Things That Go Bump in My Mind

I’m in the middle of writing Chocolate City Justice.  Actually, I was nearing the end, when I realized this mystery novel was missing a big something– a good mystery.

The book takes place during Hurricane Katrina, bringing my protagonist, Ryan Murphy, through the storm.  It also brings my entire cast into post-Katrina New Orleans, which is something I felt needed to be done.

The problem was when I planned the book, it was more about Ryan surviving Katrina, including drug dealers, bad cops, and the storm itself.  The mystery, however, wasn’t as well thought out as I had intended.

I did have a basic plot.  But basic plots are not my style and they definitely aren’t what the types of readers drawn to my type of writing would be looking for.  So I had to rethink, reformulate, re-outline, and revamp the entire plot.

Once I had a more involved plot and subplots, I realized I still didn’t have the suspects out there for the readers to contemplate.  I also hadn’t figured out how exactly Ryan solved the mystery, especially during the middle of a hurricane, stuck in a flooded out house with no electricity, no electronics, and all of her most prized personal belongings– everything she had taken in an attempt to evacuate– at the bottom of what would now be nicknamed Lake Gentilly.   

Gentilly is a New Orleans neighborhood where Lake Pontchartrain crashed through two canal breaches and flooded the houses. A lot of people think the flooding from Katrina was confined to the Ninth Ward– the area portrayed in the HBO Treme series and in just about every other Katrina-inspired movie and t.v. show.  

But the flooding in New Orleans was not confined to just one area of the city and wasn’t caused just by one levee breaking.  In Gentilly, which is where the University of New Orleans is located, the London Avenue Canal that pumped rain water into Lake Pontchartrain was breached in two different spots.   I used to live in this neighborhood, and the house I used to live in was raised four feet from the ground and still flooded to the 8-foot mark on the house. It is just a few blocks from the breach.

So taking all this into account, I had to figure out how to add some more suspects, put them earlier in the book when there was a better chance Ryan could at least partially solve the mystery before ending up in the storm, and then come up with a new twist for the ending.  The twist, to me, is the most important part of the entire book. 

So I’ve spent the last few weeks figuring out what needs to be added and what needs to be changed, and hopefully, now that I’m back on track, Chocolate City Justice will soon completely exit the dark recesses of my mind and inhabit a bookstore near you (or a page on Amazon.)

Waiting for Isaac while remembering Katrina

Waiting for Isaac While Remembering Katrina

Once again those of us in New Orleans are watching a hurricane, waiting to see if Isaac is going to show up at our doorstep or pass us by.  We've been here before, watching and waiting.

In 2005, we did the same for Katrina. Only then we really didn't think it was going to hit. While we evacuated, we brought only enough clothes (and diapers, because I had two little ones) for a long weekend. We left on a Saturday, before a mandatory evacuation had been called.  We planned on returning home Monday or Tuesday, believing deep in our hearts that a hurricane would never hit us.

My mother, my two daughters, and I stayed at the Embassy Suites in Houston. Houston was THE place for New Orleans people to evacuate. Most of us vacationed there frequently, a sort of home away from home.  Our hotel had swans in the lobby, which tickled my children, a clown who made balloon animals, which terrified me, and was something like 40 steps away from the Galleria shopping mall, which thrilled all of us.

By the end of it, we were there for two weeks. Two weeks in a nice hotels sounds like fun, but it really isn't. Especially when you've made your husband join you at the 11th hour and he's brought along his younger brother, which infuriated your mother (who is a little odd to begin with), and you have no idea if your house is still standing or not.

The hurricane made landfall on Monday. Everything seemed fine until the levees broke. We watched CNN and the Weather Channel in horror as the city filled with water.  My husband went home on Tuesday. As a deputy constable allowed to go back into the city before the general public.  He soon texted us-- there was no other viable form of communication at the time--that our house was fine, some roof damage, a few books and toys wet, but otherwise okay.  Same with the rest of the neighborhood.

We went back two weeks later, when the electricity was back up and a few stores had reopened. Two weeks after that my daughter's school reopened.  A few months later our neighbors started coming back with their families. For months it was mainly only men working on their houses and law enforcement.

Law enforcement was everywhere. Local police, police from other parishes, police from other states, even the National Guard.  It was hard to feel unsafe with so many police personnel everywhere.  You literally could not drive a block without seeing some type of police officer.

While the police weren't able to protect us from the giant flies that took over for several months, and couldn't prevent the maggots in our refrigerators when we got home, at least we didn't have to worry about copper being stolen from our homes when we were inside them, nor of someone breaking into our homes and doing God knows what to us, as had happened to many unfortunate women during the actual hurricane.

So now, seven years later, we are in the position once again to decide should we stay or should we go. Today is Sunday. The storm will hit Tuesday in the middle of the night or early Wednesday morning.  Wednesday will be the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  Scary.

So my thinking, with a now 10-year-old and 13-year-old, and now having an evacuation house, I will probably leave.  The big difference this time is that I'm not dreading leaving, because I've faced the most uncertainty a person can face having dealt with Katrina and its aftermath.

I'm looking forward to visiting my vacation house in the hills, and while I will worry about what is happening back home, I will also use the time, and more importantly, the emotion, to write more of my third novel.

Chocolate City Justice takes place during Hurricane Katrina, bringing my protagonist, Ryan Murphy, into the present days. So everything I learn about that happens, especially if the hurricane hits, will be more fodder for my novel and jog my novel about what happened back then.  As I am planning what I will pack, Katrina is not seven years ago for me, but right now, while I am loading my car with the things I want to save should a worst case scenario occur.  And I will use it as much as I can, extracting as much good as I can from a potentially bad situation.  

