Issue date: 8/30/07 Section: News

Media Credit: provided by Diedra Weaver Damaged road signs indicate lingering damage from Hurricane Katrina. Five geography students and one professor traveled to Louisiana during summer break to study the storm's lasting impact.

Media Credit: Matthew Schroyer

Horrifically, it was the perfect catastrophe. A category 5 hurricane, the worst kind of hurricane, barreled toward the Gulf Coast on an imminent course for an unprepared city.

With many unable to leave in time, the storm locked 100 miles of coastline in a 125 mph death grip for hours. Levees broke; people lost their lives in the wind and water.

In the following days and weeks was even more suffering. Many were stranded, requiring dramatic and heroic rescues. A food shortage, and with it, desperate acts of pillaging. Thousands without medicine. Thousands without water. Thousands without hope.

Then, stories of horrendous acts of violence. Of desperation. And, of courage. A society in chaos, and a government who many felt orphaned them.

In the storm and ensuing floods, 1,464 had perished and thousands more displaced, according to estimates from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

As five geography students and one professor departed for Louisiana to survey the damage, this was what they were remembering. This was the legacy of Hurricane Katrina, which sacked New Orleans two years ago on Aug. 29, 2005.

The six embarked from Edwardsville on the morning of June 7, 2007. But approaching August 29, more than two months after the trip, most are still coming to grips with the magnitude of devastation.

"We basically all piled into a van," geography professor Mark Hildebrandt said. "We started early and drove straight down there. It took about 12 hours. We spent a day and a half in New Orleans, and really just absorbing it, talking to locals and touring the area."

Junior Andrea Coop had visited New Orleans the previous summer, yet even she was taken aback by how little things had changed.

"It was devastating to see so many people that hadn't come back, or were still working on their homes," Coop said. "You could still see waterlines."

These lines marked where the floodwater had rested for a three-week period following the hurricane; a hallmark of flood damage. However, these dingy, moldy lines could be misleading. Initial floodwaters rose beyond those levels, in some cases exceeding it by many feet.

Even crossing the state line into Louisiana from Mississippi, it became immediately apparent to the group how slow rebuilding efforts had been. The Louisiana landscape was a mix of defoliated trees, debris and remnants of homes that were consumed by water and filth two years prior.

And it stretched for miles.

"In Mississippi, they tore down the buildings," Coop said. "In (Louisiana), they're still rotting there."

Some of these homes had peculiar damage - holes punched in the roofs. These holes, however, were not caused by the winds or the waters. Rather, they were man-made, signs of a life-or-death struggle as trapped homeowners tried to escape the rising waters.

"People were told to take water, a flashlight and an ax," Hildebrandt said. "An ax might seem like a strange thing to bring, but if you're in attic, what's the only way to get out?"



Most homes the group saw were marked with a spray-painted "X." At the top of the "X" was a date, revealing when rescue crews came to the house. On the left-hand side were initials indicating who searched the house, typically National Guard units.

The right hand side of the "X" was reserved for a specific, gut-wrenching detail. A number on the right-hand side indicated that a person - or a number of people - were found dead inside the house.

The group knew that detail, and saw the number on several houses.

"It's a direct shot," Hildebrandt said. "It's a like a direct shot to the gut."

In some cases, rescue crews scrawled other messages on the outside of the house. In one instance, the group came across another grizzly indicator of death: a note reading "1 Dog." It was a sign that a pet had perished sometime during the storm.

"This thing gets to me," Hildebrandt said. "My wife and I made donations to various animal organizations after Katrina. One of the things that broke my heart was … the stories of the pets that had to be left behind for whatever reason."

"Many of us teared up when we saw this," Hildebrandt said.

While there were many marks that captured the horror of the hurricane, there were also marks that showed the catastrophe in a different light - messages of hope and perseverance. On one house was sprayed "Lisa + Donnie R OK."



Other messages were a testament to how locals felt about rescue and rebuilding efforts.

"Someone is getting rich," one read. Another read, "Our government cares more about foreign oil than its own people."

