'How I See It'

The day after Katrina, pictures of stranded and suffering New Orleanians at the Louisiana Superdome and Ernest N. Morial Convention Center hit the national and international news. Their faces, filled with so much pain and struggle, shocked both my wife and me. I was sad and angry because I knew there was no reason people should have been left at the Superdome or convention center, the landmark that bears my father's name, without food, water and medical supplies. Something had gone very, very wrong.

When I learned that breaks in the levees were the source of New Orleans' flooding, my heart sank. I told my wife, Michelle, a former TV anchor/reporter in New Orleans, that even one levee collapse would be a great impending catastrophe. I had spent plenty of hurricane seasons viewing computer modeling to know that the city would fill with water like a bathtub beneath a faucet. Katrina had become the "worst case scenario." What was most distressing was the weak woeful and inadequate response of federal, state and local officials.

The phones at our New York house rang constantly with calls from New Orleanians, who were either stranded or frantically searching for family members in their beloved hometown. As each day passed, the magnitude of what had become an international crisis squarely hit me.

I called my childhood friend, Wynton Marsalis. We yearned to do something more than watch from the safety of New York City. We decided to act. So we spoke to the key leaders at Black Entertainment Television and within 72 hours organized a very successful telethon that raised $13 million for the American Red Cross.

When I visited New Orleans a few weeks later, I arrived at a city that had few signs of life. I visited my old neighborhood, Pontchartrain Park which I knew had been completely covered by water earlier. Now dry, it was gray and lonely. There were abandoned cars everywhere.

It was the Daggs' home that caught my attention. The door had been jarred open. When I peered inside, I saw the devastation of Hurricane Katrina up close for the first time. The house was all topsy-turvy with furniture turned over and walls with black mold. Anyone stranded would have clearly had a hard time coming out alive. All of the houses in Pontchartrain Park had suffered such substantial damage that remediation, repair and rebuilding would be difficult and indeed expensive at best. But nothing could prepare me for the 9th Ward as I crossed the old, historic St. Claude Avenue Bridge--near the man-made industrial canal where the levee broke.

The lower 9th Ward is special. Not only was it home to Fats Domino, it formed an important part of the strong base of support that not only helped my father, but me, through two mayoral elections. It is an area that had long been forgotten. One of my earliest commitments after being elected mayor was to hold the State of the City Address at the Martin Luther King Elementary Library, which had been built as a result of a collaboration between the city and state. After my address, we crossed the street to the Sanchez Community Center, where we dedicated a new gymnasium for the youth of the neighborhood.

While others had thought of the lower 9th Ward as unimportant and forgotten, it was a special part of the city to me. Both my father and I were determined through our mayoral terms to build schools, libraries, gymnasiums and repave the streets. I tried to help the neighborhood play catch-up after years of neglect and abandonment. It was a strong neighborhood of great character with a powerful sense of community.

These memories made the devastation even more personal, even more heartbreaking. We tried to find the levee break itself, and the closer we came, the more difficult the obstacle course before us. On Caffin Avenue, we looked to our left to see the Glapion Funeral Home's signature long white limousine. It had been carried two blocks by the sheer force of the storm's surge. The gap in the levee was several city blocks long. The path it cut was like a powerful bomb, shattering every structure in its wake.

The pain, the sadness, the sense of loss that came over all of us who were part of that trip was numbing. Despite it all, many homes were still standing. I came away believing that all of these neighborhoods could make a comeback. If the will of the people was there and with proper planning, resources and a commitment by the federal government to build a first-class levee system, it could be possible.

On our way back to downtown New Orleans, we encountered a man walking swiftly with what appeared to be a large book. He recognized me, and we embraced. He said that he had walked 55 blocks, defying the order to stay out of the lower 9th Ward area. He not only wanted to see his home, but he wanted to retrieve his large family Bible, which he was carrying under his arm. He said it was one of the few things in his home that was not completely destroyed. Seeing his home gave him closure, and retrieving his treasured family Bible gave him the power and strength to move on.