Mayor Ray Nagin made all the national news programs Tuesday, touting his plan for the evacuation of New Orleans in case of the next hurricane. No shelters will be opened, everyone will be ordered out, buses will be provided. One newscast elaborated that the plan calls for city buses to pick up those without means of transportation and take them downtown where other buses will take them out of harm’s way. Amtrak will be used, they said, to carry away the hospitalized and otherwise infirmed. Planes to ferry the hordes of tourists who are presumably in the city at any given time. Anyone on the streets during the storm will be arrested.
The report says that Nagin assures everyone that we will not be relying on the federal government this time. Maybe not, but it sounds like he will be relying on the government’s railway system. And the FAA’s airlines. And another thing: once the buses and trains leave the city with our people, where will they go? Who will be hosting our citizens? Will everyone be Houston-bound? and has anyone asked the Texans how they feel about that?
A newsman introduced one local citizen. “The mayor has said every citizen needs his own individual plan for evacuation, to know exactly where he is going. Bob here has his plan already made. In the case of a hurricane, where are you going, Bob?” The New Orleanian said, “North. Up north.”
All of this reminds me of something Will Rogers said in the middle of the First World War when the German U-boats were creating havoc in the Atlantic. “I have a plan for getting rid of all those U-boats,” Rogers said. “You just bring the temperature of the Atlantic up to a boil. The submarines will get so hot they can’t take it and will have to come up. Our people will be waiting with guns and can pick them off.” When asked how he planned to bring the temperature of the Atlantic up to a boil, Rogers answered, “That’s a detail. I’m a policy man myself.”
We have lots of policy men these days. What we need are detail people. Policy got us into Iraq, but we’re now bogged down in the details. Policy got our residents to the Superdome and Convention Center last August; only the details were lacking.
Pastor Jeff Box of N.O. East’s Suburban Baptist Church said in his newsletter to his people this week, “My mentor and pastor, Dr. Buford Easley, once said that he dreamed of a day when people from all over the world would flock to New Orleans to see what God was doing, instead of flocking here to see what Satan was accomplishing.” Jeff added, “Buford is at home with the Lord now, and I believe that day has arrived.”
I thought of that last night while reflecting back on the day. I had a call from a Hawaiian pastor who has a group of twelve from his church, staying at the Rachel Sims Mission in uptown and gutting out houses. “Four of them have been here before,” Pastor Dewayne said. They’re having a crawfish boil Wednesday night and invited me down.
The folks from the Kansas-Nebraska Baptist Convention are in and out of town all the time, helping to remake this city one gutted-out house at a time. A group from Boaz, Alabama, is coming in next month. Texans are always here, as are the Missourans and Arkansans. They rotate in and out. The miracle of the new New Orleans will belong to so many dear friends, all of them detail people. Taking care of one family, one home, one church at a time.
One fact I’m not hearing discussed is that hurricanes come in all strengths and their courses are erratic. Katrina was kind to us by taking dead aim at New Orleans several days in advance, so we knew to leave. Most hurricanes are not so dependable. That’s why local citizens have such a spotted record of leaving when a storm is brewing in the Gulf. In 1992, I stood in the churchyard in Kenner and watched Hurricane Andrew approach from the South. We could see the whirling clouds miles below us, and we saw them veer to the west and go on past us. Communities as near as LaPlace were hurt badly while we were basically untouched. In the last few years, we went through a number of scares in which hurricanes hit the coast and quickly diminished to the point of becoming tropical storms by their arrival at the city.
One reason so many people stay during a hurricane is that after you leave a few times for false alarms, you grow calloused to the warnings.
Anyone determining to live in this city and its surrounding communities should make up their minds there will be numerous needless evacuations for every Katrina-type-evacuation that saves your life.
Something else…
The other day I heard a local pastor remark about a neighboring preacher, “He’s just got back to town. I told him he missed all the hard work. It’s easy from here on in.” I recognized a ministerial version of the snobbery one occasionally hears from those who rode out the storm and directed toward the evacuees who are just now returning. It’s cruel and it’s heartless.
Recently, in the Kenner mayor’s race, incumbent Mayor Phil Capitano criticized his opponent (and the eventual winner) Ed Muniz for not staying in the city during Katrina. “He rode out the storm in his million dollar condominium in Florida,” he charged. Muniz responded, “I was not a city official. I had no role in the leadership here. You were my mayor and I took your advice and got my family out of the city.” Voters agreed with Muniz and sent the ultimate rebuke Capitano’s way.
A seminary professor said to me this week, “My family has been living in Atlanta. It’s normal there, nothing like the circumstances New Orleans is in. We have not shared directly in the pain and heartbreak of the residents of this city.” I said, “My friend, you and your family were affected also. You lost your home and most of your furnishings. You had to move away with your job, and soon you’ll be back. Your family suffered too. There will be no second-class sufferers around here. We’re all in this together.”
Now if we can get everyone else to buy that. It’s true, of course. We all suffered, whether we lost our home and our business, our church and our neighborhood, or whether we just had to move away for a while.
So, for those who are still living away, I want to say this. Come home as soon as you can. We will welcome you back. Drive through your city. It’s your home, make no mistake. You came back, you love this place, you have hurt in absentia, and now you’re going to hurt in person. You will shed some tears, and if I’m any judge, you will be depressed. It’s part of the price one pays for loving.
No neighbor with any sense of propriety will criticize you for evacuating or remaining away until now. They know everyone has extenuating circumstances. They will be delighted to have another neighbor living on their block.
And just in case someone drops in a little slur, implying that you are a second-class human for your absence until now, that only those who came over on the Mayflower–ahem, rode out the storm and suffered at the Superdome–are bonafide Americans, you need to plan a response. Silence will work. As will a smile. But I suggest something like a firm, “I love this city, too, friend.” And let it go.
After all, the pastor who made the little dig toward his colleague who just got home, that minister himself actually lived off the welfare of some good Baptists in a nearby state for many weeks after Katrina. He wasn’t exactly a first-responder himself.
Just a little detail you might want to bear in mind.
There’s a lot of work to be done for many years. We will be needing you.
Hurry home, friend.