The Daily Reveille - August 31, 2015

Reveille The Daily

MONDAY, AUGUST 31 2015 Volume 120 · No. 6

10 YEARS LATER Today, The Daily Reveille remembers the 10th anniversary and devastation of Hurricane Katrina

THE DAILY REVEILLE ARCHIVES

HURRICANE KATRINA TIMELINE 7 a.m.

Hurricane reaches Category 5 status.

A National Weather Service bulletin predicted the system would have “devastating damage.”

New Orleans CBS affiliate,WWL-TV evacuates and sets up in Hodges Hall.

“Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras, Louisiana, at 6:10 a.m. By 9:00 a.m., levee breaches flooded New Orleans’ lower 9th Ward with six to eight feet of water.

Two hours later St. Bernard Parish, east of the city, was estimated to be under 10 feet of water.”

LSU Office of Public Affairs distributes news release requesting faculty and staff return to campus on Wednesday, Aug. 31. Classes are expected to resume Thursday, Sept. 1.

LSU professional staff members sleep in the Student Recreation Complex to be prepared for a quick opening the following day.

KATRINA STRIKES

The LSU Fire and Emergency Training Institute staff in Shreveport is activated.

see TIMELINE, page 2

12:40 a.m.

Hurricane Katrina was designated a Category 4 hurricane.

design by APRIL AHMED

8.29.05

8.28.05

Monday classes are cancelled.

Hurricane Preparation

8.27.05

Hurricane Preparation

compiled by QUINT FORGEY and ROSE VELAZQUEZ

10 Years Later

page 2

Monday, August 31, 2015

Reveille The Daily

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

B-16 Hodges Hall Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, La. 70803

Newsroom (225) 578-4810

Advertising (225) 578-6090

FERNANDA ZAMUDIO-SUAREZ Editor in Chief REBECCA DOCTER Co-Managing Editor JENNIFER VANCE Co-Managing Editor RYAN LACHNEY Art & Multimedia Director QUINT FORGEY News Editor ROSE VELAZQUEZ Deputy News Editor MEG RYAN Entertainment Editor JACOB HAMILTON Sports Editor CAROLINE ARBOUR Associate Production Editor

THE DAILY REVEILLE ARCHIVES

Saturday marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which wreaked havoc on New Orleans and most of the South.

CAMILLE STELLY Associate Production Editor JACK RICHARDS Opinion Editor JAVIER FERNÁNDEZ Photo Editor

I was one of the lucky ones.

KALLI CHAMPAGNE Radio Director

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK FERNANDA ZAMUDIO-SUAREZ

Editor in Chief

Classes cancelled through Sept. 6.

Approximately 6,000 Katrina victims receive medical care at campus field hospital.

8.31.05

The PMAC and the Carl Maddox Field House become an 800-bed field hospital.

Second Day Out

First Day Out

Approximately 15,000 evacuees are cared for at LSU and later referred to shelters and other facilities.

8.30.05

TIMELINE, from page 1

As a 12-year-old girl 10 years ago, the most of my concerns were with new school uniforms that were flooded along with my closet. My naive, suburban mind couldn’t process Category 3 devastation. And I didn’t understand the gravity of it all until after the storm.

Despite my minute concerns, my life is divided in two: pre-Hurricane Katrina and post-Katrina.

Like most lifelong residents of Louisiana, the storm shaped the way I think about community, family and this wonderful state.

This storm also set a standard for government officials, first responders, communities and journalists.

While some neglected a city submerged under water, others went above and beyond the call of duty.

Ten years ago, former LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe ensured Hodges Hall was on a list for a backup generator. Media outlets from Baton Rouge and New Orleans crammed into our basement and the reporters who once fought for the juiciest stories worked side

by side.

The Daily Reveille editors and staff worked day and night while classes were canceled for two weeks, updating the community with vital information.

Reveille alums were my age, and working as if they were veterans in crisis coverage.

It wasn’t just Reveille and Tiger TV who rose to the occasion, many students from every corner of this campus acted with purpose and compassion.

Student-athletes held up vitals for patients in the PMAC turned triage center.

Student Government leaders led a volunteer charge, placing everyone and anyone who wanted to help where they were needed.

I’m immensely proud of LSU students who stepped up the plate 10 years ago.

If they could do so much in a time of such great despair, those students prove we have nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of.

Let’s not just celebrate these Tigers. Let’s vow as students, no matter how many victory laps you have to take, to put forth at least half the effort when our community and state needs us.

As for the uniforms, they were washed away in Lake Pontchartrain warm waters, but now my uniform is all purple and gold.

Campus Special Needs Shelter enters fifth day of operation and field hospital enters its second day.

LSU Office of Public Affairs opens the LSU Hurricane Information Center.

Its hotline was open for 13 days and answered 6,495 calls.

LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, in collaboration with several LSU organizations and state agencies, opened a temporary animal shelter on campus at the LSU Agricultural Center’s John M. Parker Agricultural Coliseum. Within 48 hours, it took in more than 500 animals.

SAM ACCARDO Advertising Manager PAIGE ROBERTS Marketing Manager

CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS The Daily Reveille holds accuracy and objectivity at the highest priority and wants to reassure its readers the reporting and content of the paper meets these standards. This space is reserved to recognize and correct any mistakes that may have been printed in The Daily Reveille. If you would like something corrected or clarified, please contact the editor at (225) 5784811 or e-mail editor@lsureveille.com.

ABOUT THE DAILY REVEILLE The Daily Reveille (USPS 145-800) is written, edited and produced solely by students of Louisiana State University.

The Daily Reveille is an independent entity of the Office of Student Media within the Manship School of Mass Communication. A single issue of The Daily Reveille is free. To purchase additional copies, please visit the Office of Student Media in B-39 Hodges Hall. The Daily Reveille is published daily during the fall and spring semesters and twice weekly during the summer semester, except during holidays and final exams.

