Evacuation of Rita - September 21, 2005
Let me see here, I'm getting my evacuation items list together..
Bible
9 mm
Fireproof box with all of our insurance, tax, health, financial and property info, marriage license, car titles, social security information.
My Laptop with backed up computer files on flash memory card, zip drive or CD
A pair of dress shoes, a pair of work shoes and a pair of running around shoes.
Bath and Body Works Soap (My wife gets it for me..I like it. Mountain Fresh)
AC Adaptors
A couple of changes of clothes
Books..hmm..I’ll take Bonhoeffer’s ‘Cost of Discipleship’, C.S. Lewis’ ‘Screwtape Letters’ and Mere Christianity, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, London’s Call of the Wild and Milan Kundera’s ‘Unbearable Lightness of Being’.
Golf clubs
Wedding Album
I think that’s it..I’m packed up with my family..we’re headed to Arkansas.
What? What are you tripping on? What would YOU pack if you knew there was a Category 4 Hurricane headed right toward where you live? Would you even pack, or would you be one of them ‘old school’ n’gaz that’s go ‘ride it out’?? Back when people had no other alternative, no kinfolk, no money, no means to get anywhere, they’d just buckle down and ride out the storm.
“The LORD is still in control, the LORD will take care of us.”
Whenever I hear people pull that one out, I tell them the story about the man in the boat fishing. Seems there was devout Godly man that was out in his little boat, fishing in the ocean. After awhile, a storm starts brewing out in the sea, and the waters start getting choppy and the skies are dark and ominous in the horizon. All the other little boats start heading to shore and some started calling out at the man..
“Hey!! You betta come on in..there’s a storm on it’s way!”
The man (I think he was Baptist, cuz you know them Baptist like to fish), just waved them off and let them know that his God would protect him. Next thing you know, the skies get darker and the clouds move in, all the larger boats are going in to shore and one of them even yelled over the waves..
“Hey!! You betta tie your boat along to ours..we’ll pull you in to safety with us!”
Once again the man scoffed (now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure he was a Baptist, cuz Baptist men are known to be hard headed like that.) and told them not to worry about him, cuz his Almighty Creator was STILL in control.
Well it got so bad, that the man had to do all he could just to stay IN the boat. The Coast Guard helicopter came down and threw down a rope and yelled down with a megaphone..
“Hey! This is your LAST CHANCE! Grab the rope and we’ll pull you up!!”
Once again the man refused to accept help from man and he stood resolute in his faith. He knew he worshipped a God that could calm storms and he wasn’t afraid because he knew he had the LORD on his side.
Well..it wasn’t long before his boat capsized and the man ended up drowning in the midst of the storm. And once he wakes up to see himself in the presence of the LORD, he can’t believe that he died. So he corners St. Peter and asks him,
“Hey. I thought ya’ll was supposed to have my back? I put my trust in God..how come He didn’t save me?”
St. Peter looked at him and smirked, “We came for you 3 times.”
Okay…okay..that’s enough of the Baptist jokes. This is a very serious time in Houston as well as the entire Gulf Coast. After being battered by Katrina 2 weeks ago, there is now another Category 4 Hurricane that is forming in the Gulf of Mexico…her name is Hurricane Rita.
On the Southside, Rita already has a theme song, “Now that’s a bad b’tch!”
Before Katrina, the most famous hurricane in New Orleans was Pat O’Brien’s. Even if you’re not from New Orleans, if you’ve ever visited Bourbon street, you know about Pat O’Brien’s hurricanes. They serve em in ‘to-go’ cups. You can walk the streets and get your drink on. You can also commit about any form of illicit or lewd public sex act in New Orleans too..a lot of people have..I’ve seen it. If you’re not flashing your titties on the street, then people are going to think you’re ‘acting funny’ in the Big Easy.
I bring this up, because I have so many hazy memories of partying in New Orleans. Superbowls. Bayou Classics. Essence Festivals. Jazz Festivals. Ya’ll know how they do it down there. You sleep when you get home, cuz we’re partying all night in New Orleans, cuz it don’t stop!
There are a lot of people from New Orleans and surrounding areas that were sent to Houston after the hurricane. Some of them started tripping when the got to H-town and found out that you can’t buy hard liquor after 9pm and you can’t buy beer/wine after midnight. Coming from Louisiana, where you can buy liquor 24 hours a day, it’s a bit of a culture shock to some.
“I know I’m going back to Lose’ana..you can’t even buy nothing to drank here before noon on Sundays!!”
They put them all through security checks for weapons and a medical triage as soon as they arrived off of the buses. Then they housed them on cots in the Astrodome, Reliant Center and George R. Brown Convention Center. There’s also a lot of Katrina displaced evacuees that are in faith based shelters, churches and community centers throughout Houston. There’s also a lot of evacuees that are living with relatives and kinfolk here in Houston. I have one friend that has 14 of his wife’s family members living in their house. When time gets tight, you lean on kinfolk for help.
