States of Shock & Unknowing: On Documenting the Wake of Katrina & Rita in Southern Louisiana

The cover of "After the Wind, Child, After the Water's Gone…," a video by John Sullivan and Bryan Parras. The image shows the scene through a resident's window on Isle de Jean Charles near sundown two weeks after the community was engulfed by storm surge from Hurricane Rita (Photo by Bryan Parras). Click here to view clips from the video.

Cruising through the “Golden Triangle” of east Texas on a path for Houma, Louisiana, we passed Beaumont and a long string of tiny interstate towns that lay splayed out and torn, littered with tree trunks, shards of crumpled metal, and close to 100 abandoned cars. Further down the road, Lake Charles and Calcasieu Parish were similarly shredded and empty of life, eerie in the soft October sunlight. This landscape we knew was transformed by hurricane Rita into terra incognita, and the change was terrible but fascinating. A car imbedded in the wall of a church, billboards snapped off at ground level and blown down the highway, twisted, useless, dangling – everthing we build and call our civilization, in smithereens.

And though we came here, initially, to dialogue and sample the opinions and ideas of storm victims on environmental-health hazards, out came the cameras and we began to harvest images. There were so many, no end to the opportunities for yet another perfect picture or video sequence. It nearly became a compulsion. I remembered Susan Sontag’s meditation on the world’s appetite for images of other peoples’ destruction:

Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering … are those who could do something to alleviate it or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs. (“On Regarding the Pain of Others”)

I’m still not sure what we’ve done with these images can actually alleviate anyone’s suffering. But, yes, the learning curve was steep, indeed. And that’s the crux of this story.

First I need to tell you the official version. In plain language, objectively, like a piece of tight and linear ethnography in pursuit of the patterns of science beneath all this chaos. Because various sciences, specifically environmental toxicology, risk characterization and community health supplied the very first premises for our project.

Bryan Parras and I began our work in southern Louisiana with a limited mandate from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center for Environmental Toxicology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston Texas (UTMB). Because of our Center’s proximity to the Katrina/Rita impact zones, our Community Outreach & Education Core (COEC) was asked to coordinate on-the-ground relief efforts. Because my own COEC division – Public Forum & Toxics Assistance – dialogues with citizens on toxic exposures, health effects and risk factors, Bryan and I were asked to “meet with community-based environmental leaders to determine how the NIEHS could best collaborate with local groups in research and capacity-building efforts.” We traveled east and south in early October, a few hundred miles or so, stopping at the home of Rochelle Ste. Marie in La Rose, Louisiana, where we met up briefly with another outreach crew from UTMB and the UT/MD Anderson Cancer Center. They were trucking water, diapers, assorted medical supplies and reentry fliers on safe mold remediation.

Aftermath of Hurricane Rita: wrecked shrimp boat run aground on bank of Bayou Lafourche  (Photo by Bryan Parras)

The next day we left them and embarked on this “fact-finding” journey that ranged through greater Baton Rouge, Orleans, St. Bernard, Jefferson, Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes, and the city of New Iberia. We returned twice, attending the Louisiana Environmental Action Network conference in Baton Rouge in November, and again in December, to gauge the progress of recovery efforts in Chalmette, a petrochemical industry fenceline community in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans. ("Fenceline" means any community located within a half-mile radius of a major industrial facility.) Equipped with a fairly basic video camera – and few other technical embellishments – we posed the following core questions to each of our community respondents and recorded their answers:

• What significant damage did your region sustain during or because of hurricanes Katrina and Rita?
• What is the most significant threat to human health in your area, post-Katrina (or Rita)?
• How has the hurricane evacuation, reentry and recovery process disrupted the social fabric of your area, and Louisiana generally?
• What environmental-health projects – involving collaborations among environmental scientists, healthcare/social-service providers and communities – do you think are most important to safeguard the health of people and the ecosystem in your region and the state?
• Describe your organization’s response to this disaster. How have you modified your mission to make an effective response? (Applicable only if in interviews with environmental organizations.)