Second-class copies postage paid at Baton Rouge, LA, 70803. Annual weekly mailed subscriptions are $125, semester weekly mailed subscriptions are $75. Non-mailed student rates are $4 each regular semester, $2 during the summer; one copy per person, additional copies 25 cents each.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Daily Reveille, B-39 Hodges Hall, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA 70803.

10 Years Later

Monday, August 31, 2015

page 3

As storm devastates New Orleans, campus becomes community

THE STUDENTS Many of the displaced students from the University of New Orleans, Tulane University and Loyola University New Orleans ended up staying.

“They didn’t want to lose a whole semester of college, and our registrar’s office worked around the clock to register hundreds of students who were planning to attend,” said Assistant Vice President for Communications Kristine Calongne Sanders, who worked as the director of media relations during Katrina.

The University waived late fees, matched tuition prices and found housing for displaced students, and it was those stories The Daily Reveille began to focus on, Sternberg said.

“The main thing for us was covering the influx of people.

We had a real hyper-focus on the evacuees, the students from other universities that came to LSU,” Sternberg said. “People from Tulane are coming to LSU and registering for classes, but they don’t have any room in the classes, so what are they going to do?”

The Emergency Operations Center was established by LSU. A temporary morgue was created on campus in the field hospital.

see TIMELINE, page 4

JOB WELL DONE LSU received widespread praise for efficiently mobilizing resources as floodwaters receded and evacuees left campus two weeks later.

Sternberg, Gieg and Sanders said O’Keefe thrived in the intensely stressful environment and kept steady control over LSU during the storm.

“Everybody was just

9.3.05

A one-stop registration center was opened by LSU. By the time of its closure September 12, 237 faculty and staff helped admit 3,285 students and register approximately 2,800 for the fall semester.

A town hall meeting was led by the chancellor. All members of the campus community were invited to attend, including those brought in by the storm. It was a 90-minute session in a 1,100 seat auditorium.

The chancellor compared the situation to “9/11 in slow motion.”

operated a shuttle from the school to the airport and found homes in churches for 500 mattresses — and people to fill them.

While residence halls, oncampus apartments and Greek houses became temporary homes for family members and other evacuees, LSU opened its arms to more than the displaced.

Volunteers from across the U.S. needed a place to live.

LSU commissioned on-campus churches and reactivated two unused residence halls to fill the need.

LSU Dining fed thousands for more than a week, while LSUPD worked overtime ensuring the safety of permanent residents and refugees.

Fifth Day Out

9.1.05

Third Day Out

CAMPUS VOLUNTEERS Baton Rouge was the closest city to New Orleans many could reach in Katrina’s wake, and it soon became a hub for volunteers not only from Louisiana but across the country. As more people crowded campus, LSU made use of the willing workforce at its disposal — thousands of students holed up in residence halls,

9.2.05

On Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005 — two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall — LSU anounced classes would be canceled Monday.

Then-LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe, LSUPD, student affairs representatives and members of Student Governmenthat ridden out similar storms, such as Hurricane Dennis, a little more than a month before. But when floodwaters took the Gulf Coast early Monday morning, it became clear the storm was a force of its own.

Classes finally resumed the following Tuesday, 10 days after the initial announcement.

This meeting was first of many that turned campus into a small city. Resources came from every corner of the LSU community to treat trauma and special needs patients, house refugees and volunteers and give Baton Rouge and New Orleans residents by-the-minute updates.

Already designated a Special Needs Shelter by the Department of Health and Hospitals, LSU opened the Carl Maddox Field House three days before the storm as a refuge for medically dependent evacuees to find care and seek shelter.

The state Department of Social Services and the DHH began working with early evacuees Friday, readying the field house for its capacity of 250 during the height of the storm.

As marine helicopters landed in the Bernie Moore Track Stadium carrying countless wounded and traumatized, the PMAC was commissioned as a 24-hour acute care center.

The PMAC and field house combined designated 800 beds for a field hospital, which would eventually serve approximately 6,000 patients.

eager to help their Crescent City neighbors.

Then-SG President Michelle Gieg said she remembers wondering where all the “real adults” were as thousands of outsiders descended upon campus.

Gieg ran a call center out of the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs. Typically used as a marketing research tool, it was commissioned as a place for volunteers to call in and receive shift assignments at the PMAC and field house.

“When you are talking about mapping an acute care facility, what you don’t want is a hundred people showing up at 9 a.m. one morning, and then have nobody show up at 2 a.m.,” Gieg said.

Between 20 and 30 students manned the call center from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., scheduling around-the-clock volunteer shifts.

“We would schedule them for four to six-hour shifts,” Gieg said. “We had to get something like a volunteer staff of 40 to 60 people 24 hours a day.”

The call center answered nearly 7,000 callers, but not all volunteers wanted to sign on for shifts.

Everyone who wanted to help, did their part no matter how big or small. As more people came to campus, the tiny pieces started to move and work together.

The theatre department offered up curtains and rods to ensure patient privacy, Gieg said.

Elementary education majors babysat children who evacuated with or without their parents, said Scott Sternberg, then-editor-in-chief of The Daily Reveille.

The School of Veterinary Medicine and the AgCenter transformed the John M. Parker Coliseum into an animal shelter that housed more than 2,000 animals for more than a month following the storm.

Other volunteers served food and assisted with basic medical care.

Gieg said there were good Samaritans headed to Baton Rouge with truckloads of donated mattresses and doctors arriving at the airport who wanted to help with no idea where to go.

Student volunteers reunited owners with their pets,

Fourth Day Out

BY CARRIE GRACE HENDERSON @carriegraceh

looking at their assets and seeing the need and figuring out what they could offer,” said then-Governor Kathleen Blanco.

