Generation Magazine

By Matthew Dunham

The relativity of time is astounding. If one were to make the case that the only reality is what we perceive, rather than some kind of physical externality all around us, an analysis of the way we think about time might be useful. Time is relentless: always moving forward, every second that passes is irretrievable. It is consistent—and persistent—because it moves in only one direction. But the universally constant passage of time begins to break down with any consideration of the relative speed of time. Some days seem faster than others, depending on what we’re doing and with whom, and if are happy or sad, thirsty or hungry. When we need time the most, it slips away from us too quickly; when we want time to go faster, it slows to a standstill.

My father and I left for New Orleans the morning of Aug. 23, 2005 with a 1,460-mile road trip in front of us. I was so happy that I was finally on my way to college—to a new place, to meet new people—and the trip stretched on forever in my mind. We drove halfway that day, and almost the rest of the way the next day, Wed., Aug. 24.

At around 5 p.m., we stopped in Slidell, La., just north across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Our hotel reservations in the city were not until the next day, and we had just driven almost 1,500 miles in a little less than two days, so we took that evening to relax and collect ourselves. We had some pizza and wings, and turned on the television, hoping to sample the local flavor by watching the news.

The main story that night was Tropical Storm Katrina’s impending landfall in eastern Florida. The forecasters were predicting that the storm would upgrade to a hurricane sometime during the next few hours, with landfall coming in the early morning. At this early stage, though, they didn’t know much else about the storm. One forecaster thought it would cross Florida and enter the Gulf, posing a threat to the Gulf Coast. Another forecaster was certain the storm would turn northward after making landfall in Florida, briefly entering the Gulf and then making landfall again along the Panhandle.

That night, Katrina was a relatively weak tropical system, and it seemed that residents were unconcerned. Tropical storms and Category 1 hurricanes are a fact of life along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts; there was definitely a wait-and-see mentality. There was one ominous statement, though, from a forecaster who thought the storm might enter the Gulf and head more west than north. He said something about the unusually warm water in the Gulf—90 degrees and above—which could cause a rapid intensification of the storm. It was a brief mention of what appeared to be a passing thought, but if he saw that as one eventuality on Wednesday, then it is even more of a shame that any organized response to the storm took as long as it did. There are a lot of smart people out there thinking about these things, but the knowledge has to be combined with action for anything to occur.

My father and I discussed the storm for a few minutes, but it did not really occur to us that it could pose a threat to New Orleans—or to us. It was so far away, and so many factors had to come together for the storm to affect my orientation weekend, that we more or less wrote the storm off as an unfortunate threat to some, but unlikely to concern us. We did the same thing that everyone else was doing—we were comfortable with the status quo and we did not want to let the possibility of severe problems upset it or us.

Thurs., Aug. 25 was a perfect day: Slightly breezy, low 90s, moderate humidity. Every minute we spent outside re-affirmed my love of the climate and continued to validate my decision to go to Tulane. We made the short drive into New Orleans that morning and settled into our hotel room. St. Charles Avenue follows the east-west crescent of the Mississippi River, and our hotel was located toward the east end; Tulane is at the west end.

There were constant trolleys running along St. Charles Avenue; all we had to do was get one outside of our hotel and let it take us directly to the university. There always seemed to be something idyllic and quaint about riding the trolleys—the gently rocking motion of the trolley itself, the quiet chatter of the passengers, the fresh air passing through the open windows, the lush greenness of the massive trees that line many New Orleans streets. And the trolley driver was very garrulous. At one point, she stopped the trolley for a minute or two to go to the bathroom in a little café where they knew her by name. We were all a little stunned when she suddenly left the trolley, but when we realized what she was doing we were amused.

On Friday, my father and I picked my mother up at the airport, and we retraced most of what we had done on Thursday. She had never been to Tulane or New Orleans before, and wanted to see the university, so we spent most of Friday touring the campus and the city around the Garden District. She thought the weather was a little too hot—Friday was another perfect day in the low 90s with pure sunshine—but otherwise was just as fascinated as we were with the distinct otherness of New Orleans. That day was haunted by the ever-increasing specter of Hurricane Katrina, which by that time had started to strengthen, gaining momentum in the Gulf. The expected northward turn was taking longer than forecasters had predicted. They were slowly revising storm tracks westward along the Gulf coast; at first, they didn’t include Louisiana in those predictions, but as Friday rolled into Saturday—and as I prepared to move into my dorm—eastern Louisiana became the center of most predictions.

