[The following is another installment of our daily recap of the events surrounding Katrina’s impact and the aftermath, courtesy of Think Progress.]

2AM CDT — KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]

7AM CDT — KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE [CNN]

MORNING — LOUISIANA NEWSPAPER SIGNALS LEVEES MAY GIVE: “Forecasters Fear Levees Won’t Hold Katrina”: “Forecasters feared Sunday afternoon that storm-driven waters will lap over the New Orleans levees when monster Hurricane Katrina pushes past the Crescent City tomorrow.” [Lafayette Daily Advertiser]

9:30 AM CDT — MAYOR NAGIN ISSUES FIRST EVER MANDATORY EVACUATION OF NEW ORLEANS: “We’re facing the storm most of us have feared,” said Nagin. “This is going to be an unprecedented event.” [Times-Picayune]

AFTERNOON — BUSH, BROWN, CHERTOFF WARNED OF LEVEE FAILURE BY NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER DIRECTOR: Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center: “‘We were briefing them way before landfall. … It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.’” [Times-Picayune; St. Petersburg Times]

4PM CDT — NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ISSUES SPECIAL HURRICANE WARNING: In the event of a category 4 or 5 hit, “Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer. … At least one-half of well-constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail, leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed. … Power outages will last for weeks. … Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards.” [National Weather Service]

LATE PM — REPORTS OF WATER TOPPLING OVER LEVEE: “Waves crashed atop the exercise path on the Lake Pontchartrain levee in Kenner early Monday as Katrina churned closer.” [Times-Picayune]

APPROXIMATELY 30,000 EVACUEES GATHER AT SUPERDOME WITH ROUGHLY 36 HOURS WORTH OF FOOD [Times-Picayune]

LOUISIANA NATIONAL GUARD REQUESTS 700 BUSES FROM FEMA FOR EVACUATIONS: FEMA sends only 100 buses. [Boston Globe]

To see the full Think Progress Katrina Timeline, click here.

The news this morning brings shallow comfort. Hurricane Gustav, the second of that name, has been downgraded from a hurricane to a Tropical Storm. It would be wonderful news if it were not for the vast expanse of warm water it has yet to cross in the Gulf of Mexico. Warm water fuels hurricanes. With room to grow and temperature differentials to whip it into a frenzy of wind, Gustav will be a hurricane again soon, I can almost guarantee it.

The psychological wind, on the other hand, seems to be holding at a steady Category 2. Everyone around the Gulf becomes emotional around this time, when we remember our own stories and those of the people we have lost. (And make no mistake, whoever you are down here, you have lost people to both death and displacement. Trust me, I used to have grandparents before the storm.) To have another storm aiming at us on this single most emotional time of the year, one many are saying will hit Cat 5 before landfall, is rattling even those who do not rattle easily.

Three years of obstructed efforts to rebuild. Three years of unfulfilled promised of flood protection from the Army Corps of Engineers. Nothing in New Orleans is as terrifying as the state of our infrastructure.

Lines in the stores are lengthening as people rush to gather supplies. Hotel rooms are already booked up throughout the state, according a friend who was looking. Every vehicle owner is topping off their tanks. And all the while the drumbeat of memory, like a Second Line through the ruins of the 9th Ward, pounds away at each individual’s equilibrium.

I would be lying if I said that fear has not touched me. [Interruption]

I just got a phone call while writing this, from a dear friend of ours who lives in MidCity, a neighborhood that is still reeling and only partially back in the wake of the last time. Our friend is 62 and lost everything he had in the flooding three years ago. Not having a TV he called me for an update on the current storm. I told him that I would keep him posted.

As he was getting ready to get off the line he reminded me of something I forgot about. You see if we had not woken him up early the morning before Katrina he never would have escaped the city, and being rather physically frail he would probably not have survived. Knowing he did not own a TV and that he worked the graveyard shift, we called and called until he got up to answer, at which point we convinced him to leave. I never really put it all together until just now when he said, “C’mon man, y’all saved my life last time. Keep me posted, I don’t want to die just yet, I’ve still got things to do.”

