In the wake of Hurricane Katrina

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina

By: ALAN SMASON Special to the CJN

On Monday, Aug. 29, my world and the world of nearly 19,000 Jews in New Orleans came crashing down.

A city that was known as the birthplace of jazz, whose citizenry was accepted as some of the wildest partiers in the country, and whose charming architecture was acknowledged as among the most beautiful, was literally shaken apart and flooded out of existence in a natural disaster the likes of which this nation has never seen.

What began for me as a simple weekend vacation to visit my sister Arlene Wieder and her family and my girlfriend Georgette Somjen became a nightmare. As I watched helplessly from the safety of a Cleveland vantage point, the soul of my birthplace became tortured and ravaged as 130-mile-per-hour winds struck with such ferocity that sides of buildings resembled pictures from war-torn Beirut. Roofs on several houses were lifted off like toothpicks. While most of the structures somehow remained intact, others were not so fortunate; they lay shattered atop foundations or had trees driven into their sides by the force of the winds.

The rain continued throughout the day driven by the relentless winds, reminding one of whiteouts during a Cleveland winter. And then the flooding began.

New Orleanians had long known that its system of levees was its only source of protection from cataclysmic flooding. It stood poised on the banks of the Mississippi River at a place that made it strategically valuable for shipping since the French settled it in 1718.

Throughout my upbringing as a Jew in New Orleans (our family has resided there for five generations), I was steeped in the rich history of my state and my city. Much of the city teetered on the precipice since we lived below sea level. All rain waters that fell within our boundaries had to be pumped out by a series of mammoth pumping stations and drainage canals.

We had been warned to look for "the big one" that was coming. Somehow, New Orleans's residents never heeded the dire predictions of what would happen if we sustained a direct hit from a major storm. The partying kept on going, and the parades never seemed to stop.
Announcements of the impending storm began shortly after my plane touched down at Cleveland Hopkins Airport on Aug. 20. When I boarded in New Orleans in the afternoon, the weather forecasters (who were always right on the money) said that Katrina was headed up toward the panhandle of Florida and could, possibly advance toward the Alabama gulf coast that Hurricane Ivan had destroyed last year. One track suggested that a Louisiana landfall was possible, but everyone ruled that out. In my hands were a small carry-on with a CD player and enough clothes to last me comfortably for five days.

It was too late to check the news that night, but I was glad to see my girlfriend after several months of absence. (We met at a second seder held at Touro Synagogue.) She had just moved from Winston-Salem, N.C., to begin a medical fellowship in Cleveland, and we enjoyed a relaxing meal together at a quaint restaurant in Shaker Square. We planned to attend Shabbat services the following morning at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple.

Because many of the participants Shabbat morning were elderly, I volunteered to be the hagbah (the person who holds the Torah scroll aloft following the reading). It was about the time I held the scroll aloft that Katrina began to bear down on the Louisiana coastline.

When it made landfall, Hurricane Katrina was a mammoth category-four storm with sustained winds at 140 miles per hour. This made her the deadliest natural disaster since the unnamed storm that hit Galveston, Tex., 105 years ago this week.

The storm surge was less than what had been predicted by authorities, because the eye wall of the storm passed just east of the city. Still, it weakened the levee structures along the borders with St. Bernard and Jefferson Parishes. Water from Lake Pontchartrain began pouring in, and drainage canals that emptied into the lake overflowed their banks.

Water rose so fast that occupants riding out the storm had to take refuge in their attics. Still the water kept rising. Some were able to perch themselves on rooftops. Others clawed at their ceilings trying to poke holes in the roofs to allow them to escape. Many of them were literally entombed in the rush of waters; their pitiful lives snuffed out because they would not or could not heed the warnings to evacuate.

Fortunately, my mother was on a cruise in the Mediterranean when the storm hit and my 19-year-old son was back at the University of Kansas, where I had dropped him off a few weeks earlier. My uncle and several cousins who rode out the initial storm in New Orleans are now dispersed in places like Baton Rouge; St. Louis; Little Rock; and Lancaster, Pa.

