Tag Archives: Hurricane Katrina

local news, State news

Heat: It’s all relative

5f31a5256ae9fe6efe6cac2a09cef48f

The dog days of summer have arrived a bit earlier than usual on the Texas High Plains.

We’ve been simmering in 100 or near-100-degree weather for several days now. How’s it going with my fellow Panhandle residents? Not too well, based on some of the social media postings I have been reading of late.

Pardon me for snickering … just a bit. I promise I’ll be discreet. I won’t guffaw out loud.

Still, I must remind my many friends here just how bad it could be during this time of year. We could be living on the Texas Gulf Coast, where my family and I lived for nearly 11 years before my wife and I skedaddled to the High Plains in January 1995. Our sons were in college and were on their own.

I now shall inflict a brief version of a story I’ve told many times about life in what I call The Swamp.

It was around 1989. I was working in my yard. The temperature outside that summer day was just this side of 100 degrees.

The humidity? About the same. High 90s. I’m telling you, there’s nothing quite like the Gulf Coast heat/humidity combo that makes one appreciate cooler places and cooler times of the year. Our many friends who live between Beaumont and Corpus Christi know of which I speak.

I stopped working in my yard and went inside the house. I announced to my wife, “We’re going to the beach!” So, we gathered up our beach gear, threw it into our Honda Civic and peeled out for the coast.

We raced through Mid-Jefferson County then turned east, across the Sabine River that borders Texas and Louisiana and headed for our favorite spot on the coast.

Holly Beach, La., beckoned us. Hurricane Katrina and later Hurricane Rita in 2005 wiped out what passed for the “resort” there. On this day, though, it awaited us.

We drove our Honda onto the beach, we got out and raced to the water.

I plunged into the surf — and came up immediately and ran back out onto the sand! Why? The water was as stinkin’ hot as the ambient air. That’s why!

There was no refreshment to be found in the Gulf of Mexico that day.

OK, we stayed for the rest of the day. We rented inner tubes and lolled around in the surf. Why go back home when we’d made the effort to find some comfort in that oppressive heat?

The moral of the story?

Suck it up, my Panhandle neighbors and remember: It’s a dry heat.

State news

Hutchison came to region’s aid

Kay

BEAUMONT, Texas — A news story in the Beaumont Enterprise brings to mind a memory I have about a former U.S. senator who came to the aid of a region that had been struck by what’s been called “the forgotten hurricane.”

It was nearly a decade ago when the Gulf Coast, which was reeling from what had occurred in August 2005 in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore, suffered another killer storm.

Its name was Rita and it slammed into the coast at Sabine Pass, which borders Texas and Louisiana. It roared inland and tore into Beaumont.

City, county and state officials were having trouble getting the feds’ attention. Then came Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, who managed to parlay her good relations with Senate Democrats to fast-track aid to the region that had been walloped by Mother Nature’s fury.

As the Enterprise reported today: “I’ll never forget what Sen. Hutchison and her staff did for us, as a community,” said former Jefferson County Judge Carl Griffith. “(Hutchison) made a huge difference in a lot of people’s lives.”

What she did was work with Louisiana U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, to obtain military aircraft to aid in evacuation and the delivery of supplies to the region. Other efforts to get the White House — where Republican President George W. Bush lived at the time — had fallen short.

Hutchison’s work made the difference.

Hutchison came through

Indeed, my memory of her familiarity with this part of Texas is quite vivid. I had the honor during my nearly 11 years working at the Enterprise to interview Sen. Hutchison as she would come by to, um, chat and to update us on senatorial goings-on.

And almost always, without fail, Hutchison would remind me of how she spent time visiting extended family members living in Old Town, a noted residential district in Beaumont.

She knew the region and wasn’t about to let bureaucratic bumbling stand in the way of relief for the home folks.

Nor was Hutchison going to waste the political capital she had piled up with her friends across the aisle.

