Tales of death, survival in Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago: "The lady on the corner, they never found her body'

Hurricane Katrina was blowing through New Orleans when Harry Simms learned the Industrial Canal had been breached, nine blocks from his home on Flood Street in the Lower Ninth Ward.

A failure in the same canal during Hurricane Betsy had wiped out his childhood neighborhood. On Aug. 29, 2005, Simms saw water from Katrina’s breach rising quickly around the house he had bought two years earlier. He had two choices: leave or die.

Flooding is common enough in the Lower Ninth Ward that boats are considered emergency survival tools. Simms, then a longshoreman, powered his boat south to higher ground at Jackson Barracks.

Federal levees and shipping canals were overwhelmed and failed during Hurricane Katrina, putting 80 percent of New Orleans underwater and killing nearly 1,500 people. Images from that day of residents of the Lower Ninth Ward stranded on their rooftops praying to be rescued from the rising waters became early symbols of the devastation across New Orleans.

Rooftop rescue during Katrina flooding

 First-responders borrowed Simms’ boat for several days to check houses for survivors and bodies. They marked each building with another enduring symbol, the “Katrina X.” It was short-hand code to other rescue groups, with the date the building was checked on the top of the X, the rescue-unit number to the left and existing hazards or conditions to the right. The mark at the bottom tallied the number inside who died.

“After they had checked all the houses, we all had to go to the Super Dome,” Simms says, referring to the domed stadium turned makeshift emergency shelter that would become a hellishly lawless scene.

Earlier this year, POLITICO Magazine sent me to New Orleans to write about the city’s recent success in efforts to fix or remove abandoned buildings and clear overgrown properties after Katrina turned an already decaying city into the most blighted in the nation.

I talked to several people living in New Orleans when Katrina hit. They shared stories of survival, renewal and love for one of the most special cities in the United States. In a series of blog posts between now and Katrina’s 10^th anniversary, I will tell their tales, as well as the story of the new New Orleans.

August and September storms seem to be as common in New Orleans as parades before Mardi Gras. Hurricanes flooded the city five times before Katrina, most recently in 1965 and 1969. Some people in the Big Easy developed a reputation for bravado, partying on behind plywood-covered windows while storms raged outside.

Other residents routinely marched out of town whenever New Orleans was threatened by major late-summer storms swirling through the Gulf of Mexico. “We referred to them as ‘hurrications,’” said Michael Casey, who was starting his senior year at Tulane University in August 2005. “Every year we evacuated – twice when I was a sophomore. You’d come for school and go somewhere with your friends for a week. Then you’d come back, get your syllabus and start classes.”

Geographically, New Orleans forms a bowl between the mighty Mississippi River and huge Lake Pontchartrain (a 30-mile-long bridge spans its shores). Levees and shipping-friendly canals link the waterways.




New Orleans: Lower Ninth Ward is the darker yellow portion near the center; East New Orleans (E) is above it on this map. Lakeview (A) is the yellow portion in northwest New Orleans. 

Much of New Orleans lies below sea level. Counterintuitively, high ground is closest to the Mississippi River, which forms the signature crescent shape that gives the city one of its nicknames.

With Katrina, a top-level Category 5 storm, steamrolling directly toward New Orleans, more than a quarter-million of the city’s 437,000 residents fled when the evacuation order was issued on Aug. 28. But roughly one-fourth of residents had no access to cars. Thousands of people – mostly poor and black – were trapped.

Katrina veered slightly east and weakened when it made landfall near the Mississippi border. “That’s the power of prayer,” said Bruce Johnson, who rode out the storm as his Uptown neighborhood was inundated. “It was a Category 3 when it hit us. If it had still been a 5, we wouldn’t be talking.”

Johnson recalled sitting on his porch, about six feet above street level, when he noticed water lapping a few steps below. “I’d never seen it get that high,” he said. Johnson grabbed his mother and moved to higher ground, upstairs in this case. Water eventually reached the springs on a main-floor bed.