NOTE:  I scheduled this to post a week after I wrote it, hoping by the time it is posted I will know how this has turned out, one way or another.

Jambalaya Justice Book Launch Party

I am finally having the book launch party for Jambalaya Justice, Saturday, December 17, at our bar, the Last Stand, 424 Destrehan in Harvey, LA. I say finally because the book was actually out in July, although we had it pulled once for some minor issues and re-issued. A few copies went out with the "issues", but I wanted to wait until the final version was out in hard copy and Kindle to officially launch the book.

Time kind of got away from me, as it has a habit of doing. I try to figure out where all the hours of the day go, and I can't seem to do it. I do keep busy with my youngest daughter's school as PTO president. Very busy. I also spend much of time on what I call my "job-job", criminal appeals for clients I get appointed to represent. Then I write legal articles every week for a publisher on Helium.

Oh, and did I forget to mention I write books? Not to mention have two kids, a husband, a cat, a dog, and some fish. Now I think I see where all the time goes, although I think I work on too schizophrenic of a level to categorize the time spent or put it on a chart.

I'm working on Chocolate City Justice right now. The third in the Crescent City Mystery Series will take Ryan, my protag, directly through hurricane Katrina. It kind of brings back bad memories, writing the book, but when I see how far we've come since then, it does tend to make me feel a little bit better. At least we don't have those post-Katrina flies the size of birds any longer. (My cup-still half full.)

JAMBALAYA JUSTICE

Jambalaya Justice is finally available through Amazon.com, Bn.com, independent book stores, and other websites where books are sold. I will also have some available int he near future from my website, but have to get my computer guy (translation, brother-in-law) to add the info to sell through Paypal. It's supposed to be easy to do, but for some reason I couldn't get it accomplished on the Gumbo Justice website and had to get him to do it for me. But that's what family is for, right?

In any event, I was pleased to see it is finally out, although it is not yet available on Kindle or Nook, but hope it would be soon. I saw today purely through luck that someone has already done a really nice review of the book.

Soon, I will be re-organizing my blog to include guest bloggers, interviews and book reviews, and am continuing to work on the third in the Crescent City Mystery Series, Chocolate City Justice, which is a little darker as it opens as Katrina approaches and follows the various characters through the hurricane.

And of course I'll be getting word of Jambalaya Justice out there. Hope you enjoy it.

Jambalaya Justice

Information on Jambalaya Justice, which is at the publishers now, due for a summer release:

The murder of a hooker in a New Orleans crackhouse is destined to become another unsolved homicide until prosecutor Ryan Murphy takes an interest in the case. Ryan has a connection to the victim and won’t back down until the murder is solved, even if it means she has to go undercover as a hooker herself and keep her fingers crossed that her detective boyfriend, Shep, won’t find out. She’s also juggling her Strike Force cases, including the prosecution of a mobster murderer, a nasty domestic violence, and the armed robbery of Big Who’s strip club. Not to mention a home invader she prosecuted is off of probation and might be following her. Being an outspoken pit bull of a prosecutor makes life dangerous enough for Ryan; trying to find a killer and hiding it from the one person who can protect her may end up being deadly.

Shep is on a secret quest of his own, investigating the identity theft of Ryan’s former best friend, Edie, who is presumed dead. As he delves further into the case, he begins to question whether Edie may still be alive and out to harm Ryan. Ordered by his captain, Ryan's father, to keep the investigation quiet, Shep not only has to lie to Ryan, but find a way to protect her from harm she doesn’t know exists. He'll also have to figure out what to do if Ryan ends up discovering the truth, because secrets have a way of getting out.

Set against the backdrop of pre-Katrina New Orleans, Jambalaya Justice is the second in the Crescent City Mystery Series, which eventually follows Ryan through Hurricane Katrina and into the strange new world of post-Katrina New Orleans.

The third in the series, Chocolate City Justice, is in progress.

Jambalaya Justice

Just as I am finished editing Jambalaya Justice, the second in the Crescent City Mystery Series and follow up to Gumbo Justice, I saw on the news that one of the New Orleans police officers originally convicted in relation to a police-Katrina murder has had his conviction overturned and has been granted a new trial. The feds are reviewing the federal judge's decision to determine if they will re-try him or not.

I have blogged about this particular murder before. There were five officers, some rank, allegedly involved. During the aftermath of Katrina, when the police had set up makeshift district offices, a rookie sharpshooter was accused of shooting a civilian who was attempting to approach the office. Two other officers were accused of taking his body from his brother and another individual who were attempting to save him, and burning it. Another officer was accused of writing and filing a false police report and then lying to federal agents about it, and finally, a rank was accused off intentionally not tying the three separate incidents together and realizing it was a scheme to cover a murder. The sharpshooter was convicted, as was one of the officers who burned the body. The officer accused of the cover up for filing a false report was the third convicted, and the one whose conviction has now been overturned.

The last guy happens to be a friend of mine. His wife and I were assistant district attorneys together in the late 1990's. He was a police officer even then, which is how they met, and he actually arrested my brother-in-law once for possession of marijuana. Travis, the officer, always seemed to me to be a straight shooter who played by the rules. He certainly didn't offer any leeway for my brother-in-law after finding out who he was.

