Having lived between Houston and Galveston for 6 years before heading east for college, hurricane season has special meaning for me. My parents still live in the area. So as Gustav churns his way through the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico, I watch with extreme interest the weather forecasts on TV. It has been 3 years since Katrina was etched into our psyche but the images can still be recalled at a moments prompting. Before Katrina, my father never considered evacuating for a hurricane. Heck, he rarely even bothered to board up the windows. Our first summer living in Friendswood, TX, we took a direct hit from Alicia but nothing major happened to our house. When I was a freshman in college my parents called to ask me what I wanted them to put up because of the hurricane. Now I was at school in the mountains of Vermont. I didn’t have a TV and to say that I was isolated and a bit insulated from the outside world would be an understatement. So when I heard that the judge in the next county over from my parents was requiring everyone who didn’t evacuate to get fingerprinted so the bodies could be identified, I freaked because my parents weren’t evacuating.
Katrina changed all that. My parents left early when Rita was coming in. They did not get stuck in the horrendous parking lot that I-45 became.
So as the third anniversary of Katrina (and Rita) rolls around and yet another major hurricane is poised in the Gulf trying to decide where between Pensacola, FL and Port Lavaca, TX it wants to make misery, I want to offer some up some recommended titles about Katrina, hurricanes, and survival in general.
Desert Bayou (DVD)
In the wake of one of the worst natural and humanitarian disasters ever to hit American shores, nearly 600 African-Americans were airlifted to the almost entirely white state of Utah. This DVD examines whether two cultures can come together in a time of utter chaos, or whether their differences prove too great a challenge to overcome. In their own words, evacuees of Hurricane Katrina tell how they survived the storm of the century and, out of the rubble, ended up at a military installation in the Utah deserts.
Not Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans by Troy Snow and the Best Friends Animal Society
Not Left Behind is the story of how Best Friends Animal Society rescued thousands of pets from the storm-ravaged, flooded streets of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The story is told through the images of Best Friends photographer Troy Snow and the words of five Best Friends rescuers, frontline troops representing thousands of volunteers across the country who helped save lives and reunite families.
No Ordinary Heroes: 8 Doctors, 30 Nurses, 7000 Prisoners and a Category 5 Storm By Demaree Inglese and Diana Gallagher
Dr. Inglese was one of many New Orleans residents convinced that approaching Hurricane Katrina would pass with minimal impact. The next few days’ events proved how mistaken they were, as Dr. Inglese, medical director of the city jail, leads his staff through a crisis of deadly proportions.
1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina By Chris Rose
1 Dead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Celebrated as a local treasure and heaped with national praise, Rose provides a rollercoaster ride of observation, commentary, emotion, tragedy, and even humor-in a way that only he could find in a devastated wasteland. They are stories of the dead and the living, stories of survivors and believers, stories of hope and despair.
1 Dead in Attic freeze-frames New Orleans, caught between an old era and a new, during its most desperate time, as it struggles out of the floodwaters and wills itself back to life.
The Great Deluge By Douglas Brinkley
Brinkley has produced a popular history of the devastating 2005 hurricane and its horrifying aftermath. He weaves together accounts of the incompetent negligence of far too many government officials with portraits of the heroism displayed by hundreds of ordinary people in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast. The narrative is based on newspaper accounts and hundreds of interviews conducted by Brinkley.
The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina: The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist By Ivor Van Heerden
The Storm is the ultimate inside story of the Katrina tragedy. Van Heerden knows why the levees failed to protect New Orleans. He knows why the abused wetlands surrounding the city could not protect the levees. He knew how many people would be unwilling - or unable - to evacuate and how many homes were likely to be destroyed. And he has seen politics trump science as officials at virtually all levels failed to plan for this completely predictable situation. He now unites this understanding with his firsthand, behind-the-scenes reporting, including the state’s official investigation into the levee failures, which he led.
Storm World : Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle over Global Warming By Chris Mooney
One of the leading science journalists and commentators working today, Chris Mooney delves into a red-hot debate in meteorology: whether global warming is increasing the ferocity of hurricanes. In the wake of Katrina, Mooney follows the careers of leading scientists on either side of the argument through the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, tracing how the media, special interests, politics, and the weather itself have skewed and amplified what was already a fraught scientific dispute.
In the summer of 1969, three regions of the rural South were devastated by Hurricane Camille. In this accessible account, Zebrowski and Howard tell the stories of Camille’s victims and survivors. They also discuss the disproportionate impact of natural disasters on poor communities and offer a brief analysis of the government response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes by Kerry Emanuel
Imagine standing at the center of a Roman coliseum that is 20 miles across with walls that soar 10 miles into the sky, towering walls with cascades of ice crystals falling along its brilliantly white surface. That’s what it’s like to stand in the eye of a hurricane. In Divine Wind, Kerry Emanuel, one of the world’s leading authorities on hurricanes, gives us an engaging account of these awe-inspiring meteorological events, revealing how hurricanes and typhoons have literally altered human history, thwarting military incursions and changing the course of explorations.
Not Left Behind is the story of how Best Friends Animal Society rescued thousands of pets from the storm-ravaged, flooded streets of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The story is told through the images of Best Friends photographer Troy Snow and the words of five Best Friends rescuers, frontline troops representing thousands of volunteers across the country who helped save lives and reunite families.