Bruce Drury, a retired political science professor at Lamar University — who I knew fairly well while I worked in Southeast Texas — said that Hutchison’s ability to cross party lines is not nearly as evident with today’s Texas congressional delegation. “We have two Republican senators, neither one of whom have attempted to cultivate goodwill with the administration,” Drury told the Enterprise, adding that “to some extent the administration hasn’t been overly active in trying to establish links.”

As the former senator demonstrated, it’s nice to know people in the right places.

 

national news

Emergencies often build lifetime friendships

airman

This picture speaks volumes to me, and I’m sure it does to others.

The young man is Michael Maroney, who in 2005 was serving as an Air Force pararescue jumper.

The little girl is LaShay Brown. She’s hugging Maroney’s neck because the jumper had just saved LaShay and her family from Hurricane Katrina’s savage onslaught in New Orleans.

A decade later, Maroney and LaShay have hooked up again. He found the girl who’s now a teenager living in Mississippi.

“I was a single father trying to raise two boys. I had just gotten back from Afghanistan, and New Orleans was under water,” Maroney, now 40, told The Washington Post. “When she hugged me, everything went away. There were no problems in that moment. That meant everything to me.”

Little girl hugs with joy

As it should.

These are the kinds of stories that have been told and retold in the decade since the Katrina disaster. President Obama went to New Orleans this past week to salute the city’s return. Former President Bush went there as well to pay his tribute to the strength of the residents who endured nature’s wrath.

Yes, we have talked in recent days about some of the failures of government at all levels to do right by those who suffered.

But an Air Force serviceman, Michael Maroney, did his part to deliver a little girl and her family from the storm. “I can’t wait to meet her to tell her how important she is,” Maroney told People magazine. “In my line of work, it doesn’t usually turn out happily. This hug, this moment, was like — everybody I’ve ever saved, that was the thank you.”

They have become friends for life.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

 

local news, State news

Texas stood tall in time of tragedy

katrina_aftermath_-_11

Ten years after the fact, Texans perhaps should take stock of a time when our state stood tall as our neighbors fled a savage onslaught.

Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 Louisiana residents and drove many thousands more than that from their homes. And of those thousands who were displaced, many of them came to Texas.

Most found refuge downstate. Some came to the High Plains.

As Erica Greider writes in her Texas Monthly blog, the manner in which Texas responded to the crisis provided the state with one of its shining moments.

Greider writes: “… Texas’s response to Katrina has to count as one of our state’s finest moments. We saw real leadership from people like Rick Perry, then the governor, and Bill White, then the mayor of Houston, among many others, and real graciousness on the part of millions of Texans, who welcomed so many neighbors at their time of need. I’d like to think that’s who we are. And I’d like to think it’s a good reminder for us today, since 10 years later we have the flaring tempers and frayed nerves without the proximate cause of a historic natural disaster: when people work together, progress is possible.”

Here’s the blog post

Amarillo responded well during that time. We set up emergency quarters for the residents who came here. We gave them shelter, food, medical care, counseling services and placement advice as they sought to collect themselves after having their lives shattered by the storm’s wrath.

It’s good that we don’t have to respond in such a fashion all that often. But when we do, it’s also good to know we are able and willing to answer the call for help.

 

 

local news

Hunt for Katrina survivor comes up empty

hurricane katrina

Emma appears to have moved on.

I hope she’s happy and healthy.

Word came from City Hall earlier this week that my search for a woman I met 10 years ago here in Amarillo after Hurricane Katrina devastated her home town of New Orleans has come up empty.

She and more than 100 other refugees from the devastation of the storm fled to the High Plains. Several communities welcomed them. They lived for a time in makeshift quarters assembled at the Amarillo Civic Center, which had been turned into a refugee center.

The Amarillo Public Health Department and the city’s Emergency Services Department had mobilized quite efficiently to accept the individuals — and the families — that sought to escape the devastation brought to the Gulf Coast in August 2005.

They set up health clinics, providing medicine and immunization. Counselors were available to talk to the refugees who were coping with the enormous emotional shock of what they were enduring.