Blanco called her daughter Nicole, who volunteered as a social worker for mentally distraught evacuees in the PMAC, a “direct line” into LSU operations.

“I knew the PMAC operation was very big and going strong, so I thought the LSU people did a really great job,” Blanco said.

Looking back, Gieg said she is proud of the way LSU responded to the crisis.

“I think in times like that you can either have open arms and cut some of the red tape in a bureaucracy, or you don’t,” Gieg said. “That’s not always the best

business decision, to be honest, so I think the university handled it very well.”

The November after Katrina, LSU Media Relations released a book, “LSU in the Eye of the Storm: A University Model for Disaster Relief,” detailing the day-by-day operations before, during and after the storm.

Sanders said the storm defined LSU’s role in future natural disasters. The university solidified agreements between state and federal agencies, and the PMAC and field house are both designated Special Needs Facilities.

“That service piece of our mission is part of being a flagship university,” Sanders said. “That’s part of what we do.”

AUGUST

31

EVENT CALENDAR

MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2015 6:30 PM

Move Your Mountain, Low Impact - Gus Young Park

7:00 PM

Music Video Overload - George's Place

For more information on LSU events or to place your own event you can visit www.lsureveille.com/calendar FOR RELEASE AUGUST 31, 2015

THE Daily Commuter Puzzle ACROSS 1 Cut off 4 Catch some z’s 9 Give the cold shoulder to 13 Perón and Mendes 15 Lift and throw 16 Days of __; yesteryear 17 Cowboy Autry 18 Classic name for a dog 19 Long story 20 In __; all prepared 22 “That was __; this is now” 23 Wrongdoings 24 Anger 26 A diller, a dollar, a ten __ scholar...”

29 Hodgepodge 34 Verge; edge 35 Slogan 36 Luau garland 37 Feels sick 38 Bette or Ossie 39 Connection 40 “Cry __ River” 41 Punctures 42 Paddled boat 43 Arose 45 Waste disposal systems 46 Early flower 47 Formal dance 48 Messy person 51 Found; set up 56 Long skirt 57 Cheek coloring 58 In __ of; lacking 60 Microwave, e.g.

61 Glowing coal 62 Equipment 63 Group of thugs 64 Good buys 65 Be nosy DOWN 1 Piece of chicken 2 Trip __; stumble on 3 Window glass 4 Psychiatrist

5 Spinks & Uris 6 Roof overhang 7 Nights before big events 8 Lasts 9 Solar __; sun and planets 10 Ark builder 11 Egg on 12 Lima or fava 14 Fall and winter 21 Nickname for Richard 25 Greek letter 26 Romney’s defeater 27 Weeps 28 Light purple 29 Relocated 30 “...Thy will be done on earth as __ in...”

31 Without companions 32 Mexican mister 33 Covers up 35 Foal’s mother 38 Walked unsteadily

by Jacqueline E. Mathews

Saturday’s Puzzle Solved

©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC All Rights Reserved.

39 41 42 44 45 47

Sobbing Wildebeest Jailbird’s room Diminishing Curved swords Baked donutshaped roll 48 Air pollution 49 Molten rock

50 Plow pullers 52 Partial amount 53 Largest brass instrument 54 Ooze out 55 Use one of the senses 59 Dishwasher cycle

10 Years Later

page 4 2012

2005

Aug. 29

Hurricane Katrina hits. LSU has no Emergency Operations Center in place.

September

2006

2007

2008

2012

Today

June

February

O’Keefe steps down as chancellor at LSU.

SDMI begins operating full time.

Morris still serves as the EOC’s interim director. There is no full-time position to date. O’Keefe is now a professor at Syracuse University.

Monday serves as the executive vice president of finance and administration at University of Kentucky.

Former LSU The LSU EOC is Chancellor operational for Sean O’Keefe the first time. suggests creating the EOC. D’Ann Emergency Morris is Operations Center chosen to Equipped to respond assist with its to the full spectrum administrators. of:

Sept. 6

Classes resume

Monday, August 31, 2015

Emmet and Toni Stephenson donate $25 million to LSU, $11 million of which was used to establish the SDMI.

Eric Monday is reassigned as the vice chancellor of student life and academic services.

Stephenson Disaster Management Institute

Natural Disasters Manmade Disasters Acts of Terrorism No notice events EOC BRIEFING by D’ANN MORRIS

“Close the gap between emergency management practitioners and academic researchers by causing collaboration.”

“Apply business principles and research to bear on disaster preparedness, mitigation, and recovery.”

“Produce applied research and disseminate best practices to individuals, businesses, and practitioners.” courtesy of SDMI.LSU.EDU

Emergency management centers born out of tragedy

LSU Foundation establishes a student relief fund.

The Office of the University Registrar and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions begin calling local churches looking for rooms for new students.

9.7.05

The football game scheduled for September 10 in Tiger Stadium with Arizona State University was moved to Tempe.

Classes resume at LSU.

externally with the public.

“So much has changed in the area of crisis preparation since the incident at Virginia Tech,” Sanders said, referencing the university’s 2007 mass shooting. “We were living in a time without social media — just a website and phone call access, but that service was down initially [after the storm].”

Sanders called on faculty to combat language barriers and create a 24/7 hotline for parents — an organization Sanders and her staff manned for a month.

Former CFO and vice chancellor for finance and administrative services Eric Monday also played a tremendous role in post-storm recovery, said Sanders and Morris.

“My motto for this whole operation was, ‘Let’s worry about the budget details later and just do it — I’ll take the responsibility later,’” O’Keefe said. “Then with Monday, [resources] flew in from several local business community leaders like [Baton Rouge businessman] Richard Lipsey, Walmart — there were just enormous contributors and truckloads of stuff.”

