Helping out down South

Los Angeles Country sent an advance team to New Orleans assess the damage of Hurricane Katrina and offer advice. Due to my father's experience in the Northridge earthquake in 1994, he was a member of the team.

My dad returned home from New Orleans much as he left, which was a disappointment to me because I think I wanted him to come back looking really different, maybe a crazy beard or and eye patch or something. But I guess four days isn’t really going to change anyone that much, appearance-wise. Even if it was four days in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

I’ve been really busy recently and I haven’t been able to sit down and hear about his experience like I’d like to, but one story I have heard goes like this:

My dad flies into Houston where he is met by several military guys who take him to some military base right nearby. The rest of my father’s group assembles (they’re all local government officials from Los Angeles County and elsewhere in the state of California) and they all head out to a line of black Suburbans and Windstars. The military guys all ride up front, while all the passengers pile in the back. They take off in a caravan towards New Orleans and, at the beginning of the journey, drive normally. But as they get closer to New Orleans, fewer and fewer cars are on the road, and it gets to the point where the entire freeway is barren and empty. The military guys take this opportunity to drive their motorcade ninety miles an hour, booking into the disaster area in record time.

And that was how his trip began.

PS. My dad came home with about half of the group he went over with. Some of the group stayed back to do more work. We just got word today that they were reassigned from damage assessment. Today they went out and gathered dead bodies.