Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, Dan's Trip

After considerable urging I am publishing the log from my trip to Louisiana and Mississippi. I also have put together a power point presentation of this trip. It is a very large file. I hope this give those of us who are living a 'normal' lives an appreciation for what we have and some reflection on what we can do to help others.

Trip to Louisiana
This is my best recolection of our trip to Louisiana and Mississippi. I felt compelled to travel down shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit eastern Louisiana, Mississippi and Parts of Alabama. I felt that the people of these areas needed our help in some small way. For those of you who don't know me, I have been a fire fighter for over twenty years. I wanted desperately to help in some way. I have family in the New Orleans area. They were all accounted for but unfortunately, they lost their homes. My first idea was to raise money for Katrina victims. We did a “fill the boot” type promotion which raised over $27,000. I donated that money to the Red Cross. We raised about another $3,000 at the fire stations. My friend Phill Queen thought of the idea of us going and helping out the firefighters who had lost everything. The “Wal-Mart cards for Firefighters” promotion that I thought up turned out to work well. I suggested that people give Walmart cards; I would in-turn purchase clothing items for rescue workers with the proceeds. In a lot of areas to which we went Wal-Mart was one of the only stores open.

Saturday, September 17, 2005
My friend Phill Queen and I left Reno on Saturday morning, bound for Houston. Our bags were packed with minimal supplies. Our baggage limits were maximized with t- shirts and fire department caps that we had brought to give away. The flight was uneventful. Upon landing we boarded a bus and picked up a rental car. We drove to my “summer home” south of Lake Charles, Louisiana. We arrived at the house at 11 PM only to find that the door had been locked in a way that prevented us from opening it. I made a quick phone call to my mother-in-law; she put us up at her place, about 30 minutes away.

Sunday
Phill and I made entry to my house with the help of a crowbar. The temperature was in the high nineties with high humidity. Before the trip Phill had had 100 fire department t-shirts made up to go with the many donated fire department t-shirts that we had packed in our bags. We purchased a variety of socks, shorts, toothbrushes, deodorant, soap, etc. at Sam’s Club, for the now homeless firefighters of Katrina. We repaired the air conditioner in my truck (it was very hot out) and stayed the night.

Monday
As we were leaving southwest Louisiana we drove by burton Coliseum, where some of the Katrina victims were housed. Busses in the picture were about to relocate the remaining guests to another shelter.

We drove about four hours to eastern Louisiana.

We picked up the t-shirts that had been shipped to us at the Farrera Fire Equipment Company in Holden, Louisiana.

We drove another hour to the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge near McComb and Slidell, Louisiana. We met with my friend and co-workerTom Dunn, who set us up with a place to stay in the Fish and Wildlife Office.

That night we met with local firefighters who had lost their homes and belongings to Hurricane Katrina. We pulled up our little pick-up and started giving them whatever we had brought, that they wanted.

Tuesday
We traveled the roads of eastern Louisiana and south Mississippi. The devastation that we observed was impressive. There were downed trees, groves of them. They were mostly 70 to 100 foot pine trees. We were in mostly wooded areas. Trees were down around most homes. Many of the homes were hit and damaged. You could see where people had been sawing the trees with chainsaws. This was hazardous duty as the medical system was not up to running at this time. In the town of Kiln, Mississippi we came to a surreal sight. A firehouse that had undergone the fury of the storm. There was junk everywhere. The firehouse was a mass of damaged steel. The floor of the station had been made into a makeshift (donated) clothing area. There was several feet of piled up clothing. Yet there was a firefighter on the edge doing laundry….on generator power. One of the firefighters had told us how had spent the night of the storm in a tree.

That must have been an experience! We offered up our clothing items to the firefighters and visited the surrounding area.

We talked with a neighbor who had spent the storm in his attic.

When he had thought that he, his wife and neighbor were done for, along floated a boat. This was not just any boat. It was his old boat that he had sold a while back. They grabbed on, jumped in and spent the night of the storm hanging onto a vent pipe at the top of the house.

Wednesday
Phill and I drove to Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Mississippi. The sight was incredible. Miles and miles of shoreline and homes were just gone. Where there were homes they were all badly damaged. There were the remains of homes where everywhere……all over the ground. We were about three weeks after the storm. The streets were mostly passable. We stopped by several firehouses which had been destroyed. All that was noticeable in one was its checkered floor. A group of Virginia firefighters were there, taking calls, and cleaning things up.We found the main firehouse at Bay Saint Louis. It was completely surrounded by badly damaged homes. There was a food line across the street. If you were hungry you just got in line. You ate what they fed you…no questions and no complaints. This was not gourmet food…it was just food. There were several soldiers in line.We talked with the firefighters. They told us that 3 out of 4 had lost their homes. We took them to out “supplies” and told them to help themselves. Many items were snapped up. The caps were a big hit.

