Say What? An analysis of the formation of rumor in response to Hurricane Katrina
Lauren Flexon Marcinkoski
Comprehensive Exercise
James Fisher and Jerome Levi, advisors
3 April 2006
Abstract
In August of 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans, Louisiana with violent fury. The destruction caused by the storm flooded the city, destroyed homes, and left many trapped without access to vital resources. This paper traces the formation of the rumor that the levee system was intentionally sabotaged during the aftermath of the hurricane. I examine the historical context of racial tensions and distrust of local infrastructure in New Orleans and the roles they play in the creation of rumor. Drawing on the theory of Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim that social institutions are exaggerated when a community is put under stress, I demonstrate the ways in which racial relations are perceived and communicated through story and rumor within the African-American community.
Acknowledgements
I would like to dedicate this paper to my mother, my father, and Britta. They lived through this disaster with me and will always hold a special place in my heart.
I would like to thank my advisors Jim Fisher and Jerome Levi for all of their wonderful advice and our department head Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg for letting me break down in her office. In addition, I owe a huge thank you to Hillary Elmore for my graphics. I would like to thank Adrienne Falcón and the rest of my Urban Sociology Class. And, I would like to thank my roommates Liz and Sarah and the rest of “the girls” for putting up with me through the comps process. A paper like this is not written by one person; it is a process helped along by all.
To all of those who lived through Hurricane Katrina, may you find peace and live well. And to those who passed on, we remember you with respect and gratitude.
Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………. 2
Acknowledgements….………………………………………………………………….. 3
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………............ 5
Photographs…………………………………………………………………………. 6 - 8
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………9 - 20
Day 1 – Friday August 26, 2005……………………………………………….. 9
Day 2 - Saturday August 27, 2005…………….……………………………….. 9
Day 3 – Sunday August 28, 2005……………………………………………… 10
Day 4 – Monday August 29, 2005…….……………………………………….. 11
Day 5 – Tuesday August 30, 2005……….…………………………………….. 12
Day 6 – Monday August 31, 2005………….………………………………….. 18
Literature Review ………………………………………………………………... 22 - 25
Research Problem ……………………………………………………………….. 25 – 26
Methods…………………………………………………………………………… 26 – 27
Background ……………………………………………………………………… 27 – 31
New Orleans Demographics………………………………………………………32 - 34
Rumor…………………………………………………………………………….. 35 – 40
The Disaster Itself…………………………………………………………………42 – 45
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………45 – 47
Works Cited………………………………………………………………………. 48 – 50
Appendix A………………………………………………………………………… 51 -57
List of Figures
Photographs 1 & 2 …………………………………...………………………………… 6
Photographs 3 & 4 ………………………...…………………………………………… 7
Photographs 5 & 6 ……………………...……………………………………………… 8
Map of Orleans Parish. ………………………………………………………………...21
Table 1 …………………………………………………………………………………. 33
Table 2 …………………………………………………….…………………………… 42
Appendix A ……………………………………………………………………………. 51
Figure 1 …………………………………………………………………….. 52
Figure 2……………………………………………………………………... 53
Figure 3 …………………………………………………………………….. 54
Figure 4……………………………………………………………………... 55
Figure 5……………………………………………………………………... 56
Figure 6……………………………………………………………………... 57
Photograph 1 Day 5 – Looting on Canal Street
Photograph 2 Day 5 –Looting on Canal Street
Photograph 3 Day 6 – Rita and my mother on the way to the helicopter pad
Photograph 4 Day 6 – View of the Superdome for the National Guard command post
Photograph 5 Day 6 – View of Interstate 10 from the helicopter
Photograph 6 Day 6 – View of the Mississippi River from the helicopter
Day 1 – Friday August 26, 2005
As our train pulled into New Orleans station that morning, we were aware of a hurricane lurking in the Atlantic, but we had no idea that my family, Rita (a college friend) and I were about to live through one of the largest disasters in American history. My parents had come for a vacation from their stress-filled jobs and Rita and I had come to do what college students do best. Like my father said as he glanced at the Weather Channel, “Oh, come on. When is the last time a hurricane hit New Orleans?”
Day 2 – Saturday August 27, 2005
By 6:00 AM the next morning we realized that my father was wrong…very wrong. My mother called Delta Airlines to schedule an evacuation flight and was lucky enough to find one leaving early Sunday morning. So, with a sigh of relief we tried to soak up as much of the Big Easy as we could in one day. Somewhere between the Voodoo Museum and Fifi Malone’s store for burlesque dancers my cell phone rang and my mother’s panicked voice pierced through the sunny afternoon. Delta Airlines had cancelled all flights leaving New Orleans. With the hurricane gaining strength in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, we knew we had to get out of the city. We called rental car companies, U-Haul, train stations, and bus stations. In desperation we tired to buy a car or charter a plan. But as the sun set that night, we became painfully aware that despite one’s resources, there was no easy way out of the Big Easy.
Day 3 – Sunday August 28, 2005
Sunday was a day that can only be described as complete and utter panic. Over night the little hurricane chugging through the Gulf had become a furious storm that would be the biggest to hit America yet. The roads were jammed with those lucky enough to have a way out, stores were quickly boarded up, and the local Walgreen’s was being cleaned out. While my parents still tried desperately to find any way to evacuate, Rita and I prepared for what we thought was the worst-case scenario: we bought enough bottled water to keep our little group happy for two or three days, a couple of flashlights, a few batteries, and some snacks. We filled the bathtubs with water so that we could flush the toilet if the power went out, and we bought a deck of cards to entertain ourselves.
