By Phil McAuliffe, Staff photographer
On Sunday Aug. 28 2005, still on my first cup of coffee, I was awakened by the live broadcast on TV of a news conference by the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin. His words, carried nationally by the networks, were as shocking as they were unprecedented. He was ordering the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, the first of its kind in a major American city. And this city of nearly 500,000 people – two to seven feet below sea level and protected by a series of levees and seawalls – was in the direct path of a huge category 5 hurricane called Katrina.
I had no idea there was even a storm coming, let alone the magnitude of it, nor did I have any idea this story would take me to New Orleans three times between now and February 2006.
After a week of helplessly watching the blanket news coverage of Katrina’s aftermath, the flooding and the horror at the Louisiana Superdome and Convention Center, I was invited to photograph a relief flight by the National Guard out of McGuire Air Force base. It was bringing guard troops from the 3rd battalion, 112th artillery out of Moorestown N.J. to the New Orleans Naval Air Station to construct a tent city for refugees. The flight would also be carrying thousands of bottles of drinking water gathered from various drop off points around
New Jersey, including the National Guard armory in Lawrenceville.
We would be flying down on a KC 135 Strato tanker which is an aircraft designed for refueling warplanes in flight. At the rear of the plane was a very small refueling station where a crew member would lay prone and operate a large boom to connect to another aircraft. He or she could watch what they doing from three small 8×12-inch windows on the floor. It was from there that I could see straight down and shoot pictures.
As we approached the storm zone we would pass over Biloxi, Mississippi, which took a direct hit from Katrine. During the 1980s I lived in Florida and have been through many of these storms. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw out of those small windows. Katrina’s storm surge damage could clearly be seen from the air. It looked like a huge arm had come out of the ocean leveling houses for at least five blocks inland, leaving only foundations. A winding yellow line, which was probably lumber from the homes, snaked its way along the coast dividing buildings still standing from bare foundations. A few minutes later we landed at the air station.
New Orleans Naval Air Station was ground zero for the massive relief operation that was ongoing. Planes were arriving from all over the country as well as Coast Guard helicopters coming and going, plucking survivors from rooftops in the flooded city. We had just minutes to drop off our troops and cargo then get out of Dodge.
After departing, our pilot flew us over the flooded parts of the city and all those images that I had been seeing on CNN were now made real from my view of several thousand feet, the sun reflecting off the glassy water through a grid of rooftops.
During our three-hour trip home there was little conversation, the mood of the crew very subdued.
For about six months I had been doing freelance photo work for a national news agency in New York City called Polaris Images. In mid-September, having seen the limited images I shot on my first trip, Polaris gave me an assignment to do a feature on the animal rescue operation that had just started. Night after night my wife Cathy had been brought to tears by the heartbreaking images of pets and animals abandoned and lost because there was no plan in place for them. I had to make arrangements with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which was running the operation. This meant getting updated tetanus shots, getting boots, thick leather gloves and mace as I would doing some of the rescue as well as covering it.
After arriving in New Orleans on Sept. 22, I was supposed to meet Jane Garrison of the HSUS at a horse expo center about 40 minutes north of New Orleans in Gonzales, Louisiana. I arrived at Louis Armstrong Airport to an exodus of people leaving. They were fleeing a second category 4 storm called Rita taking aim and now one day away from the Gulf Coast. I was tempted to get on the next plane out myself.
Once on the ground in New Orleans the sense of fear in everyone was palpable. I rented a car and made my way up Route 10, passing a German military convoy along the way. They were here to support recovery operations, but it was a sight I never thought I would see in the U.S.
As I arrived at the expo center, I had to present a secret password given to me by the HSUS to a guard allowing me onto the premises. FEMA Camp Gonzales was a massive operation with veterinarians from all over the country volunteering. Rows of horse stalls sheltered lost pets, ranging from horses to snakes and birds in cages, but mostly cats and dogs that would be photographed and put online and hopefully reunited with their owner or be adopted.
With the first feeder bands of Rita just hours away, there was an evacuation in progress. Semi tractor-trailers were being loaded with animals and driven to other locations inland. This went on through the night. I was finally given a cot and was able to get a few hours of sleep. The next morning I was told by Jane Garrison that all the HSUS strike teams were being canceled due to the storm and there would be no access into the city.
Working along side and under the direction of the HSUS were many individual volunteers from around the country, some legitimate some not so legitimate. It was then that I was approached by Eric Rice of Annapolis, Maryland. He had been running a rescue operation along with his friend, Billy Hauck from Baltimore. They and local New Orleans resident Suzaune McKamey had been rescuing animals for the last two weeks.
