ABOUT THIS SERIES

In December 2005, a contingent of Poynter faculty and staff members, along with representatives from the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, traveled to the Gulf Coast to work with journalists who were dealing with the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In anticipation of the three-day concurrent seminars in Biloxi, Miss., and New Orleans, Poynter faculty members asked each participant to write a short essay about his or her experience in the days that followed the storm. Those essays, published here for the first time, with the permission of the journalists who wrote them, will continue to appear on Poynter.org throughout our weeklong remembrance of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Some of the participants agreed to go one step further and provide us with an update of their experiences, which you will find after some of the essays. Click here to see the compilation of essays, which we will add to throughout the week.

DECEMBER 2005:  I am a general assignment reporter for KTRK, the ABC-owned and -operated station in Houston. I have been back and forth to New Orleans four times since Hurricane Katrina hit. In addition, I spent nine days on the road covering Hurricane Rita in Southeast Texas and Louisiana. With so many evacuees still in Houston, hurricane-related stories have become a staple in our newscasts.

Below is my "story" capturing what it was like to cover the storm and its aftermath. It is taken from a blog post I wrote a few days after Hurricane Katrina. I chose to use the blog because the emotion was fresh when I wrote it.
 
9/2/2005

I will never forget the sight of an elderly man, who has had a stroke, waiting in line for hours for a bus as his wife tries to comfort him, or the sounds of a 3-year-old boy crying for his mother who somehow got separated from him and his six brothers and sisters during an evacuation. Those are indelible images and sounds, and this catastrophe has thousands of them.

The human suffering is so great, but while we hear of the dark side of humanity in all of this, there are a few bright sides. In the midst of a food shortage, I saw a man give his lunch meat to a stranger so that that man's dog could eat. Another man gave up his cot so that a woman and her child could sleep. We have heard about gunfire and looting. I have seen people, standing in trash and filth, be polite.

However, what I've also seen is a lack of communication and organization. Something as simple as a loudspeaker could work wonders to ease the refugees' minds. Where they're going, how long they may have to wait to get on a bus, and where to get food and water are all questions that could easily be answered if authorities could just communicate to the masses. Instead, the victims know nothing. In addition, there are no lines, no process, no order to the evacuation. If you can push harder to get on a bus, you'll get out. If not, your wait drags on.