When Travis was convicted, I was upset. I could only imagine what his wife was going through, and while I could picture Travis following an order someone gave him, I couldn't imagine him intentionally doing something on his own like hiding the truth about a murder. But I wasn't there, and Katrina was an unprecedented event and I can't swear as to how anybody will act under those type of conditions.

When he was first convicted, I had to believe everything would work out. I am an appellate public defender now, an officer of the court, and probably lean a little hard on making sure individuals' rights are not violated. It's been my job for the past 11 years, so it's ingrained in me at this point.

In Travis' case, he has maintained from the beginning that he assisted a ranking female officer with the writing of the report, and the factual basis was not his own, but hers. She testified for the prosecution, changing her testimony more than once. She was caught in several lies, and given complete immunity as far as the murder. Immediately after her testimony, she took early retirement from the NOPD, for which she was still employed. One of the biggest issues was the original report that she wrote. She claimed the original report was altered by Travis, but for some reason she had not kept a copy of that original report. Soon after the trial, one of the acquitted officers submitted what he said was the original police report written by the female rank, which shows the report eventually submitted was not altered by Travis. The prosecution tried to argue the report was a fake, but offered no proof to that. The judge found that if the original police report had been provided to the jury, the jury would have acquitted Travis, which is the standard for newly discovered evidence. While the rank who eventually provided the report may have been holding out on providing the report, perhaps fearful he would be convicted and would need the report to get a new trial himself, his failure to provide the report, for whatever reason, was not the fault of Travis. Obviously, if Travis would have had access to the smoking gun that would have exonerated him, he would have used it at trial.

It so happens my mystery series revolves around a prosecutor and the dysfunction of the New Orleans criminal justice system, that somehow usually ends up rendering justice if not necessarily fairness or what is right. Obviously, the two concepts are not the same. Justice requires a trial without legal errors, not one that ultimately results in the guilty getting convicted and the innocent going free, although those should be desired results. The belief that only those, and all of those, who deserve punishment are punished, is childish. The law doesn't require perfection. It only requires that nobody cheats or makes a mistake during the process.

So seeing that two of the individuals involved were convicted and their convictions upheld, two others were acquitted by the jury, and one was convicted and his conviction set aside, all I can think is that the premise and theme behind my Crescent City Mystery Series is correct, that things maybe eventually do work out the way they are supposed to, even if sometimes they need a little help.

Last Hurricane Katrina Case

Having written about Hurricane Katrina in the past, I felt a need to take a break from working on Jambalaya Justice to write about the verdicts of the last prosecution for crimes committed by police officers during Katrina. The trial wrapped up a few weeks ago in Eastern District Court in New Orleans, and I have been putting off writing about it because things did not end up favorably for a friend who was charged in the case, and it has been difficult for me to assimilate.

Initially, the D.A. refused to prosecute the various cases in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, because the grand jury in New Orleans refused to indict the officers involved in the most serious case, the Danziger Bridge shootings. Thus, the U.S. Attorney, Jim Letten, charged the officers in federal court, the Eastern District Court in New Orleans, with what are civil rights violations, but the convictions have the same type of sentencing ranges as criminal charges. The feds prosecuted NOPD officers not only for the famous Danziger shooting, where all of the defendants eventually pled guilty, but also for several other crimes during Katrina.

The last case, which I believe is the only one that actually went to trial, involved the shooting death of Henry Glover. Glover was out with his brother after Katrina, apparently looking for supplies. He was shot by NOPD Officer Warren, who was keeping guard from a makeshift temporary police station at a school. (Warren was found guilty of manslaughter as opposed to murder.)

A few minutes later, Glover's brother and another man drove a bleeding Glover to another makeshift station and were met by Officer McRae, who felt for a pulse, realized Glover was dead, and ordered his brother and the good Samaritan to leave.

The good Samaritan testified that he and Glover's brother were beaten by Officer McRae and Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann, but apparently the jurors weren't convinced because they found both men not guilty on those particular charges. Glover's brother, for reasons unknown, did not testify at all at trial.

McRae directed another officer, who didn't know Glover's body was inside the car, to drive it to the levee behind the station. McRae then set the car on fire with a flare gun. He testified Scheuermann did not know what he was going to do, but Scheuermann, who was the ranking officer, watched and did nothing to stop him after he did it. McRae was found guilty of 2 civil rights violations, one of those for burning Glover's body. Scheuermann was found not guilty on all counts.

Weeks later, Lt. Travis McCabe participated in the writing of a police report that cleared the other officers of wrongdoing. Another officer in charge of writing the report testified against McCabe, stating that the parts of the report clearing the officers was not her work. She also admitted she lied to a grand jury about the events and could not produce a copy of what she claims was her original report. She took early retirement immediately after testifying, and was not charged with anything in exchange for her testimony. McCabe was found guilty of lying to a grand jury and falsifying a police report.

Finally, Lt. Italiano was charged with obstruction for the subsequent cover up, the government's theory being that he did not adequately investigate the link between the shooting of an unknown man and the burning of Glover's body. He was also found not guilty.

It's a set of complicated circumstances, and the defense for Warren and McRae relied heavily upon the Katrina factor as justification for their actions. Warren testified he was in fear of his life and afterward did not know that he had hit anyone, and the NOPD had been advised to, "shoot the looters." Indeed, our own governor went on television and advised somewhat the same thing. McRae testified as to the death and devastation he had already seen, including seeing dead babies and people floating along the streets, and said he couldn't stand the thought of a body rotting that close to where they were located. It was noted by the prosecution that he did not burn any of the other dead bodies he saw.

