Not quite below the surface

Joe and I didn’t go down to the Gulf with the intention of writing an article about race. We didn’t go out of our way to ask questions about it when we initially arrived because we really didn’t think it was going to emerge as a focal point of our coverage.

But after no more than a day of talking to people on the coast, it really was impossible to escape the racial subtext to so much of the conversation about rebuilding. From Will Williamson, with his very clear references to welfare dependency, to Frahn Koerner and her frustration at city leaders for allowing accusations of racism to “stifle the discussion,” it was almost startling to hear so much discussion of a racial divide.

I want to be very clear: our article today isn’t a blanket accusation of racism across the Gulf region. Most of the folks quoted in the piece are extraordinarily well-meaning, and there’s a lot of goodwill on both sides. But it somehow gets muffled and distorted when you approach the issue of race. And because of the racial and economic geography of New Orleans, almost every issue takes on a racial component.

If there are any sociology students out there looking for a thesis, book your flight to the Big Easy.

- Eric

Covering the big city

In past coverage of Katrina and its aftermath, the DTH hasn’t ventured into New Orleans. In part, that’s because the city was largely off-limits when we made our first trip to the Gulf just days after the storm. And in part, it’s because New Orleans is an intimidating story to report. There’s an overwhelming amount of information to convey, and every person you meet has an incredibly interesting story to tell.

But Joe and I both visited the city within the past year, and both came away with the conviction that we needed to write about it. Mississippi is a fascinating story, and one that has been largely neglected in the last two years. But no discussion of Katrina is truly relevant without New Orleans.

Given the continued urgency of the situation, it’s bizarre to see that there’s very little media attention being given to the two-year anniversary. There has been periodic coverage in major newspapers, with the NYTimes devoting significant real estate to articles focused on levees, hospitals or the tourism industry. But nothing of note on the actual anniversary of the storm.

There has also been strikingly little coverage of individuals. In a place that has not seen a boring day in the last two years, that’s a shame. Take a look at Joe’s profile of Hassan Awad in today’s DTH to understand why.

 - Eric

A snapshot of the Brookses

Back in 2005, about a week after Katrina turned Waveland into a giant debris field, photographer Brandon Smith met one of the Brookses’ four sons. At the time, Brennan Brooks was a little tipsy. And he had scantily clad young women tucked under each arm as he wandered around the destroyed town, coping with the post-storm daze in his own distinctive way. He led us back to the Brooks family home, and that was the auspicious start to one of the most rewarding friendships to come out of the DTH’s ongoing coverage in Mississippi.

The sheer energy that this family has brought to bear in the aftermath of the storm is impossible to capture in print. I hope you’ll take the time to watch Judi Brooks’ video on our multimedia site, so you can get just a glimmer of what it takes to recover so rapidly from something so overwhelming. Tommy and Judi have a demeanor that makes you feel like they’re old family friends, like you’ve lived down the street from them for ages. They joke freely in front of guests. “We’re getting divorced as soon as all of this is over,” Tommy deadpanned while standing in the kitchen. “We’re just waiting ‘til all the boys are gone, because I don’t want to pay child support.” Judi laughed and took a swipe at his arm.

Katrina marked the third time that Tommy Brooks has been wiped out. He lost everything in Camille in 1969, and filed for bankruptcy in 1995 after his youngest son Brett became gravely ill. Now, with Brett finishing up his senior of high school and the family home undergoing an impressive renovation, Tommy took a moment to look back. “It’s a good feeling,” he said, wiping sweat away from his forehead while surveying his backyard. “It’s all coming back together.”

Judi said that you’re choices in coping with the storm are to laugh, cry or curse. Her family has done a lot of each, but its been mostly laughter. And when you think about the scene they were facing two years ago, that’s simply amazing. I can’t wait to see them again.