Interpreting what we were told through the lens of community-based participatory practice (CBPR),[1] these results distilled into a series of ideas, a community “wish list” of potential collaborative research projects uniting local environmental groups, NIEHS Center researchers, healthcare providers and public-policy makers. These results were presented at the NIEHS Center Directors Conference at Vanderbilt University, Oct. 31-Nov. 1, 2005.[2] We were inverting the traditional risk-communication paradigm – shifting the balance of power from expert to local knowledge. We hoped this strategy would shed new light on regional risk perception and the effects of risk-communication efforts by various state, regional and federal agencies. Most important for the future, we wanted to provide new perspectives on site-specific exposure pathways.[3]

And that’s the official version: true, as far as it goes, but also majorly sanitized, like generic war news or glib political punditry. The flood of fact and feeling we got back from our collaborators refused to stay inside the neat little box of our original purpose. From the moment we arrived in Baton Rouge – literally “busting at the seams” with former residents of New Orleans and all points south – we realized that the magnitude of the human and ecological damage demanded something more intimate and much less formal, something grounded in fact but that also opened a window into how it really feels to take a deadly hit and struggle through the aftermath of a massive eco-catastrophe. Though we are by no means experienced filmmakers, we tried to expand the filmic possibilities of what began as archival footage, adding music, a series of still photographs, and what was foremost in the minds and hearts of local residents. “…after the wind, child, after the water’s gone…” grew by accretion; we reconfigured the tone and refined our montage as the scope of the project expanded.

State wildlife department sign at Pointe-aux-Chenes permanently engulfed by saltwater  (Photo by Jennifer Gorenstein)

Though most of the interviews were supposed to follow a more or less structured “sit-down” format – which greatly peeved Bryan’s direct-cinema instincts and violated his verite aesthetic – much of the footage unfolded improvisationally, in the moment, with no warning and little time for a calculated reaction. In fact, even the interview process really morphed into something like a free-flowing group conversation: Local folks began to ask us and each other questions and all these intriguing back stories bubbled to the surface. This seemed like the right thing to do: It was quite enough to bother people in the middle of their shared calamity when we didn’t have any immediately tangible aid to offer. But to force them into some locked down mold for someone else’s purposes seemed ultimately cruel and unethical. As a consequence, we have hours of additional footage, and dozens of possible storylines begging for more intimate treatment than this project could offer.

So, did we learn something from this very brief immersion inside the pain of others?  Was anything revealed within all this clang and tumult to justify our intrusion? We think so, choosing here to focus on risk anxiety, post-hurricane mental-health issues and massive land loss, though this list could go on and on and never be complete.

First, we learned that people have serious worries about risk: to their families, their own bodies, their pets, the ground they walk upon and the water they drink or bathe in when confronted with miles and miles of potentially toxic terrain and no straight answers on the extent of their risk. Risk assessments evolve over time in a disaster this huge, but that’s little consolation when you’re waiting for experts to give the “all clear.” This risk uncertainty provoked a gnawing risk anxiety that compounded the already complex reentry decisions facing everyone who initially evacuated. “…after the wind…” opens with a statement by Anne Rolfes – director of the New Orleans based Louisiana Bucket Brigade – which cuts to core of this mass dilemma: "I think people are still in shock, they’re in a state of suspended unknowing because they don’t know what’s true, they don’t know where to turn."[4]

While Anne spoke primarily for the people of Chalmette, Louisiana, site of an oil spill that engulfed acres and acres of residential neighborhoods with “oil-gas,”[5] diesel products and heavy metals, many more of our respondents also remarked how environmental uncertainties and dire projections had problematized the reentry process.[6]

"Ghost oak" – a monument to land loss by saltwater infiltration, which increases the salinity of soil and water (Photo by Bryan Parras)

Florence Robinson – former professor of biology at Southern University, Baton Rouge, and recipient of a Heinz Environmental Award – expressed concern that Louisiana and Mississippi’s evacuees, especially children, would feel strong emotional shockwaves for months, perhaps years to come. Rochelle Ste. Marie – an interpersonal-skills trainer from Larose, “down the bayou” in Lafourche Parish – corroborated Florence’s insight with accounts from her recent parish-wide workshops for preschool teachers and day-care providers. And I’ve heard this from others, as well: Yes, it does seem that kids evacuated from storm damaged areas – with no home left to reenter, living more or less permanent temporary lives – are carrying emotional baggage. Adults, likewise. And these stresses are spread across a wide expanse of territory, from east Texas to Mobile, Alabama. In the British medical journal The Lancet, Todd Zwillich reports that patients needing mental-health services – especially acute psychiatric interventions – are faring badly. It seems – at least by Feb. 25, 2006 – that exactly two psychiatric beds were available in New Orleans and its suburbs. And the problem stems more from chronic staffing shortages than lack of actual beds. These shortages also plague the city’s 50 pre-Katrina nursing homes, six of which were open when The Lancet released Zwillich’s article.