In addition to the death and displacement roughly 70 percent of the city’s housing stock – had major-to severe damage or was destroyed. The flood did not discriminate between black and white, rich and poor, residential and commercial.



More than 105,000 houses and apartments in New Orleans had major-to severe damage or were destroyed

In the upscale Lakeview neighborhood by Lake Pontchartrain, scores of its predominantly white residents died and 72 percent of its homes were damaged by flooding up to 10-feet-deep in some areas. High-water levels still are marked on the walls of some Lakeview businesses.

Some of the worst damage was in East New Orleans, low-lying land between Lake Pontchartrain and the Intracoastal Waterway, where roughly 90 percent of the housing stock received major damage or worse. Its residents were predominately black, mostly families with workers earning low- to moderate wages.

Jean (she declined to give her last name) was born, grew up and raised her children and grandchildren in a house on America Street in East New Orleans. Like many houses in New Orleans, it is built substantially above street level. Before Katrina she owned it outright.

“I’ve got 10-foot ceilings and the water went eight feet up the walls,” Jean said. She lost everything and now pays a mortgage to cover the rebuilding costs. But she counts herself among the fortunate. “The lady on the corner, they never found her body.”

Before he was transported to the Super Dome, Simms left his boat tied to a canal bridge. It was gone when he returned a week after Katrina. But bigger problems waited on Flood Street.

His two-story elevated home was severely damaged from water that reached the rooftop. Three other houses had been swept into his yard. Others blocked the street.

“Then (Hurricane) Rita hit a week later,” Simms said. “The water blew through the same hole in the canal. It went right back up and we had to evacuate again.”

(Next, recovery and a new beginning.)

Hog to blog: How George McMillan breaks down dinner

I knew I was in heaven the moment I saw a severed pig’s head on a sheet pan in the kitchen at FoodBar restaurant on recent February morning. Chef/owner George McMillan III was going to walk me through the process of turning a half-hog into menu items.

The food and history lover in me always has been fascinated by how our meals go from farm to table (all too often these days, via factories). Conversations with McMillan at his Cahaba Heights restaurant led to an invitation to watch him break down one of the Duroc/Berkshire pigs he regularly buys from the legendary pork producer, Henry Fudge.

Chef George McMillan III

In an upcoming issue of Birmingham Magazine, I will focus on the end product, the dishes on the FoodBar menu that feature or are flavored by these pigs. This blog goes behind the scenes with McMillan and a pig better left unnamed.

McMillan orders a half-hog every 4-6 weeks, about 150 pounds of meat, fat and bone. (He also orders a side of beef every six weeks.) The initial breakdown separates the side into the head, belly, front quarter and hind quarter. All that’s missing is the innards and the squeal. “We’re thinking about what we’re going to do with the tail,” McMillan said. “We’ll figure out something.”

Dealing with carcasses instead of individual cuts makes good business sense and allows a chef to be more creative, McMillan said. Everything gets utilized, from center-plate chops and roasts to scraps for sausage, bones for stock and fat for myriad uses.

Lacking the power of a kitchen band saw, McMillan gets quite a workout using a hacksaw on the heavy-duty bones. “Ever since I touched a blade (when he worked) at Hot and Hot, I have a strong respect for band saws,” he said wryly, demonstrating that all joints on each finger, fortunately, are still attached.

The hog head can be made into headcheese, an addictively wonderful, meaty and gelatinous flavor-bomb, prized when it appears on any charcuterie board. When the head is done, McMillan reduces the cooking liquid to enhance the natural gelatin that will bind the bits of tender cheek, tongue and other face meat when they are molded together.

McMillan has other plans for our head, rich meat sauces for ravioli. Either way, the cooking process starts the same: Fill a huge pot with a mirepoix of onion, carrots and celery; the pig’s head; a seasoning sachet; white wine and enough cold water to cover all but the tip of the snout. It will cook for three hours; the tip that it’s done is when the skin starts to pull away from the exposed snout, indicating that the submerged meat is falling-apart tender.