Due to the mandatory evacuation when Katrina hit and eventual flooding, many residents left their pets thinking they would be back in a few days. This evacuation became one of the largest mass migrations in the last century. Others who did not want to separate from their pets were told they had to leave them behind. The HSUS provided lists of those who reported that they left a pet and the address.
Eric Rice was planning on going into New Orleans that day and, probably looking for some publicity for his efforts, he invited me to go along as long as I helped with rescue. He then had to get me a letter from the city allowing me past the National Guard checkpoint. How he pulled this off, I don’t know. I didn’t ask.
By mid-morning as the first rain squalls from Rita arrived in New Orleans, so did we. Driving in a U-Haul box truck full of cages and dog crates, Billy Hauck, Suzaune McKamey and I worked our way through the list of addresses, past the Superdome, the French Quarter and the 17th Street levee. It was shocking to me how empty and devoid of life that a city of this size was. It seemed apocalyptic.
Throughout the day, we were able to maintain cellphone contact with the outside world. We needed to stay up to date as to the position and track of Hurricane Rita in case we needed to leave New Orleans early. My wife Cathy worked in an insurance office back in Hamilton N.J. and they had a TV tuned to CNN. She would call me when they announced tornado warnings in our area or an update in the path of Rita.
At midday we had rescued several dogs and cats. Billy and Suzaune tried to rescue a bird but it had flown away. Some houses had the words “one cat” or “one dog” spray painted on the side. As the wind and the rain increased, I remember looking at the Superdome with its roof ripped off thinking, “What am I doing in New Orleans during a hurricane?”
At one point a New Orleans police officer saw us leaving a house we had just checked. I was afraid he would think we were looters, but he apparently knew Billy.
“Can you guys come to this house and get a dog?” he said with a heavy accent.
When we arrived at the house he warned, “This be a murder crime scene, watch those shell casings.” A pit bull was in the basement of the home. His owner had been dead of gunshots for several days. We all put masks on and went down into the basement. Billy opened a can of dog food and dumped it on the floor. The dog didn’t eat. I dropped a leash around his neck and calmly walked him out, his dead owner still in the house.
I noticed in the windows in a lot of the homes with small signs, white with blue letters, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” We passed a couple of National Guard soldiers in a Jeep and one looked totally freaked out. He was as white as a ghost.
I shouted to him from our truck “Are you guys ok?” He just looked at me nodded yes. I think this must have been a new assignment for this guy.
As we were leaving New Orleans we stopped so I could photograph a large wind-battered billboard on a building on Claiborne Street near the Superdome with the same message. It was a landscape picture that seemed to say it all. The storm was getting worse and it was time to leave.
After a harrowing ride on Route 10, dark, water on both sides, high gusts of wind and rain, and being in a box truck, by the grace of God, we made it back to Gonzales with our cargo of rescued animals. But we were told that this was not a hurricane shelter by the local sheriffs and we had to leave our animals with the skeleton crew running the place.
Back in my compact rental car, I got in the parade of other vehicles leaving town, including the box truck alongside which we eventually had to take shelter at a nearby strip mall. Winds at 80 mph joined the rain that was blowing sideways. But I finally drifted off to sleep.
Rita made landfall to the west of where we were, near the Texas border. When I woke up on the morning of Sept. 24, the sun was shining bright. FEMA Camp Gonzales was battered but still operating. Before leaving I decided that I would adopt a cat. I was scheduled to fly home later that day.
As Zydeco (my cat) and I made our way south on Route 10, the exit to the airport was blocked by flooding from the storm. I got to the terminal just as the plane door was closing. I had missed my flight.
The airline attendant told me I would have to stay overnight on the baggage area floor. The 82nd Airborne was bivouacked there. They fed me and gave me a cot to sleep on. The airline attendant lived locally and brought me a crate for my cat. I almost felt guilty as all these people were going the extra mile just so that I could get through the night. I remember calling my wife after dinner to talk about the my journey from photojournalist to rescuer to refugee and then the silence when I said, “By the way we have a cat.”
I would go back to New Orleans once more in February of 2006 to photograph Marti Gras. This is where I would experience the resilience of the people of New Orleans.
As I was walking through the lower 9th Ward in early 2006, I met the displaced Fields family, who had returned from Maryland. They showed me their devastated home. It was off its foundation and lines from the flooding could be seen above the front door.
Years later Hurricane Sandy would devastate New Jersey and New York. And once again I would be photographing devastation and despair, but this time in my own state.
Sandy was a different animal. After Sandy it was clear that we had learned a lot from Katrina. But I think the most important lesson is to never underestimate the power of Mother Nature.
Phil McAuliffe is the staff photographer for Packet Media Group.
