In the thick of Katrina

The water lapping at our front steps seemed to stretch forever: waist-deep and rising. The Times-Picayune newspaper offices, where we rode out hurricanes so we could hit the streets to report, was about to become an island prison.

All night after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Lake Pontchartrain had spilled relentlessly into living rooms across New Orleans. More than 1,000 people were already dead. But we didn’t know that yet.

The newspaper’s delivery trucks were our only way out, and perhaps not for much longer.

Report to the loading dock, we were told. Get in the back of one of the trucks. Everyone.

But, on that day five years ago, I was about to become an exception.

***

In New Orleans, this is well-known: To find high ground, head toward the river. As our caravan of delivery trucks ambled up the bridge approach, we peered from the open backs and saw a ribbon of dry land running along the Mississippi.

People were trudging along listlessly. Some carried plastic tubs filled with possessions. It was ungodly hot.

The day before, early reports indicated that the wind damage had not been so bad. But two colleagues on bicycles confirmed massive floodwall failures and they saw neighborhoods underwater between the lake and the newspaper — the area where I lived.

Everyone pondered their own nightmare as we headed for safety. I was thinking about my house and the dog and two cats I’d left behind, with plenty of food upstairs and the bathtub filled with fresh water. The cats would be fine, but Carson, an Australian shepherd mix I’d inherited when my father passed away five years earlier, was old. He also was afraid of stairs.

In my final hour at home, I had leashed Carson and guided him up and down the stairs. Now I hoped he had figured out what I was trying to tell him.

I also thought about this great city, which had seduced me like it had so many others. I turned to Mike Perlstein, an investigative reporter, and said, “I’m not leaving.”

He felt the same. “Whatever you’re thinking,” he said, “I’m in.”

***

After we made it over the river, several trucks in the convoy stopped to regroup.

Perlstein and I connected with like-minded colleagues. Not everyone was eager to return. But Editor Jim Amoss gave us a truck.

Our reporting team was assembled in that parking lot: A handful of city desk reporters, the editorial page editor and her deputy, the music critic, the art critic, the religion writer and a photographer. Behind the wheel was me, the sports editor.

We made it back into the city and drove into a news story: A massive crowd surrounded a Walmart. In what would turn out to be a last moment of naivete, I thought the store was launching a relief effort. Then we saw a man headed down the street with a flat-screen TV in a shopping cart.

Merchandise was leaving by the armful. Looters loaded with goods struggled to get through exits jammed with aspiring looters trying to get in. People guarded their bounty as if they’d paid for it.

Some of the looters were cops. Perlstein approached a female officer — in full uniform, loaded down with cosmetics. She shrugged and said, “There’s nothing we can do about this. It’s every man for himself.”

One of her colleagues grabbed about 20 fishing poles; another held an assortment of DVDs.

A looter, spotting our photographer, shouted: “The Times-Picayune is here taking pictures! Let’s go outside and take care of business!”

It was time for us to go.

***

We drove to the home of Terri Troncale, our editorial page editor, and arrived with our first story — the looting — and no way to send it in. Then we met Elaine and Guy Trouard, an elderly couple stranded in their home across the street. They spotted our truck and were quite pleased to see a bunch of journalists pour out the back.

We caught a huge break. Their phone was working. It was so old it wouldn’t command much at a garage sale, but on this day, it was priceless.

We called colleagues setting up the paper’s news desk in nearby Houma and dictated stories written on scrap paper and the backs of envelopes. John McCusker transmitted photos of the looting officers.

Our colleagues put the coverage on the Web; the newspaper wouldn’t print for three days.

We needed a way to get around the flooded city, so three of us decided to return to the newspaper building to retrieve a kayak. While a colleague waited with the truck parked on the dry side of Interstate 10, Perlstein and I waded into the black water. The current was strong and I was nervous. But we made it.

As we loaded up the kayak in the late afternoon sun, I surprised my colleagues. “There’s still a lot of light,” I said. “I need to do one more thing.”

If Carson was alive, I had to rescue him.

***

We got within two miles of my house, at the edge of an ocean of water. I put on a life jacket, climbed into the kayak and shoved off down I-10, taking my usual freeway exit, steering the tiny boat past the rooftops of my neighbors’ homes, hoping they all had made it out alive.