McCabe testified that the officer in charge of writing the report asked him to help, and he assisted her, and that was the end of it. He still maintains what he told to the grand jury. The officer who testified against him contradicted herself more than once during trial, but a jury finds what a jury finds. McCabe has asked for a new trial, which will be heard February 24, but new trials are rare and the motion is more procedural than anything.

I know both Dwayne Scheuermann and Travis McCabe. I worked with both of them when I was a prosecutor at the D.A.'s Office, and Travis married a fellow prosecutor I was pretty good friends with, who also, coincidentally, went to school with my husband. Travis also arrested my brother in law once during my tenure as a prosecutor for possession of marijuana, and my experience with Travis and his wife, Juliet, is that they are both rule followers to an extreme.

Granted, people never fail to surprise me, and who knows what one might be capable of given an extreme situation, but of all the police officers I know, and I know many, I am the most surprised that Travis would do something like this. I still have my doubts, but the jury has spoken, and that's what our justice system is about.

Which brings me to the Glover family. I am sorry for their loss, and I know how I would feel if something like that happened to someone in my family. The difference is that something like that wouldn't happen to my family, at least not during a hurricane, because I insisted my entire family evacuate. My husband had planned to stay behind, and I specifically told him that if it got as bad as what the forecasters predicted, it could be weeks before supplies were available, and if he stayed behind and had to loot for supplies at the end of a few days, and the police ended up shooting or arresting him, he had only himself to blame. I made my mother evacuate with me as well. If we could not have afforded a hotel, or if we couldn't have found a hotel, as that was a huge problem, I had decided we would either stay at a shelter or, if worse came to worse, we would just drive to the Alabama or Texas Welcome Center and hang out, with my kids, my mom, and my husband, until we figured something out.

My theory, right or wrong, has always been that people who evacuate don't end up getting shot by New Orleans police. Period. Argue morality or ethics or law all you want, or the fact that police shootings shouldn't be a factor in your decision to evacuate or not, but at the end of the day, the evacuees won't have an NOPD bullet in them.

People have their own reasons for staying put, I guess, the least of all being that most people thought we were going to dodge this one, so I really can't fault the Glovers for doing what a hundred thousand other people did. The thing that truly bothers me about the Glovers, however, is that they are bitter against the entire criminal justice system, insisting that all five of the officers should have been convicted and should do life in prison, missing the one point that I can accept. In America, the jury gets to decide who did it and who didn't do it. Joe Public is in no position to say someone is guilty of a crime after a jury has made a decision to acquit. Can juries be wrong? Of course they can. The theory is it is better for a hundred guilty men to go free than one innocent man be punished, but if nothing else the use of DNA has shown that innocent people go to jail all the time. (Louisiana, New Orleans in particular, has had to release people from death row after DNA evidence proved they were innocent of the murder and/or rapes they were convicted of, Louisiana having the death penalty for certain types of rapes.)

But still, while I grieve for Travis and Juliet that Travis got convicted of something I refuse to believe he did, and he not only will lose his job but end up with a possible 25 years in federal prison, in the end, once the jury convicts, a person is guilty. People can't rely on the criminal justice system only when it turns out the way they wanted it to.

It's an imperfect system, but it's the best one available, and people who truly don't like it can always move along to one of those countries that doesn't have a jury system. I say good luck with that one.

While the rest of the country is probably thinking that New Orleans should be getting over Katrina by now, more than five years after the storm, there are still many more steps to be taken to complete the recovery process.

Perhaps finishing off the last of the "police Katrina" cases is one more step in that direction. It's difficult to move forward while still looking back, and if the juries on the various cases didn't return the verdicts I wanted them to, at least I can say the verdicts brought this city a sense of closure.

Book drawing winner

Margaret from Illinois won the book drawing for Gumbo Justice in a random drawing of everyone who left comments on the Katrina blogs. Thanks everyone for reading!

Hurricane Katrina Anniversary- Part 3

This is the last segment of the Hurricane Katrina Anniversary. If you post a comment on any of my Katrina blogs, you will be entered in a drawing for a signed copy of Gumbo Justice. I will be doing the drawing over the weekend, and will post the winner then.


Katrina Anniversary Bog- Part 3

Two close friends of mine stayed in New Orleans for the hurricane, coincidentally, each the Godfather of one of my daughters. Both had very different experiences.

Danny stayed at his house in mid-city. His house was raised, and didn’t flood. After a few days without electricity, he would have left, but an elderly neighbor who lived around the corner from him refused to leave, and he wouldn’t leave her behind. The police and National Guard tried to strong arm him into leaving, but he had provisions and was happy to stay and watch over his belongings and his neighbor. He ventured out frequently. With no electricity, it was the darkest dark he had ever seen. Gunshots were frequent. Occasionally, bodies floated by, including one in a police uniform. There was little to be done with no phone service, no way for police to retrieve the bodies, and no place to put the bodies until they could be carted away for autopsy.

Robbie also stayed behind, in his house in Lakeview, on Canal Boulevard, a street name that would prove to be appropriate after the 17th Street Canal failed. Robby, like Danny, had the means to leave. Unlike Danny, Robbie didn’t have a neighbor to look out for, but did have a cat, and cats weren’t welcomed at shelters or most motels. When Robbie’s house began filling with water, the first thing he did was grab his cat and put her in a cat carrier. He ended up swimming back and forth in his driveway with the cat carrier over his head, until he finally made it to a set of raised railroad tracks.

