Essay by Su Zi: Citizens’ Alert

Many of us have already survived the rising tides of climate catastrophe. Current predictions do not include a return to paradise, and, in fact, are fair warning of future fiascos. Perhaps, it might be wise to consider that which has been written about such events to enhance, at least, personal preparedness.

Published accounts vary widely; however, a memoir of a storm by Riza Oledan-Ramos/ Walt FJ Gooding called Citizens’ Alert, which was acquired at a bookfair, contains a scene of evacuation:

This wasn’t your typical storm. This was something entirely different—something of a completely different nature than I or anyone else had ever experienced. It was as if it were alive. It sounded and felt as if it were a living thing—a conscious, breathing, thinking being with an intention, and on a mission. It was trying to get to us. First it tried the front door, then it tried the side walls; then the windows, finally the roof [...] it pounded and howled and screamed at the roof[...]the howling never stopped. It pounded and shook and finally it got its way. It tore our roof off and flung it into the night as it raced inside after us (12)

The arc of the narrative is that of aftermath, personal and specific enough to include both photographs and a survival checklist.

There are professional published accounts as well, and now, although time has passed, the possibility of Gulf storms has not. While myths about storms not coming ashore was disproven by Asheville, North Carolina, aftermath can take a generation for some healing. It has been a generation, now, since the storm that directly hit New Orleans, but mention of the storm among locals is a demarcation in time. Professional accounts of Katrina include that of New Orleans journalist Chris Rose 1 dead in attic (2005), also a memoir. In this case, the protagonist returns to see what is left and return to work. 

And I’m telling you: it’s hard

It’s hard not to get crispy around the edges. It’s hard not to cry. It’s hard not to be very, very afraid.

[...]

We have a generator and water and military food rations and Doritos and smokes and booze. [...] Some of these guys lost their houses -- everything in them 

[...] 

And they stink. We all stink. We stink together (22)

Rose also makes mention of celebrity journalists, “The satellite trucks stretch for eight blocks on Canal Street. [...] I saw Anderson Cooper interviewing Dr Phil, Dr Phil’s camera crew filmed Cooper, and about five or six other camera crews [...] filmed all of that “(26).

Anderson Cooper included a chapter about Katrina in Dispatches from the Edge (Harper Collins 2006), along with accounts of Tsunami, Iraq and Niger. That an American city would be in the same celebrity catastrophe accounting ought to serve as warning as well. Cooper begins his account by counting corpses:

[...]the searchers find a body lying on a sidewalk in an empty-cul-de-sac.I think it’s a woman; at first, it’s hard to tell.  Water wipes away identity, race, even gender. I think she’s African American, but her skin appears white, translucent almost.

Someone has covered her face and part of her body with a dirty bedspread. Her feet and hands stick out.

[...]

The team takes pictures—Click, Click—then records the woman’s GPS coordinates

[...]

I never thought I’d see this here, in America—the dead left out like trash. None of us speaks. (138)

Cooper’s narrative is interspersed with personal recollections of the city, as he tells us of individual moments of aftermath. Yet, lest someone take sole hope in evacuation centers, Cooper interviews Dr Greg Henderson, who arrived at the evacuation point, “discovered that there was no medical team there, just evacuees. Thousands of them.” (161). Cooper describes the interview site as “standing on a garbage-strewn street outside the Convention Center one week after the storm” where Dr Henderson says, “This is where hell opened its mouth” (160). As for the evacuation point itself:

They were packed in everywhere, all the way into to the street, and pretty much the other side of the street; it was just one mass of humanity. No air-conditioning, just people crying and dying. Crying and dying (161)

Cooper witnessed the Katrina aftermath for a few weeks. He makes a remark that ought to be useful for us in preparation, as he asked officials questions: “Demanding accountability is no game, and there’s nothing wrong with trying to understand who made mistakes, who failed. If no one is held accountable for their decisions their actions, all of this will happen again” (191).

These three accounts of once-rare, now frighteningly possible, super storms, must give sane people pause, especially as the northern American continent is already beleaguered with drought, fires and heat in the wake of some devastating arctic storms. Whether or not we want to consider the weather might be keystone to community, if not personal, survival. Perhaps we ought to take some consideration time while we still have it.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

               

Check out her author page on Amazon.