- Eric

The Blissetts

Chris Blissett was among a group of a half dozen dock workers who were placing planks along the Bay St. Louis beachfront. We stopped to ask them about their efforts to rebuild, the steadiness of their work and how each of their homes fared in the storm. “I’ve got the FEMA trailer park,” Chris told us about his front yard, where he and his extended family live in three trailers. We asked to pay a visit, and told him we’d drop by a couple days later.

Work for Chris is going well. He says they can’t build the docks fast enough. But things aren’t going quite as well for wife Crystal, who was about to tidy up her trailer when Eric, Beth and I stopped by. I couldn’t imagine living for any extended period of time in there, let alone with a young family. She told us that Chris is happy so long as the place is cleaned and dinner is ready when he gets home. That seemed like quite a challenge, as nine-month-old Colten threw oranges across the room and happily tried to wreak havoc on anything he could grasp.

Crystal knows they need more space with another baby on the way, and she is trying to move the family about an hour north, but Chris can’t imagine leaving a steady income behind. But all you had to do was look around the FEMA trailer to believe Crystal when she said she had no idea how they could survive in there with another newborn.

How Frank and Susan found us

We met Frank and Susan Underwood, the subject of today’s profile on Hurricane Katrina-impacted residents, completely by chance. Seeking a place for free wireless Internet and caffeine, Eric, Beth and I made ourselves regulars at Bay St. Louis’s Mockingbird Café, which also is Frank and Susan’s favorite hangout.

While waiting in line Tuesday night, Frank grabbed Beth’s Daily Tar Heel press pass, and Susan starting singing, “I’m a Tar Heel born …” It turned out they both are from North Carolina. Susan went to UNC-G, but is a UNC fan at heart, and Frank said, “I didn’t go to college, I went to ECU.” They weren’t too keen on being the subject of a story, but we convinced them that having their photos run in the newspaper of their favorite school would be worth it.

We went the next day to their home, one of only a handful in their neighborhood that has returned. Susan was so excited to see us that she wore a Carolina blue feather boa and UNC Mardi Gras beads. Though they lost almost everything in the storm, Susan, an avid snowman collector, just seemed happy that her Tar Heel figure survived.

During our two-hour visit, the Underwoods played a PowerPoint presentation showing their lives from rubble to rebuilding, which you can view on our Eyes of the Storm multimedia project. It struck me that they were able to laugh about the fact that they bought their home only three weeks before it was washed away to the basic structure. “We wanted to move to the beach, and we got the beach all right,” Susan said. Later in the week, we ran into them at the Mockingbird again. Soon they had the house band playing “Carolina on my Mind.”

Impressions of the coast

I still remember cresting the railroad tracks in Waveland for the first time just days after the storm, and being utterly dumbfounded at the violence that was wrought on the streets near the water. This wasn’t simply a community of beach cottages and vacation condos, but the kind of brick and mortar houses you might see in any town in America. Katrina had shattered them, and left hulking piles of debris nestled against the railroad tracks and tangled in stands of trees.

So looking at it now, on my fifth trip, the overgrown, empty lots almost seem like progress. After all, there are no puddles of fetid water, no giant patches of muddy earth where bulldozers have been working to clear debris. I looked at the handful of houses that have been rebuilt and felt a little impressed with the progress.

But Joe and Beth, visiting this landscape for the first time, felt shocked. They didn’t see the few new homes and think about progress; they saw the gaping holes where hundreds of other homes should have been, and thought about stagnation. Their reactions reminded me of the stark difference between what people expect the Gulf Coast to look like at the two-year mark, and the reality of what’s actually there.

It’s true that the coast has come a long way, and a tremendous number of flooded homes have been cleaned out and made livable again. But the coast is not back in any sort of complete sense, and in some cases it remains unclear whether it ever will be. In writing this series, we have tried to walk a fine line between being overly bleak — there is great hope among Gulf Coast residents, after all — and too sanguine.

This isn’t an anniversary story; it’s ongoing coverage of an event that is still unfolding. Thank you for staying interested, and we look forward to hearing from you.