TowerWeb Productions
The Alternative Library

Hurricane Katrina

"What's New" by JJ Collins
continued from Fall 2005 Home Page.

about your job, your spouse's job? How long you can impose on your friends? How quickly you can receive aid? Surviving the storm's effects but then being unable to flee afterwards because all your family and friends are on the other side of a gaping chasm created by both a lack of communication and the destruction of major bridges that once resided over the large bodies of water.

I was trapped for almost a week until 3:12 Saturday morning when I received one of the most important phone calls of my life. My cell phone managed to get a few tenuous bars of signal as my best friend in Baton Rouge who had been trying to call repeatedly somehow managed to get through. He told me he had power, water and food, and to come to Baton Rouge where I would be safe. I had filled my car's gas tank prior to the storm, but had been very conservative venturing out because it was unclear what areas were passable and what had and had not survived the storm. I knew gas was a rare commodity at that point, and I did not want to get stranded. I gathered some items together and made my way to Baton Rouge.

So much has happened to the Southern part of the country, and it will take a long time for us to recover. What I hope any observer or directly affected person learns from this is that if a disaster is coming and you are warned, take heed. It is not always the source of the disaster itself that creates problems. It is often all the things that accompany it. A week ago I heard a caller on the radio ask what the most dangerous part of a hurricane is. The DJ proceeded to explain that if you are far away from the eye of the storm, but a tornado decides to tear the roof off your home, then that is the most dangerous part. If you live in a city beneath sea level and the levees protecting your neighborhood break and your house floods, then that is the most dangerous part. If hurricane winds hurl a tree through a group of power lines and your business catches on fire in the middle of the storm's wind and driving rain, then that is the most dangerous part. The DJ summed up his response by saying, "What's the most dangerous part of a hurricane? Take a look at what's happened. I think it's pretty clear: All of it."