The cooked head cools a bit before the meat is removed. “It’s like pulling bubblegum out of quicksand,” McMillan said. “It’s a sticky process.” McMillan’s dogs usually wind up with the ears.

McMillan considers Fudge Farm pork bellies to be special. “It’s always a treat when we get one. They’re big bellies that provide good bacon, big enough to wrap around our sausage-stuffed rabbit loin.”

The skin is carefully trimmed from the belly for use as cracklings. Sometimes, McMillan reserves part of the belly to roast, but today it is exclusively reserved for bacon. The trimmed belly is rubbed down with generous mixture of salt, sugar and spice, cured for five days then rinsed. His neighbors at New York Bucher Shop generously allow use of their large smoker.

Chops will be one of the center-plate byproducts. McMillan slices the meat before sawing through bone to separate each serving. Chine bones are hacked off for use in stocks. The saw also comes in handy when he separates a single trotter and two huge hocks from each leg. They will be smoked and used to flavor beans and greens.

Boston butts come from the shoulder, but McMillan uses most of this shoulder meat for sausage. Some of the fat trimmings also will be rendered into flavorful cooking oil. The ham is destined for roasts and braises. The idea of curing and air-drying a hind leg like prosciutto is appealing, but McMillan says he can’t tie up the cooler space while it ages.

The first rule of sausage making is chill. Everything – meat, grinder and storage containers – must be kept cold to avoid liquefying the fat. “You want to do it quickly, working in batches,” McMillan said.

McMillan cuts his trimmings to a uniform size for the grinder. Added fat comes from different parts of the pig, each with its own appearance and texture. Some is thick and gnarled. Some is snowy white and smooth. “That’s good solid white fat," McMillan remarks. "It’s a piece of pork butter.”

A generous heap of seasoning is mixed thoroughly with the trimmings and fat before they are cooled to near-freezing then ground and blended with a little ice water. The pig’s lacy caul fat will encase some of the sausage for crepinettes.

By now McMillan has gathered the stock bones, which he roasts to boost their flavor. He will brown onions, celery and carrots in rendered pig fat before adding the roasted bones and cold water for pork stock. Sometimes he adds pork bones to supplement the rabbit in a game stock.

The conversion takes hours to complete. Once the mise is in place the fun part begins, putting that pig on plates.

Ebb and flow

It's been way too long since I have posted to this blog. For the most part that's a good sign that I've been flooded with work in the ebb and flow world of freelance writing.

It has been an interesting period in my evolution from daily newspaper report to scribe-for-hire. With Anna taking on bigger and bigger roles in her executive position, the flexibility of being a freelancer working from home has allowed me to provide her greater support behind the scenes, not only at home but also after school with our children. Behind every great woman is a good man. Nuclear family for the 21st Century.

Before I started freelancing, I created business cards with the slogan Writer Researcher Advocate Gastronome. It proved prescient; I have performed each of those roles at some point in the 28 months since the massive layoffs at my former newspaper created this new career opportunity. I have written for national and local publications and clients -- even for my former employer. Here's hoping each prong of that slogan continues to be prominent in my professional life.

Another part of my transition: I have set up a website, Ericvelasco.com. I did it in anticipation of attending the Food Media South conference this weekend, although I'm running a bit behind. Having my own website will allow me to more effectively post my work (I have a good bit up now at LinkedIn), be more visible to potential clients and hopefully be more active in posts.

Often when reporting a story, much good material gets left behind due to the brevity of some assigned stories (mine at Birmingham Magazine generally are limited to 700 words for "main" stories and 300 words for the others). This next blog item, and hopefully many in the future, is a continuation of those stories, a bonus for anyone interested.

Chef George McMillan III graciously allowed me to watch him break down a half-hog recently at his Cahaba Heights restaurant, FoodBar. In an upcoming edition of Birmingham Magazine, I will discuss how the different parts of that hog show up on the menu, linking cuts to the plate. But the following blog post will examine McMillan's butchering process. I found it fascinating.

Starting in March, check me out at Ericvelasco.com. Let me know what you think.