From my recollection of the events as they were unfolding, the city response represented one of its finer moments.

None of those storm refugees remained.

The city reportedly had 48 clients registered through it Community Development office, but all of them, according to the city, appear to be “inactive.”

Perhaps it was her heart that was talking when Emma agreed to meet with me shortly upon arriving in Amarillo. She said she had intended to stay here. She was going to give up her life in the Big Easy and settle, perhaps, for a quieter existence way up yonder here on the Caprock.

She had plenty to say a decade ago about the incompetence of the emergency response in New Orleans. She blamed everyone — local, state and federal authorities — for the confusion and mayhem that ensued as residents struggled to cope with the loss of homes, not to mention the loss of loved ones.

Emma was fortunate in one important aspect: No one in her family died from the storm.

My hope was to find her and to visit with her yet again, to assess how she’s coped.

I’ll put my faith in the belief that she’s doing fine and that the city she called home, if only for a brief time — Amarillo — helped Emma find her way to a new life.

local news

On the hunt for a Katrina survivor

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A decade ago, Amarillo opened its doors — and its arms and heart — to about 100 or so refugees from down yonder, on the Gulf Coast.

They fled New Orleans after their homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Many thousands of residents were left homeless, hopeless and penniless.

Some came here, far away from the danger of storm surge, horrifying wind and torrential rain.

Amarillo showed what it was made of at that time, just as communities all across Texas and the nation did in lending a hand to those who were in desperate straits.

I had the pleasure of meeting one of them, thanks to some help I got from the city’s public health department, which then was led by Matt Richardson, who’s since moved on.

Her name is Emma.

Ten years ago, this courageous mother and grandmother told me she had every intention of staying in Amarillo. She wanted to find the kind of work she was doing in The Big Easy. Emma said her then-boyfriend was qualified to do a lot of odd jobs and he, too, hoped to make Amarillo his home for life.

My curiosity over her whereabouts and her well-being has been rekindled as the nation looks back at that dark time.

A great American city was inundated and nearly destroyed. It has come back — more or less. New Orleans isn’t quite as heavily populated as it was pre-Katrina. But much of it has been rebuilt. Many folks have returned to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

I’m wondering, though, about Emma.

I hope to find her soon and get caught up on how she’s fared in the past decade on the High Plains.

national news

Say goodnight, Brian Williams

The Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special was a hysterical event.

Seeing some of the former cast members, including those from the initial 1975 lineup, filled the evening with nostalgia and lots of laughs.

Including a few giggles at the expense of one Brian Williams, the suspended NBC News anchor.

I came away from the Williams jokes believing more strongly than ever that the anchor’s career is finished. Done. Kaput.

A wise person once said — or perhaps I dreamt it — that when you become the butt of prime-time or late-night jokes, than your career as you’ve known it is toast.

Williams’ career took a serious hit already with revelations that he fabricated a story about being shot down by rocket fire in Iraq in 2003. He said he “misremembered” the event. Whatever. Other reports came forward quickly thereafter: his coverage of Katrina; his reporting about being shot at in the sky over Israel.

NBC sent him packing for six months without pay. The network has launched an investigation into Williams’ fabrications, embellishments, other “misrememberances.”

The SNL special last night, though, sealed it for me. Williams is finished. When the audience laughs at jokes from Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Carrey about the formerly trusted news anchor, well, it’s time — as they say in the business — to “pursue other interests.”

 

national news

Williams gone for 6 months, maybe forever

That didn’t take long.

I was hoping to cool my jets for a time while NBC News decided how to handle Brian Williams’ “misremembering” tale of woe. But today, the network news division decided to suspend Williams for six months without pay for violating the No. 1 cardinal rule of journalism — which is to tell the truth.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/nbc-news-suspends-brian-williams-for-false-iraq-helicopter-story/ar-AA9eu7i

It does not appear that this will end well for Williams’ once-stellar journalism career. He got caught fabricating a story about getting shot down in Iraq in 2003; he has been saying for years that his helicopter was hit by enemy rockets when, in fact, it wasn’t.

