew and Bertha Lee Sylvester have lived in Violet, LA, for 35 years, almost all in the same house. Their home stands gutted and hollowed out, faceless, while they wait for their Road Home money. This is 21 months after Katrina came and went. They’re still living in a FEMA Trailer that sits in their driveway. What they’ve done to fix up the house so far has cost them most of their savings.
We talked about a lot of things, about Road Home, about Faith, about food and clothing (both said they do ok in terms of getting food but that they are in dire need of clothing). What did we talk the least about? Hurricane season. For people like Andrew and Bertha Lee, they have too many things to worry about, like money, and clothes and insurance and transportation. They think about one day getting out of the trailer and back into their home. “I came back here and had nothing left (after the storm),” said Bertha Lee. “Somebody gives me something now, and that’s what I live off of.”
Their friend, Denise Duplessis, was there visiting them with her two-year grandson, Joseph. She lost her home and is spending most of her time living in Houston, TX. She has to because she didn’t get a FEMA Trailer. She says she drives back and forth, coming back to St. Bernard’s Parish to see family, hoping she can get back here permanently. She acknowledges the start of Hurricane Season more than the Sylvester’s do.
“I’m very nervous,” said Duplessis. “We can’t do nothing about it, but I’m still nervous. I guess the Lord is going to guide us. We have to pray. What else can we do.”
Several hours later, those very comments were running through my head as I sat in the Gallery Room at the Sheraton New Orleans, listening to Jesse St. Amant.
The first 40 minutes or so of the Emergency Preparedness press conference were standard PR. The Executive Director of the New Orleans Flood Alliance opened things by speaking about the need for communication on a day such as this before introducing all of the participants. One by one, each of the Parish’s representatives, including Dysart, laid out their high-level plans and approach, as well as their communications strategy (St. Bernard Parish, for instance, is teaming with Cox Cable to produce a local TV channel which will have updated emergency bulletins and announcements anytime a storm is approaching).
Each Parish had a common theme: any storm labeled a Category 3 or above is going to mean mandatory evacuation, for all residents. There is no bending on this, and there will be no local shelters offered. All residents must evacuate, regardless of pet issues, regardless of whether they have family and friend who are handicapped. Each will be providing bus transportation to those who need it, including those with physical handicaps. This was not the case leading up to Katrina.
I think this is good. Despite all the failed leadership and communication prior to Katrina, it doesn’t do any good now or going forward to sift through the ‘what if’ scenarios or the blame game. The people up there on the podium seem to know what they’re doing, as they should, and it appears their approach this time around is the correct one.
But then up stepped Mr. St. Amant. Tall, dark, and very serious looking (perhaps it was just the occasion), Mr. St. Amant is in charge of Emergency Preparedness for Plaquemines Parish, which sits just south of the Mississippi River and a bit east of downtown New Orleans. He is all Louisiana. Courteous and full of manners, he started by thanking the other Parish representatives for all their work and for what they shared. But then, just as quickly, and with all due respect, he politely disagreed with one assertion that each of them insinuated.
“The question we need to ask, that you (the media) need to ask is not if we’re ready,” Mr. St. Amant said in reference to he and his counterparts. “We need to ask the residents, ‘Are you ready’? Are the people ready? We’re doing our job, it’s our job to be ready. Are the people ready. You better have a plan with your family (on how and where to evacuate), you better be ready to respond.”
I just sat and watched and listened, as Mr. St. Amant continued his passionate plea.
“Most of these people are professionals (referring to the others up there with him). Mother nature has a sick sense of humor; she’ll hit you where you least expect it and hit you the hardest. We stay ready, we better. Anyone along the coast of Louisiana better stay ready.”
He concluded with: “Yes, we are ready. But I ask the people who we serve, “are you ready?”
I loved what he had to say, and how he said it. It impressed me infinitely more than any of the procedural jargon I heard from the prior speakers, and it topped all the technical detail I would end up hearing after he sat down from the Colonels representing the Army Corps of Engineers in regards to the current state of the levees in and around the city.
As the conference wound down, I stayed in my seat for a few extra minutes, still thinking about what he said. Then I thought back to my half hour or so earlier in the day in the front yard of the Sylvesters, about what they said and where their heads and thoughts are at, and all I could think to myself was, ‘Is this city ready for Hurricane Season?’ I don’t know.