I’ll be watching, and I’ll be calling. I’ve had funerals for 26 friends and family members since the storm, I do not want another one.

Wish us luck. Even if it does not hit, the storm winds of memory have been whipped into a frenzied blast as the sense of deja vu comes rolling in like a storm surge.

[The following is another installment of our daily recap of the events surrounding Katrina’s impact and the aftermath, courtesy of Think Progress.]

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN MISSISSIPPI [Office of the Governor]

5AM CDT — KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE [CNN]

GOV. BLANCO ASKS BUSH TO DECLARE FEDERAL STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA: “I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.” [Office of the Governor]

FEDERAL EMERGENCY DECLARED, DHS AND FEMA GIVEN FULL AUTHORITY TO RESPOND TO KATRINA: “Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.” [White House]

To see the full Think Progress Katrina Timeline, click here.

As I sit here in New Orleans, the weather is cool and beautiful. That is not good. You see, as Tom Robbins once described it, “New Orleans in August is like an obscene phone call from Mother Nature.” The reason we lack the usual sauna-like atmosphere is because Hurricane Gustav is approaching us from the other side of Jamaica. Just what everyone down here needs on the third anniversary….

Everyone in the city is starting to get freaked, especially as it looks like landfall will be almost exactly three years to the day since “The Thing.” (The Thing is a term frequently used to refer to Katrina and the levee failure for those of you reading this in other parts of the world.)

I seriously hope that we do not commemorate the anniversary by fleeing the city again, much less having another catastrophic event. Since my wife and I do not own a car this could, once again, become a major issue. In the meantime my posts will be a bit shorter than usual as I race around getting water, canned goods, and other survival supplies just in case.

Starting today I will be putting up a daily recap of the events surrounding Katrina’s impact and the aftermath. Think Progress has kindly allowed us permission to draw from their wonderfully detailed and well-documented timeline of these events.

Today, August 26, is the day that the insanity began three years ago. All of our lives changed vastly, and often in the most unpleasant ways.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA [Office of the Governor]

GULF COAST STATES REQUEST TROOP ASSISTANCE FROM PENTAGON: At a 9/1 press conference, Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander, Joint Task Force Katrina, said that the Gulf States began the process of requesting additional forces on Friday, 8/26. [DOD]

To see the full Think Progress Katrina Timeline, click here.

Cross your fingers for us!

Thus we begin a series of videos introducing the Katrina Media Fellows and their works. Look for more over the next few days!

To see the works of the OSI Katrina Media Fellows, click here.

Well, Rising Tide has come and gone, and now it’s time to sort through the pictures and video to see what came out well enough to share (new camera). In the meantime, I’d like to point out some folks with a different perspective from what we usually see around this time of year: The New Orleans 100.

In their own words:

It’s time to put an end to the negative press in mainstream media. We know that the levees broke. We know that our city is dysfunctional. We know that. But do you know about Prospect.1? Or about the influx of young professionals into New Orleans? The world needs to know about the NEW New Orleans. And to quote Brad Pitt, “If you’re going to rebuild something, why not rebuild it right?” Amen brother.

[…] This list is in no particular order and each selection was chosen based on creativity, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship.

Now I am far from familiar with all of the entries on the list myself, but there are some gems in there like Constance, Global Green, Trouble the Water (which I wrote about extensively in my last post), and Defend New Orleans (a group I have assisted and supported directly since my return). I greatly look forward to having the time to investigate the ones I don’t know already, and there are quite a few of them.

Don’t let the blinking banner at the top drive you off, just scroll down to the list itself.

It was almost three years ago when Scott and Kimberly Roberts found themselves stuck in New Orleans on the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. Having no readily available means of getting out they gathered together their limited supplies and fired up their camcorder. The results are beyond what anyone suspected.