Prior to Monday’s involvement, however, most of the funding for the campus’ emergency medical center came from university funds. Donations through the Hurricane

Ninth Day Out

LSU’s South Campus becomes home to a tent city for volunteers.

Emergency professionals gather to receive orders and debrief for the next three weeks.

9.6.05

U.S. Surgeon General, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visit campus.

Eighth Day Out

9.4.05

Sixth Day Out

TIMELINE, from page 3

When Hurricane Katrina stormed through South Louisiana 10 years ago, LSU administration was unprepared for the Category 3 afflictions they would suffer both during and post-devastation.

Former assistant to the chancellor and now executive director of the Student Health Center D’Ann Morris said the LSU Emergency Operations Center did not exist at the time of the storm. “‘What is an EOC?’ was the first response I gave when former Chancellor Sean O’Keefe asked if LSU had one,” said Morris, who is also the interim director for campus emergency operations. “Looking back now, we should have had the structure we currently have.”

Morris said the EOC’s development would not have been possible without O’Keefe’s leadership. He was a former administrator at NASA and secretary of the Navy whose strength, Morris said, was crisis management.

At NASA, O’Keefe managed the fallout from the 2003 Columbia shuttle crisis after the spacecraft broke into pieces en route to space between

9.5.05

BY KACI CAZENAVE @kacicaz

southeast Dallas and Alexan- and they needed to recognize dria. O’Keefe was at LSU for they’re in our house, and in seven months before Katrina our house, we share — in an hit Southeast Louisiana. emergency, you do just that.”

Morris said O’Keefe was O’Keefe’s foresight kickthe first to recognize the need started LSU’s relief process for the EOC and for LSU to act with his suggestion to immedias a medical emergency and ately create a well-defined mission for LSU’s role in handling relief services center. the disaster: to Once those support the medfacilities were ical needs of the established, he ‘You never know what pinpointed and disaster is going to be, state and human eventually overbut you have to hope that life.The mission came challenges of misman- you’ve done enough. All also allowed agement and you can do is learn every Morris to estabtime.’ disorganized relish emergency sources. policies with “It became the state, make KRISTINE CALONGNE SANDERS, evident in the negotiations Assistant vice president opening hours with FEMA and of communications of our operation agreements with that we were the state Department of Health in a diaspora,” and Hospitals, none of which O’Keefe said.

Realigning and reorganiz- had existed before. ing the forces of volunteers, In total, LSU’s medical students and supplies was the personnel cared for 6,000 pafirst step in making the relief tients. In 10 days, its adminoperation more cohesive, Mor- istration registered roughly ris said. Teaching them how to 3,000 displaced students and communicate and operate as a housed 535 of them. central emergency “hub,” as “If it could have been done Morris referred to the organi- better, I don’t know how,” zation, would come second.

O’Keefe said.

“Each piece of the opAssistant vice president eration thought they were in of communications Krischarge of the entire operation tine Calongne Sanders, who rather than just their own,” worked as director of media Morris said. “We had mul- relations during Katrina, said tiple organizations managing bringing relief to the commucrisis, but not successfully, nity meant communicating

Seventh Day Out

EOC, SDMI established in storm’s wake

Katrina Student Relief Fund established by the LSU Foundation did not arrive until later.

“To my knowledge, [LSU was] never fully reimbursed for what took place because FEMA said we didn’t have these agreements,” Morris said.

Like Morris, Brant Mitchell, director of research and operations at the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute, works closely today with running LSU’s EOC and improving disaster management, both on campus and across the state.

The SDMI was established in 2007 after LSU received a $25 million donation from Toni and Emmet Stephenson, two business school alumni who believed much of Katrina’s devastation resulted not from the storm, but from management issues that could have been prevented by using basic business principles.

The SDMI uses data analytics and consequence modeling — a system that allows the institute to predict the effects of storm surges on vulnerable areas — to provide a support system for the state.

Though the SDMI was unable to serve the campus during Katrina and Rita, the institute operated fully for the first time during Hurricane Isaac in 2012.

New Orleans television station WWL leaves the Manship School of Mass Communication.

LSU admissions staff asks displaced students to present valid student identification from their institutions to complete the admissions process.

Sports “Tonight,

page 5

this historic stadium is lit in gold and stands as a beacon of promise for our

state and for its people. Because on this evening, we vow to move forward under a common flag.

Because this is

LSU Football, and this is Tiger Stadium, and

THIS IS

LOUISIANA”

- Former LSU football PA announcer Dan Borné at the start of LSU’s game against Tennessee on Sept. 26, 2005

When Louisiana needed it most, LSU athletics gave back in more ways than one

JAVIER FERNÁNDEZ / The Daily Reveille

BY JAMES BEWERS @JamesBewers­_TDR Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters flew overhead, rocking the Athletic Administration Building and kicking up dirt in the Bernie Moore Track Stadium as it became a makeshift helipad.

A fire truck was parked inside the stadium to hose down dirt as victims were rushed out of the choppers via stretchers. Those in helicopters and others in ambulances headed for the PMAC — a massive triage facility, the largest in U.S. history.

With police and military members blocking off North Stadium Drive, buses continuously brought residents from areas southeast of Baton Rouge to the Carl Maddox Field House, used as an overcrowded safe haven.

Hundreds of LSU’s finest, including student-athletes, coaches and LSU athletic department staffers, answered the call of duty — a showing of compassion in the

aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Life under the stately oaks was never more uncertain than it was in the late summer of 2005.

At times, especially after Hurricane Rita rolled through the region less than a month after its predecessor, the chaos seemed endless.

For weeks, LSU wasn’t a breeding ground for education and athleticism. It was a place of loss and survival. It was a place of desperation and hope. It was a place of fear and courage. It was a place for Louisianians, facilitated by its flagship university.

