I’m sure I must be like a lot of people this week watching the stories of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath five years later.
I’ve watched Brian Williams remember his first five days in New Orleans and Spike Lee’s HBO documentary that debuted this week. I keep asking myself ‘what have we learned? Could this happen again? ‘
I find myself slipping back to that time five years ago when it seemed all I did for days on end was watch and worry. But most of all I wandered around in a daze thinking could this be my state and one of the most famous cities in America that was so messed up.
If you were a part of the LSU campus, you couldn’t help see the story’s other chapters unfolding as well. Two friends in the admission office spent days and hours on end with little rest making sure several thousand displaced students had a place to go to college in the fall of 2005. LSU opened its arms to them and allowed them to keep their educational path moving forward.
The Athletic Department facilities became a primary focus quickly as Katrina approached and especially in the days after. The Carl Maddox Field House became a special needs shelter and the Pete Maravich Assembly Center became a triage center that would take some of the most needed medical emergency cases – if only the government could figure out how to get them out of New Orleans.
A football game would be postponed against North Texas and in an even more surreal setting, LSU would play its first home game at Arizona State. LSU would rally to win in the final minutes on a fourth-down play with the whole state watching back home rooting them on.
I look out on this sunny day in August 2010 and see the Bernie Moore Track Stadium a pile of dirt as renovations take place on the long-standing venue. It was never more needed than it was after Katrina when its infield became a landing pad for Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters. Helicopters that would barely clear our top floor and shake the athletic building as they hovered across North Stadium to their landing spot.
At times, it might be hours between landings. At times it would be minutes and multiple helicopters would be on the ground. I had a dream one night that helicopters were landing in my front yard only to realize that was only a partial dream – they were flying low over our subdivision about to make their landing.
Inside the PMAC, volunteers worked feverishly to make every person as comfortable as possible, some in their final minutes. Athletes and staff pitched in where they could. Washers and dryers that cleaned football and basketball uniforms now washed and dried sheets and towels. Coaches who used the buildings for practice now turned to supply chiefs and welcome souls to visit with those who just wanted to know about their home.
And then, there was the email. It was a simple email sent late into the night from then-student in the LSU Sports Information Office, Bill Martin, to his friends to let them know not only that he was okay and what he was doing, but as a release of the emotion and gripping reality he was experiencing.
But a simple email turned into a national symbol of what was happening in one of iconic symbols of LSU athletics, the Maravich Center. Friends sent the email to other friends. Friends sent it to members of the sports media. The email went national. The email went global. Suddenly media wanted to talk to Bill Martin. A mature young man from Lake Charles was telling the story in his own words on radio and television and even five years later as I read the email again, it couldn’t have been said any better.
It’s the kind of words written with the raw emotion of the times. You probably read it then, but again, excerpting here reminds us of the event we dealt with five years ago.
“The PMAC will never host an important event like it did tonight.
“Little did I know what I would be doing following Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath but as I type right now, there won’t be a more gratifying or more surreal experience I went through tonight. We went up to the office today and held a press conference regarding the postponement of the game and it was the right decision. As the PMAC and Field House are being used as shelters we decided as an office to do everything we could to help the situation.
“At first, we were just supposed to make copies of this disaster relief form for all of the people. The copiers will never print a document more important than that. It’s weird. Nearly 12 hours ago, we were running off copies of game notes for a football game that is now meaningless. We printed the copies and carried them over to the Field House at 6:30 p.m. I wouldn’t leave the area for another 8 hours.
“On the way back to the PMAC in a cart, it looked like the scene in the movie Outbreak. FEMA officials, U.S. Marshalls, National Guard, and of course the survivors. Black Hawks were carrying in victims who were stranded on roofs. Buses rolled in from N.O. with other survivors. As Michael (Bonnette) and I rode back to the PMAC, a lady fell out of her wheelchair and we scrambled to help her up.
“We met Coach Miles and Coach Moffitt in the PMAC to see all the survivors and it was the view of a hospital. Stretchers rolled in constantly and for the first time in my life I saw someone die right in front of me. A man rolled in from New Orleans and was badly injured on his head. 5 minutes later he was dead. And that was the scene all night. What did we do, we started hauling in supplies. And thousands of boxes of supplies. The CDC from Atlanta arrived directing us what to do.
“…After unloading supplies, I starting putting together baby cribs and then IV poles. Several of our football players and Big Baby (Glen Davis) and Tasmin Mitchell helped us. At the same time families and people strolled in … I worked from 8 p.m. until 2:45 a.m. Before I left three more buses rolled in and they were almost out of room. People were standing outside, the lowest of the low from NO. The smells, the sights were hard to take.
“A man lying down on a cot asked me to come see him. He said, ‘I just need someone to talk to, to tell my story because I have nobody and nothing left.’ He turned out to be a military veteran. His story was what everybody was saying. He thought he survived the worst, woke up this morning and the levees broke. Within minutes water rushed into his house. He climbed to the attic, smashed his way through the roof and stay there for hours. He was completely sunburned and exhausted. Nearly 12 hours later a chopper rescued him and here he was.
“…That was the scene at the PMAC and it gives me a new perspective on things. For those of you who I haven’t been able to get in touch with because of phone service, I pray you are safe. Send me an email to let me know. God bless.
– Bill Martin, LSU Sports Information
Some of the other remembrances of that time five years ago, some that make you feel good about the people who have passed through our campus:
The Tiger football team visited the Baton Rouge River Center, spending time with those families displaced from their home. They brought along t-shirts and posters and took pictures with many of the children. The team also secured a 15-foot trailer, filling it with clothes, shoes, non-perishable food items and anything that would make the stay a little more bearable for the displaced.
And then there was the story of JaMarcus Russell and music legend Fats Domino. Domino, whom New Orleans thought was missing and possibly dead, was rescued after Katrina from his home in the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and brought to the triage unit at the Maravich Assembly Center. Domino was then reunited with family members and taken to Russell’s apartment located just off the campus.
LSU’s athletic community was featured on “Outside the Lines” on ESPN as Jeremy Schaap visited with members of the LSU basketball team who volunteered in the PMAC, gymnastics coach D-D Breaux and football’s Andrew Whitworth. Schaap also told the poignant story of football walk-on Donald Hains, who didn’t hear from his parents for 10 days before finally making contact with them to learn they were safe.
Situations like this can also being people together in strange ways. The LSU volleyball team had to play on the road for seven-straight weekends, had to play its first two home SEC matches in Arkansas and by the time the nets were set up for the first time on the main floor of the PMAC, the squad had traveled over 10,000 miles. But they handled the situation with grace and with the understanding that this force of nature changed lots of people’s lives forever.
Tulane played a home game in Tiger Stadium against Southeastern Louisiana on Oct. 1. But who would have thought that then NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue would stand on the floor of Tiger Stadium on Sept. 12 and announce that the New Orleans Saints would play four home games in Baton Rouge. Watching those games gave no one any illusions that we would five years later be calling them the defending World Champions.
Five years later, there are still too many questions regarding the Hurricane Katrina event that will never be answered. The Hurricane was an act of God and nature that showed how powerful these storms can be. But the next few days and weeks showed people at their worst and sometimes at their best.
I’m proud to say there were a lot of people at LSU who were at their absolute best when it came to the way they adjusted to situations never thrown at them before or even imagined before. May we never forget Katrina and the lessons that we all were taught.