Katrina, Mississippi: Voices from Ground Zero
By: NancyKay Sullivan Wessman / Narrated By: Kevin Stillwell, Gwen Hughes
Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
What the people of the Emergency Operations Center went through, and it was a LOT!
I dunno—I can’t STAND it when my husband trots out the phrase: “People don’t realize” so I’ll try not to use it here, but…
Oh damn!
People don’t realize that Mississippi was Ground Zero for Hurricane Katrina. THAT’S where her greatest devastation was caused. Yeah, yeah, yeah, New Orleans blah blah blah—BUT—New Orleans was NOT Hurricane Katrina, it was the failing of the levees.
Katrina, Mississippi tells of the COMPLETE horror show that Katrina left in her wake. And I thought it’d be about the stories from the people who lived through it and lost so much, but it was actually about those in charge, heading up the EOC. It starts with them deciding which zones to evacuate (Leaving some as just suggested voluntary evacuation as hospitals needed to stay open), parking their cars on higher ground, setting up in the command center, naively thinking they’d be one of the safest spots around.
Uhm… no…
Katrina, expected to hit Louisiana hardest, swings to the east, and everyone in the command center experiences the terror of the winds, the terror of the surging water that forces them to higher levels, all the while making them feel that, yes, this is the moment they will die. Author Wessman does a fine job in showing freaked out people. Yes, I’m being flippant, but there was just SUCH a difference in how they felt getting ready for the storm to how they felt actually living through it. Your toes just kinda sorta curl because you KNOW how hard Katrina hits, you KNOW they’re NOT safe.
I really liked the book because it showed that, while there was confusion and chaos, there was a helluva lot of heroism. They wait until Katrina winds have died down to go out to rescue others, and by “died down” I don’t mean all was calm: They went out in 60-80 mph gales. What they find (An environment utterly ravaged) is too much to bear, so they advise each other to just “look at one thing at a time; do NOT think of the Big Picture.” They find drowned families with maybe a solitary child survivor; they find casinos that have been torn up and pushed blocks away. It’s too much.
Or so it would seem. But they immediately swing into action, and it was heartening to hear about how much they did for themselves, and it was heartening to hear about how much Florida did for them too (Florida was designated as a helper state before Katrina made landfall, so they had resources ready to move).
Speaking of resources, they (And I wish I could tell you the names of the people in charge who did all this, but there were sooo many that I had trouble remembering who did what when all was said and done) were ULTRA resourceful. They made do with what cropped up. Too many bodies? Why there’s a truck with refrigeration that recently unloaded supplies and is now empty. The driver doesn’t wanna sell, but no way are they letting this slip by. $25,000 should do it. And it does: Now they have a morgue on wheels.
This is a somber book, but it’s an uplifting one at the same time. Narrator Kevin Stillwell does a jolly decent job; my only problem is that he kinda races through the last name of the one person whom I believe truly deserves to be honored and remembered. I Googled the HELL outta various options but it’s Trebanchek… maybe? I dunno, but the man totally rocked. A health official, he dealt with horrible conditions, little sleep, bureaucratic boondoggles, and even people basically slandering him. Katrina, Mississippi chronicles many of his undertakings and efforts, and much of ALL that stood in his way. I REALLY wish I knew his name, as his story was sooo memorable. Even Wikipedia and clever ideas about what to put in Search brought me nothing (Tho’, through Google, I DID find a few scholarly research articles with some interesting info on “health officials”…).
Mississippi was kinda part of my whole Katrina PTSD thing as you can’t read/hear/listen to things like entire places being completely wiped out like Waveland, Pass Christian, or Bay St. Louis without feeling exhaustive horror. (And then there’s Biloxi, and then there’s Gulfport, and then, and then, and then…). So it was VERY good for my spirit to listen to this audiobook with stories of just how good and resourceful and generous and self-sacrificing so many individuals were.
An Uplifting Horror Show, you ask?
Well, uhm, yeah. It turns out to be so!
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