As many of us did at the time, they tried hard to document their experience. Little did they know that a flood of almost biblical proportions would rage through the streets around their 9th Ward home. As their home filled up with water supplied by the recently failed levee, they kept on filming. The results will be available Friday, August 22nd, when Trouble the Water opens in Los Angeles and New York (nationwide in September).

It is fortunate that Katrina hit us in an era when technology has made documentation like this possible. Camera phones and video cameras have allowed a much more intimate view of the disaster than any prior era could offer. This is an opportunity to be on the inside for a moment, to put yourself in the shoes of one of us.

It has now been almost three years since the city sank, Atlantis like, beneath the waves. There is still devastation everywhere, and social injustice (often based on race) is an ongoing problem. Watching this film will help you understand why we have to ensure that the ongoing racial and economic injustices are part of our national dialogue.

One of the most repeated memes I have heard consistently since the deluge is “If this had happened to a wealthy white community there would have been an effective response.” Granted it is usually expressed in somewhat more visceral language, but I do my best to remain a “G rating” here on the blog. This feeling, and its ubiquity here in New Orleans, is indicative of the issues of race and class that are woven into the fabric of American existence, particularly in the Deep South. Katrina and the diaspora that followed have thrown those aspects of the tapestry of our culture into sharp relief.

Here is a little bit from the press release:

The film, directed and produced by Fahrenheit 911 producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and executive produced by Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes, won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and was hailed by Manohla Dargis of The New York Times as “one of the best American documentaries in recent memory.”

Here’s what other critics had to say about the film:

“INDELIBLE! Will pin you to your seat.”
–Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

“MIRACULOUS!… Ineradicably moving.”
–David Edelstein, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

“Trouble the Water celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit.”
–Miki Turner, ESSENCE

If you’re in New York or Los Angeles, don’t miss the premiere of Trouble the Water. Check out the theaters screening the film and buy your tickets today:

• New York: The IFC Center: www.movietickets.com/house_detail.asp?house_id=9598
• New York: ImageNation Cinema: https://imagenation-film-festival1.ticketleap.com/
• Los Angeles: The Laemmle Sunset 5: http://laemmle.com/viewtheatre.php?thid=2
• Irvine: Regal Westpark 8: www.fandango.com/edwardswestpark8_aabhq/theaterpage

There are a lot of Katrina documentaries out there, from Spike Lee’s phenomenal work When the Levees Broke on down the line. This is, as far as I now, the first one that includes footage taken by those flooded in during the storm. Give it a view, and enhance your understanding of what the real impact of the storm was…

Three Years Later: An Examination of the Post-Katrina Experience is a series of events taking place at the University of Tennessee. Many thanks for remembering us down here on the Gulf Coast!

A series of four events will take place between August 27 and September 24, 2008:

• After the Storm: Rebuilding Lives along the Gulf Coast and in East Tennessee
  August 27, 2008 | Hodges Library Auditorium | 6:30 - 8:00 PM
• Hurricane Katrina Memorial: Remembering the Victims and Honoring the Survivors
  August 29, 2008 | UT Pedestrian Walkway Amphitheater | 6:30 PM
• Recovery Challenges St. Bernard Parish Still Faces Three Years after Hurricane Katrina
  September 24, 2008 | Hodges Library Auditorium | 6:30 - 8:00 PM
• A Call to Action: Civic Engagement through Service Learning
  October 29, 2008 | Hodges Library Auditorium | 6:30 - 8:00 PM

If you are in the vicinity stop by, and take a moment to absorb what you can of this huge and nearly overwhelming event and its ramifications. More info can be found here, including details on all four events.

The first two weeks after we watched the levees fail were delirium. Our initial refuge was a dinky hotel in West Memphis, Arkansas. A place full of fellow New Orleanians, most of whom were from the 9th Ward, an area soon to become infamous.

From there my wife and I and our five cats were transported to Bloomington, Indiana, where my now mother-in-law is a professor. Several more days of frantic casing about put me in touch with my dear friend Sean and his wife. They wired us money to rent a vehicle and gave us the use of a recently vacated apartment for the duration. This took us to Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Now I have lived in New York before; most of ‘99, in fact. It helped a lot to be able to take the Metro North into Grand Central and see my old friends and haunts. Still, it was not home.

