‘New Orleans is still crying’

I have never felt so small as I did when I first visited hurricane-ravaged New Orleans two months after Katrina. There were signs everywhere of the horror that played out when 80 percent of the city became submerged in water. Cars swept up in the floodwaters now rested upside down on building tops. Downed power lines crisscrossed mud-caked streets, and marooned boats and homes that had floated right off their foundations blocked intersections. Ripped-open roofs and spray-painted messages of desperation for help told stories of people fighting for survival.

After spending several months reporting in New Orleans, I adapted to this eerie landscape. It wasn’t until I later returned to my home in San Francisco that I realized how deep the impact was on me personally. The crowded downtown streets and intact buildings of my city’s skyline gave me a comfort I hadn’t noticed before. I was struck by the features of a functioning American city that most of us take for granted, from operating stoplights to trash pick-up and mail delivery, from phone service to cable TV. In my home, I surveyed family photos, treasures I’d collected through travels, the smallest personal belongings I’d never before stopped to think might define me, until I saw the faces of Katrina survivors whose every possession had been washed away.

There were many stages of grief and loss that I witnessed in the lives of three New Orleans families who agreed to give me a personal look at rebuilding from the worst natural disaster in American history. Their journeys reconciling lost homes, entire neighborhoods, jobs, schools and churches have been monumental. But as each family overcame the shock and anger of what happened to them, they did the only thing they could — begin again.

It wasn’t always easy for them to invite cameras into their most trying moments, but each expressed a duty to inform other Americans about what it was like to be at the center of this tragedy.

Searing experience shapes lives
“Let the people know that New Orleans is still crying,” firefighter Haden Brown told our crew. Brown, whose family lived in the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward, volunteered with the city’s search and recovery team responsible for finding victims’ remains. That mission, which is documented in “Rising From Ruin,” lasted nearly 10 months after the storm, bringing New Orleans’ death toll to 904 people.

“The Lord has allowed me to live through this,” says Brown, whose displaced family ended up on a cruise ship along with those of hundreds of other homeless emergency workers. “I will keep this experience with me through my whole life.”

Social worker Carol Emery said she hoped the story of her city would serve as a wake-up call to the nation. After her home flooded, she moved to Baton Rouge, where many of her other flooded-out family members also took shelter. After months of unsuccessfully navigating FEMA’s bureaucracy for a trailer, she and her husband, Thomas, decided to move back into the second floor of their flooded home. While they rebuild downstairs, they use their former office to cook meals in and their spare bathroom as the kitchen sink.

MSNBC DOCUMENTARIES ‘Rising From Ruin’ Documentary filmmaker Kelly Whalen and her crew spent most of the past year in New Orleans chronicling the city’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Her report, “Rising From Ruin,” hosted by NBC’s Lester Holt, airs Tuesday at 10 p.m. on MSNBC-TV.

“If this happened again, would the same thing happen or would they be better organized? I hope the next group of people that have to deal with a hurricane, earthquake, whatever it is, that our government is better prepared to assist them, because it didn’t happen for us,” Emery says. “What have I learned? You’ve got to have your own plan.”

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