From the tracks, he tried to retrieve his furniture, now floating past him. He managed to save a few pieces and put them on the tracks, but it was pointless. He ended up leaving it all behind anyway. He also saw people floating by, screaming for help, beginning to drown. He tried to help them, but they were too far away from the tracks, and there was nothing he could do. He ended up making a very long trek to the Superdome, through water up to his chest, holding his cat above his head.

Outside the Superdome, he was greeted by an eerie sight- a line of cats and dogs, sitting and staring, confused, waiting to be retrieved by their hopeless owners who felt forced to leave them behind. When he tried to enter the dome, he was told he could not bring his cat in, nor would he be allowed to bring her with him when the buses showed up to evacuate people. So he left, and went to Danny’s, not prepared to relegate his Fluffy to that line of sad, abandoned cats and dogs waiting for masters who would never come back for them.

Danny’s elderly neighbor eventually agreed to leave, and when she did, Danny left as well. The safety issues were less important to him than the comfort issues, and he was ready for civilization again. He managed to contact someone by text message to meet him on the interstate, and he walked. Robby also eventually met up with his family in Baton Rouge, where he spent some time in the hospital, covered with boils from a staph infection he caught from the flood waters. He was one of many treated for what they were terming Katrina rash.

I returned home exactly 2 weeks after the hurricane to minor roof damage, with working electricity and water service. Phone service and cable took a little longer, but we got them back pretty quickly. I was more isolated back home with no t.v. or cable for a few days than I had been in Houston, and it was an uneasy time. Only a few men in our neighborhood had returned, and had not brought their families back yet, and my two girls and I were pretty much alone all day while my husband, a contractor, supervised a team from Texas repairing roofs. There was a silence like I had never experienced. Ours was the only air-conditioner running, and then when the cable service was restored, the only t.v.. We had to drive two hours to Thibodeaux to find a grocery that was stocked with meat and other freezer foods, and where we didn’t have to wait in line an hour just to get in the door.

The smell was sometimes overwhelming, whether from moldy refrigerators, the rotten food everyone had to bury in their backyards, the stagnant water that had yet to drain from some neighborhoods, or the corpses that had yet to be removed from the flood. Flies the size of small birds came from nowhere, but were particularly nasty at the gas stations for some reason. Gas was another thing we had to wait in line for, and it was a good idea not to go anywhere if you couldn’t gas up near home, because you never knew if gas would be available at the next station. Debris was still a danger, clogging the streets and puncturing tires, and power lines were still down in many areas.

Driving around the un-flooded sections of town was odd. Very few cars on the roads, curfew at dark, and near the area of the breach, the streets were gone, the houses either destroyed or moved by the wall of water. Where streets once sat was nothing but sand. An occasional street sign had not been destroyed, and provided a vague landmark. Houses were crushed, others sat in the middle of what had once been the street.

Stories of shootings and rapes were still prevalent. Some of these were certainly tall tales, or exaggerated versions of true stories, but some of the stories were true, and were covered up, or at least denied to the media. One particularly sad and chilling story was of local icon, Charmaine Neville. She ended up commandeering a bus and driving a busload of people out of the city after the flood, but not before saving herself and a neighbor from the rising waters only to be raped by a stranger trying to get to higher ground. She is certainly not alone in her tragedy.

It should come as no big surprise that mental health issues increased, exacerbated by the fact that most of the mental health facilities either did not reopen, or were closed down after they did because of lack of funding. Murder/suicides also increased, especially domestic.

I definitely didn’t have it as bad as some people, although my way of life was affected. I relied upon public assistance for the first time in my life, receiving food stamps for a two month period as well as a check from Red Cross, something I never would have thought I would need to do. While my credit card companies would wait for payment, the bank for my mortgage and car note expected any shortage to be made up in the next three months, as opposed to tacking the missing payment on at the end of the loan. Why they thought any of us would be in a position to pay extra in the coming months, when many people were out of jobs, is beyond me, but it wasn’t worth not paying it now if I could, instead of having to find extra money a month from now. Not knowing what the future was going to hold, I didn’t want to take the chance. So my Red Cross check went to bills and the groceries were paid for, so until my husband actually got paid– some people needed to wait for insurance claims to pay him– we made due. Unlike most of Louisiana, for some reason FEMA denied me payment. I must have filled out the forms wrong on the internet, but I helped my mother fill hers out and she received her money without a problem, so I’m not sure what happened.

Katrina was definitely a shock to all of us, but we tend to focus on all the bad things that happened– the lack of government reaction, the way some of our police turned into murderers, the way some of our citizens stole big screen t.v.’s on National Television. As a city, we have a lot to be ashamed of.

On the other hand, the good stories don’t make the papers. For every thug who looted a store for a gun, there is a decent person who pulled a stranger from raging flood waters. For every cop who shot an unarmed person in error, there is one who saved a baby from a roof. And for every doctor who overdosed a terminal patient on morphine, there is a guy who refused to leave until he made sure his neighbor was safe.

Ultimately, if you view the lowest point in the life of any person or any city as a tragedy unfolds, you’re going to see a lot of ugly. Hopefully, those who actually experienced it will be able to show the good as well. And God forbid if such a scenario repeats itself, we will all know what to do next time.

Holli Castillo

Hurricane Katrina Anniversary- Part 2

August 29, 2005


The television in our hotel room never went off the day Katrina made landfall. I knew it was probably not good for my two girls, but it was the only news we could get. We watched the tracking on the national news channels and the weather channel, as Katrina stealthily approached. She wobbled every so often, but we were experienced enough with tracking storms that we recognized it for what it was, and knew by the next hourly update, she would be back on course. And she was.


