Covering Hurricanes

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By Bryan Monroe
President, National Association of Black Journalists
Assistant Vice President/News, Knight Ridder

I am just returning from South Mississippi, covering the worst of Hurricane Katrina at the point where her full force slammed the coast directly over Biloxi and Gulfport.
 
The devastation there was beyond words. Homes were crushed as the waters rushed in. Massive waterfront casinos were tossed aside by the winds and the waves, lifted from their beachfront moorings and moved across the street as if they were children's toys.
 
And the people...
 
Hundreds wandered the streets of Biloxi, looking for loved ones. Hundreds more huddled in shelters and in the remains of their homes, without water, food, power or phone. The situation was desperate. People tended to do desperate things.
 
Was there looting in the aftermath of the hurricane? Yes. I witnessed some of it myself in Gulfport and Biloxi –- a man walking out of a partially demolished convenience store with a half-case of Budweiser, a couple rummaging through a Budget car lot on Pass Road. And we have heard the reports and seen the photos out of New Orleans. Senseless. But, as unfortunate as it was, there was looting by whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, all races. No doubt, some people were being opportunistic -- or just plain stealing -- but most were just trying to survive, any way they could.
 
Just as there were criminals walking off with color televisions and cases of beer, there were also desperate people in a lawless, untenable circumstance, just trying to find something to eat or drink, scrounging for clothes, food, diapers.
 

Bryan Monroe/Knight Ridder Arnold Blackstone "rescued" 30 pounds of meat he found in the freezer of a store that had been partially gutted by the storm. He then brought the meat back to the shelter and "cooked it right up" on a temporary barbeque near the outside wall of the gym.

But while many of us are caught up in the stories of the looting, there were many, often unreported stories of what I'll call "anti-looting," countless instances where resourceful individuals with nothing for themselves did whatever it took to take care of others.
 
There was Arnold Blackstone. On Wednesday afternoon, on the steps of Biloxi Junior High School, I met Arnold, a shirtless man smoking a cigarette near the entrance of the makeshift shelter, a building that months before welcomed naïve 14-year-olds and bossy eighth-graders.
 
Before the hurricane, his day job was to put on one of those hazardous materials "bunny suits" and clean up waste on Keesler Air Force Base, just across the street. But on that day, he was just one of the hundreds of black men and women left homeless after Katrina, seeking shelter in the halls of the junior high school, with no power, phones, water or food.
 
Arnold had a few other talents besides hazardous waste cleanup. "I'm a hustler. I've always been a hustler," he told me. "I'm good at it." So, for the past few days, Arnold had been walking miles along the streets of Biloxi, hustling, in search of food, water and other necessities for his neighbors now sleeping in the hallway of the junior high school.
 
On one such journey, he was able to "rescue" 30 pounds of meat he found in the freezer of a store that had been partially gutted by the storm. He then brought the meat back to the shelter and "cooked it right up: on a temporary barbeque near the outside wall of the gym.
 
"Everyone who wanted to eat got to eat," Arnold said, "...except me. I didn't get nothin' but a bag of (pork) skins and a soda. But that's OK."
 

Bryan Monroe/Knight Ridder Davie Scott manned the food line in front of the Main Street Missionary Baptist Church, serving fried chicken and red beans and rice to his neighbors -- food scraped together from church members' homes, neighborhood freezers and donations from the community.

There was Davie Scott. Across town, at the edge of the African American and Vietnamese neighborhood known as East Biloxi, Scott manned the food line in front of the Main Street Missionary Baptist Church. His home destroyed, he served up fried chicken and red beans and rice to his neighbors -- food scraped together from church members' homes, neighborhood freezers and donations from the community.
 
One neighbor who worked at the nearby Popeye's wanted to help. He knew that, with the power being out all over the city, the food in the restaurant's freezer would surely go bad if allowed to thaw. So he managed to gather as much chicken, beans and rice as he could carry out of the restaurant and brought them over to the church, to feed his hungry neighbors. On that day, they ate well.
 
Only hours earlier, Scott, who helped organize the meal, had saved himself and eight members of his family during the ferocious storm as waters quickly flooded his wood-frame home near Division Street. When the water rose to chest-high, he knew he had to escape.
 
"By the time we got to the porch, the water was up to my neck," he said. Homes were crashing off their foundations, neighbors trapped and drowning in attics.
 
As empty gas cans and used tires drifted by, they grabbed on to anything that would float. While his family struggled to get to a tree and on top of a neighboring house, he noticed his teenage daughter was falling behind. She had gotten her shirt caught on a chain-link fence and was being quickly dragged underwater.
 
"I had to dive under the water and get her free," said Scott. "I don't know how we made it. Every one of us made it. By the grace of God, we made it."
 
 Stories of survival like these were around every corner in Biloxi, Miss., last week. Poor blacks and poor whites, just struggling to stay alive, helping each other to make it through until tomorrow.
 
In the first few days after the most devastating natural disaster in modern U.S. history, the stories I saw of simple kindness, self-sacrifice and the good in humanity far outweighed the stories of greed, selfishness and the bad in humanity.
 
I'll take the good any day.