Then came questions about his reporting on Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — and then some head-scratching regarding his reports about flying over rocket fire in Israel in 2007.

When does it end?

NBC made the right call here. Williams’ credibility is, shall we say, blown to smithereens. His presence now at the NBC Nightly News anchor desk calls attention not to the news he would delivering, but to the man who would deliver it — and not in a positive manner.

What happens now is anyone’s guess. Williams will be off the air for at least six months. I suspect it won’t take him that long to decide that perhaps his time in the anchor’s chair is over.

For the short term, the network and the anchorman will have time to work out a separation agreement and a way to announce his departure that seeks to save a little bit of face — for both parties.

There will be plenty of discussion over how this controversy was allowed to explode and how Williams got away for as long as he did telling a story so many people knew was wrong.

A part of me is sad to witness the implosion of a man’s career.

Another part of me, though, is glad someone is being held accountable for breaching a serious trust between the media and those who expect truth in the information they deliver.

 

national news

Did the work horse become a show horse?

I can’t help myself.

Whenever I see pictures of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams covering the Big Story — in the flak jacket, or the hip waders — I keep thinking of terms other than “journalist.”

I keep thinking of terms like “show horse,” “entertainer,” “grandstander,” “show off.”

OK, I know it’s likely unfair at this point of the Williams “Chopper-gate” controversy to pass final judgment, but it’s beginning to look strange and weird as I gander at these pictures of Williams on the job, reporting the news to his faithful viewers. (See the link attached.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/09/questioning-the-ritz-carlton-gangs-that-brian-williams-said-terrorized-him-during-katrina/?tid=hp_mm

The link here, from the Washington Post, talks about another story emanating from Hurricane Katrina. It’s about gangs that reportedly terrorized the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where Williams was billeted during his coverage of the tragic storm.

This all began, of course, with the helicopter story that Williams now admits to “misremembering.” Others are saying he fabricated the story of being shot down in Iraq in 2003. The shoot-down didn’t happen. Williams wrapped his on-air apology in the flag, saying how he “bungled” an effort to pay tribute to the brave men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the reports of other questionable stories keep coming forward, casting even more doubt on the credibility of a man whose employer, NBC News, had been promoting on air as a man who had earned viewers’ “trust.”

Surely I’m not the only viewer whose faith in a veteran broadcast journalist has been shaken.

Oh, how I want to be wrong, but I cannot help thinking this isn’t going to end well for Brian Williams’ career.

 

national news

Williams story taking on life of its own

A wise person once said that you know you’re toast when the late-night comics start making fun of you.

Welcome to the world of wee-hour funny stuff, Brian Williams.

His story about “misremembering” a shoot-down in Iraq and now his reporting from Hurricane Katrina is taking on a life of its own. It’s turning into a monster that, if it’s left still kicking, is going to knock down the walls of credibility that formerly surrounded the NBC Nightly News anchorman.

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/11526453-148/nbc-news-anchor-brian-williams

This is not a pretty sight to watch.

It well might be that the Katrina story inflicts an even deeper wound in Williams’s reputation.

He reported during the storm in 2005 about seeing “dead bodies” floating in the French Quarter — despite the reported fact at the time that the Quarter suffered hardly any flooding. He told viewers about ingesting floodwater, causing dysentery. Others on the scene have doubted that as well.

What in the world is happening to this individual’s once-stellar journalism career? He’s always been thought of as one of the more thoughtful, everyman, honest newsmen in the business. Williams has exhibited none of the erratic behavior that Dan Rather did when he took over from Walter Cronkite at CBS. He’s been rock solid, steady — and at times self-effacing, such as when he makes appearances on late-night shows to talk about stories he’s covered and the foibles he’s endured.

The so-called misremembering being shot down in Iraq by itself stretches credulity.

Add to that now the reporting of deep flaws in his Hurricane Katrina coverage and you start drawing the picture of a broadcst journalist who’s found himself in some deep doo-doo.

This is not fun to watch.