The day before, my kids had been bored. We hadn’t brought toys, because we left sort of on the fly, not believing we would be gone for that long, but after only one day, the girls wanted to play. I took them to the hotel lobby, which had a small pond with two swans in it, and to the hotel restaurant, which had a creepy balloon man I still think was a pedophile. The girls sensed something was wrong with him and my youngest hid his substandard balloon animal in the closet until she decided to pop it. I warned them he might be the bad man we've talked about, and to stay away from him. I didn't have to tell them twice.

We also went to the Galleria. I felt blessed when the Disney store had 40 percent off of everything for Katrina evacuees with an I.D.. Not knowing how long we would be gone, I didn’t how far my bank account was going to stretch, something I hadn’t considered before we evacuated. The room wasn’t cheap, anywhere from $99 to $179 per night, depending upon what day of the week, and I was putting it all on my American Express card. I didn’t know then that a little thing on my insurance policy called “loss of use,” would reimburse me, although not in time to pay the bill.

My husband was a contractor, if he didn’t work, he didn’t make money. I have a contract through the state to do criminal appeals, but I had no idea if I would get paid if I wasn’t actually working, and I couldn’t work from Houston. I didn’t worry a whole lot yet, though. Something inside kept me believing it wasn’t going to be as bad as the newscasters were making it out to be.
My husband arrived from New Orleans early Monday morning, in the wee hours, before Katrina hit land. He brought my laptop, and it became my lifeline to the world back home. I connected with NOLA.com, our local newspaper’s website. They have excellent forums for people to communicate with each other and post news, and eventually to post requests for news about missing people, but at first there was nothing to report. My husband and family slept while I watched the news and surfed the internet looking for information.

Early in the morning, we saw the first images from the French Quarter. The worst we saw was a few bricks from the top of an older building had fallen on a car. There was not a lot of flooding, and the wind damage was not as bad as it could have been. New Orleans East had been hit the hardest in the metropolitan New Orleans area, as the storm had made landfall further east than tracked. Slidell, Louisiana, took a huge hit, as did Bay St. Louis and the coast of Mississippi. We felt somewhat relieved.

My husband called one of our neighbors, who was a police officer and had stayed in town. The neighbor, Mike, said we had a little flooding, he and a few other men who had stayed behind pulled debris from the drainage system and the flooding went down. Part of one of my trees had been destroyed, and all of our roofs had damage, but it didn’t sound too bad.

About an hour later, new reports began coming in. Water was rising in the French Quarter from an unknown source. People began arriving at the Superdome, the “shelter of last resort,” with stories of massive tidal wave type flooding, people trapped on roofs of houses, screaming for help, others drowning, swept up in the water.

The first levee that I heard had failed was at the 17th Street canal. My daughter’s school was two blocks away from this canal. Many of her new friends lived in this neighborhood. Through Nola.com, I learned the school was okay, but only because our sheriff’s department sandbagged right along the canal, keeping a lot of the water from going into Old Metairie. New Orleans, particularly Lakeview, and the less affluent areas of Metairie, were flooding.

The time line actually was something like this:

At 4:30 a.m., the Industrial Canal leaked through drainage gates into neighborhoods on both sides of the I-10, creating a minor flood compared to what was to come.

At 6:10, Katrina made landfall at Buras, Louisiana, and a wall of water 21 feet high crossed the Mississippi river levees, flooding Plaquemines Parish.

At 6:30 a.m., the tidal surge built in the Intercoastal waterway and the levees were overtopped, sending St. Bernard under water.

At 9:00 a.m., the surge in the London Avenue Canal rose, the levee panels began bending, and water began leaking into yards, creating a minor flood.

At 9:30 a.m., the east side of the same levee failed, putting parts of Gentilly under water.

At 9:45, the 17th Street canal levee wall panels failed, filling mid-city, Lakeview, and parts of Metairie with water.

At 10:30, the west side panels of the London Canal failed, adding 8 feet of water to the already flooded Gentilly.

Then we heard the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, or MRGO as we call it, a shipping channel, had levee failure, flooding more of New Orleans. The MRGO crosses the Industrial Canal or Intercoastal waterway, and goes through St. Bernard. The Industrial canal connects the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, separates New Orleans East from the rest of the city, and divides the lower 9th Ward from the Upper 9th Ward. The failure of the levees of MRGO and the Industrial Canal caused the bulk of the flooding portrayed on t.v. and movies, but the 17th Street Canal caused the Lakeview and mid-city flood, while the little known London Avenue Canal caused the decimation of Gentilly.

These canals lead from the river to the lake. Because of the levee failures, Lake Pontchartrain would continue filling the city until the amount of water outside the lake leveled off with the amount of water inside the lake. That's a whole lot of water.

The day Katrina hit, I spent the entire day back and forth between the computer and the front desk of the hotel. I had only booked the room until Monday, that day, and the hotel said they were overbooked and didn’t know if they were going to be able to let us stay. I had to continuously check with them, while frantically trying to book another room elsewhere in Houston. Unfortunately, Houston was pretty full up with New Orleans people right then.