Thursday
On Thursday evening I received a phone call telling me that another hurricane was heading for Louisiana…..southwest Louisiana. I didn’t think too much of it as many hurricanes had passed through the area. The last that I had heard was that this one, now named Rita, would hit south Texas.Thursday On Thursday morning I checked with Tom. He showed me the latest storm track and Hurricane Rita was heading for the Texas/Louisiana border. This put my place either in or directly to the right side of the eye of the storm. This is the worst place to have a hurricane hit. This was not good. In fact things were really starting to look bad. Phill and I hit the road. We stopped at out supply drop-off. Nothing more had come in. We were heading for Lake Charles. Traffic was fairly heavy heading across I-10 across Louisiana. We arrived back at my little farm late in the afternoon. We tried to formulate a plan. I found it difficult as this time it was my place that was now the target. A few years back Hurricane Lili had passed through the area. During that storm we were on the left side of the eye (the “good side”). The water during that storm had risen to the level of my back walkway. I thought that with this storm the water level would rise maybe a foot or two higher than that. This should keep it out of the house.

Friday
We moved the TV, Stereo, and a few clothing items upstairs. We borrowed a trailer from our friend Lisa and loaded up the trailer with the tractor and lawn mower. The wind had already started to blow. We left, expecting to return in a few days.We drove LA highway 14 through Holmwood, Hays, and Lake Arthur. Lake Arthur is a beautiful lakeside town near the coast. At Lake Arthur we stopped by the boardwalk to see folks being loaded onto a bus. This was the town’s evacuation plan being implemented. They were loading a school bus with folks who had no other means of transportation.We headed north through Rayne, “The Frog Capitol of the World” and up to my cousin Geno Richard’s rice farm, in Branch. We parked in an open field (away from trees) and camped in the house.

Saturday and Sunday
We stayed at Geno’s for the two nights. We lost power early into the first night. A generator was borrowed and we had set out a few fans, to keep “cool”. Actually, it never cooled down. During the storm the winds were near 100 miles per hour while the temperature lowered to about 85 with the ever-present high humidity.There was very little news out of the Lake Charles area. Everything on the radio was local; no regional news; no national news. Many of the radio and TV stations were knocked off the air.

On Sunday morning we decided to head back. We left the trailer because we had heard that most of the towns were heavily damaged. Curfews were in place everywhere.We drove on LA hwy 90 to avoid any roadblocks. We switched to hwy 14 as we got closer to Cameron. At one point we ran into a roadblock of Cameron Sheriff’s Officers who were very confused as to how we (two westerners) had got there. They sent us on our way. We found Lincoln Road and headed for my little farm on Black Bayou. As we approached Big Lake Road things really started to look bad. The road was choked with “Swamp Grass”, a sort of tall bamboo like grass. There was a bunch of junk on the road also….it turned to be the remains of the settlement of Deatonville. There were nails sticking out of much of the wood. Phill and I got out of the truck and donned our knee high rubber boots. We walked past the dead horse that lay in the road and headed for the pontoon bridge. It stank. We got to the edge of the bridge only to find it impassable.

I stood on its edge and could see my house.

This was not right…..the house could not be seen from the road. Something was wrong. I felt sick. A Blackhawk helicopter approach and circled us. We waved to let the pilot know that we were O.K. He flew off.

We headed back to “mama’s” house. On the way we had to turn around because some tall steel (power) line towers had fallen across the road, totally blocking it. I knew of a side road and we got around the road closure. Twenty years of “vacationing” in the area paid off. We stayed at my mother-in-law’s that night.

Monday
It was time to sort things out. The first order of business on was to find a chain saw and hopefully a generator. The storm had knocked out all of the power in the region. There was a freezer full of food at “mama’s” that we couldn’t let spoil, if possible. 95% of the food in people’s refrigerators and freezers spoiled. It created a health hazard. Phill and I drove around town. It was almost vacant. Power lines and poles were down everywhere!

