LAKE COUNTY — A year ago today one of the country”s worst national disasters made landfall, killing 1,500 people, causing $80 billion in damage and changing lives forever.
The effects of Hurricane Katrina are still being felt up and down the Gulf Coast, and in parts of the nation where Katrina survivors live today.
Katrina”s anniversary comes as Tropical Storm Ernesto is causing concern along Florida”s eastern coast.
Pictures of Floridians rushing to fill gas tanks and preparing to evacuate brings back harsh memories for transplanted Gulf Coast resident Lucie Faulknor.
“It”s hard going back there in your mind,” said Faulknor, a New Orleans resident who left New Orleans and today lives in Berkeley.
Faulknor”s parents currently reside in Lower Lake. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Faulknor”s mother was scheduled for major back surgery at a hospital in Santa Rosa. Faulknor had arranged for a flight out of New Orleans for Sept. 11 in order to assist her mother with the recovery.
After the hurricane, Faulknor recalled, “There were no flights out of New Orleans for over a month and so I had to make my way down to Houston in order to catch my plane.”
Faulknor evacuated with her partner, her sister, her sister”s two children and her mother to Baton Rouge at 3 a.m. the day before the hurricane hit. They later saw the destruction on television.
“It looked like New Orleans was battered, but not badly. Then the hurricane came up to Baton Rouge and the power went out for four days,” Faulknor recalled. “We rode it out trying to get reception on a battery-operated black and white TV. We didn”t see any of the images that were being shown on CNN. We eventually heard that the levies had broken. My car just missed being clobbered by a huge, downed tree.”
She said she received about $300 from the Red Cross and about a $100 voucher for toiletries and needed items at Kmart.
“One important thing I learned in a disaster is to always have cash with you. Even in Baton Rouge, with the electricity out, ATMs didn”t work, credit card swipe machines didn”t work. You couldn”t get a hold of your bank because phone service was out. In fact, cell phone service was next to impossible for months. Most of the towers in New Orleans were wiped out. Eventually power was back on in Baton Rouge and we could use the Internet at the local library to contact people to let them know we were safe.”
Faulknor said she did not receive the initial $2,000 from FEMA for disaster-related personal needs and expenses, including housing, clothing, food and transportation costs because by the time FEMA straightened out her claim the money was no longer available.
“I survived the first six months on the generosity of friends and family and what little savings I had,” she said.
Coincidentally, Faulknor has been producing a documentary about a neighborhood in New Orleans, called the Faubourg Trem?, for the past four years. Her documentary focused on this historic neighborhood next door to the French Quarter that was home to one of the oldest, most prosperous and most politically active black communities in the country during slavery.
“We had to rescue our master tapes before the heat destroyed them; and we felt we had to go in see what impact the hurricane had on the Trem? neighborhood,” she said. “We obtained press passes and went in 10 days after the storm. It was like a war zone. Nobody around. The National Guard occupied the city. We had to go through checkpoints, in and out. We were able to get to our office and get our equipment out, but not without the National Guard asking for ID to make sure we weren”t looting. We couldn”t get near our house in Mid-City it was still flooded. In fact, a friend went in two and a half weeks after the storm in a boat to rescue our cat still inside the house.”
Since Hurricane Katrina struck last year, the Lake County Red Cross chapter lost its charter and ceased to exist.
This occurred last April as part of a downsizing of smaller chapters by the national organization that have had difficulty in meeting all of the Red Cross regulations, such as maintaining required funding levels, for continued operation.
This action resulted in the Yolo County-supervised Certified Service Delivery Unit (CSDU) having governance over its activities. The CSDU has been functioning under the name of American Red Cross of Lake County and has continued with a local facility and paid staff here in Lake County.
Disaster volunteers are desperately needed, according to American Red Cross of Yolo County Emergency Services Director Diana Gustafson. “We currently have three volunteers as captains and a total of seven or eight more,” said Gustafson. “We need 30.”
Anyone interested in volunteering should contact Gustafson directly at (530) 662-4669 or e-mail her at comdir@yc-arc.org.
Contact Cynthia Davis at cdavis@record-bee.com.
