Aug 26, 2015 10:10 PM
#1
Nice article about Oubre and Dad on ESPN
Aug 27, 2015 12:04 AM
#2
My Katrina story. This is my wife in the Superdome from the day before Katrina hit until they got everybody out. Didn't see her until her activation ended in December. Six months later she was at Balad AB, Iraq.
http://old.seattletimes.com/ABPub/zoom/html/2002463401.html ↗
Aug 27, 2015 02:25 AM
#5
@nuleafjhawk 👋🚶
Aug 27, 2015 12:41 PM
#8
I have to ditto what @nuleafjhawk said!
Aug 27, 2015 12:55 PM
#9
Katrina is what brought me to Louisiana and tomorrow night, if anyone is interested, is kind of that story on ESPN. Wuerffels Way is a documentary about a school named Desire St. Academy which Danny Wuerffel had a hand in starting. I came after Katrina and was involved here for about 3 years until it closed down. It's on at 6:30 Central time Friday night.
Aug 27, 2015 01:46 PM
#11
I have heard lots of stories about Katrina and have some family friends that live just outside New Orleans and have been there since the late 90's. Basically, the perception of Katrina depends on what neighborhood you lived in. Some neighborhoods were completely devastated, never really received any help and, too this day, haven't really experienced much recovery. Unfortunately, most of those neighborhoods were some of the heavily African American neighborhoods, some of which still have not been repopulated. There was a very good article on fivethirtyeight ↗ just a couple of days ago that highlighted that.
I think that's where the differing stories come from. If you were white, or lived in a predominantly white neighborhood, the recovery that was seen was much different than if you were black or lived in a predominantly black neighborhood, some of which simply still have not recovered. It's telling that many African Americans simply never had the opportunity to move back, becoming refugees in their own country.
This mess is more of a political failing than a shortcoming on the part of people like @brooksmd 's wife, who did the best to help whoever they could during that disaster.
Aug 27, 2015 03:35 PM
#12
@justanotherfan Fortunately we live on the north shore and other than losing shingles off the roof and cleaning up the remains of 6-7 large oaks and pines, and no electricity for 3 weeks we were ok. Yes there were areas in the city that received more damage than others, but everybody without flood insurance got federal monies to either rebuild or relocate. The predominantly black neighborhoods, 9th ward and east New Orleans for example, many of those people never returned, chosing to remain where they relocated to. But they still received federal money. As with anything done by the feds, the handing out of money was a goat rope with poor accountability. Especially when complaints of long delays started and the push for faster settlements began. Once people got the money they had a specific time frame to rebuild if that was their choice. You can still find damaged homes in all neighborhoods sitting on overgrown lots where somebody just took the money and ran. As time goes by the local governments have seized those properties and offered them for sale. But white or black, everybody was affected by the delays of the federal bureaucracy.
Aug 27, 2015 04:01 PM
#13
@jaybate-1.0 They were too busy to worry about it. Once they got everybody out of the dome, her medical unit setup a portable facility to provide care for the large influx of military support people and anyone else in need at Belle Chasse JRB.
The deal in the dome was badly bungled. The dome was never meant to be a storm shelter for thousands. They only expected a few hundred at the most who for medical reasons needed help. There was absolutely no security for the medical people until a few days after the storm. In some cases families dropped off grand parents and left a teen or younger as a caregiver. People showed up with out meds even after being told to bring them. And contrary to some claims, the medical people lived off the same meager supplies as everyone else.
Aug 27, 2015 04:43 PM
#15
Thank you for sharing your knowledge of Katrina in your usual cogent way. I really appreciate it.
Aug 27, 2015 06:05 PM
#17
@drgnslayr I in no way wish to take away from what Mr Oubre went through for him and Kelly. I admire the man for his fortitude and the successful raising of his son in a world that can so easily destroy two people struggling like that.
But another amazing story, sorry not basketball but football, is the story of South Plaquemines HS which was a consolidation of three Katrina destoyed schools from Port Sulfur, Buras and Boothville-Venice down in the river parishes below New Orleans. A writer from the NYT did a series of stories about the coaches and kids that organized that program in 2006, a year after Katrina, and won state championship in 2007. In the articles you'll read where they had no facilities. They had to travel 60 miles r/t to practice. They shared a destroyed locker room with whatever 4-legged critter wandered in, and using the glow of their cellphones to see because of no electricity.
Aug 27, 2015 06:54 PM
#18
" “I’d rather him have a good education than play football,” Elouise Turner, Ridge’s mother, said. She relented only when “I realized I can’t take everything from him.”
“We already lost our home,” she added. “Losing football would be losing everything.”"
Wow. I think it is impossible to really understand what these people have been through and what they will continue to go through without actually going through it, too.