It was at this point that I wrote the following piece. Since I retained the copyright, I have the ability to reprint it here. This, then is what it was like, two weeks after Katrina when I was…

Adrift in New York

“If it keeps on raining the levees going to break
If it keeps on raining the levees going to break
When the levee breaks, got no place to stay.”

-Led Zeppelin

The buildings of New York City rise above me as I wander through the streets, some old and historic like our own, but titanic by comparison. This area of the country is steeped in history, ancient by the standards of the USA, but still shiny and new compared to home.

There is a lot of rich history here, but NYC did not exist above 10th Street when New Orleans was already a thriving port city steeped in music and culture. I miss the aged buildings of the Vieux Carre, attributed to the French despite their Spanish ancestry. The lack of live oaks and Spanish moss gives nature here a sharper edge. New Orleans, I miss you terribly.

I am surrounded by a cacophony of languages and ethnicities, yet nowhere do I hear the soft-edged and humid speech of the Crescent City. People here are wonderful to us, but my friends are scattered to the corners of America and only a very few who made it to the Big Apple are accessible. Despite my friends here I feel unbearably lonely.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this crazy town with its endless ranks of buildings, gruff but compassionate people, and something new everywhere you look. I’m better off than many who ran this far, for I have lived here before and know my way around. I still know the F Train to Brooklyn and Coney Island. I know Nathan’s hotdogs are the best in the world. I know that coffee and chicory can be found in Chinatown if you know where to look.

There is so much to love here, but there is no Midsummer Mardi Gras. There is no Olivier’s Restaurant to get Creole Rabbit in Oyster Dressing. There is no walking down the street to see friends in every block, ready for a beer or a crawfish boil. It is not home.

I am a man cast adrift. I have become, as my fiancee has pointed out, “the strange thing in everyone’s day.” When people here ask me how I broke my hand and I answer, “running from Katrina,” I can see the shock and horror on their faces. Suddenly it becomes real for them and not just a newscast. A woman at the corner store noticed my accent and asked me where I was from. When I said New Orleans she said, “Oh my God!” and gave me ferocious hug.

I’m so weary of the news, the nonstop barrage of acrimonious spin management. Weeks of nonstop newscasts have left my eyes red and my soul weary. The sight of buildings I know intimately now submerged and drained and re-submerged by Rita (like the Hi Ho Lounge on St. Claude, where I met my wife-to-be) repeated over and over by a media that only cares about milking the drama for all it’s worth has begun to numb me. But I intend to return.

A world without New Orleans does not bear contemplating. When New York City did not exist above 10th St. New Orleans was a thriving port and center of culture for North America. When Chicago was undeveloped wilderness, music reverberated through our streets.

It is a city that straddles this world and another stranger land, a world of pirates and rogues and parties that greet the dawn. It is a city of decadent opulence and bone-crushing poverty. It is a place where people, “make groceries,” rather than shop. Only there could street gangs evolve into Mardi Gras Indians. Only there could the rhythms of Congo Square have changed the face of music across America. Only in New Orleans.

For weeks I have been disillusioned. The constant reports of murder, rape, and looting have torn my heart from my chest over and over again. As any native can tell you, the best days in New Orleans are the ones right after a flood or hurricane. Those are the days when everyone is “in it together.” Those are the days when people join together, sharing resources, cooking and drinking together while they are united by shared adversity. I was disappointed in my fellow New Orleanians for failing to take care of each other.

I no longer feel this way. Instead I am disappointed in myself for buying into the hype. Current reporting from the Times-Picayune’s website states plainly that the “piles of bodies” in the Superdome attributed to violence actually totaled six. Four of those six died of natural causes.

My friend Karl told me of watching gun-toting, “gangsta” kids aiding an old woman as she struggled through waist-deep water, helping her to a dry porch above the water line and securing supplies for her. The people of New Orleans DID step up to the plate. I doubt that major media will provide a recap that includes these facts. It is conventional wisdom that only bad news sells.

