A few days ago my wife and I evacuated from New Orleans, piled into a friend’s car with our four cats. Thus began a series of events that simultaneously evoke the horrors of three years ago and put a vicious post-Katrina spin on them. I am going to tell you what this kind of evac is like. Be ready, because it is not pleasant.
First comes the mad packing. What can fit in your car? What can be left behind to make room for neighbors? There is always something to be secured around the house no matter how complete your prep may have been.
The soundtrack to this is the panicky, fearful misinformation coming from our political class. Despite claims by the mayor, Gustav was not the “Mother of All Storms,” a phrase whose use was hardly conducive to anything other than panic. Neither was the storm 900 miles wide; its hurricane-force winds only reached 50 miles from its center (note Katrina stretched 105 miles from its center).
Katrina was more than 50 percent stronger than Gustav. Panic and threats that anyone found on the street would go directly to the state prison at Angola, something I believe is usually against the law, constituted the majority of the official voices on the airwaves. At the time, we had none of the facts handy about this “Mother of All Storms,” just a litany of fear voiced before a backbeat of polemic. I am honestly surprised I did not hear the phrase “run for your lives.”
So you get the mad packing done and gaze wistfully at the family relics and items of sentimental value that you may never see again. If you have multiple pets you get out with practically nothing, as all the room is taken up providing for your four-footed children. Such was our case; not having an auto we relied on a colleague for transit. At 2am on Saturday she arrived to pick us up. The silence on the street was the loudest I have ever heard.
Keep in mind that at all times throughout this we were each haunted by the familiarity of it all. The mental association with the last times our friends and family were scattered to the four winds and our lives were turned inside out. Like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, it loomed overhead filling everyone’s thoughts whether they wanted it or not.
So then we get on the road, forming up with others to make a caravan of cars, everyone’s cell phones tied into Twitter and other social media in order to coordinate and communicate. In that respect, we were far luckier than during the Katrina experience; we could let out a call for help or check traffic with other people also tied in.
Our group joined Contraflow, the evacuation plan where several designated highways have all lanes temporarily pointing away from the evacuation zone. It was in Contraflow that the real nastiness began.
The six hours before dawn took us into the gridlock. Once we hit I-59, traffic was reduced to an average of one to three miles per hour. With no available gas in sight, the option of AC rapidly became too fuel-intensive to embrace. In heat close to 90 degrees we watched people around us start to wilt. With each hour, the situation became more unpleasant.
Remember the beginning of this post when I spoke of people gathering their possessions? Now came the heartbreaking part, watching them leaving behind entire trailers, sometimes boats or cars, because they were terrified that they would not have enough gas to get out if they kept them.
As my cats came closer and closer to fatal heatstroke, we poured water over their heads to cool them off. Two almost died. People around us were obviously suffering in the temperature, including many elderly and infants. The various cars stalled out on the side of the road stood like scarecrows striking the fear of being left behind into our hearts. The worst place to be in a hurricane, bar none, is in a car stuck in traffic. Visions of being blown into the air in your vehicle by the “Mother of All Storms” contributed to the palpable feelings of despair.
In Mississippi, police blocked the off ramps, several cars at each. it seems we were not wanted or allowed to leave the parking lot that was Contraflow. Fear of the situation warred with rage at those whose panic was substituted for leadership. All the while, the radio spewed forth reports of how well Contraflow was working, alternating with self-congratulatory proclamations by the mayor.
My wife became so ill with the heat that an ambulance, sheer impossibility in this situation, was seriously contemplated. The lady who was driving and my wife both had to use the side of the road to relieve themselves, as did anyone else on the road.
The last few miles of this hell ride were the slowest and ugliest. The fact that I did not see any violence around us is something that makes me take pride in my fellow man; the shimmering heat haze was a type well know in the subtropics, the type that incites tempers.
Now Contraflow had both sides of I-59 heading east, at a crawl, and as we approached the end of the route we hit the slowest point of the trek. The signage and police were merging these two glacially slow-moving sides of the highway onto our side. Movement slowed a few feet every twenty minutes or so.
It took thirteen hours to reach Hattiesburg, MS. That’s 110.59 miles for those of you following at home.
This left us with a full day of travel before us to get to our final destination. I’ll detail that part of the saga in a future post. In the meantime, I am staying with friends who never returned to New Orleans after Katrina, so at least we are around people who understand.