And what about the bayous, the rapidly deteriorating marshlands, the estuaries, the fishery, the very basis of life and culture for people “down the bayou” like the Houma Nation and the people we commonly call Cajuns? During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, over 100 square miles of marsh were obliterated and small communities in Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. Bernard, Terrebonne, Lafourche, Vermillion and Cameron parishes were lashed by high Category 3 winds and buried in storm surge. In our film, Brenda Dardar – Principal Chief of the United Houma Nation – describes the damage done to her people by storms, the decline of the estuary, saltwater infiltration of the marshes, and neglect. Many Houma communities lay outside the safety of the levee systems. Few Houma communities have reaped much material benefit from the ongoing exploitation of southern Louisiana by energy producers or large-scale commercial fishing. Curtis Hendon, Houma tribal parliamentarian and long-time resident of the tiny village of Isle de Jean Charles, laments the progressive loss of habitable land on Jean Charles and passionately condemns the callousness and political chicanery that “left his people in the water.” It’s obvious that Houma culture and life-ways have reached a vital tipping point and Bryan and I devised a new project we call “Down the Bayou” that features how the Houma traditionally “loved the water and fought against its storms and surges,” and shows where their struggles to keep a toehold on the vanishing Gulf coast have led them. 

“Down the Bayou” will focus closely on the damage done to coastal Houma infrastructure and culture in 2005 by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and tie this directly to historical trends of land loss, diminishing local economic prospects and subsequent cultural erosion for the Houma. We want the facts in this film to influence coastal recovery and redevelopment policy-makers at all levels of government and hope our reportage of both the damage done to coastal communities and estuaries, as well as the potential of various reconstructive efforts and ideas will positively influence how resources are allocated, and how environmental health and justice consequences of future storms are addressed. Following the lead of environmental activists like Clarice Friloux and Dr. Mike Robicheaux, we will direct community scrutiny toward potential sources of industrial damage and consequent environmental pollution during future storms so petrochemical storm lockdown and safety protocols for other hazardous industries may be upgraded to include Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. It takes massive denial – and truly egregious stupidity - to ignore the climatological portents afoot in the Gulf, and worldwide; more behemoths of these magnitudes are coming and they will make landfall somewhere. Ultimately, we hope to describe – in their own words with their own actions - the richness and importance of Houma culture in the diverse mosaic of southern Louisiana.

Latino wrecking crew in the New Orleans French Quarter, early October 2005 (Photo by Jennifer Gorenstein) Author's note: There are huge numbers of Latinos – even a group of White Mountain Apaches from Arizona we met living in the park – that came or were brought to NOLA for reclamation work. The undocumented workers, especially, are not faring well; they've told us that.  –J.S.

So, I guess we did learn some things and I hope our video communicates some of these facts and ideas. But finally, I must admit, though I prefer to see my self as compassionate, a giver of comfort and an activator, I’ve often been touched by this hollow feeling that when all’s said and little actually done, especially by me, I may be nothing more that an image-of-pain junkie, another American Voyeur, comfortable, well insulated from all these other peoples’ painful circumstances, and ultimately, ineffectual. And always eager to take another look, and another. Which leads me directly back to Susan Sontag, again, from “On Regarding the Pain of Others”:

“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People do not become inured to what they are shown – if that’s the right way to describe what happens – because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.”

If we accept this reading of the relationships among compassion, knowledge, an overwhelming surfeit of images and passivity, then the remedy – the right thing to do – hits like a brick. In our own ways, separated as we may be from the problems of the Houma, New Orleanians, folks from Lafitte, Venice, Dulac, Isle de Jean Charles, Chalmette and so many more, we just can’t forget them when the novelty of this latest disaster wears off. What each of us should do with this long-lived awareness, I really can’t say, but another hurricane season is literally on us already, and efforts to repair the past and simultaneously prepare for possible calamitous futures must move into clearer focus and accelerate into higher gears.

