I’ll never forget those early days after Katrina and am increasingly reminded of them as we approach the 5th anniversary of the storm, which devastated both Mississippi and Louisiana including the New Orleans area, which for better or worse, got the majority of the news coverage post storm. One of those tuning in was a paralegal with the Dallas Texas office of a national law firm with whom I shared a common client. I contacted them in early September to reestablish communications on important business we had pending when the storm hit.
“How are you able to call us?” she inquired. The answer was easy as I replied, “On one of my firm’s cell phones.” Satisfied with the answer we then quickly tied up a few loose ends. She ended the conversation by telling me to, “hang tight, help was on the way.” She thought we were stranded on a roof top with flood waters all around us. The events in New Orleans, as shown around the clock on the news had already been implanted in her mind as the impact of Katrina everywhere, even on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The Katrina mix and match appears everywhere to this day. In the HBO series Treme for example, the introduction shows storm surge footage that was taken at the old Gulfport Holiday Inn that is roughly 70 miles or so from Treme but the allure of the waves was evidently too much for the HBO folks to pass up. I never spent too much time worrying about it because the fact is the issues laid bare by Katrina are mostly common to all that were impacted regardless of where we happened to live. Continue reading “No matter how you slice it Ol’ Girl deserves top billing. It is Katrina here at Slabbed, not the Hurricane formerly known as Katrina.”
