Watching Hurricane Katrina on TV
Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--Brenda's brother and his wife lived in Slidell.
When Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans, they came to Panama City, to
stay with Heap and Brenda.
Together, the four of them watched the coverage
of the storm on television.
Accurate information was slow to come in, because
of the damage, but they all feared the worst, given the location of the house, what
they knew about hurriances, and what they knew about Hurricane Katrina.
There
was no way to find out.
Phones were out, mail was out, news crews couldn't
get into the area, then their bank was closed, their utilities were out, clean-up
crews were swamped.
It was stressful for Gerald and Del, psychologically.
Heap and Brenda were practically codependent with them--as hosts for four months--during
the whole ordeal.
Finally, they got a FEMA trailer put up next to their flooded
house and moved back to Slidell.
* * *
Larry and Hazel, and Charley and his family, went to Texas, then came back
and roughed it, in their homes.
Heap didn't know what to expect when he and
Brenda drove over.
Larry said traffic lights were still out, stop signs were
down, there was broken glass in the streets, potholes, debris, drivers talking on
cell phones.
Back to normal.
* * *
About the only good thing that came out of Hurricane Katrina, as far as Heap
could see, was people could see, for the first time, close to home, what the Bush
Administration was really like.
The TV stations were showing live film, without
the producers checking with their bosses to see whether what they were showing jibed
with the talking points the White House wanted stressed.
Communications discipline
was non-existent.
There was cross-talk. Chatter. Competing voices. Reality.
It was a shock.