Big Easy evacuees can only watch, wait and wonder
By JEREMY CAMPBELL

September 12, 2005

Two weeks have passed since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and there's nothing I'd like more than to be back home in New Orleans trading evacuation survival stories with friends over a big pot of gumbo. That's how we usually handle hurricanes in Louisiana. But with a mandatory evacuation still in effect, any resemblance of "usual life" is worlds away.

If home is where the heart is, these days New Orleanians' hearts are loyal to CNN. Locals are used to national media coverage of events that welcome the nation to our city like Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl and JazzFest. We're used to worldwide headlines about New Orleans, but not due to tragedy.

Watching the coverage teaches locals the meaning of surreal with firsthand reality. Everything is recognizable, but, in ruin, it doesn't feel like the same place that we love. We see the devastation in our neighborhoods and worry about our neighbors, none of whom is reachable by phone. No one is.

As reports come in, we wonder about friends. And we wonder about the people we don't even really know, like the lady at the grocery store who always had an extra coupon to share, the guy at the gas station on the way to work and the girl behind the counter at the gym. It's daunting to realize that everyone you knew - and everyone those people knew - are all displaced from their homes, their lives put on hold indefinitely.

Tales from friends who didn't evacuate gradually arrive. These stories are even more horrific than what is reported in the papers. A week after the storm hit, one of my co-workers called from an evacuation site at Louis Armstrong Airport. He stayed behind to help care for a group of seniors in a tiny apartment building that had broken windows from the storm's winds.

His Garden District neighborhood had been converted into a war zone with military choppers roaring overhead and gunfire blasting at night. He waited for help each night, covered in a darkness so deep he couldn't even see who was trying to get through the gate just outside his front door.

The only thing worse than hearing reports of dead bodies on the sidewalk must be actually seeing those bodies - seeing those neighbors who died waiting for help that came too late.

The dramatics of "essential, live, up-to-the-minute" coverage showcase television's most valuable resource: showing destruction live as is happens. When one journalist said, "I don't know why help isn't here. I made it here," we understood there was a bigger picture in the delay of the relief effort.

Dissecting what went wrong will be debated for months, but eight days after the storm, a string of fires engulfed the city. One New Orleans couple watched their neighborhood burn from hundreds of miles away.

Starbuck and Lori Laney, the husband and wife team behind the New Orleans-inspired designs of Metro Three, had two causes for worry when fire broke out near Magazine and Josephine streets. Both their home and their livelihood sat in the path of the blaze, and from television reports they couldn't make out which was more at risk.

Citizen journalists posted scattered facts online that the couple used to plot the fire closer and closer to their home. Through frantic Internet searches, they learned good news and bad news. The blaze was moving away from their store, but the fire had consumed the homes next door to theirs.

The Laneys continued searching the net, flipping between television news broadcasts and e-mailing friends who had evacuated from their neighborhood. They were looking for more information, but what they really wanted was hope that maybe they could salvage the things there was no time to evacuate like family photos and keepsakes from when they met.

All New Orleanians are frantically searching for breaking news just like the Laneys. As destruction becomes evident, evacuees share a craving for instant facts. We become information addicts from our evacuated safety, desperately seeking just one more update about our city.

Two weeks have passed since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and instead of gathering with friends to eat gumbo and share survival stories, New Orleanians are still watching the headlines and waiting for the good news that we can return, rebuild and relive our lives in the city we love.