Around us, the city was a frenzy of activity. Because the mayor had waited for so long to call a mandatory evacuation, virtually the entire metropolitan area was trying to flee in the last few hours before the storm made landfall. Those who were unable to leave ran frantically from store to store in search of the dwindling supply of bottled water. However, our Bell Captain, Ron, assured us that the Fairmont Hotel was possibly the safest place to ride out a hurricane, and that they would stay open and fully staffed for the duration of the storm.
Sunday night brought a flurry of emotions. Having no idea what to expect, we called friends and family and waited for the storm to arrive. In the early evening the rain began to tap at our windowpanes and we all went to bed that night as if we were simply sleeping through a thunderstorm.
Day 4 – Monday August 29, 2005
Around 4:00 AM Katrina lost her temper. We woke as a metal gutter went through the window of the room directly above us. The battered office building across the street had lost all of its windows and the curtains broke free and were dancing around the pool deck. Shingles of nearby rooftops soared by as gusts of wind tore apart the surrounding neighborhood. We joined the rest of the guests in the lobby away from any breakable windows and waited.
When the storm cleared on Monday afternoon things did not seem as bad as we had expected. There was destruction all around us, but buildings were still standing, and most importantly there was no water in the streets. We thought that after maybe twenty-four hours the roads would clear and we would be on our way home. Due to the total lack of communication with the outside world and serious lack of communication within the city we did not realize how wrong our first post-hurricane assumptions were.
When the National Guard walked into our lobby to ask us for supplies, we should have known, but it wasn’t until I saw a grown man in uniform sink into a chair and start to sob that the reality of our situation set in. They told us about the flooding in other parts of the city and people hacking through the roofs of their homes to escape rushing water. They had no supplies and no way of communicating with each other, much less local authorities. Ironically, they all had radios, but there was no way to charge them.
Ron’s face sank as he listened. The hotel staff had been using most of its resources to make their guests comfortable under the assumption that people would be able to leave within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. There was enough food for Tuesday morning breakfast, but the water was already gone and the generator was only going to last for one more day. With almost 400 people in the hotel, the staff was faced with a serious problem. Ron tried to bargain with the Guardsmen for diesel to fuel the generator, but they did not even have enough for themselves.
The heat in the hotel was unbearable and as the thick walls gathered condensation, the rooms began to act like saunas. Worse, the elevators did not work and many elderly guests were unable to get up and down the stairs. Most guests had set up camps in the lobby or along the hallways like refugees. The sticky humidity and close quarters made it too hot to sleep, and my father and I sat up most of the night restlessly brainstorming about how to get out of the city. There was no way to live on M&Ms for a week.
Day 5 – Tuesday August 30, 2005
After a couple hours of tossing and turning, around 6:00 AM we found our hotel suddenly surrounded by water. The basement had filled with sewage and the bar had become lake front property. The humidity of the Deep South turned the basement into a boiler room making the first two floors smell like the Port-A-Potties on Fat Tuesday.
My father and I have never been the type of people who can sit around and wait easily, so we convinced Rita to put on her sneakers, get her camera, and come explore Canal Street with us. Plus, we needed batteries and if we could find a man in uniform, we might have a better idea of what was going on. Canal Street looked like a friendly neighborhood looting block party. People were smashing in doors and taking everything they could carry. There was an assembly line passing televisions and stereos out of the Walgreen’s and two heavily armed women guarded the jewelry store as they waited for their boyfriends to return with tools to open the security gate.
Farther down the street, we spotted a man with a CNN hat and a video camera under his arm filming the ordeal. Thinking that he might have access to information from the outside world, Rita and I made our way over to ask about what was going on.
“Look girls, I don’t know any more than you do. I just got dropped in the middle of this to videotape,” he replied, irritated that we had interrupted his footage. And as he spoke, a bottle whizzed by his head.
“Fucker! Either help us or get the hell out!”
“You girls need to get out of here,” he said with a jerk of his head. “These black guys are going to kill you.” With that, he turned and sloshed towards a clothing store that was getting cleared out.
The black men did not kill us. As a matter of fact, they gave us the right size battery for our radio and relayed information they had gotten from a policemen who had come through earlier. The water we were wading through had come from a break in the 17th Street canal levee and it was expected to keep rising slowly throughout the day.
Back at the hotel, Ron had also gotten tired of sitting and waiting. So, he set out through the water in search of the canoe house in City Park. He came back with a canoe, two paddles, and a fantastic story about the amount of water in other parts of the city as well as rumors of even more levees breaking.
“They say there’s going to be twenty-five to thirty feet of water in this area by 3:00 PM,” he exclaimed. “We should get everyone ready to move to the second floor Mezzanine”
Some people moved and some people said they would wait and see. But for us, a miracle happened. Rita found an old calling card in her purse. And for some reason, it would work to call out of the city when nothing else would. We managed to reach her boss at home who had already taken it upon herself to call up some clients with a helicopter.
“Well, we have to get you out of the bayou before we’re going to be saying good bye to you,” she laughed on the other end of the phone. “All you have to do is get to the helicopter port on the roof the Superdome parking garage at precisely 8:00 AM tomorrow morning. Now, he’s only going to be able to land for about five minutes, so you have to be there or he’s going to leave without you. The Superdome is only about a mile from your hotel, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get there. They gave us an ID number for the flight so that National Guard will know you’re the right people. Call us when you get home. Good luck!”
To someone from the outside, walking about a mile to the Superdome probably seemed easy. But to us, we would be wading, possibly swimming through sewage, human waste, gasoline, and debris to a place we had never been. And if we were late, we would be left right back where we had started. So, we decided it would be best to find the helicopter port in advance.