My mother and I got in a tiff because she complained I spent too much time on the computer and not enough taking care of my children, which I guess she kind of failed to realize was part of the reason she was there. I wanted to yell at her to do something, anything, to help us out. Take the kids for lunch or find us another room or something, but I guess she was so used to having everything done for her she couldn’t even contemplate taking the lead. It was driving me crazy. We were all worried about the condition of our homes, our neighborhoods, wondering if our lives would ever go back to normal, but I was also worried about where we would be spending that night, and the only way I had of checking that out was on the computer. She snipped ALMOST under her breath that she was just going to leave and go rent a car (because of course she rode with me instead of taking her own car), and book her own room and stay somewhere else. I wanted to ask how she was getting to the rental car place, and how was she going to book a room, particularly since there were none available, but I dismissed her bitterness as her own nerves. (I was almost tempted to ask her for half of the money for the room she had already stayed in before she left, at least until I received my insurance check, but that was me being ugly and my frustrations coming to a head.)

The hotel would never commit to more than one day at a time the whole two weeks we were there. Before Katrina, during a category 1 hurricane called Cindy in July, I had decided to start looking for an evacuation house, something no more than 5 or 6 hours away from home, so we could travel to it when necessary, but far enough away to be safe from hurricanes. I had looked in parts of Louisiana after Cindy, but had kind of let it slip my mind until now. I vowed during that hotel stay that no matter what else I did that year, I was going to get an evacuation house, and would never go through that again. I did end up buying an evacuation house the following February, in the hills of rural Northern Alabama, and have never regretted it.

Eventually, we got the room worked out, and the day after Katrina, my husband, his father, and his brother decided they were going to be cavemen and go home and brave it, with no electricity or running water. No one was allowed back in town yet, but my husband is a deputy constable, and badged his way in to town. They all lasted a single night without a/c, but my husband did manage to clean out the two maggot-infested refrigerators at my house as well as my mother’s. Cell phones were still not working in the area, but text messaging was, so we were able to communicate while he was gone.

Our house had roof damage, in my daughters’ playroom and my office, but only a few toys, children’s books and small appliances were ruined. My husband and his entourage came back a day later, and we remained in Houston for nearly two weeks.

My husband went home a day before we did, but I was extremely apprehensive. We were still hearing stories of looting and gunshots, although a lot of that had stopped with the national guard in town, but that brought a series of other problems, such as a curfew at dark. It was particularly scary because police from all over Louisiana, as well as the rest of the country, were in town, in uniforms, trying to keep the peace. But that also meant any impostor could don a police uniform and pretend to be an officer.

My daughter’s Godfathers stayed for the storm, both with different experiences of what happened during Katrina, and will be highlighted in part three, as well as how our life changed after Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina Anniversary- Part 1

On this date five years ago, I was living in a state of blissful ignorance. It was a Friday, and there was a hurricane called Katrina that we were sort of keeping an eye on. I say sort of, because forecasters had it going to Florida. We figured it would hit Florida and weaken as it traveled inland, as hurricanes do, and we might get a few showers, maybe a little wind. We had already thought, as this time, that we had missed the big one.

I sent my daughter to school that day, the first Friday of the first week of first grade, in a new school no less. She had attended a Catholic school for Pre-K and Kindergarten, but the first of several magnet schools to come had opened in our parish, and although it meant a half-hour drive every morning and afternoon, when my daughter tested in there was no doubt we would try it out.
My younger daughter, a little over a month away from turning four, stayed home with me every day, having just missed the cut off for Pre-K by three days.

In any event, that day started the same as every other day that week, nothing special. There was no talk of a hurricane, and no provisions had been discussed at the school. Just as we were not busy securing our houses or packing our belongings, the school system was not taking the time to secure the buildings for a big storm, nor send home the plethora of school supplies we had just purchased.

Sometime Friday night, well after school and work hours, the newscasters started to get a little jumpy. One in particular who tends to be a Chicken Little had the sky falling, and soon the other weathermen joined her.

I alternated between calling my mother, who had been living alone for the past six months since my father died, and lived about fifteen minutes away from me, and calling my sister, who had a four-month old baby and a nine-year old. We vacillated, unable to decide if we should evacuate. Many times in the past we had contemplated, sometimes going so far as making reservations, and then deciding to stay put and not leave.

By late Friday night, we still believed everyone was overreacting. My mother tried to talk me out of evacuating. It was assumed if we left, my mother would come with me, and she really didn’t want to leave. My sister’s husband worked for some internet tech company, and if an evacuation was officially ordered, he would be relocated to continue working to keep websites up, and my sister and her children would go with him.

Late Friday night I made reservations. I assumed, as did so many of us, that we would be gone for the weekend, and by Monday when the storm didn’t hit us or didn’t turn out to be as bad as we thought, we would be going back home. We were going to Houston, mainly because it was the New Orleans thing to do. I had been to Houston so many times I knew exactly where I wanted to stay, and what areas I wanted to avoid. I ended up reserving a room with two queen beds and a sofa bed for me, my mother and my two girls, because my husband had decided he was going to brave it out. Our hotel was something like 67 steps from the Macy’s entrance to the Galleria, and had swans in the lobby. I figured if we were going to be stuck out of town for the weekend, we might as well be comfortable.


We waited until the following day, Saturday, and threw together a few bags of our belongings, and hit the road prior to the mandatory evacuation being called. Traffic was fine until we hit Lake Charles, Louisiana, right before the Louisiana/Texas border. There was a wreck, and with all of the people fleeing the state, it put us off schedule by several hours. The normal 5 ½ hour trip took 9 hours. We arrived late that night, but we arrived, checked in, and started watching CNN.

