Hurricane Season in New Orleans
Hurricane season is a very strange time in New Orleans. Before Hurricane Katrina, we were an almost arrogant people, ones who defied the hurricane Gods to blow our way. In just the year before Katrina, we watched as Hurricane Ivan turned at the gates and headed toward Mississippi.
Now, we are a panicky people. Every strong gust of wind that blows in the ocean is greeted with a watchful eye. For six months out of the year, we go from being firemen, lawyers and accountants to padding our resumes with “amateur meteorologist”. A trip to Burget King is more likely to yield advice on high pressure systems and prevailing currents than it is ketchup packets.
It’s a strange ritual in the “New” New Orleans. We sit around, anxiously waiting for updates from the National Hurricane Center, making note of even the slightest shift in tracking or forecasting. If the forecast doesn’t reach land, we trace the line with our finger, trying to see by hand what billion-dollar computers can’t, the future.
It is an exercise in futility and we know it. For one, the hurricanes never stay on their track. Katrina, for example, overshot its original estimations by at least a time zone. Second, even if the storm did follow its “predestined” track, there would be nothing we could do about it.
But it is that futility that makes us weep. We are playing a reverse lottery, hoping that our fragile city is not blown away. We can do nothing, so we gas up our cars, buy some plywood and make plans to evacuate.
Other than that, all we do is talk, we talk about the levees, we talk about our plans, we talk about everything. We’re strange that way. We won’t tell a stranger our age but are ready at the drop of a hat to bear our deepest fears and weakest moments when it comes to hurricanes. However, that is because it is a shared experience, something that connects us all.
In a strange way, this is cathartic for us in the city. New Orleans, even three years after its disaster, is still a divided city. racial and class tensions, healed so well after the insanity that followed Katrina died down, were wounds reopened shortly thereafter. We were a people who came together in the weeks after, only to be split apart by leadership blunders and a handful of opportunists.
Indeed, these problems have continued to get worse as crime and fear have driven the new wedges in deeper. But those wedges heal quickly when we are under threat. For we are always united in two things, our fear of nature and our love for the city.
So no matter what happens with Gustav, whether it comes for us or veers away, strengthens or dissipates, we New Orleanians will follow our ritual. Tracing lines on tracking maps, second-guessing mother nature and praying for the best.
We are a breed of survivors but that doesn’t mean that we are not scared nor does it mean we don’t need or lean on one another.
We are frightened right now, make no mistake, but we are also unified. We are one. It is the people of this city that have brought it back and it is the people that will keep it strong, even in the face of potential disaster.
In the meantime, all we can do is watch… and wait…
