Columbia Journal of American Studies - Makeshift Tombs, Makeshift America: Hurricane Katrina and the Deficiencies of Civic America

Makeshift Tombs, Makeshift America: Hurricane Katrina and the Deficiencies of Civic America
09.15.2005 | Lou Caravella | Media and Culture

�Finally, disgusted by the way she had been abandoned�and concerned, too, about the health implications of advancing decomposition�her friends buried her in a makeshift grave. A local man fashioned a simple cross, and on top of the soil that was shoveled over her body he placed a white plastic sheet and wrote �Here lies Vera. God Help us.'�
�Andrew Buncombe, reporting for The Independent (UK)¹

Neanderthals were the first of modern humans' predecessors to tend to their dead rather than simply leaving them to the elements. In fact, perhaps one social practice that humans everywhere observe, regardless of culture, is tending to their dead.² Consequently, the sheer lack of attention paid to the dead in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in late August of 2005 is remarkable. Due to the overwhelming desperation of those Louisianans who remained in New Orleans following the hurricane, properly caring for the dead was such a low priority as to become largely disregarded or worse. One writer even reported rumors that some New Orleans hurricane victims had resorted to �eating corpses to survive.�³

Faced with such an unsavory reality, no wonder so many Americans in New Orleans , the greater Gulf Coast , and America at large were shocked into an existential crisis following the inhumane aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As a result of the disaster, the notion of what it means to be an American has been dramatically challenged; among many, a keen awareness of the contrast between rhetoric and reality, talk and action, has shaped the debate. News reporters nationwide have logged articles and commentaries on the vast discrepancies between governmental or �official responses� and those from �in the trenches.�⁴ For example, in response to a loaded question from television personality Larry King, CNN news correspondent Anderson Cooper explains:

I wouldn't say I'm angry, you know. I think I'm tired of hearing the politicians say that, you know, they understand the frustration of people down here. To me, you know, it's not frustration. It's not that people are frustrated. It's that people are dying. I mean there are people dying. They're drowning to death and they drown in their living rooms and their bodies are rotting where they drowned and there are corpses in the street being eaten by rats and this is the United States of America.⁵

These remarks show a dual concern. Cooper is troubled with both the fact that people are dead and dying and with the misperception that politicians' supposed sympathy, as opposed to action, is helpful. Indeed, the latter problem exacerbates the former; inadequate or outright feigned empathy is an emotional malady that only reinforces the physical, material maladies at the site. Wasted time, especially in the form of words subsuming action, compounds the problem by allowing starvation and dehydration to gain momentum while bacteria fester among the corpses.

Cooper's coverage is a break from most American journalists' practices of late. Private or personalized stories of suffering, such as the tragic death of an attractive teenage girl in Bermuda , tend to garner much attention. However, American journalists tend not to focus on instances of large-scale public suffering, especially pertaining to non-Americans, the poor, and racial or religious minorities. One example is the American press' near non-existent treatment of the Caribbean flood of May 2004, which killed approximately 2,000 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic . An even more telling example of the media's twisted priorities is Diane Sawyer's trip to Africa this year, in which Sawyer ignored the ongoing genocide in Sudan in favor of an exclusive interview with Brad Pitt.⁶

Nevertheless, Anderson Cooper's unambiguous comments provide a context for the even more candid remarks of New Orleans ' mayor, Ray Nagin. Given the unquestionably dire situation in New Orleans beginning August 29 and the significantly delayed and insufficient responses from federal officials, Nagin, by September 2, was losing patience. On that day, in an interview with local radio station WWL-AM, Nagin responded to a question on President Bush and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco's sluggish reactions. He said, �I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.�⁷

While America 's most powerful politicians evidently debated the chain of command, those stranded, sick, dying, and hungry in New Orleans remained destitute. Nagin too, despite his stern words, had not done nearly enough to help stave off havoc in the crucial pre-storm days when he had more leverage. He could have evacuated more residents and provided more buses. But no matter who is to blame for needless human costs�and many have earned a share of the blame�the finger-pointing began early, well before the immediate tragedies had ended.⁸ Meanwhile, exhausted New Orleanians were left to their own devices to bury their own Vera Smiths (see top) and to defend themselves from post-storm ills such as hunger, thirst, looters, and the acrid flotsam in their midst.

The imagery on August 31, 2005 was grim. In a predominantly non-white crowd with few police or military personnel on hand, countless persons were dead, dying, or injured. The usually serene waters were littered with bobbing corpses as those lucky enough to survive the catastrophe helplessly looked on or searched for loved ones. The disaster need not have happened, and there would be much discussion to follow on how to avoid such needless fatalities in the future.

