Katrina Hits Close to Home

“If it keeps on rainin’, the levee’s gonna break…”
Led Zeppelin, “When the Levee Breaks”

When the news media first began bleating about the developing storm that became Hurricane Katrina, I had my doubts. As a long-time observer of the insurance industry, I’ve become somewhat desensitized to catastrophes. I’ve seen hurricanes and other natural disasters come and go, including the former heavyweight champ, Hurricane Andrew.

So before the storm hit I sent an insouciant e-mail to my friend Sue, who lives in the Big Easy. “Hope you’re headed to higher ground,” I joked. After all, the last time a hurricane threatened the city, Sue and her friends had prepared in traditional New Orleans fashion: they threw a party.

But this time was different. Sue had evacuated to stay with friends in Texas. She couldn’t take much — just some jewelry, research papers from the book she’s writing, and her Maine coon cat Emmett. She left everything else behind in her charming shotgun flat — vintage hats and clothing, 78 rpm records, valued books.

As Katrina’s full impact hit the world, our e-mail exchanges grew less jocular. She confided that on a museum curator’s salary she couldn’t afford flood insurance, and it was likely that everything she owned was waterlogged. As word of looting and violence spread, she hoped they’d take the TV and stereo and leave the antiques. After all, the worst was over.

But then the levee broke, and so did all hell.

Katrina didn’t just change Sue’s life, but all of ours. Like the Great Chicago Fire, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and 9/11, the fallout from Katrina will yield surface changes like higher gas, grocery and insurance prices. On a deeper, more visceral level, the images flashed to us by the media, reminiscent of those far-away natural disasters that can’t hurt us, will become part of a national Zeitgeist that most of us thought had faded with the worst days of the 19th century: bloated corpses in the streets, gangs of looters and rapists roaming free, threats of hepatitis, cholera and dysentery. It will remind us once again that yes, even in America, raging nature can destroy us.

But as New Orleans and the rest of the stricken Gulf Coast begin to pick up the pieces, there are signs of hope. Rickety old Preservation Hall, the cradle of traditional jazz, is relatively untouched. The Audubon Zoo only lost two otters. And Sue will soon be back to work, trying to recover artifacts at the Old U.S. Mint museum in the French Quarter. Back to work, too, are the insurance adjusters, National Guard, rescue workers and the everyday people who will lift New Orleans to her feet once more.

A recent Gallup poll shows that while 56 percent of Americans believe New Orleans is devastated beyond repair, 63 percent think the city should rebuild. Even those of us who are watching from a distance are in the presence of history. It will take years of hard work, money, and the proverbial blood, sweat and tears.

But like Chicago in 1871 and San Francisco in 1906, New Orleans will live to sing again.