No evacuation had been ordered when we went to bed Friday night, so when we woke up Saturday morning, we proceeded with moving me in. We arrived on campus at around 7:30 a.m., the campus already bustling with parents and students. We unloaded my things on the curb outside of my residence hall; by 8 a.m. it was already 85 degrees and very humid. My room was on the sixth floor. There were only two elevators, so we spent the hour between eight and nine dragging my things up some very hot stairwells. The first few trips weren’t too bad, but every trip after 8:30 was increasingly difficult, because the stairwells were warming up with the day’s heat and the many bodies passing through them.

By the time we finished, my father and I were both drenched in sweat. My mother only made the last trip, preferring to stay with my things on the curb as we brought everything up. Conversation between all of the parents and students was good-natured that morning, though the threat of the hurricane became more real with every passing minute. Perhaps we were all in denial, but Katrina was only mentioned a few times. By 9:30 a.m., my roommate and I had moved all of our things into our room. He was from Detroit, and he seemed like a good kid, albeit fairly quiet, so our first impressions were warm. He and I spent the next hour or so helping others on our floor settle in, while slowly unpacking our own things. But at 11 a.m., the other shoe dropped.

The RA came into our room and informed our parents and us that Tulane was ordering a mandatory evacuation because of the hurricane. The university wanted everyone off campus by 2 p.m. We were told we could leave our things in our rooms, because they expected we would be able to return by Tuesday or Wednesday. The city-wide voluntary evacuation was not ordered until 5 p.m. that day, so Tulane was a full six hours ahead of the city of New Orleans. Regardless, my parents and I were unsure of what we were going to do. Our first inclination was to go to the airport and take any flight we could out of the city, but that proved harder than we imagined. We piled my things in my closet, got in our car, and headed for the airport. Although the airport was only a few miles from Tulane, it took us about three hours to get there. The traffic was already bad, several hours before any kind of official evacuation.

We arrived at the airport around 2:30 p.m., and found complete chaos. All flights were fully booked and some were even cancelled, adding to the anger and frustration many people were feeling. We stayed at the airport for about 15 minutes, and then abandoned it as a lost cause. We would travel west, to Austin, Texas, because my brother lived there. It was about an eight-hour trip from New Orleans under good traffic conditions—we had no idea how long it would take us to get there. Our best guess was somewhere between 12 and 20 hours.

Luck was on our side this time. Contra-flow, which closes highways to inbound traffic, started at 3 p.m.—right as we were leaving the airport. We entered the highway as contra-flow was happening, and we were the lead car for quite some time. Traffic eventually caught up with us, because my father did not want to push his speed in unfamiliar places, but it was surprisingly smooth driving almost all of the way to Austin. Just after we crossed into Texas, I looked left out of the car, to the south. I saw what is now indelibly imprinted upon my brain. We were only a few miles north of the Gulf at that point. Dusk was falling across the land. Stretching for hundreds of miles across the sky, and 40 or 50 miles up, was the biggest and most violent bank of clouds that I have ever seen, illuminated by the last vestiges of the sun that we couldn’t even see anymore because of the curve of the earth, with constant lightning issuing forth.

According to weather reports on the radio, it was a wall of super cell thunderstorms, the leading edge of Katrina. For those few seconds, I was mesmerized. It was the most beautiful and terrifying thing that I had ever seen, putting into immediate perspective the cold, impersonal power of the hurricane. Prior to that moment, Hurricane Katrina was just a concept to me—something that I had seen swirling over the blue waters of radar screens for a few days. The intensity of the lightning and the awesome magnificence of natural power drove home that Katrina was a real force and had real potential to do catastrophic damage.

We ran into one other hiccup before reaching Austin. About an hour outside of the city, we drove through some super-violent, super cell thunderstorms that spawned a few tornadoes. It was the perfectly awful end to a day that could have been much worse, but was still the complete opposite of what I had wanted and expected. At that moment, I should have been spending my first night in a college dorm. I should have been meeting all the new people that would become my good friends. I should have been experiencing Tulane and New Orleans, eagerly immersing myself in a new place. But instead, I was pulling into the parking lot of my brother’s apartment complex around 1 a.m., Sun., Aug. 28. I did not comprehend the true power of Katrina at the time—no one could. I was selfishly upset at my own misfortune, though I was safe and very far from New Orleans. I was fortunate to have transportation and enough time to get out of the city. So many others were not so lucky.

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