Time shall continue its march. The waters are receding, the black mold and mildew will eventually be banished, and many of us will return because New Orleans is not just a place–it is a state of mind. It will require a lifetime, but we are a hardy people. Generations of living in the subtropical swamps have bred us to be resilient and stubborn, a trait that the people of New York share.

Mardi Gras will arrive on the 28th of February and it will bring healing, the healing of a city’s soul. The Krewes will march, green chartreuse will be imbibed, and a wild healing decadence will hold sway even if there are only a few of us to do it.

So raise your glasses and drink deeply, be you Southerner or Yank, white or black, Democrat or Republican. Raise your glasses and toast us and our fair city of roguery and romance, for we are scattered but we are not destroyed.

Catharsis is essential.

[We did return home for Mardi Gas; we actually made it home just in time for Halloween in the disaster zone. More on that later…-Loki]

Three years ago today, I was madly embroiled in the plans for my imminent wedding and honeymoon. Little did I know that in ten days everything in my life would be changed irrevocably. As I sit at my keyboard a kaleidoscope of memories takes hold of me, images particularly from the first few months after the deluge.

Today I am going to share a few of these, just a few paragraphs on each, but enough to give you a window into why I blog and why I take this site so seriously. And now here is a series of random moments. The moments that still come to me often as I think back on all of the chaos the past three years has brought.

—

September 2005 - New York

Finally ending up with friends in Dobbs Ferry, New York, we attempted to come to grips with the enormity of what had occured. Foreshadowing things yet to come, the people of NY were the ones that really helped us make it through, while the institutions set in place seemed mired in a swamp of red tape. In one week alone, I spent close to twelve hours a day stuck on the phone with FEMA. (NOTE: we never received a penny, something for which I am now quite glad.)

As my 39th birthday loomed in mid-month, a time when we still had no idea if our home had survived, depression assaulted me. Still, after over two weeks, with no knowledge of the whereabouts of my family and with one hand in a cast I remember a greyness coming over me that seemed as though it would never lift. In order to feel useful, I started working with the webmaster at WWOZ to help locate musicians and music industry people that were still missing.

—

November 2005 - New Orleans

I remember watching a Blackwater mercenary threaten an elderly man and his wife in the Jewish Community Center on St. Charles Ave. A location that was being used by FEMA for processing people’s claims. The gentleman must have been in his late sixties at the youngest, frail but still vibrant. He was talking loudly to his wife about how this was the fourth time spending an entire day in line dealing with FEMA.

Blackwater troops were all over the place, and one wandered over. He asked the old man to be quiet. When the old man replied that he had the right to say whatever he wished, the man in uniform leaned close in to his personal space and said something I did not hear. As he did so he pointedly put his hand on the butt of his sidearm. The old man did not say much for the next six hours we were in line.

—

New Year’s Eve 2005 - New Orleans

When the storm hit and the levees failed, we were in the process of moving house. Our old lodgings were in an area called Broadmoor, which took a solid five feet in our block. The landlord is an old friend, he and his girlfriend lived in the second floor, which escaped a soaking during the hurricane. For New Year’s Eve we went to his place to sit on the porch, have drinks, and marvel at the narrow escape he had experienced.

That evening the closest signs of life were a good 15 blocks away. My friend’s yard, our former yard, was filled with lighted Christmas decorations powered via generator. Surrounding us as far as the eye could see was nothing but blackness. The only motion that of the occasional small animal furtively running along the border of the light.

By 9pm the fog had begun to roll in. It was surreal. To sit in a city, especially your home, surrounded by fog and know that there is not another human anywhere nearby is an experience I shall never forget.

—

These are some of the things that I will never shake. Those otherwise ordinary moments amplified through tragedy and uncertainty to resonate through one’s consciousness forever.

The photo above was taken for HumidCity by Charlotte Diem on the first day of hurricane season, 2006.