Because of the people using generators (and back-feeding the power grid), many of the lines were energized. You were constantly driving over power lines. All of the power poles that were not down were bent. We made our way to the rumored Sam’s club grand opening. It was not just a rumor. We waited in line for close to an hour. We talked to people in line. The stories were all to be remembered.Power was out in the entire town. There was no air conditioning, except when you were in a car or truck. As with hurricane Katrina, the banking system had failed. You could not buy anything with checks or debit cards. Using a credit card was a hit and miss proposition. Cash was the only reliable form of trade. There were only a couple of gas stations opened. Lines stretched around the block. You might have to wait all day to fill your tank.When we entered Sam’s the shelves were mostly stocked. It was obvious that they had opened a few days earlier than anticipated. But Sam’s was one of only a handful of stores that was open in this town of 70,000. They had chain saws and generators. I bought one of each, along with a bunch of heavy duty extension cords.We returned to our new home and got set up. We stretched extension cords thought the house we plugged in the fridge and freezer, the fan and the TV. At least we saved the food and had could watch the news.We made another attempt to access my house. Still no luck. All I could do is look and wonder why things looked the way that they did…all wrong.We arrived back at the house to find that the whole family had returned. That night there were eight people and three dogs sleeping in one room, with one fan for air circulation.

Tuesday
We made yet another attempt to access my little farm house. Phill and I talked our friend Carolyn’s nephew Marcus into taking us into the area by boat.

We launched at the Calcasieu Boat launch and motored through the Black Bayou ship lock. There were dozens of dead cows near the boat launch. The stink was to be remembered.

We got through the lock but we couldn’t get past the bridge; the waters were just too high.

We next tried to motor over to near Fred’s, our local watering hole. We got to Fred’s and found that Hwy 384 “Big Lake Road” was under four inches of water and was acting as a spillway for the Intercoastal Waterway.

We tugged and pushed the boat across the highway. We were in Black Bayou and motored over to within five hundred feet of the house. But now the water was just low enough to where we couldn’t get close. The marsh was partially under water (and full of angry water moccasins). On my street, “Reon Road” the water was too deep to pass wearing knee waders. A stick was added to repell the angry snakes in the vacinity. The smell in the area was disgusting.

A dead sheep guarded the end of Reon. There were dead animals everywhere, deer, sheep, cows, horses, armadillos, opossums, raccoons, nutria, etc. It was estimated that there were over 15,000 dead cows in the area.Marcus motored his boat down to Deatonville to check on my friend Ron Granger’s house. Ron lost a house, a mobile home and several semi-trailers. The lower story to his elevated house was gone, including his main staircase. I called Ron on the cell phone. He urged me on. I climbed up what was left of his spiral staircase and entered his upstairs. The bottom of Ron’s second floor is fourteen feet above ground level.

I entered his back door and found his second story entirely intact. Only a cup of water had blown in through a window sill. I grabbed three warm beers from his fridge and took them downstairs. We drank them before leaving for the launch.

Wednesday
Phill and I drove back to Holden to make a supply pick-up. It was three and a half hours in each direction. We stopped by Branch on the way back and picked up the tractor. We once again slipped into Lake Charles.

Thursday
I drove Phill back to Houston to catch his plane. We left at 4 in the morning. There was no power between Houston and Lafayette. That’s over 200 miles of coastline with no power. It was still hot (very hot) and sticky. I returned to Lake Charles and made another attempt to get down to the Cameron area. I made it as far as the Cameron Prairie Management office. There I found just about every fire engine that belonged in Cameron Parish. They were all parked along the road; they no longer had stations to be parked in. The towns of Cameron, Creole, Holly Beach, and many more had been destroyed. Holly Beach only had a water tower to distinguish where the town had been. As I walked up to the Refuge the heat was getting to me. It was about 95 degrees out, with high humidity. This created a “heat index” near 110. One important step in staying well in this climate was to hydrate at every opportunity.

There were two Army Blackhawk helicopters landing at the time. I grabbed a bottled water from a pallet, opened it and went to sit.

I looked over and saw that the fellow sitting down next to me was General Russell Honore. General Honore was put in charge of the Katrina relief efforts by the President. Now he was in charge of Rita also. The General was having his Colonel’s order up troops and supplies for the now homeless population of Cameron Parish. This was good to see as up to this point there no visible outside help in the area. I met with the Sheriff of Cameron Parish. This was a very important contact to have for someone who is exposed as an outsider every time he opens his mouth! I made contact with one of the Parish’s Assistant Fire Chief’s. I told him of the things that we had been buying for other firefighters. He was more than happy to have me do some shopping for Cameron Firefighters.Friday Friday morning came and I heard that the Black Bayou Bridge was to be opened from 7 AM until 10AM. I was at the crossing at 7AM; the bridge opened to auto traffic at 7:30. It was to close at 10AM for the day. The bridge mechanism gave to the water during the storm. The bridge was being moved by a tug boat. It will be repaired over the next few months. The idea of being on an island with the heat, humidity, little food, and poisonous snakes for 23 hours did not excite me.There was a dead sheep decaying at the entrance of my road. There was nothing that I could do for it. It stunk. There were an estimated fifteen thousand dead cows in the area. Maybe the stench will keep the looters away.

