As Hurricane Francine bore down on Louisiana’s coastline, it triggered a mixed bag of memories, emotions, fears and prayers among those of us who lived through the life-altering storms of the past 20 years.
Oh no, not again. Please, God … not again.
The mere thought of those storms — Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Laura, Delta, Zeta and Ida — conjure horrific flashbacks that can still induce physical reactions.
Those storms came after decades of relative calm along our state’s southern coast. Betsy happened 40 years before Katrina. We barely dodged Camille in 1969.
Two generations passed without the trauma of existential loss. As humans inevitably do during such quiet periods, we let our collective guard down. We became complacent.
Then, in 2005 and too often since, nature violently reminded us just how vulnerable we are.
Perhaps that’s why, for so many of us, hurricane preparations have become akin to muscle memory. Once begun, the checklist practically writes itself, even amid the mixed emotions, fears and prayers.
Francine, like other storms, kept changing course before finally taking aim at Louisiana’s coastline. And, as we’ve seen too often of late, she was expected to intensify before landfall, with sustained winds reaching 100 mph.
As I write this, Francine also was expected to weaken rapidly after landfall — thanks to meteorological terms we’ve come to intuit if not actually understand. What, after all, are steering currents and vertical shears?
Back on the ground, an approaching hurricane also reminds us just how much — and why — we need one another. Whether it’s extra water and food, batteries, flashlights or the shelter of a whole-home generator, our individual experiences of coping with impending or all-too-real disasters are tales of people helping each other.
This is true across Louisiana, most poignantly so in New Orleans, where life is precarious even in the best of times. No matter where we live or where we “went to school,” disaster reminds us that we are neighbors — family, even — not strangers.
Life here is uncertain, sometimes perilously so. Yet we cling to this low-lying, flood prone, mosquito-infested place we call home.
People elsewhere often wonder why anyone would want to live in such a place, where hardship and disaster are so much a part of life.
At such times, even amid the muscle memory of hurricane preps, I recall James Carville, Louisiana’s unofficial Minister of Badassery, explaining “why” years ago.
"Living in New Orleans has always been and always will be a struggle,” Carville said. “But every struggle here matters, because this city has more culture than most countries. People in other cities are obsessed with their quality of life — their sunshine, their libraries, their universities, their income levels. In New Orleans, we’re obsessed with our way of life, because our way of life is our quality of life. We have our own food, our own music, our own funerals, our own social structure, our own architecture, our own body of literature.
“That’s why we stay. That’s why we endure — because it’s worth it.”
Clancy DuBos: Remembering Sybil Morial, a Steel Magnolia whose legacy will endure