New Orleans and coastal Louisiana are home to so much of our energy-industry infrastructure – crucial for all of us whether we support our nation’s ravenous fossil-fuel jones or not. They also form the nexus of ongoing struggles by African-American, Houma and Cajun communities for basic environmental, social and cultural justice, and harbor the most bountiful and endangered estuarine fishery in the Lower 48. They provide a way-station for innumerable species of migratory birds, and serve as the cradle of so much of our national culture. They deserve a long prayer of our focused attention.

John Sullivan is a theater artist who co-directs the Public Forum & Toxics Assistance division of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He wrote for CAN in October 2005 about his work in theater and public health.

Bryan Parras is an actor with El Teatro Lucha de Salud del Barrio in Houston, Texas, and a producer of the Pacifica radio show "Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say."

“…after the wind, child, after the water’s gone…” premiered at the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival April 6, 2006. It will also screen at Rice University in conjunction with the Citizens League for Environmental Action Now and the environmental-justice advocacy group TEJAS.

NOTES

Environmental and social-service organizations doing invaluable work with Katrina victims and the land:

Lousiana Environmental Action Network (Baton Rouge) - direct relief, important environmental data on the extent of and breaking news; a vital nerve center in relief efforts. [www.leanweb.org]

Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (of Dillard University in Baton Rouge) – focused on right-of-return issues, environmental racism, neighborhood soil testing and sludge removal, building coalitions among organizations and cities affected by the 2005 storms. [www.dscej.com]

“Common Ground’s mission is to provide short-term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the Gulf coast region, and long-term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area.” [www.commongroundrelief.org]

ACORN serves the housing needs of hurricane evacuees in New Orleans, including reentry issues such as gutting houses and mold abatement, and having a voice in reconstruction policies. [www.thebeehive.org/Templates/HurricaneKatrina]

Louisiana Bucket Brigade -- focusing on environmental-justice issues of residents in fenceline neighborhoods of Chalmette; organizing citizen-based soil sampling; have supported Citizens for Environmental Quality/Chalmette in efforts to require effective oil-sludge abatement from Murphy Oil, the company whose holding tanks ruptured during the flooding. [www.labucketbrigade.org]

Introductory reading on a wide spectrum of environmentally related hurricane and coastal issues, and social-justice implications:

Mike Tidwell, “Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life & Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast" (Vintage, 2004, reprint).

John Tibbetts, “Louisiana’s a Lesson in Nature Appreciation” (Environmental Health Perspectives; Vol. 114, #1; January 2006)

Oliver Houck, “Can We Save New Orleans?” (Tulane Environmental Law Journal. Vol. 19, #1; Spring 2006)

Todd Zwillich, “Health care remains basic in New Orleans" (The Lancet. Vol. 367; February 25, 2006)

Robert Bullard, “Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class & Environmental Quality" (Westview Press, 1990)

Footnotes

[1] A "collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. CBPR begins with a research topic of importance to the community, has the aim of combining knowledge with action and achieving social change to improve health outcomes and eliminate health disparities." —WK Kellogg Foundation Community Health Scholars Program.

[2] Katrina/Rita Community Research Project “Wish List”: schematic diagrams of possible community-based research designs suggested by Louisiana environmentalists and presented at the NIEHS Center Directors Meeting. (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 2005)