“I’ve always told people,” said former LSU associate sports information director Bill Martin, “that day, LSU became the model for how to respond in a disaster, from a campus standpoint. Everything that was done — from facilities, to students, student-athletes, doctors,

people — it was total all hands on deck.”

NOT IN THE ‘PLAYBOOK’ The first year of the Les Miles football era was on the cusp in Baton Rouge, but the athletic department already was preparing for something far more severe.

Two days before Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, current associate athletic director and SID Michael Bonnette, who was an assistant athletic director and SID at the time, sent out a news release, which canceled the popular Taste of Tiger Tailgating event held in the field house.

LSU planned to use the field house as a special needs center, but daily operations continued in advance of the Tigers’ season opener against North Texas on Sept. 3.

As Katrina and the levee breach wreaked havoc in New Orleans, Martin, who was a sports information department student intern then, printed game notes on

Aug. 30 for a game scheduled four days away.

But the situation in New Orleans and the surrounding areas was worsening.

That same Tuesday, LSU decided to postpone the opener and eventually moved the game to a coincidental open date for the Mean Green in late October.

The PMAC and field house were appointed refugee hubs prior to the storm, but the facilities were not prepared for the sheer volume of people about to arrive.

For the first few days, Director of Athletic Training Jack Marucci and the LSU training staff were some of the only medical professionals on site to assist refugees.

When helicopters touched down and ambulances raced to campus, LSU needed everything it could get its hands on.

Wal-Mart sent more than 1,000 beds,

see FOOTBALL, page 7

10 Years Later

page 6

Monday, August 31, 2015

Gymnastics program helps rebuild in wake of Hurricane Katrina

BY JACOB HAMILTON @jhamilton_TDR For more than 24 hours, LSU gymnasts rode out Hurricane Katrina together in the safety of West Campus Apartments, 107 miles west of the eye of the storm.

Half the team had no idea what was heading its way, why people were stocking up on gas and water and how bad the storm could get. Only five gymnasts on the 2005-2006 team hailed from the southeast and had experienced a hurricane before.

Then-senior gymnast Kelly Lea, born in St. Louis and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, said it was nerve wracking not knowing what to expect, but she was comforted by her southern teammates.

“I had a lot of teammates at the time that were from Florida and even from there in Louisiana, so they were telling me what to expect, saying we were going to be OK,” Lea said. “We were all planning on being together, so I guess that kind of helped calm my nerves.”

But even the gymnasts who endured several hurricanes during their lifetimes and were wellversed in what to expect, were ill prepared for the storm that breached the levees surrounding New Orleans in more than 50 places, flooding 80 percent of the city and turning LSU’s PMAC and Carl Maddox Field House into refugee centers.

A FIELD HOUSE DIVIDED When the team emerged from the apartment the following day, campus was surrounded by sirens and helicopters flying overhead.

The gymnasts found their practice facility filled with sleeping doctors, nurses and other volunteers who were helping about 350 displaced refugees inside the field house.

Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters dropped off refugees at Bernie Moore Track Stadium.

Some of the people ushered into both the PMAC and field house had nothing but the wet clothes on their backs.

The field house was sectioned off with different wards and people crammed into small spaces, and the coaches and gymnasts lent a helping hand wherever they could be useful.

Gymnastics coach D-D Breaux said the gymnasts volunteered day and night inside the field house, with jobs ranging from helping people get settled inside the building to dealing with hospitalized patients.

“In the first few days we were taking donations, doing laundry, helping people get a toothbrush and showing them where a bathroom was,” Lea said. “As the days kind of went on, it became more of a hospital setting, it seemed. I did really anything from sitting next to someone who had a bunch of tubes and IVs to helping do room care to bringing somebody a clean t-shirt.”

courtesy of LSU GUMBO YEARBOOK

The 2005-06 gymnastics program spent the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina helping refugees in the PMAC. “Each day when we arrived, I would help out whatever way I could.”

But on the fourth day after the storm, as the fatalities rose in number by the day and the situation became more dire, Breaux and assistant coach Bob Moore pulled the gymnasts from volunteer work as it was psychologically detrimental to them, Moore said. The volleyball team followed suit.

“I went into the field house one night and I saw Kelly Lea and Terin Martinjak — two of my student athletes — putting food into a feeding tube for one of the patients,” Breaux said.

“At that point I realized that enough is enough. We began to try to pull our student-athletes and rely more on the volunteer services for the agencies that are designed to do this kind of work.”

To restore a sense of normalcy, Breaux constructed a cloth wall between the doctors, nurses and volunteers — who were sleeping in the gymnastics practice facility inside the field house — and brought back equipment so the gymnasts could practice.

But the partition only affected what happened inside the gym.

OBSTACLES A week after the storm, April Burkholder was stopped at the front door of the gymnastics practice facility by an armed National Guardsman stationed outside the field house., who didn’t know she was an All-American gymnast.

“April Burkholder shows up for practice one afternoon and she’s stopped at the front door by a National Guardsman with an automatic rifle,” Breaux said.

“I’m like, ‘Nothing about this is normal.’ The chancellor and

athletic director — it was Chancellor [Sean] O’Keefe and Skip Bertman — they did a tremendous job of settling the situation down and getting it back to the educational institution that it is.”

The team returned to class eight days after the storm, and the normalcy of getting back into the routine of going to school followed by gymnastics practice helped clear the gymnasts’ minds.

As the team walked to classes, attended practice and went through the motions of being student athletes, visions of the crowded field house were not easy to shake.

Although they tried to keep their minds off it, Lea said the team never erased the memory of the sorrowful time. The gymnasts collectively used it as motivation during the upcoming season and even later in life.

