Reliving the Horrors of Katrina

It seems like the mainstream media have long forgotten New Orleans and the ongoing struggle of its residents to rebuild. Sandy Smith, a New Orleans tour guide, makes sure that visitors know exactly what happened to her beloved city during and after Hurricane Katrina.

When she showed our group of students and faculty from Valley College Hurricane Katrina's damage, she did not mince words when placing the blame for the extent of the tragedy. She warned us as we neared the hardest hit areas, "You'll find that I'm not kind to FEMA and the core of engineers here."

As she showed us what Katrina and the resulting floods did physically to the city, Smith, through her own story, also reminded us of the human tragedy that took place at the same time.

"There was no light whatsoever in the city [after the storm]. You could hear gunshots going off, people screaming and crying," she said. "Helicopters everywhere, you could hear them up in the sky, but you didn't know what was going on, where the water was."

Our tour took us from the crowded French Quarter where the storm's damage has long been repaired into what she warned us were "awful sections in the city" where entire communities had been wiped away.

Although she did evacuate to a hotel, which she described as "vertical evacuation," Smith stayed in the city during the hurricane and rode the storm out in the hotel's ballroom.

She was one of the tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents who lost their homes - the winds "ripped the roof off and collapsed one of the side walls" of the house she rented in the French Quarter.

Once the storm passed, Smith was safe, but completely unaware of what was really happening in the city.

"I found out my city was flooding Tuesday afternoon [the hurricane made landfall Monday, Aug. 29, 2005] at one o'clock when I physically saw water on Wall Street, she explained. "The reason was because we lost all communication with the outside world . . . We didn't know that those [flood] walls had broken down and that those other canals . . . we did not know that any of that had broken down. So, those people were literally sitting on top of their roof for a day and a night before I found out that anything had happened there."

Although I could not imagine how the survivors coped in the days after the storm, Smith's story gave me a strong idea.

"By Wednesday [two days after the storm made landfall], the water was definitely rising up. The stench in the city was awful. There was no food and water and people were heading towards the Convention Center at that point."

Approximately 20,000 people sought refuge from the rising flood waters at the New Orleans Convention Center alone. An additional 26,000 were staying in the Louisiana Superdome.

Trapped in the city with no supplies and no home, Sandy Smith had to survive for four days before the army finally flew supplies into the city the Friday after the storm. Unfortunately, they were so afraid of the desperate residents rushing the helicopter that they decided to drop the food and water from the sky. On impact, many of the water bottles burst open.

Despite the stories we heard on the news of rampant crime and looting after the storm, Smith highlighted the humanity of those she was trapped with.

"People thought we were going to act like animals. We didn't act like animals," she said. "When we got the water and food, . . . we gave it to the elderly first and the young children. I saw people take water, they hadn't had any water. They'd take one sip of water and literally go bathe faces with water, trying to revive people, especially young children."

Although some of her fellow New Orleaneans refused to come back after Katrina, Sandy Smith plans on staying in the city and helping to rebuild despite her experiences after the storm. "We are deeply rooted in our communities here and our whole history's here," Smith said. "I'm fourth generation here and I can't even imagine living anywhere else, I really can't."