• General health-outcomes monitoring using combination biomarker assay and health-effects survey with rescue and recovery workers.
• Differentiation of acute and chronic health effects in recovery workers based on time period of response, length of time working in affected areas, proximity to documented environmental impact areas, occupational category etc. This monitoring could also be extended to ALL residents reentering affected areas.
• Systematic bio monitoring of vulnerable populations returning to storm ravaged areas. Particular emphasis on children, residents with compromised immuno-systems, residents with pre-existing chronic disease, etc. Results used to develop individual clinical intervention plans where applicable and track overall population health.
• Comprehensive survey of industrial sites in affected area to assess extent of structural damage to facilities – especially as damage might impact fugitive emissions or emergency flaring procedures. Also an industrywide inventory of all toxic releases during or after the storms, inventory of waste sites and facilities with similar toxic seepage/leakage potential to assess extent of pollution incidents. Series of community meetings in affected areas to translate data and clearly communicate immediate risks, risks over time and abatement procedures – if necessary – adopted by industry.
• Development of a comprehensive – but simultaneously site-specific – disaster management plan and procedures that incorporate environmental health: i.e., statewide environmental-risk communication and hazardous-situation preparedness training for community-based environmental organizations. This training was conceived as a mechanism to create pools of local first responders for rescue and relief efforts and to open a vital avenue of communication and networking opportunities for Gulf Coast organizations. Interdigitation with industrial and municipal first responders would increase the effectiveness of this culturally flexible effort.
• Monitoring infiltration of potable water supplies (with emphasis on bayou-supplied communities) by petrochemical releases, effluents and waste-disposal site residues. This is especially crucial in areas with a RCRA hazardous-waste exemption site. Monitoring equipment would remain on-site, online with opportunities for continuous data feed and future emergency-response measurements.
• Multi-agency efforts to create an intercoastal and marshland-reclamation waterway policy that sustains industrial economy while preventing further saltwater infiltration of marshlands and restores essential storm buffering: This policy would of course be science-based, thus the need for a program based on assay of existing subsidence, saltwater infiltration damage, projected marshland erosion with reference to future storms, and a social-cultural asset map of threatened areas. Network should include federal, state, local wetland-management organizations, sportsmen’s associations, community environmental organizations, industry, municipal government and vulnerable communities and/or cultural groups.
• Public Forums on waste-disposal efforts devised to address hazardous and nonhazardous debris removal, storage/sequestration and/ or incineration as a result of the twin storms. Citizens want to know where various types of waste will go, how the facilities are being designed to receive and contain waste, and how and to whom contracts are being awarded. Preservation of nearby water supplies, toxic fumes, noxious odors and various human health effects are the prime considerations.

[3] The following list of potential exposure pathways were identified and discussed in detail during our interview process. Ambiguous or contradictory assessments of actual risk associated with these exposure sources contributed to risk anxiety and reentry confusion: 

1. exposure to mold: concentrations, direct exposure effects, possible immuno-suppression and recommended precautions
2. extent of threat from pathogens in water; ongoing monitoring of pathogen levels in bayou surface water and major bodies such as Lake Pontchartrain
3. general water potability factors during and immediately post-disaster
4. flooding/overflow risk to surface water from RCRA-exempt waste pits & compromised sewage-treatment facilities
5. post-Katrina viability of drinking-water treatment facilities
6. dispersion patterns and health effects of toxic releases from submerged automobiles, agricultural chemicals, nonpetrochemical industrial sites
7. levels of metals, diesel and hydrocarbon residues in desiccated sludge, change in levels over time
8. viability and potential virulence of pathogens in desiccated sludge
9. respiratory and other health effects of wind-borne sludge dust (Katrina cough)
10. transport of petrochemical toxicants & residues moved by storm surges
11. integrity of superfund sites and brown fields after wind damage and submergence; effects on capping
12. post-wind-and storm-surge integrity of petrochemical facilities; direct damage to physical plants
13. emissions and flaring during post-storm petrochemical shutdown-restart process; regulatory waivers on unpermitted emissions during start-up process
14. debris issues: collection, transportation, certified and marginal disposal sites, use of air-curtain destructors to contain emissions from incineration process
15. need for specific reentry safety gear not clearly indicated, lack of information on reentry procedures, safety equipment unavailable, price gouging
16. mosquitos, animal and/or human corpses, diseased animals as contagious disease vectors
17. effects of damage to coastal marsh on subsistence food supply and health of the estuarine ecosystem
18. loss of marshland’s hurricane dampening effect
19. post-traumatic stress effects of disaster.

[4] The sample results show the state health-screening level for diesel fuel to be met or exceeded in a third of the samples. DEQ states that the pre-Katrina levels for arsenic were 7 mg/kg; 30% of all samples taken exceeded that level of arsenic. Many health experts believe that no level of arsenic is safe.

[5] oil-gas: a semi-volatile product of incomplete refining: contains benzene, ethylene, toluene, styrene as well as more viscous liquid resembling crude oil; an intermediate “cut” from the catalytic cracking process.

[6] Risk uncertainty and risk anxiety were identified as over-arching problems. The degree of personal experience with environmental issues seems to positively correlate with degree of risk anxiety. Citizens with less awareness of environmental-health threats were usually less concerned with precautions and the interpretation of environmental monitoring data. This was not true, however, for cases in which citizens involved in recovery operations developed chronic respiratory irritation, or skin lesions and/or rashes from exposure to standing flood waters or toxic residues.

Original CAN/API publication: April 2006