I took my little tractor off of the trailer and pushed my way through the muck towards my place. It took about ten minutes to make it to the front gate. There were remnants of houses everywhere.

There were lots of boards with nails sticking out. This was not a good place for tires.My yard was rather clean. The trees had filtered all of the debris out on its way up from Cameron and Deatonville.

The house was another story. I found that it had moved sideways and back on it’s foundation, that there had been over four feet of water in the house, over six feet in my shop, and that there was now two inches of mud everywhere in the house.

My shop had only half its roof intact. The insides looked as if a washing machine had tumbled everything about. The water had been over my head in this area. I found a dead water moccasin in the shop area. As close as I was to it, I was glad to see that it had its tail caught and had drown. It was within striking distance. I don’t believe in disturbing nature’s system by killing animals that I can’t eat. But at this distance, it was much better to find this pit viper dead!

Time was running short and I had to leave. As I was packing up I ran into a fire engine from the Cajun Country V.F.D. I gave them a dozen t-shirts, some socks and shorts and went back to town. I went shopping at Sam’s and headed to Cameron parish. I arrived in Cameron just in time to watch the sun set. I tried (unsuccessfully) this evening to meet up with the volunteers to hand over clothing items. It was late. It was getting close to curfew. I needed to get back to my temporary housing near Iowa.I drove towards Iowa. I tried to stay to the most remote road that I could find. I dodged the power lines that were down and crossing the road. I came upon a small convoy of vehicles, three police escorts and one army vehicle. Unfortunately for me…..the last police car hung a U-turn and turned its lights on me (Uh-Oh!)I was on a remote road and out after the designated curfew. Violators are being rounded up and taken for a long stay at the county jail. I could have stayed where I was and slept in the truck. I had taken a gamble and it looked as if I had lost. I exited my vehicle and stood by the driver’s door. Before the officer appeared the ever present swarm of mosquitoes arrived. They bit the dickens out of me.I talked to the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Officer. I explained my “mission”. Fortunately, he understood how I ended up out after the witching hour. I was issued a pass so that I could drive the three remaining miles back to my temporary quarters.

Saturday and Sunday
On Saturday I spent most of the day at my now wrecked home. The bridge was opened for auto traffic from 8 to 9 AM and 3 to 5 PM. I pushed several inches of smelly marsh mud out of the “great room”. All of the furniture was waterlogged and too heavy for me to move by myself. It was hot and humid. I pushed gallons and gallons of mud from the house and then sat on my front porch for a while. It was totally peaceful. I took a drink of water that I had carried in. I sat in a mud covered chair on the porch. As I gazed on my yard I saw lots of critters moving through the yard.

There was a flock of Rosette Spoonbills eating bugs near my pond. Spoonbills are the most beautiful pink color, much like flamingos. There were lots of slithering creatures as well, Water Moccasins. They almost floated upon the surface of the water as they swam. I thought to myself, it wouldn’t be very good to be bit by one of them. I was alone, on an “island”, without a way to get help, without any way to leave in a hurry and my place was surrounded by snakes. I thought that I ought to be very careful until the bridge opens again. After more mud pushing it was time to get on my little tractor and leave. I snapped a few last pictures and headed the ¼ mile to the main road. My entrance was choked with trees. As I maneuvered over them the tractor slipped sideways and into a ditch full of water. I was stuck. I got out about an hour later with the help of a helpful neighbor.

Monday
I traveled back to the Cameron Wildlife Headquarters. I wanted to collect some telephone numbers for future contacts. As I entered the main office I encountered five people in a make-shift command post. There were two firefighters from a southern California fire department, two army officers and one local communications officer. They told me that they were trying to get the start of the Incident Command System up and running. I was out of time. It was time to drive back to Iowa, load my stuff and head for the airport in Houston. What’s next? In mid October I held another fund raiser for the emergency workers of Hurricane Rita. With the able bodied help of the young men and women of the Northern Nevada Fire Academy and Reno Firefighters we raised app. $15,000. At the end of October, I returned to the Lake Charles / Cameron area. My plan was two-fold. First, was to help the emergency workers of this already forgotten corner on Louisiana.

Secondly, I made an attempt to start the clean up from my own loss.

Will I rebuild....you bet you!