Tampa Photography Blog

I’ve been torn as to how to start this series. It’s so close to my heart and is such a sensitive subject with some folks, I was afraid of what to say.

Then, I found journal entries in my reporter notebooks from that week.

I wrote my first entry when I arrived in Baton Rouge with a reporter named Francis. We stayed at a congressman’s house near the Capitol before we drove into New Orleans. We arrived on Sunday, August 30, 2005, the day after Katrina hit.

I remembered how irritated I was when I left Shreveport (five hours northwest of New Orleans), because my newspaper (The Times) was not willing to let me use a company car. I remembered hearing that a VIP needed it for something and I’d have to take my own. I had just purchased a brand new 2005 Chevy Trailblazer not two months before Katrina. (It still had that new car smell.) I was upset. I thought the least my paper could do was let me use a company car since I was covering a dangerous aftermath of the state’s worst natural disaster.

Then, I arrived in New Orleans and realized my anger and frustration was petty. I was alive. I had a car. And I didn’t live in New Orleans.

I had nothing to complain about.

Most of the images posted here are from Rouse’s Supermarket in Metairie, Louisiana (a suburb of New Orleans). This was one of the first times I saw the chaos of what Katrina had done to these people. Police called taking food and supplies from a supermarket “looting”.

Looting is defined as “anything taken by dishonesty, force, stealth, etc.” Those who were taking DVD players and top-notch Nike shoes are absolutely being dishonest but those who are taking food for their families, are simply trying to survive. FEMA was nowhere near reaching these people and if I was in that situation, I would have done the same thing.

But walking inside a pitch black supermarket where desperate people are fighting for food and water is a scary feeling. My only weapons were my cameras but even so, I was 120 pounds soaking wet. Could I defend myself if something happened? And what would keep them from stealing my gear?

I shot most of my photos outside the supermarket for safety reasons and for light. (It was awful inside--it smelled like bad fish and sour milk.) We met a woman named Hannah who sat and waited with her infant son while her husband went inside to gather whatever food was left. She seemed defeated. Her son was too young to understand, thank God.

Then we met Darmesha, a young girl was “standing guard” by her family’s stash of supplies while they went inside for more. She had a dazed look about her—her eyes were empty and she seemed numb. I’m sure this is the first tragedy of this kind that this little girl has ever experienced.

August 31, 2005 journal entry:

“We finally get out and go to LSU where there’s a special needs shelter set up. We talk to a few people but get kicked off campus fairly quickly by police. I talked to Arthur, a 59-year-old man sitting in a wheelchair outside the shelter. He told me he left his wife and kids in the 7^{t h} Ward (of New Orleans) to go to the Superdome. He’s not sure if they’re alive or what’s left of their house. I can’t imagine what he’s going through and how uncertain he feels his future is…

…What I will remember are the smells, even on the first day. The smell of vomit outside the LSU shelter and the smell of spoiled, rotten food outside Rouse’s Supermarket in Metairie…

…Other journalists are talking about what people have seen as they get into the heart of New Orleans—dead bodies of adults and children floating in the floodwaters, people begging for rescue from their roofs, looting downtown with guns…”