After staying up all night and watching the various news channels, I called my husband and convinced him to get on the road and join us. Katrina had been upgraded to an expected category 5, with a track of a direct hit on our city. He left Sunday evening, and the rain began as he was still making his way out of Louisiana. He ended up at the hotel early Monday morning, mere hours before the hurricane made landfall.

And then we watched the cable news channels and waited.

I’ll post part 2, Katrina’s landfall, on the August 29, the fifth year anniversary.

Just Another Day in New Orleans

Tragedy is common in New Orleans. Murders, hurricanes, poverty, indictments, you name it, we've got it. But the most recent tragedy, the oil spill in the gulf, is in a class of its own.

You would think a city that got pummeled by a hurricane and nearly destroyed by levee failures would be immune to worrying about an oil spill. We nearly drowned in Katrina, but we didn't. We survived, and will continue to do so. So what's a little oil in the gulf?

To southeast Louisiana, it's big. And eventually, it will be to the rest of the country, if not the world. Like Katrina, the damage was preventable. If the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had not had designed flaws in the levee protection system, New Orleans would not have flooded. This is no longer speculation but has been proven. Likewise, had BP paid the extra half a billion dollars for the automatic shut off for their rig, the oil flow would have shut off prior to the entire rig sinking. As it stands, oil is still continuously pumping out into the Gulf of Mexico.

And the Gulf of Mexico is by no means a Louisiana problem. The entire southern coast of the United States, as well as the east coast of Mexico, will be greatly affected by massive amounts of oil washing up on shore. This has ramifications so huge it's hard to put into words.

The people down here are standing in line to buy up seafood, as clearly, we won't be having fresh shrimp, crawfish, or other types of seafood for quite some time. But it's not just this year we have to worry about. The entire ecosystem is going to be disrupted, likely for years. Shrimp and crawfish will not be back, much less suitable for consumption, for years to come. Animals and plants that live in or near the gulf are going to be poisoned, and those that do survive will not have a suitable environment for a long time coming. Species of animal and plant life may disappear forever.

And how long will it take to rid the water of this oil, particularly when it is still flowing? Will this oil evaporate and fall down in the rain, contaminating water supplies, poisoning crops, lowering the quality of our atmosphere? Will we breathe in oil the way we breathed in mold, seeing another spike in asthma and upper respiratory diseases and illnesses like we did after Katrina?

What happens if another big storm hits, whether it's Louisiana, Texas or Florida? The gulf water will get tossed around and tidal surge can send this oily water onto even more land than it is already invading.

Not to mention the number of people in southeast Louisiana, as well as the entire coast, who make their living in the gulf. Fishing is a huge industry in coastal areas. What will happen to these people who can no longer make a living because of the oil spill?

We have had oil spills before. This one is unique in that they have still not cut off the spill. The rig has sunk, apparently too deep into the gulf to send human beings down to figure out a way to turn it off. Maybe it will run out before they get it turned off. Either way, gas prices will end up going up, and if BP is the only gas station in your neck of the woods, you'll be feeling it.

But New Orleans will keep on dancing on Bourbon Street, hosting Jazz Fest, spending every last penny on Saints season tickets. We've always been the red-headed stepchild of the United States, so whatever happens, it's just another day for us. Whether our fishermen have to survive on welfare and food stamps or our children end up in emergency rooms from breathing problems, we will endure. We always do.

GUMBO JUSTICE Tour

My publisher, Billie Johnson, was in town for the Epicon conference, which is an e-publishing conference. Oak Tree Press has books on Kindle as well as in print, and with the e-market expanding, it was a good conference to attend. Oak Tree also had two writers up for awards, Mike Orenduff and Marilyn Meredith, so there was more than one reason to attend. (Mike Orenduff won for his Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras. Go Mike!)

While Billie was here in town, I gave her the Gumbo Justice New Orleans Tour. Julio (my husband) and I showed her around the locations that are in the novel, including the courthouse, the district attorney's office and The Hole, the bar owned by Ryan's brother where Ryan drowns her sorrows. I also showed her a few spots that are going to be featured in Jambalaya Justice, coming out this summer.

We did the traditional down town French Quarter jaunt, but because Billie is the adventurous type who knows very little fear, we took her to the ninth ward. For those who don't know, the ninth ward is the area of New Orleans the most decimated by Katrina, the place where Brad Pitt is building houses and where the Musician's Village is located.

The ninth ward is showing some progress, but it's amazing how little work has actually been done since the storm. As you leave downtown and head toward the ninth ward, the damage to the buildings becomes more prevalent and the neighborhood becomes questionable. Some of the buildings have not yet been gutted. And then you cross the canal and see grass and dirt, an area that was once a thriving suburban neighborhood now dotted with only an occasional new construction.

This goes on for miles. There's a small section with a handful of new houses, all raised on platforms, and all brightly colored as if to make up for the depressing landscape. It's clear that a lot has been lost here, and it takes gumption for the people who stayed to rebuild to do it. The isolation, going on five years later, is haunting.

Some houses still have "X" spray painted on them, with numbers in each segment. The numbers tell a story, how many people were found in the house dead, if the workers who investigated saw pets that needed rescuing, the date the house was checked, all a constant reminder to the people who have returned that many still will not.

And on top of everything, crime has returned full force, murders and robberies easier to commit with fewer witnesses around and the National Guard gone.

But Billie Johnson braved the tour with us, and while out there, we saw other groups touring the ruins, the canal, taking pictures of the new construction. Perhaps next time she comes in town, we'll have more progress to show.