It was eerily quiet, except for the gurgling sound of water splashing against houses. I got stuck on the roof of a submerged shed. Hatchback cars sink, but their rear ends float just below the surface. I hit a few of those.

About halfway there, a floating tree branch smashed the kayak and pinned me against a house. Exhausted, I started to hyperventilate and I thought to myself, “Is this what a fatal mistake feels like right before it’s fatal?” But I extricated myself, took a few deep breaths and pressed on.

I had done pretty well at keeping my emotions in check, but as I approached my home stewing in 10 feet of water, it was all too real. I sat there, as adrift as I’ve ever felt, and cried.

Gathering myself, I tied the kayak to the gutter, smashed a window and yelled, “Carson! Carson!”

Silence.

I cleared away the glass shards, stuck my head in and called again. From the back of the house — up the stairs — came a bark, then constant barking.

I climbed through the window and swam toward the sound.

Carson and the cats were fine. But I realized that there was no way I could swim out with the dog, much less get him into the kayak. I decided to comfort him and return the next day — but then I heard voices.

I yelled out the second-floor window, and moments later, like a vision of good fortune, I was looking at a motorboat holding an older man and two young women. The three Cajuns from Assumption Parish had seen my kayak and come to help.

As I tried to explain my situation, the old man interrupted me. “Oh, I could never leave my dog,” he said. “Hand him down to me.”

I left the cats, who had plenty of food and water. (I retrieved them several days later.) We tied the kayak to the boat, and the Cajuns motored me back to where I’d put in. I never saw them again.

***

Back at our makeshift news bureau, there was concern. It was almost dark and radio forecasters were predicting the water would keep rising. We decided to move to the other side of the Mississippi, weaving through downed trees and snapping dead power lines with the top of our truck.

Amazingly, our new house had running water and another working phone.

But it was a brutal night. The heat was oppressive and we’d already stripped to our shorts. Nothing helped. Some of us went outside and made beds on the driveway, where we were immediately swarmed by mosquitoes. No one slept much.

The next day, conditions were deteriorating, but we figured the emergency response would be massive. President Bush had declared New Orleans a disaster area even before Katrina arrived.

But the day passed, and then another. We weren’t seeing any help. We were on our own.

We wrote about the devastation in the 9th Ward and St. Bernard, and the hopelessness of those who had sought refuge at the Superdome. We wrote about people in apartments, haunted by the cries of neighbors, trapped below, pounding on the ceiling as the water rose.

One day, as I surveyed the misery downtown, a man saw the newspaper logo on my shirt and hollered: “Hey, Times-Picayune man, tell ‘em what’s happening down here. Tell ‘em the truth.”

We went with rescue boats as they pulled out survivors — and left the dead for later.

We moved our base again, to another Uptown house, where a police officer confronted me.

“Are you armed?” he asked.

“No, we’re not armed — we’re reporters,” I said.

“Well, can you make yourself armed?” the officer asked. “There’s no 911. If you call for help, nobody’s coming.”

Alarmed, we reached one of our photographers, Alex Brandon, who was embedded with the police. I told him I was a little worried because a police officer had just recommended we arm ourselves.

Within a half-hour, an unmarked New Orleans Police Department cruiser arrived. The officers left us a shotgun and a .357 Magnum revolver. They said they’d come back to pick them up “when things settle down.” We left the weapons in the house; none of us wanted to carry them.

***

The first post-Katrina print edition of the Times-Picayune was scheduled for Friday, four days after the flood. It would be printed in Houma and distributed mainly to shelters.

We watched as it rolled off the press. It was filled with nothing but ugly news, but to us, it was beautiful.

I asked the production manager for 500 copies and returned to Convention Center Boulevard in New Orleans, where thousands of people had been sitting in the heat, day and night, for four days.

“He’s got Times-Picayunes!” someone yelled.

I couldn’t hand them out fast enough. All I remember is arms reaching and waiting.

It was just the daily paper, but to them — and to me — it was a sign of life in the city we loved.

Five years later, in a miracle I could not have foreseen as I paddled that kayak through my neighborhood, the city has battled back.

dmeeks@tribune.com

David Meeks, an editor in the Washington bureau, previously worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.