The scene described above is not New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina but Baghdad on the day that yielded to date the highest single-day death toll since American-led operations began in Iraq in March 2003.⁹ The casualties were not caused by a suicide bomber or a military firefight but, rather, by a frightened mob. As most of New Orleans lay sunken underwater thousands of miles away, a large group of Shiite pilgrims were crossing a bridge into northern Baghdad when false rumors of a suicide bomber among them caused panic. The force of the rushing mob killed over 950 people, mostly through suffocation or drowning in the Tigris River below. Interestingly enough, in both New Orleans and Baghdad , victims died of natural causes that were, nonetheless, easily preventable through human agency. In other words, no one needed to die. The coincidental timing of the unprecedented tragedies in America and Iraq should remind us of the simple, often ignored truth that senseless tragedy can befall Americans too.

Indeed, human life is as fragile in America as it is in Iraq , even if Americans rarely pause to consider this fact. Americans bleed. Americans die. In fact, since American combat operations began in Iraq nearly two and a half years ago, 1,890 American service members have died in the conflict.¹⁰ By contrast, in less than one week , upwards of 650 Americans have died as a result of Hurricane Katrina, making the storm the tenth deadliest natural disaster in American history.¹¹ Longstanding assumptions about �American Exceptionalism��the belief, in short, that Americans are somehow different than other people and immune from foreign woes�are challenged in the midst of the turmoil in the Gulf Coast . Americans would do well to realize that despite their much-vaunted protection agencies, they remain one historical cough�one hurricane, one earthquake, one terrorist attack�away from plunging headlong into a Hobbesian state of nature. It is true, catastrophe can awaken Americans' better angels, as in the case of September 11, 2001 , or it can unleash our darkest, forgotten fears and demons. Katrina, it would seem, represents the latter.

If the conditions in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina seemed otherworldly or Third Worldly, that is because they most certainly were. Starvation is not traditionally considered an American problem. Insufficient foundations of basic infrastructure is not considered an American problem. Large-scale deaths on account of insufficient food, water, and public works structures is also not an American phenomenon or, at least, not perceived by Americans or foreigners to be an American problem. Yet the slate cleared by Katrina has exposed each of these problems writ large. There is added irony, almost certainly unintentional, in George W. Bush asking his father and former President Bill Clinton to lead a nationwide fund drive to aid victims of the hurricane. After all, the same duo led the public advocacy campaign to aid the victims of last year's tsunami, which killed over 30,000 people throughout Southeast Asia .

Some evidence suggests that American leaders are reluctant to compare the plight of Katrina's victims to that of the Third World 's poor, however. One telling indication of this hesitancy is the way certain leaders have approached the use of the word �refugee.� While many journalists use the word freely and doubtless benefit from its more dramatic and stirring meaning, some politicians shy away from the word. In a press conference following the hurricane Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, ��Refugee' calls up to mind people that come from different lands and have to be taken care of. These are American citizens.�¹² Indeed, little good could come from applying such an ambiguous term as �refugee� to a largely black population. And, as has been well noted, the vast majority of those worst crippled by Hurricane Katrina were poor and/or black. Despite Watson and others' linguistic reservations, however, many residents of New Orleans remain homeless and without a city. So, call them �mendicants� or �migrants to Texas � or �poor,� if these terms are less troubling than �refugee,� but those expelled from their decimated homes are, in the truest sense of the word, refugees.¹³

Strictly speaking, the racial composition of those worst affected comprises neither an argument nor a political statement but a simple observation clear enough to any onlooker. Thus, the delayed response on the part of federal government officials�most of whom are white�is doubly suspicious. National leaders may not have intentionally meant to shortchange African Americans in the Deep South , but their slogging to the aide of those same African-Americans did not enhance their assertions to the contrary.

The tragedies, the inequities, the ironies, and the deficiencies associated with Hurricane Katrina are many, and they will inevitably be recounted in newspapers, websites, blogs, and even a dissertation or two. Indeed, the salient imagery and gut reactions that have followed the hurricane's devastation have provided conditions ripe for a shift of awareness in American public consciousness. Americans now have the opportunity to generate public dialogue and perhaps even public policy decisions that are more realistic, more attuned to realities, and more capable of anticipating and preventing future catastrophes. The ultimate synthesis that will emerge from the storm waters of Katrina is unclear but it should take into account the following larger issues:

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a case study in the power of media, especially newer media such as satellite photography and blogs. The way in which instantaneous news updates and pleas for assistance intertwined in the long, slow, desperate days of the hurricane's aftermath�particularly from August 29 to about September 3�challenged viewers'/readers'/listeners' collective sense of chronology. For example, as imbedded eyewitnesses such as Anderson Cooper and Mayor Nagin revealed, it is difficult to know how many people died from the storm itself and how many people died from neglect following the storm. Additionally, since presidential press conferences�always well-publicized� preceded rather than followed presidential action, the official government position was help while the official government action offered help only after help was most sorely needed. The point here is that the speed in which information can travel is so fast that these discrepancies are readily apparent. A government official can no longer expect a chronological discrepancy between vocal policy and action policy to go unnoticed�even in the short term, even in the moment. Ergo, rhetorical transparency is not only ethically superior to verbal deception or even �spin,� but it is politically expedient since verbal dishonesty is promptly detectable.