“Any sort of obstacle like that makes you stronger as a team,” Lea said. “We carried that on through the season with just saying we started off with this new team with these trials and tribulations, we built on it and used it as motivation saying, remember what’s at stake this season, how we poured our hearts out at that time to help them, let’s continue to use that to help us this season.”

“We had made the commitment to one another that we weren’t going to use it as an excuse, we were going to use it as motivation to better ourselves.”

Katrina still affects Lea’s drive to work every day.

She said it was the driving force in why she became a physician’s assistant, and in her PA school application, she wrote her time as a volunteer solidified her

decision to go into medicine.

DEJA VU Breaux was no stranger to hurricanes.

Years before Katrina plummeted through the Gulf Coast, Breaux lost her home during a different hurricane.

She was a freshman in high school when Hurricane Betsy made landfall in 1965. The eye of the hurricane hooked the Mississippi River and ravaged her hometown of Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

She was hunkered down in her family home with her parents and seven siblings when the windows imploded and the house filled with water.

“Donaldsonville was pretty devastated,” Breaux said. “Of course, we lost our home and everything. It was a real community effort to take care of us, as well as take care of all the other families and people that were totally displaced.”

Breaux said she identified with the people in the field house and the PMAC and exhausted the last of her resources to help as many people as possible.

Even the organizations that are tasked with responding to national disasters were unprepared for the number of supplies needed to take care of everyone on campus, Breaux said.

Breaux and LSU strength and conditioning coordinator Tommy Moffitt called in favors to supply people with necessities.

“We were getting people that were arriving with wet clothes.

There was no bedding. The level of preparation was — if it was a scale of one to 10 and we had a 10 emergency — the level of preparation was about a three,” Breaux said. “I made a couple of phone calls to some people I knew and the next thing I know,

people were flooding in with sheets and towels and things to help service the situation that we had.”

Breaux and her team worked hand in hand with Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, Red Cross and other volunteers, including other teams on campus who helped those in the field house.

Moore was tasked with the heavy lifting and assembling bunks, while Breaux ran operations in the field house.

“She is a great orchestrator, organizer and line boss,” Moore said. “There were a lot of things that she did out there that she got people organized, helped institute other volunteers in places they can go and things they can do. She did that a lot for them out there.”

Moore said once the situation calmed down and gymnasts were pulled out of volunteer work, Breaux helped out every day and checked on people she met on the track.

Breaux still has phone numbers of people she met in the field house because she doesn’t want to let the memory of them go, she said.

She continued to help people look for lost loved ones for three years after the storm, fielding multiple phone calls from people thanking her for helping them recover.

“I had given people my phone number, and I’d have them call me and just say, ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I met you at the field house and I have your number and I just want to say thanks,’” Breaux said. “That’s kind of enough.”

10TH ANNIVERSARY Though LSU helped countless people, the storm still looms in the field house.

Moore leaves the phone in the gymnastics practice facility unplugged to this day because up until a year ago, people called looking for loved ones.

LSU wasn’t able to help everyone affected by the storm, but Breaux said she hopes time helped people get back on their feet and people remember the way the LSU community rallied.

“Your life experiences kind of prepare you for the next thing that you’re going to have down the road,” Breaux said. “What my family experienced during Hurricane Betsy and the community coming together was a life experience, but what New Orleans, Jefferson Parish and St. Bernard — what those people experienced in Katrina and what the Baton Rouge community and what the LSU community was able to do to facilitate their healing and help them at least move to a better place, it was a 10. It was a 10 in performance.”

“We had people that had been living under bridges that we brought to a better place. Hopefully from this, our city and our state was able to move forward and help some of these people go to better places.“

10 Years Later

page 7

Monday, August 31, 2015

FOOTBALL, from page 5 mattresses and cots to the facilities, as they struggled to the support the number of people coming in. Civilians brought towels, blankets, pillows, bandages, gauze and iodine.

“The [LSU] Hurricane Center [said], ‘We’re going to do this, we’re going to —’ But you just didn’t figure on the levees breaking and 150,000 homes or 75 to 80 percent of the homes [in New Orleans] being flooded up to the roof, with the Coast Guard picking people off the roof. That wasn’t in your playbook,” said former LSU Athletic Director Skip Bertman.

A MESSAGE FORWARDED Martin stuck around on Aug. 30 for more than eight hours in the refugee area, witnessing the worst of a grim situation. He returned to his apartment in the early morning on Aug. 31. With no cell phone service, he wrote an email, updating those of the situation at LSU. Martin said it was sent to seven or eight people he worked with in the sports information department.

Little did Martin know, the candid email would be read by thousands, as the first-person account was passed around the web.

“I never intended for that to happen,” Martin said. “If it served a purpose of, ‘Hey, this is the dire circumstances here’ and what the people are going through to our east, you know what, maybe that gives people cause to donate right to Red Cross or do something.”

Martin’s email showed his foresight. He knew he had played a roll in something “more gratifying and more surreal” than anything else he would be a part of in his life.

In the email, he detailed hauling supplies with athletes and taking direction from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention representatives.

He described hurrying, along with Bonnette, to help a fallen elderly woman get back in her wheelchair.

He told of witnessing people die in front of him from wounds too critical to treat.

He wrote about simply talking to refugees in the PMAC, giving them comfort when they had no one else to turn to. At least one person he talked to didn’t make it through the night.

Martin noted mothers in labor in locker rooms and when the auxiliary gym was converted into a morgue.

The email reads more like a nightmare, but it was reality.

These were people he may have just seen on television, but now they were suffering in front his eyes.

