Title:
Below the Water Line: Getting Out,
Going Back, and Moving Forward in the Decade After Hurricane Katrina
Author: Lisa Karlin
Publisher: Centennial Publishers
Pages: 376
Genre: Memoir
Format: Paperback 14.97/Kindle 9.99/Audio 22.99
Author: Lisa Karlin
Publisher: Centennial Publishers
Pages: 376
Genre: Memoir
Format: Paperback 14.97/Kindle 9.99/Audio 22.99
Below the Water Line provides a gripping account of a family’s
hurricane evacuation experiences and all that followed in the decade after
Hurricane Katrina. The story begins in August 2005, when author Lisa Karlin,
her husband, thirteen-year-old daughter, eleven-year-old son, and two dogs
evacuated New Orleans for what they thought would be a two-day “hurrication.”
The day-by-day account of the weeks that follow vividly chronicles the
unprecedented displacement of thousands of Americans, and on a personal level,
describes how her family makes the trifecta of major life decisions: where to live,
where to work, and where to enroll their children in school. Below the Water
Line provides a first-hand commentary on how everyday life has been
impacted by Katrina’s aftermath and how, a decade later, there are still
lingering effects of one of the most devastating events in American history.
For More Information
- Below the Water Line: Getting Out, Going
Back, and Moving Forward in the Decade After Hurricane Katrina
is available at Amazon.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
About the Author
Lisa Karlin is the author of Below
the Water Line: Getting Out, Going Back, and Moving Forward in the Decade After
Hurricane Katrina. She is an oncology nurse who, unlike weather chasers
who look for storms to track, has had the weather chase her, and these
experiences are described in her memoir. Lisa lives in New Orleans, Louisiana
with her husband, daughter, son, and Yellow Lab named Buddy.
For
More Information
Book Excerpt:
The pool water is bathtub warm, and the
sky is postcard-perfect, clear and blue.
Thirteen-year-old Samantha floats on a
raft near me. My daughter has carefully positioned herself with her arms
extended by her sides and her chin tilted up toward the sun. Since school
started last week, her tan has faded and she is determined to preserve it. She
lies perfectly still; her only movement is the subtle rise and fall of her
chest as she breathes.
A major hurricane named Katrina lurks just
a few hundred miles away, out in the Gulf of Mexico, but we are not concerned.
Landfall predictions are still uncertain, and I’m expecting that this hurricane
will turn to the east or west and spare New Orleans, just like all of the
hurricanes in the past forty years have done.
I take notice when I come in from the
pool, turn on the television, and see the satellite image showing that Katrina
has increased in intensity, and is now bigger than the state of Texas. Even so,
the hurricane watch area extends all the way from western Louisiana to the
eastern edge of the Florida panhandle. Anything can happen with this hurricane
at this point.
Late in the afternoon, New Orleans Mayor
Ray Nagin calls for a voluntary evacuation. He says he’s adhering to the
state's evacuation plan, and will not order a mandatory evacuation until thirty
hours before Katrina’s expected landfall so that people living in low-lying
surrounding areas can leave first and avoid gridlocked escape routes.
My eleven-year-old son calls and tells me
he’s ready to be picked up from his friend Colin’s house. On the stoop outside
their house, Colin’s father asks if we are evacuating, and I tell him my plan
is to watch the news and The Weather Channel and then decide. If Jim Cantore
shows up in New Orleans, then we’re going to skedaddle, since he always seems
to broadcast from the bulls-eye of a storm. Colin’s father says he plans to see
how things look in the morning. And I have jury duty on Tuesday, I tell him.
Can’t miss that!
My son John and I make a quick stop at
Breaux Mart on the way home. Cars circle the parking lot, competing for the few
open spaces. The store is clogged with people, and many shelves already are
bare. I dispatch John to see if there are any hamburger buns still on the
shelf. He reports back that just a few packages remain and like a fisherman,
proudly holds up his catch. I see a few scattered packages of ground beef lying
in a refrigerator case, and speed up to get there before anyone else does.
There’s nervous chatter in the long
checkout line as people debate hunkering down or getting on the road. Older
folks recall evacuating in ’92 after Hurricane Andrew blasted across southern
Florida, and then entered the Gulf of Mexico and headed toward Louisiana.
Andrew made landfall as a category 3 hurricane a couple of hours west of New
Orleans, so we dodged that bullet. Hurricane Alberto in ’94 looked like it was
headed for New Orleans, but veered off to the Florida Panhandle. And no one
could forget evacuating for Hurricane Ivan last year and the arduous, tortuous
process that was.
With ample time in the checkout line, many
evacuation stories are told, eliciting nods of recognition from the people
standing in the adjacent lines. We know all too well what it was like to
batten-down the house, creep north along the interstates, spend a sleepless
night out, and return a day or two later to sunny, intact New Orleans to start
reversing the process. “Here we go again,” another “hurrication,” seems to be
the sentiment of many in line. A number of people say they’re waiting to see
how things look in the morning.
It’s inconceivable that a major hurricane
is headed this way. The sky is clear, the air is still, and the sunset is
spectacular. Buddy, our 80-pound yellow Lab, takes a leisurely swim in our pool
while we eat dinner on the patio. It’s just another ordinary day.
All evening long, we wear down the
television remote jumping from station to station. We, too, have decided to see
how things look in the morning, knowing that a lot can happen in twelve hours.
I’m still predicting that fateful turn that hurricanes take at the last minute,
the turn that produces a collective sigh of relief from the people in their
initial path.
We watch evacuation footage and see that
even with the contraflow on the interstate this year, it’s no better than last
September when about half of the people in New Orleans evacuated for Hurricane
Ivan. Despite six lanes of traffic all heading westward, the traffic on
Interstate 10 does not move at all. People are standing beside their cars, an
impromptu and odd social gathering of sorts. Good thing we didn’t leave
tonight, I tell my husband, Rich. We’d be stuck out there on the highway in the
dark. I can’t imagine our family—two adults, two kids, and two dogs—inching
along the interstate all night.
John plops down on the couch and announces
that it would be fun (fun?) to evacuate at night. He tells us he would bed-down
in our car, tell the dogs goodnight, and go to sleep. Rich raises his
eyebrows. He knows our two kids would be
squabbling before we back out of the driveway. And there’s no telling how Buddy
and John’s 12-pound Jack Russell Terrier, which he named Jack, would handle a
long car ride. We have trouble driving around the neighborhood with our dogs,
and with our kids for that matter.
A news announcer casually mentions that
Pat Sajak and Vanna White, who are in town taping New Orleans-themed episodes
of Wheel of Fortune, have cut production short and are leaving. The
“Wheelmobile” and eight tractor trailers of equipment are being readied for
departure. It is the first time in its thirty-year history that the
long-running game show cancels taping.
I silently pray that Katrina weakens and
changes course, but the latest information indicates that this hurricane is
strengthening and coming our way. Local weatherman Bob Breck pronounces that
“the water will be so high that you’ll be on the roof with the cockroaches!”
Around 10 p.m., we are surprised to see
Mayor Ray Nagin back on TV. He looks just as surprised to be on TV; earlier
today, he said he would issue his next statement in the morning. The mayor says
he received a phone call from Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, who in turn
had received a call from the National Hurricane Center Director. The news is not
good. As Nagin puts it, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a test. This is the
real deal.”
