Shelter After the Storm

You think you know the story of Hurricane Katrina, but you don’t—not all of it, in any case. This is because the media primarily told the story of New Orleans, with occasional looks into the small coastal towns that were ravaged or destroyed. Nobody tells the story of Baton Rouge,—an inland experience that was quite different than the frontline areas that flooded.  I was a graduate student at Louisiana State University in August of 2005, experiencing my own personal upheaval when this turbulent force hit the city. Permit me to offer you a brief glimpse into a largely unheard story, a look down a two-way street where there is compassion on both a micro- and macro-level.

In a tale of cities damaged by the hurricane and cities that welcomed their outmigration, Baton Rouge occupies both spaces. On the one hand, it suffered significant structural damage, if not from flooding then certainly from wind. I remember walking down the road from my apartment and seeing the giant red letters that once spelled “Arby’s” strewn haphazardly across the street. Although, living near campus, my power was restored within a few days, I stepped over downed and broken power lines for months on my daily walk to my classes. Some neighborhoods remained without electricity for months, leaving their residents to suffer the effects of the sweltering Louisiana summer without air conditioners, electric fans, or refrigerators. A handful of residents were killed by fallen trees, while many others simply lost their places of residence to them. It took countless man hours of volunteer labor from both residents and non-residents alike to take care of the damage and debris left in the wake of the storm.

On the other hand, Baton Rouge was the first stop en route to more famous refugee destinations like Houston and Atlanta. Being the epicenter of a human tide almost broke an already strained infrastructure. “Literally overnight, Baton Rouge’s population nearly doubled. The Capital City became the epicenter of a great migration as the storms chased New Orleanians in from the east and swept residents of Lake Charles and other communities in from the west. Suddenly, grocery store lines were long and supplies were short. Demand for commercial and residential properties far outstripped inventory. As gridlock gripped Baton Rouge, even schools suspended their tardy policies because no one could reliably get anywhere on time” (https://www.225batonrouge.com/article/baton-rouge-became-home-hurricane-katrina). I remember traffic jams that normally took an hour suddenly took three, and that was just on the main highway; on boulevards like the one on which the local “24 hour” Walmart (which suddenly closed at 10 pm every night to restock) was located, people literally got so sick of waiting in traffic that they abandoned their cars in the middle of the street, took a cab home from a neighboring street, and returned to claim their vehicles the next day.

I learned that natural disasters bring out the best and worst in people.  Gas stations, when they hadn’t run out of gas, often engaged in price gouging.  Racism-driven rumors (most of which proved to be false) reported increased gang activities and rapes in various parts of the city, in particular the refugee camps, allegedly brought about by the influx of African-Americans from New Orleans. Despite, all of this nastiness, I saw a swell of action that demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the compassion that lies within the human heart.  People with few means gave what they had to help people they had never met. People were exceptionally forgiving when it came to how functional goods and services were, and how functional people were in general. This was particularly true with respect to time: if students or employees were late, or stores failed to open on time, people tended to cut others a tremendous amount of slack. Open displays of emotion were common, and not publicly chastised.

My own experience with compassion revolved around the issue of housing.  For reasons I will not go into, I had violated one of the terms of my lease (the one and only time I made that mistake). My property manager, with whom I already had a semi-contemptuous relationship, found out about this a week prior to the storm, informing me that she could have me evicted if she wanted, but she was not going to do so.  A week after Katrina hit, I found an eviction notice taped to my door. I have often speculated that this change of heart came about because she knew she could get away with charging significantly higher rent. Property was at such a premium that a friend of a friend was offered $750,000 cash for her $250,000 house (which she took, and moved to Mississippi, figuring out the rest as she went).  Most apartments had already been snapped up by incoming students before the hurricane arrived, but suddenly it seemed as though there was literally no vacancy anywhere around the city, let alone anywhere affordable to a graduate student. As I contemplated potential homelessness for the first (but not the last) time in my life, I started mulling options in my mind. Perhaps I could spend my nights on the couch in my office until things died down, or maybe I could bounce between friends’ basements for the foreseeable future.  Then, out of nowhere, a friend came to me with a miracle. He had a former landlord who owed him a favor, and he was willing to cash it in on my behalf. Before I even knew what was happening, I had the tiniest room I had ever seen, on the top floor of a boarding house. I shared a bathroom with 10 people, as well as a kitchen with a single set of hot plates in place of a stove in the basement. With the boxes of my belongings taking up most of the space, I only had a tiny sliver of free space on my floor. All of the discomfort of my living situation paled in comparison to the relief of having somewhere to live at all, and I soon became especially grateful for that sliver of floor space, as it would become its own form of valuable real estate, so to speak.

As I looked for ways to give back despite feeling I had little to offer, I came across an internet message board for people offering shelter to refugees, who were still streaming out of the coastal cities nearly two weeks after the storm.  While not in a position to offer permanent shelter, it dawned on me that I could certainly offer up my floor to those just passing through en route to another city. No sooner had I posted my offer than I had a set of takers: a couple who were headed for Houston, uncertain if and when they would ever be able to return home.  I felt somewhat ashamed of being able to offer only a spot for a sleeping bag in cramped quarters, but this sentiment changed as soon as I met them; being autistic, I am not particularly good with facial expressions, but somehow I recognized on their faces the same emotion I had felt when I found out I had a place to stay of my own.  Not long after they left, I welcomed two of my friends from Wisconsin who slept on that same strip of floor for days. They were not coming to town for a social call, but rather as two bodies in the myriad of volunteers who flocked from out of state to help New Orleans eventually become inhabitable once again. Had I not been able to provide them a base of operations, it is doubtful that they would have been able to offer their services in turn.

It took years for Baton Rouge to return to something resembling normal yet, like me, it was never quite the same.  The population of the city never quite returned to pre-hurricane levels, as some of the newfound citizens, having established newfoundroots and friendships, decided to take up permanent residence. I discovered how powerful something as simple as shared quarters could be, and found myself offering them more often when I moved to a larger, private apartment in the basement of the boarding house.  I joined the “hospitality club,” an organization that offers temporary, free stay to visitors from out of town, and a couple years later had the opportunity to temporarily house a pair of friends after they got evicted from their domicile. Several years after this, my mental health worsened to the point that I found myself on the brink of homelessness, only to have friends help me find my way back to my family, where I was offered a place to live once again.  The part of my brain that likes to engage in magical thinking sees a reciprocal ebb and flow to this cycle of housing, and wonders if it is all connected on a cosmic level. One thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that when a storm hits, even a little shelter goes a long way.

Author: Mark Huntsman

Editor(s): Daniel Watson

Jasmine Hyder