Responses to the email came flowing in. He hadn’t sent the email to his mother, who led the music department at McNeese State, but it reached her via her boss. It also reached Sports Illustrated’s Rick Riley, prompting Riley to come to LSU. After getting his own picture of the campus, Riley wrote a column, explaining how sports was meaningless yet essential for

THE DAILY REVEILLE ARCHIVES

The tumultuous 2005 LSU football season ended with a 40-3 win against the Miami Hurricanes in the Peach Bowl.

Louisiana at that time. He wrote the altered LSU football schedule didn’t matter, but the athletic facilities, student-athletes, coaches and athletic department members did.

“We were all different races, all different types of people and all different backgrounds,” Martin said. “But we were all there as one. ... You walk away from there, and you feel proud to be a part of helping people in a very desperate time of need.”

THE HAT Miles had yet to roam the sidelines of Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night, but he already was facing the most adversity he’d ever seen as a collegiate coach.

He said he was unprepared for a hurricane season in southern Louisiana, especially the two in 2005. The coach calls Elyria, Ohio, home, and he was surprised he needed to fuel his car prior to the storm.

“I anticipated that this must be the way summer always is here,” Miles said at a recent news conference.

Miles saw the exhaustion on the faces of players like senior wide receiver Skyler Green, a Westwego, Louisiana, native, as Green would commute from practice to his dorm room filled with evacuated family members.

Miles’ players weren’t sleeping, but they were helping and making donations. Miles did, too.

Though it was far from the most important part, football practices became difficult with the deafening sounds of helicopter propellers and ambulance sirens blaring throughout the day.

Miles walked through the PMAC every night after coaches’ meetings were over. Miles — like then-men’s basketball coach John Brady and many other coaches — was there to lend a hand or raise the spirits of so many feeling hopeless.

Miles described how special

it was to see so many people with the name tag ‘volunteer.’ Athletes such as then-sophomore basketball star Glen “Big Baby” Davis was there almost everyday, at one point holding up bags of fluid and blood as medical professionals treated patients.

Bertman said Miles won’t take any credit for his efforts, but he considers them to be heroic.

Martin agreed.

“For him to have to face that situation, and it’s days before his first game, which all of a sudden didn’t happen and football is irrelevant,” Martin said. “Him being there is one of the finest examples of leadership I’ve ever seen.”

THE GREAT DISTRACTION Eventually, campus began to stabilize.

School resumed on Sept. 6, and more doctors arrived to the triage center.

Even then-President George W. Bush showed up after touring New Orleans, and LSU was forced to cut a hole in the fence around the PMAC to make his walk shorter.

The football team, too, was ready to begin its season, but the campus wasn’t in condition to do so. Tempe, Arizona, became the site of LSU’s first home game against Arizona State.

The Sun Devils paid to fly the Tigers out and presented a million dollar check to the program.

With some evacuees seeking shelter in Arizona, the school was more than accommodating on short notice.

“Those people in Tempe, I can’t praise them enough for the way they welcomed us into that town and into that stadium,” said LSU public address announcer Dan Borné. “On just a few days notice, they prepared for a game that they weren’t planning to play. They literally gave us a home game in their stadium.”

Les Miles’ message to the

team: Win this one for the folks back home.

The Tigers fell behind, 17-7, through three quarters. Early in the fourth quarter, the Sun Devils looked to go up by 13 on a field goal attempt. But LSU senior defensive tackle Claude Wroten blocked the kick and shifted the momentum of the game, as senior cornerback Mario Stevenson returned it 55 yards for a touchdown.

The Tigers returned a blocked punt for a touchdown on the next possession and traded scores with the Sun Devils before LSU sophomore quarterback JaMarcus Russell connected with sophomore wide receiver Early Doucet on fourth-and-10 from the 39-yard line for the game-winning touchdown with a little more than a minute remaining.

The emotion of overcoming a hellish two weeks for the team to win dramatically stands out to Borné.

“I had left the press box with about five minutes left in the game,” Borné said. “I went down there to stand in the corner of that end zone, and that touchdown was probably 25 feet from where I was standing. It was the most incredible rush of adrenaline that I’ve ever had.”

While the feeling of victory in the season opener may have been sweet, LSU still hadn’t played in front of its fans who desperately needed a distraction.

Displaced fans welcomed the Tigers home on Sept. 24 against No. 10 Tennessee.

Then, Rita hit the region and threw off LSU’s attempt at balance again.

Rita pushed the home opener against the Vols to Monday night, a first in the history of LSU football. Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer agreed to play the game and fly back to Knoxville the same night, given the lack of hotel space in Baton Rouge.

The day of the game, school

was canceled. The stadium was filled, buzzing with energy and craving a release.

Fans may not have known what their future held, but on that night, it was about LSU football.

Former senior associate athletic director Herb Vincent penned a message to the fans for Borné to read before the game.

As Borné delivered it, four student-athletes from Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama walked onto the field with their state flags.

“It was three or four weeks of pent up frustration, sadness, fear and angst,” Vincent said. “Coming into Tiger Stadium and cheering for your team and being able to release that with fellow Louisianians who had gone through the same thing, it was probably the first time they could cheer.”

Riding the crowd’s emotional wave, LSU jumped out to 21-point first half lead. By the fourth quarter, the Tigers had run out of juice, surrendering the lead and falling in overtime, 30-27.

The final score was hardly relevant to Borné, who considers it to be the most memorable game in almost 30 years as an announcer.

“In that stadium, you had people who lost just about everything in their lives,” Borné said. “You had people in evacuation centers, who somehow or another found a way to get to the game. You had people, who didn’t know what the future held to them, pick up and get to Baton Rouge and come and see their Tigers play. There were no rich people or poor people in that stadium.

“Every single person in that stadium was there because they shared a common grief and common compassion for everyone who had been so involved in the misery of these storms. ... We lost the game, but we scored a great victory for Louisiana.”

LSU played for the next nine weeks, getting special permission from the NCAA to do so to make up for lost time. They finished the regular season 10-1, matching up with Georgia in the Southeastern Conference Championship game.