Like the global economy, public policy should be attached to global considerations. Sometimes ensuring domestic security is as simple as keeping domestic security forces domestic, rather than sending them on expeditions that are only tangentially connected to national security and in far-flung corners of the globe. Despite U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's assertions to the contrary, America 's armed service s are currently stretched too thin to ensure the national security of the United States . The current U.S. presidential administration is both reluctant to scale back its ambitious war campaigns and hesitant to institute a draft. As a result, the Bush Administration has depleted its domestic reserve forces by sending them abroad. In fact, security forces in America are doubly strained since, as is common knowledge, many of America 's military reserve members fighting abroad are also members of local fire or police departments. So, John Doe, fireman and Army Reservist of St. Bernard Parish, was not in St. Bernard Parish as a fireman or as a soldier during Hurricane Katrina; he was in Iraq . If this argument seems like an exaggeration of America 's overextension of its security forces, we should hope that it is not. We should hope that armed service s were inadequate in America 's Gulf Coast . If not, where on earth were these supposedly plentiful uniformed service men while their American brothers and sisters were dying of neglect?

Global interconnectivity also means showing respect for the research and ideas of talented foreign thinkers. For example, maybe those 54 countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, including an America that later reneged, were not so silly after all. American politicians and American scientists, especially those not financed by companies with competing interests, should consider this possibility. Global warming could well have contributed to the rising sea temperatures that bred such a powerful hurricane as Katrina. Politics should answer to credible science�not vice versa.

Some politicians have already called for a commission styled after the 9/11 Commission to investigate the Katrina disaster. While an official�and likely politicized�evaluation of what went wrong is probably inevitable, the postmortem should be more comprehensive and more thoughtful. The American media, universities, think tanks, and populace in general should systematically evaluate all of those fundamental assumptions about America that Hurricane Katrina has shaken to the core. This evaluation should include investigating such disparate though critical issues as environmental science, racial equality, poverty, public works projects, national security, energy policy and oil (in?)dependence, emergency preparedness, governmental accountability�even issues such as equitable healthcare distribution and corporate ethics.¹⁴

Clearly, the three considerations above are only an outline of a long series of debates that must ensue in the coming months and years. Hurricane Katrina is a watershed moment, a meta-issue, with few precedents in the history of the United States . Mayor Nagin, the immediate duress of his situation notwithstanding, offered a pithy evaluation of his surroundings when he called the aftermath of Katrina �the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.�¹⁵ The sheer depth of the devastation that the hurricane wreaked has and should continue to uncover deeply buried sociopolitical realities. Hard discussions that have long been circumscribed by weak excuses and intellectual platitudes (�This is race bating�; �Politicians should not encourage class warfare �; �The European model is socialist �; �That's politically incorrect ;� �This state is red that state is blue ;� etc.) are now imperative.

Rendering the above three categories useful to public debate will also require the public to sustain a relatively large attention span and historical memory. As in the case of grassroots movements, the civic diligence required to salvage public betterment from the havoc of Katrina must remain high for real change to subsume the status quo. Why not accept the opportunity to respond to Katrina in ways similar to how Franklin Roosevelt responded to the risk of flooding in the Tennessee Valley in the 1930s? Certainly, the United States can protect New Orleans as well today as FDR could protect Tennessee 70 years ago. There is an opportunity here to create not only better programs but a civic philosophy underlying them. Such a thoughtful outlook is less idealistic than it is pragmatic because, as we have learned from New Orleans , we either take care of our own now or we will pay a much higher price later.

At present, however, the process of merely collecting the dead continues. Along with above- ground interment, another one of New Orleans ' unique funerary practices is jazz music adapted to the funeral procession. Somewhat similar to an Irish wake, the mood of a traditional funeral in New Orleans is generally more upbeat�figuratively and literally. The music complements the raised spirits, but at a time when spirits are lowest in New Orleans no jazz band is at hand and all the trombones have sunk underwater anyway. The sounds of Bourbon Street's first Saturday night following the hurricane included an eerie silence occasionally punctuated by a stray gunshot, a stray dog's bark, a chain rattling, a distant siren�unsettling noises all.

And for now and for long to come, the only funerary music to be heard in New Orleans is the silent dirge that comes from a choir of Bourbon Street 's newest ghosts.