After the Storm

After hurricane Katrina ravaged the Mississippi and Louisiana regions in 2005, I spent 10 days documenting the aftermath of the storm in a few of the hardest-hit Mississippi communities. In 2009 I had the opportunity to return to some of these communities to reconnect with residents and witness how much had or had not changed. The following are pairings of images taken from the two trips.

Mary Lewis

Kevin Harver was one of the Henrico County police officers whose work I documented while in Mississippi in 2005. Reporter Dave Ress and I had traveled to the area with a group of Virginia-based officers and we spent time documenting their recovery efforts, their contact with the local residents and the personal experiences they brought home to Virginia with them. I was there when officer Harver first met Mary Lewis at the Bay St. Louis public library, where she was patiently waiting in line for aid. Mrs. Lewis told him how she had lived through storms before this one and had decided to ride hurricane Katrina out in her home. Sitting on her couch she watched the water climb up her front steps and into her home. She was able to save her most precious belonging, a suitcase full of photographs.

Throughout the next four years, Officer Harver and Mrs. Lewis kept in touch, writing each other letters, sending photographs and calling each other from time to time. The following is their story.

A New Orleans Community Rebuilds

The Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation, in the Versailles neighborhood of New Orleans East, has worked very closely with the members of the Versailles community to recover and rebuild after hurricane Katrina. Although the damage is still visible, four years after the hurricane, for miles around Versailles, the neighborhood shows few remaining signs of the storm. After speaking with various members of the community, I learned that Versailles began its rebuilding effort just months after Katrina hit. The Vietnamese residents returned to their church and to their moldy homes as soon as access was granted. According to the residents, they did not wait for government funding, but, resilient from experiences of typhoons and hurricanes in their native Vietnam, they took it upon themselves to rebuild their lives and pave the way for their elders to return to the community. The residents, however, did not stop at rebuilding what had existed before. Only one life was lost in the neighborhood during the storm, an elderly Vietnamese woman who hid from Katrina in her apartment. This loss, along with the delayed reopening of schools and hospitals, prompted the community to strive to be more self-sufficient than ever before. The MQVN Community Development Corporation has since built a health clinic in conjunction with Tulane University and a charter school. They have started an agricultural initiative to grow and sell food to local restaurants and have begun plans to build their own retirement center. After witnessing the devastating and persistent effects of Katrina on many communities along the Gulf Coast, I was inspired by the resiliency and hope of Versailles. The work of this organization, which was born out of and is part of the community, is an example of new life rising from the ashes with the help of traditional values.