There’s a lot of people who THOUGHT they had some kinfolk here in Houston, but once they got here they were disappointed to learn that their ‘kinfolk’ wouldn’t answer their calls or their pleas for help. Instead they turned a deaf ear on blood relatives in times of need. That’s a sobering experience to go through.
But the people who don’t have any kinfolk that can help them, like the homeless and the generational welfare poor folks, have to depend on the government and the goodness of others to take care of them.
A lot of black people were quick to jump on Kanye West’s bandwagon when he made the comment, ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people’ on a live telethon.
When I heard him say it, I looked over at my wife and started laughing..because I had noticed Kanye ‘tweaking’ a lil bit before that when he started talking about the media’s portrayal of black folks as ‘looters’, while the white folks were ‘survivors’…but yet they’re both taking food.
The funniest part to me was the look on Mike Meyer’s face because he was standing right next to Kanye and you could tell he was kinda like, ‘This n’ga is trippin..that’s not what the teleprompter says..I hope they don’t think I agree with him.”
I dunno..that was just funny to me.
A lot of black folks were like, ‘Yeah! Gone and put that redneck George Bush on front street! Call it out!!!”
Personally, I don’t know if George Bush cares about black people or not. I really don’t think his mind has the capacity to project that far. What I do know, is that the chain of events that took place after Katrina first hit land, has a lot more to do with politics than it does with racial prejudice.
George Bush is a Republican.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (the governor of Louisiana) is a Democrat.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is a Democrat (but yet he supported the Republican candidate Bobby Jindal in the gubernatorial elections.).
So as you can fathom through the political tiers and layers, it’s not a leadership group that could be considered ‘close-knit’ or even friends with each other, for that matter.
Of course, it’s absolutely horrid to think that some people wasted away in the rising floodwaters, days after the storm hit in New Orleans, just because of politics, incompetence, apathy and money..but this, ladies and gentleman, is where we are in America 2005.
The reason I have no animosity toward Bush, Blanco or Nagin, is because I’ve never put all of my faith and trust in a man (white, black, Republican, Democrat, woman, whatever) to save me.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth”. – Psalms 121:1,2
I think it is every person’s responsibility to do all he can to protect his family and keep them out of harms way. Along with that comes the responsibility for property. A lot of people don’t want to leave because they’re afraid of looters and thieves coming to steal their belongings when they’re away. Material things can be replaced, human life cannot.
That is the mindset I have as my wife and I make preparations to move on up to higher ground. We have a house with all of our belongings in it, that is subject to being blown away or flooded out. Maybe even have a tree crash down on it or something..I don’t know.
But what I do know, is that God is still in control. And it’s sad to say, that a lot of people in Houston were looking at the New Orleans hurricane a couple of weeks ago, and saying that that happened because that city was so sinful.
“It’s just a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah..God was just cleaning house from all that evil and witchcraft voodoo they got down there.”
If you fool yourself into thinking for one second, that that hurricane veered that way because New Orleans was so bad and Houston was so good (comparatively), then you’re falling into the common trap of ‘throwing stones’.
The tragedy in New Orleans was a tragedy of the uninformed and the unprepared. People who couldn’t get out of the city had no choice. But those who just falsely assumed that Katrina would be like the other storms that they had rode out in New Orleans, had a rude awakening.
The wildest part, is that New Orleans actually caught a break, because they were on the west side of the hurricane eye. The northeastern quadrant or ‘dirty side’ of the hurricane is the part that packs the most force. When you see all those casinos and building toppled along the Mississippi coastline? That’s from that ‘dirty side’ right there.
New Orleans bigger problem was the fact that most of the city lies beneath sea level and the levees were breached in certain areas. Who knows..if the ‘dirty side’ of the hurricane had hit New Orleans as a Category 5, it could have completely destroyed the levees and caused exponentially more deaths and destruction.
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
So no, we shouldn’t ever look on another place or people and their hardship incurred by ‘natural’ causes and assume it to be a punishment sent directly from above. Instead, we should all realize that we are all on the brink of a disaster happening in our own homes, if not for the Grace and Mercy of the LORD.
Does George Bush care about black people? I don’t know. What I do know, is that this whole tragedy has heightened the level of awareness when it comes to disaster management. They currently have several thousand National Guard troops in position in Austin to help if called upon. They also have a United States Navy ship, following the Hurricane into the Texas Gulf Coast, to serve in any capacity needed after the storm hits.
Of course, this is Texas, which is G-Dubya’s home state. Maybe Kanye got it wrong, and instead of blacks, it’s actually Louisiana that Bush doesn’t care about. It makes about as much sense as anything else.