As much as I can tell, the major damage to my home was done the day after the storm had passed. It was then that another levee was breached, and the water level began to rise in my neighborhood to a "significant level," according to news reports.

Immediately before the storm hit, I was on the Internet, warning everyone I knew of its ramifications and asking for prayers on my city's behalf. I feverishly phoned friends and checked on relatives who, because of ill health or recent surgery, elected to stay. I posted several messages on bulletin boards and checked the progress of this monster.

As the storm made slow and steady progress, I phoned relatives and friends and watched streaming television newscasts in real time on the Internet. This hurricane was the first instance where a federal disaster area was acknowledged prior to its landfall.

The video reports came to a screeching halt about midday as the first of the floods began to pour into the city. News operations were hurriedly moved to Jackson, Miss., and Baton Rouge, and I watched in abject disbelief as people were rescued from raging waters by boats and helicopters as they waved from their roofs.

Especially hard hit was my Orthodox synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, located only six blocks from Lake Pontchartrain. It recently celebrated its 100th anniversary and was the home of the only daily minyan (quorum of ten for services), both morning and afternoon in New Orleans.

The congregation's rabbi,Yisroel Shiff, and his family of five, including a 2-month old-girl, took refuge in Memphis, Tenn. He carried as much as he could, but was unable to rescue the eight Torah scrolls residing in the aron hakodesh (holy ark) in the main sanctuary and in the beit hamidrash (school). It may take months before the damage can be ascertained, but the likelihood is that they were soaked in putrid waters, which would render them unholy.

At Metairie synagogues Gates of Prayer (Reform) and Shir Chadash (Conservative), the scenarios were strikingly different. Concerned Jews rescued the Torah scrolls and had them stored on the third floor of the newly built Jewish Community Center next door and in a fifth-floor office building without windows.

Orthodox Congregation Anshe S'Fard and the two uptown Reform houses of worship, Touro Synagogue and Temple Sinai, were spared. They appeared to have suffered some wind damage and slight flooding downstairs, although reports are sketchy at best.

No reports have been received about how the Chabad Center and Torah Academy run by Chabad of Louisiana fared. Like Gates of Prayer and Shir Chadash, they are located next to one of the major drainage canals along West Esplanade Avenue and probably suffered significant water damage.

Chabad also maintains its older Chabad House near Tulane University. I have seen pictures suggesting the flooding there was brief, and because it is a raised structure, they might have been spared major damage.

Immediately following the storm's passing, Internet communities began outreach to determine what help could be offered. Despite the savage storm, the Internet never went down, and e-mails were the only lifebuoys that victims could cling to if they could find a place that had power and an available computer.

Our larger New Orleans community has proven to be a savvy Internet haven. Many sites went up overnight with links for storm victims. Group e-mail lists on Google Groups were created by this writer at groups.google. com/group/Jewish-New-Orleans and by the New Orleans Jewish Federation at groups. google.com/group /Jewish NOLA as a form of outreach to the dispersed Jewish community.

Individuals continue to send pictures of storm damage to each other by e-mails, and finding relatives and missing friends has been made easier by membership in these groups. Several other sites have provided hot links for assistance to the victims of this tragedy.

As a victim of the worst natural disaster that this country has ever experienced, I am luckier than most. I was spared the indignity of having to try to survive the powerful storm and deciding which nearby town to relocate to. The Cleveland Jewish community has already extended its welcoming arms to me, and I am grateful.

New Orleans will never be the same again. In one flash, I became homeless and destitute, my (computer-related) business and clients also hapless victims. I thank G-d that I and the rest of my family am alive, and I have tried to be as optimistic as possible.

This past Friday evening, Rabbi Matt Eisenberg of Temple Israel Ner Tamid closed Shabbat services with the singing of "Hatikvah" I, too, hold onto "the hope" that is expressed so well in Israel's national anthem that my Jewish community will reunite in our once-blessed city and that we will be able to practice our religious freedom with other survivors once again.

In addition to running his computer business, Alan Smason is a reporter for the Jewish Civic Press, published in New Orleans, with editions also in Houston, Atlanta, and northern Mississippi.