I did not personally experience Hurricane Katrina, as so many did, but it was impossible to be living in Austin, Texas in the last year and not be affected by Katrina and its aftermath, however indirectly. Being here allowed me to see both the horrors of the storm and the heroes, mostly unsung, who stepped into the vacuum to serve when the government seemed paralyzed and unable--or unwilling--to act.
Katrina struck while my wife and I were in northern Indiana, visiting family. My most personal connection to the storm became apparent even before Katrina roared ashore. Fr. Dabney Smith, the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans, was an old family friend. I'd worshipped in his church for years when he was the rector of St. Michael and All Angels in South Bend, he stood at our side in court when my brother was sentenced to rehab, and he'd married my wife and I. The fate of Dabney and his family, his parishioners and his church weighed on my mind as I watched the devastation on the news and listened to the weeping people looking for friends and family that were feared dead.
It was on the drive back to Austin that the numbness over what was, to me, an inconceivable tragedy began to give way to rage. It was not the $3 a gallon gas that did it; it was the signs directing evacuees to shelters that I began seeing in Arkansas and Texas. This was the United States, dammit, and hundreds of thousands of people had suddenly been reduced to little better than refugees. We were better than that. My horror was only magnified as I saw Trinity Episcopal narrowly escape an oil fire on ABC World News Tonight.
But if I saw horrors, I met heroes. I work at a kennel, <a href=http://www.dogboys.com>DogBoy's Dog Ranch</a>, just north of Austin, and our kennel manager handles a dog trained to find dead bodies. She spent a week in St. Bernard Parish, risking her and her dog's health in the open sewer that was New Orleans and the surrounding area, searching for (and unfortunately finding) the dead--twenty in a single house. I can't imagine being able to deal with the apocalyptic scene Sandra had to confront, the courage it had to have taken, but she and Makena both will forever have my admiration for stepping up and volunteering for such a grim task.
I also consider my employers at DogBoy's to be heroes. DogBoy's is a medium-sized kennel, with our capacity ideally being no more than 85-90 dogs when we're fully booked. Bart and Courtney, DogBoy's owners, took in 12 dogs evacuated out of the storm zone. Since no one had any record of these dogs' vaccination histories, they had to be quarantined (indeed, four of the dogs ended up having parvo), effectively closing off a third of the kennels' capacity for several weeks. But this was done without question, because it was the right thing to do. I have never, ever, been prouder to work for someone than I was then.
My fellow parishioners at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church were also heroes to me. The first Sunday after Katrina struck, they gave $25,000 to a special offering for victims of the storm. Some of them volunteered at the Austin Convention Center, turned into a temporary shelter. Among the people they met and ministered to was Bob, who'd been a janitor at a small bar in the French Quarter. Already terminally ill with liver cancer when the storm hit, it was clear that Bob would not survive to return home to New Orleans, and he had no family or friends that we were able to track down. I was so proud of the people who befriended this man, who gave him what comfort they could in his last days, and at the last ensured that he would have a decent burial in a niche in our memorial garden. I was never more proud when Bob was given a memorial service the Sunday after his death, so that, if nothing else, we could remember that this man lived and died and make sure he was mourned.
There were many more such instances of heroics, and I'm sure the DailyKos community has many more such stories. None of it excuses the inaction and incompetence of the government response to Hurricane Katrina, nor should we forget the continued suffering. In early June, St. Matthew's associate rector, Susan Barnes, led a mission trip to New Orleans; you can hear her account of it <a href=http://www.stmattsaustin.org/audio/2006-07-09-sermon-sjb-1318.mp3>here</a> (it starts not quite halfway through the sermon). Much work remains to be done, and FEMA, with or without Brownie, must continue to be held accountable.
But I shudder when I think of how much worse it would have been without all the heroes who stepped into the breach and served, when the government was not.