[EDIT: My worst fears have been realized. I have been made aware that the body count from the evacuation has begun. The first seven fatalities are here and the next six are here. It pains me to say that there will proabably be more. ]
All pictures taken by George “Loki” Williams and Alexis Stahl, usage granted for this post and syndication.
I stayed and I listened to the misery on the radio on WWL. My heart goes out to you. It sounds miserable. I frankly place a significant amount of blame on that A-Hoe, Haley Barbour, who apparently is not above screwing a Republican bretheren for the sake of the almighty vote on MS (”See gang, we pulled another over those rubes in Louisiana!”). Agreements were made amoung the govs, and he unitilaterly turned those eacuating east (from a storm forcast to go west) toward Mobile, etc. north, thus jamming the interstate headed to Hattiesburg.
I could not agree with you more about the hyperbole and its harm. I watched all the forecasts and computer models (with today’s internet, we can all practically be Nash Roberts) and made the risk assessed judgment to ride it out. I sent my family to Houston early (Friday) but felt comfortable staying at home, even though our street took on 4 feet during Katrina.
It’s hot and sticky, and I can’t necessarily take a shower because of the sewer issues here in Jeff Parish, but my dog and I are glad we stayed. Good luck and God bless!
The contraflow was a well-intentioned plan gone terribly wrong. We were driving on I-59 from Slidell to Meridian, MS — a trip that, under normal conditions, takes a little less than 3 hours. It took 9 hours of drive time. (It took us 5 hours to reach Hattiesburg — normally it would take 1.) I should add that we followed the same route for Katrina and made it in roughly half the time.
I think contraflow just made a bad situation worse. It would have been so much better to have 2 lanes of moving traffic than 4 lanes that had to slow to a crawl in order to merge down to 2.
I also heard the radio reports about how well contraflow was working. I wondered what interstate they were basing those comments on, because it obviously wasn’t I-59.
Near the end, I honestly was worried whether we’d make it. I was in a car by myself, following my parents and grandmother, so I didn’t have a driver to swap off with, and in the last couple of hours, I was dehydrated and exhausted, truly struggling to focus. I have NEVER been behind the wheel for 9 hours in a day before — particularly not in such stressful, grueling circumstances. It was miserable. I hope I never face anything that bad again.
I also seriously wondered if my grandmother would survive the trip. She’s 91 and I remember thinking that, given the shape I was in by the end, it’s a wonder she was still conscious and breathing.
There’s got to be a better way to evacuate our area. I hope our leaders can find it soon, because just the thought of having to evacuate again any time soon makes me want to go sit in a corner and cry.
And this, among other similar experiences & sentiments, makes me realize that our decision to stay rather than evacuate was the right one.
It was worse than the 18 hour trip through the pounding rain to Memphis that we made fleeing Katrina. Our first impulse was to stay, but the mania brought on by the Mayor’s speech made us fear the unstable human element more than the storm itself.
It was a shameful display that has taken 13 lives that we know of.
Next time, take the country highways of LA, MS and AL. We had the exact opposite experience as you guys did. Sorry to hear about the kitties - hope they’re feeling better. Please keep me posted!
We watched and waited because we just weren’t willing to pay the cost of evacuating. We looked at where we live, in Metairie, relative to the predicted path of the storm. Once it came off Cuba, weakened, and various weather folks were saying that it may not regain much intensity, we sat and waited and watched. We were ready to flee. On the other hand, we did not want to spend this storm trapped in our car, possibly over water. We already knew that by then, we would have to cross a few state lines to find a hotel room. Had Gustav intensified, we would have done it. Quite a few of our neighbors made the same decision to stay and wait. We aren’t diehard non-evacuators. We evacuated for Ivan, Georges, Katrina and probably a couple less memorable storms. We just didn’t get that feeling from this one. It was risky and being without electricity for a couple days was terribly annoying. All in all, after hearing harrowing evacuation stories, and now that we have electricity, I’m glad we stayed. Had we misjudged, it would be a completely different story. The bottom line was that when we evacuated for Katrina, we had a 3 year old and two cats. We couldn’t even fit cat carriers in the car. The cats rode all the way to Phoenix and back loose in the car. It was way too crowded. Now we have a 6 year old, a 15 month old and 3 cats. We have the same car. It hasn’t gotten any bigger. We’re watching Ike and Josephine and hoping that we won’t have to try to evacuate.
Best wishes y’all,
Fear can be just as damaging as incompetence - another lesson.
Damn it, George.
We went wandering through the back roads all the way west through Louisiana, into east Texas and up to Oklahoma City.