And another, in tribute to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, read: "Fix Everything My Ass."

This proved to be a motto for the locals, and some sold T-shirts with the acronym to support personal financial recovery. For many, FEMA was a "four-lettered word," according to Hildebrandt.

Senior Diedra Weaver recalled a conversation with a New Orleans waiter who had personally experienced the worst of the Katrina disaster.

"He stayed, and had to be rescued off the rooftop. Except where he was taken, it wasn't really safe. There was violence," Weaver said.

"His jaw got tense, he was so mad. He had so much to say," she added. "This was the general consensus."



While in New Orleans, the SIUE group took a close look at the Louisiana Superdome, where more than 9,000 had taken refuge from the storm. From their vantage point, the six observed damage to nearby buildings and learned about the many facets of New Orleans that sustained damage.

One building, they learned, once housed a medical laboratory that tested treatments for cancer. The building was damaged beyond repair due to flooding, and the valuable cancer research was lost forever.

"Their data and the specimens had to be stored in a cold place," Hildebrandt said. "Where are all of these cold places? In the basement. And where did all the water go? The basement."

"All this incredible research is gone."

Near the Superdome, the group saw firsthand the stretch of elevated highway where people had taken refuge and escaped the Superdome. It was a helpless situation for all on the interstate, who suffered from dehydration and starvation for days on end.

"Basically, there was no way for people to get out," Hildebrandt said. "People were literally dying."

Besides visiting the most hard-hit areas of Louisiana, such as the infamous Ninth Ward and Lake District, the group also ventured east of New Orleans. A portion of the tour consisted of a drive between New Orleans to Bay St. Louis, where the center of the storm made landfall, and farther east towards Biloxi.

It was on the trip to Bay St. Louis and Biloxi that they say they were exposed to a part of Katrina that the media had missed. While the Ninth Ward was a poorer community, Bay St. Louis had a mostly middle-class population. Senior Gregory Schlechte, who had been to pre-Katrina New Orleans, said the media overlooked a lot of middle-class Louisianans who lost their homes and suffered in the storm as well.

"A lot of people got stuck down there, no matter what class," Schlechte said.

It was an eerie drive; the view was an odd combination of empty lots, new modular homes and white FEMA trailers, with the remains of houses strewn all about the Louisiana countryside.

Most houses that had not been destroyed by the wind or water were doomed regardless, as mold claimed the surviving homes. An occasional sight for the group was new modular homes that had been trucked in and were specially designed to prevent mold infestation.

"If you have a flood, all you do is take soap and water to the wall and hose it off," Hildebrandt said.

More housing was found in the form of camper-type trailers, which had been brought to Louisiana through funding from FEMA. The FEMA trailers, Hildebrandt said, had no water and no air conditioning in most cases.

Houses that were rebuilt were considered at-risk, as vandals had the tendency to break in to newly-rebuilt homes and strip them of wiring.

In rare instances, however, some homes had beaten the odds and survived without major damage. But just barely.

Hildebrandt remembers one house in particular, which was near a levee that broke. All the houses around it had vanished in the flooding waters, but the one remained.

"There was a barge that kind of parked itself in front of the house and saved it from the water." Hildebrandt said. "It's eerie that nothing is there, but it's also serendipitous for this one house to have survived."

And that is how it seemed for the bulk of Louisiana for the group. Largely still lying in ruins two years later, but now, with pockets of people who had either weathered the storm or returned to their roots.



Now, Hildebrandt said, it's a different New Orleans. Much of the original population had been displaced and may never come back. Those who will come to New Orleans, he predicted, are people from all over the country.

"In essence, it's going to reinvent itself," Hildebrandt said. "It's going to be different."

Hildebrandt said many of the locals are skeptical even of the repairs to the levees, and refer to the improvements as "bandages." Whether they will hold the test of time, however, Hildebrandt can't say for sure.

What is certain, Hildebrandt said, is that he and his group have a newfound respect for nature and the people who call New Orleans home.

"We are not in control," Hildebrandt said. "Nature is in control."

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