I remember a fictitious movie in 2004 that appeared on FX called “Oil Storm” in which a fictional Hurricane Juliette struck the New Orleans, LA area on Labor Day Weekend 2005, destroying Port Fourchon, and setting off a fictional chain reaction of events that would change the United States’ dependency of oil and gasoline forever…
I remember thinking “That’s crazy, it’ll never happen”…
Then I remember the summer of 2005…
I remember a crazy start to the Hurricane season in 2005…
I remember Anderson Cooper nearly getting cut in half on live TV from a flying metal sign back in July…
I remember a lot of named storm early. I remember it was very unusual…
I remember thinking about the Oil Storm movie I had watched a year earlier, and began to wonder in mid-August was life beginning to imitate art…
Then in late August, Katrina formed as a Tropical Storm…
I remember that fictional Hurricane’s Juliette’s path in the fictional documentary…
I remember Katrina’s path starting to go roughly parallel to Juliette as it approached Florida…
I remember an E-Mail to the Tony Kornheiser radio show on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 as Katrina was about to make landfall just south of Miami say approximately the following, “You know it’s going to be a bad day when you turn on The Weather Channel and you see Jim Cantore doing a live remote from your front lawn”…
I remember Katrina actually strengthening as it moved over the southern tip of the Florida Peninsula from a Category 1 to a Category 2 Hurricane…
I remember a lot of flooding associated with Katrina and multiple deaths…
I remember thinking that was weird. Florida had been struck by 4 hurricanes the previous year, and I didn’t remember any significant loss of lives during any of those Hurricanes…
I remember as Friday night approached it was starting to become clear that New Orleans could be in the crosshairs of Katrina…
I remember Saturday morning, August 27th, 2005, when it became clear Katrina upgraded to a Category 3 Hurricane and was aiming for the Crescent City…
I remember talking to my parents that afternoon about Katrina as I was watching mass evacuations from New Orleans…
I remembered the story that my dad told about having gone to New Orleans 40 years earlier in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy…
I remember asking my dad about Betsy… The responses he gave about that storm did not give me much comfort…
I remember waking up the next morning to find Katrina had upgraded to a Category 5 hurricane and was a monster in size…
I remembered thinking New Orleans was about to die…
I remember thinking this was far worse than the “Oil Storm” scenario…
I remember telling someone I thought Gas prices would go to $4 a gallon after Katrina made landfall at church that Sunday morning before Katrina hit…
I remember watching Jim Cantore on TV that evening as he reported just north and east of New Orleans…
I remember he looked scared to death about Katrina and that he wanted no part of being anywhere near the Crescent City…
I remember turning on WWL Radio in New Orleans that night (870 on the AM dial) and hearing numerous tornado warnings and weather emergencies…
I remember wondering if New Orleans would survive until morning…
I remember watching news about the MTV Video Music Awards from Miami that Sunday night, where 3 days earlier Katrina had disrupted show prep…
I remember many of the MTV VMA presenters telling Katrina jokes like it was no big deal…
I remember that Monday Morning going to work wondering if we would be watching the death of New Orleans… and of Port Fourchon…
I remember watching Mobile, AL was experiencing major storm surge…
I remember initial reports seemed to suggest New Orleans had taken a beating but appeared to survive intact…
I remember breathing a premature sigh of relief…
I remember Tuesday morning when the scope of the disaster finally became all too clear…
I remember my heart sinking when I heard the levees were breaking…
I remember thinking not to panic, help would be coming soon…
I remember the scope of the disaster got worse and worse as the day grew on…
I remember wondering where the help was…
I remember wondering if people were still alive…
I remember that night into Wednesday morning the discussion was about whether we were witnessing a dying American city before our eyes…
I remember seeing the damage to the Superdome…
I remember hearing reports of suicide, rape, and murder in the Superdome…
I remember hearing the Dome was flooded in areas…
I remember wondering where was the help…
I remember wondering where was Gov. Blanco and Pres. Bush…
I remember reporters covering the suffering of the city… I remember people in anguish…
I remember the chopper rescues from rooftops…
I remember hearing roads out of New Orleans were destroyed…
I remember there was only one way out of New Orleans, and that it was littered with debris…
I remember on that Friday before Labor Day finally the National Guard arriving in New Orleans…
I remember thinking the tide was turning…
I remember not thinking once about the devastation in MS during that time…
I remember hearing initial death toll estimates of 10000 (thankfully never reached)…
I remember hearing about how Port Fourchon had survived Katrina…
I remember being unusually happy about hearing that…
I remember hearing about long gas lines, high gas prices, and pumps running dry in Atlanta on the Friday before Labor Day…
I remember Bush’s poor praise of FEMA director Michael Brown…
I remember people took Hurricanes a lot more seriously after Katrina…
I remember over caution about Hurricane Rita…
I remember how Hurricane Wilma surprised weather people with its track…
We all remember different things about Katrina, a storm that ultimately killed 1800 people and changed how we deal with future Hurricanes… This is but a small trip down Memory Lane… What do you remember?