FEMA keeps emphasizing that people ought to stay on the marked evac routes. We learned from a friend of ours that the marked evac routes on Long Island all run together in a giant circle…very trustworthy, riiiiight.
I am so, so sorry about your poor cats. ALL levels of government owe you an Lex and the cats BIG TIME.
Bless your kitties and you and yours, Loki.
Next time you have someone like me in Memphis up ahead on the google maps and the phone, OK?
You forkin’call me. This will never happen again.
Always better next time.
Bring’em home solid, Noble Mon.
Editilla
This Contra-flow fiasco on certain routes has been vastly under-reported by the national media — I hope you can find a way to get your story out there!
From a long distance away, though, it seemed that Nagin’s histrionics were based around a germ of truth. That is, it DID seem like there was a good chance the storm would strengthen or at least remain at Cat 3, rather than weaken; that it might hit 35 miles closer to NOLA than where it actually fell. I guess folks who have a sophisticated understanding of weather systems and trust their own interpretation of computer models were able to judge for themselves that the storm would weaken to Cat 2. But even so, didn’t this high-tech prognostication require waiting until the absolute last few hours? From a long distance away, it sounds a bit like gambling with one’s life(?) Of course the alternative should not have been facing a potential life-or-death situation in Contraflow stagnation.
I found Nagin’s threat about Angola to be barbaric and just downright moronic (I guess he forgot that the great majority of the Katrina “looters” were simply desperate to find any source of water and food to keep them alive). But I’m not sure mandatory evacuation was such a bad idea; what if he had UNDER-reacted and failed to give adequate warning? I guess you are all saying that it would be nice to see a happy medium between hysterical melodrama, and gross neglect/ complacency.
For the longterm, NOLA and surrounding coastal communities can only hope to survive with an immense amount of wetland restoration. And not to start waxing hysterical and histrionic myself, but… maybe NOLA also needs the world to turn back the clock on global climate change, too? Aren’t these storms getting whipped up at a more fast and furious clip than you would usually see even in a bad year? It seems like more unusual signs are showing up all the time — with, for instance, a 19-square-mile ice sheet having just broken off of the arctic ice shelf in Canada, and a much larger-than-usual hailstorm in Kenya. Well that’s it, I’m done for now with being the resident chicken little.
We left at 4-o-clock Sunday morning. It took four hours to get from New Orleans to I59 in Slidell. We went three miles on I59 before taking the first exit that we could. We took back roads the rest of the way and found gas and food along the route.
It still took us 14 hours with stops to get to get to Birmingham but it was so much better than getting stuck in traffic. I’m thankful that we had an atlas in the car.
I think it speaks volumes that those of us who “followed the rules” were the ones who had hideous experiences. This, to me, is a sign that the management infrastructure in place is as pitifully poor as it was for Katrina.
I truly wonder it this would have played out this way if it were not an election year….
we had the same experience you had when we evacuated to atlanta during hurricane ivan. i think it was 8 hours to get to slidell from new orleans on the I-10. the trusty old volvo with my wife and two cats starting konking out in all the fumes of the traffic moving 1-3mph and there was 5 minutes on the twinspans bridge where it had stalled and wouldn’t restart. we turned the a/c off for fear of running out of gas, and our long hair cats were suffering and panting. we would have turned around if there was a way off. the whole time we watched people whizz by on the 11 bridge and regretted our decision to trust the radio that the contraflow. we were listening to WWL and they did not acknowledge the nightmare at all, but kept cutting into nagin’s reassurance that everything was going smoothly. we were furious that WWL would buy the mayor’s propaganda hook line and sinker.
for katrina we got stuck in the same situation on I-10 in Jeff Parish going west, but when the car started stalling again we got on Vets and then took the Causeway to I-55 north. we got to Memphis 4 hours before our friends who stayed on the I-10.
for this storm, we took US-90 and the 11 bridge, and other than a traffic light that someone forgot to turn off on Chef Menteur Blvd, it was pretty much smooth sailing all the way. we didn’t get on a single mile of interstate until we were north of Slidell and the I-12. I would recommend that to anyone in future evacuations. you can always get on the interstate, but you can’t get off. the pictures of the Miss. State troopers blocking the exits is really proof of that.
I will never be able to erase from my mind the images of the MS police blockading us in like that. It is yet another in the seemingly endless series of inhumane and incompetent acts perpetrated by those who hold the public trust. This has been the constant back beat for the past three years now.
It nauseates me to think about.