It's always a decision on whether to leave for a hurricane. For those that don't live down here you might be sitting there scratching your head and wondering what there is to think about. There's a hurricane coming, get out of town. For those of us that call New Orleans home (and even though I'm not in the city proper but live across the lake on what is called the Northshore I consider myself from New Orleans) hurricanes are part of our lives. It's not a perverse sense of courting danger, even though it might seem that way with Hurricane Parties and such going on as a storm advances towards the city. You don't live in this area for long without realizing that more so than in a lot of other cities and states the weather is part of your life here. You consider the weather to be part of the city and something you have to live with and just learn to accommodate. I've lived elsewhere and while you talk about the weather somewhere else you live with the weather here.
So when word comes that there's a storm brewing out in the gulf you start wondering if it will come here. Even when they start out heading towards Florida and are projected to come on land in that state you know that hurricanes never follow the path expected. Isaac was not supposed to be a problem for us, maybe some rain, but that was the extent. Now it's bearing down for the mouth of the Mississippi. Luckily it is a fairly weak hurricane, as far as that goes. Weak being relative here, any wind that comes through at 100 plus miles and rainfall of perhaps twenty inches is still more than strong enough to cause a lot of damage and destruction.
Right now the wind is whipping through, every now and than you can feel it shake the house. Looking outside the trees are bending to the strength of the wind. Still the wind is nowhere where it'll be, maybe at the moment around forty miles an hour, double that coming. The hurricane is coming ashore and heading towards us.
At first I was going to ride Katrina out. I went to work that Sunday morning to finish preparing the store where I worked as best as possible for a hurricane and boarding up the last of the windows and doors. When I went to bed the night before I had resolved to stay. My parents were going to head towards Tennessee to stay with relatives of my Mom. That morning the news was reporting that Katrina was likely to be a category 5 and heading right towards the city. As I worked getting the store prepped I decided that I should head out and not risk it. I called my Mom and Dad and told them I would be coming with them.
Even though I've decided to stay for Isaac and the strength of this storm will be nothing like Katrina there is always that moment when you stay that you second guess yourself. I've stayed for most hurricanes, only leaving for a few and there is always that moment you wonder. You're sitting there, more than likely in the dark because the power is gone, and the walls are rattling from the wind and you can hear the roar of the wind from outside and you think to yourself that maybe this was a mistake. It goes, but there is always that moment you have to wonder.
After Katrina there was a lot of music made from the storm and the negligence of aid afterwards. I've written on this site before about Bruce Springsteen's show at the first Jazz Fest after the storm. Listening to John Boutte take the Randy Newman song "Louisiana 1927" and remake with the truth of Katrina is enough to bring tears to the most hardened of hearts. But of all the songs I've heard about the storm my favorite is "Washed by the Water" by Will Hoge.
This version of "Louisiana 1927" features Paul Sanchez, John Boutté, John Thomas Griffith, and Sonia Tetlow perform an updated version of Randy Newman's Louisiana 1927 at Schuba's Tavern in Chicago, July 24, 2006.
Take care.
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