The physically worn down Tigers couldn’t keep up with the talented Bulldogs, losing, 34-14.

Weeks later, the Tigers were finally rested, punishing Miami, 40-3, in a return trip to the Georgia Dome for the Peach Bowl. Bertman said LSU could have gone 13-0 if not for all the team went through that season.

But the story, Bertman said, wasn’t how a rocky season finished on a high note. It was the time and effort given by the LSU community.

For Vincent, the “LSU spirit” was shown through studentathletes.

“The resiliency of all the student-athletes was probably the most amazing part of all this,” Vincent said, “because so many of them had friends and relatives from New Orleans or came from the Gulf Coast or came from Biloxi or wherever. ... It was an incredible show of [the LSU spirit] of these young people stepping up during something that no one had ever seen before.”

Entertainment

page 9

Despite losing everything in Hurricane Katrina, LSU alumna Tamika Jett now owns and runs a successful dance studio called Passion Dance Center, located in New Orleans, Louisiana. After the storm hit New Orleans in August 2005, Jett was forced to transfer from the University of New Orleans to LSU, where she created a dance crew — the Legacy Dancers.

Legacyestablished LSU alumna thrives with dance studio following Hurricane Katrina story by KAYLA RANDALL @kay_ran21 photos by RONNI BOURGEOIS @ronnibooz

“Rebirth” is a word synonymous with New Orleans.

It’s a word that’s also synonymous with the life of LSU alumna and Passion Dance Center CEO Tamika Jett.

A year before Hurricane Katrina, Jett graduated from high school and was teaching at Benjamin’s School of Dance and Gymnastics in New Orleans.

Then the storm hit.

Benjamin’s never reopened, and Jett, who was attending University of New Orleans at the time, moved to Baton Rouge for LSU. Jett said her brother was an LSU student, and he helped her settle into the state’s capital.

Life was hard for Jett in Baton Rouge when she first arrived. She

said she was going through the motions and didn’t know what she was doing. She took solace in the university after the storm, a place she never would have ended up if it weren’t for the hurricane, and she decided to fuse her old life with her new one by creating her own dance crew at LSU — the Legacy Dancers.

“I was in my apartment, and I was dying to dance,” Jett said. “I wasn’t doing anything with dance, so I thought, ‘What if I had a group and we could do something?’”

She went online and saw people on Facebook who were looking for a group to start. She contacted them and held auditions in Hatcher Hall.

With that first meeting, Jett and the other dancers, many of whom are

New Orleans natives, were hooked, and Legacy was born. The team will commemorate its 10-year anniversary along with the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

To this day, Jett said she gets chills when remembering her first performance with Legacy in a packed Student Union.

“It was the hypest performance ever in history,” Jett said. “Everybody was dancing with us, the entire audience. It seemed like a stress reliever for them because LSU had a lot of people from New Orleans there after the storm.”

Jett said she and the other dancers needed Legacy and used it as a creative outlet to take their minds off the tragedy and destruction. They fed off

the energy, used it to succeed and never looked back.

Legacy helped Jett escape from the destruction that was Katrina, but she said some of her losses still pain her when she thinks about how many of her dance memories before Legacy have been washed away.

“My recital tapes are gone, and they’re just all on my mind because I used to watch those tapes every day like a crazy person,” Jett said. “Twelve years worth of videos, and if I hear a song from the tapes, I can do the whole dance. I had them memorized.”

Some of the only items Jett was able to salvage from the water damage were her old dance trophies. When evacuating, she also left a dance bag on her bed, which held costumes and other items but were safe from flooding.

One summer, while at LSU, Jett interned in New York at the Broadway Dance Center. When she came back, she put everything she learned into Legacy and started setting the groundwork for her future, which was to open her own dance studio.

“I’ve wanted to open a dance studio since I was 10 years old,” Jett said. “I knew I was going to have a dance school.

I’ve been writing plans down since I was a kid.”

However, her dream did not come to fruition immediately after graduation. Instead, after receiving her degree in mass communication, she went back home and worked at an eye doctor’s office.

Jett said she had $300 to her name and started considering a move to New Jersey to find a job in a communications field, when her mother told her she and her father had bought the building that would become Passion Dance Center.

“My parents saw my face every day and decided they needed to invest in my studio because I was not happy,” Jett said.

Now, everything Jett has learned has culminated in her dance studio as she teaches her students. But Jett said she

won’t be forgetting her Legacy roots any time soon.

“Legacy is a big influence on what I do,” Jett said. “I feel like if I would’ve opened a dance school earlier, it wouldn’t have been done right. My whole mindset was different after LSU and Legacy.”

Jett is sharing this experience with her friend and fellow Legacy dancer Olga Gale. Gale now works at Passion Dance Center as a dance teacher for the studio’s junior dance team.

Gale said she is in constant disbelief of how far she and Jett have come.

“In college, I would always tell Tamika after she said she wanted to open her own studio that if I ever moved back home, I would help her with it,” Gale said. “Now, every Saturday when we do rehearsal we just yell and jump and scream in joy, and our students think we’re crazy.”

For Gale, her memories of Legacy are dear, and she credits the crew for creating a venue to use their pain constructively.

Gale said Legacy served as an outlet and something she could do instead of sitting at home watching her family cry and be depressed.

“I don’t think that I would’ve been able to go to school and then come home and be as strong as I was for my family if it wasn’t for Legacy,” Gale said.

Through all the devastation the hurricane brought, it also created lasting bonds among the dance crew, and the original Legacy dancers are still close with one another and keep in touch.

Jett and Gale both experienced great losses, but ultimately great gains as well.

Their friendship was born out of the misery of the hurricane’s aftermath, and it’s one of the things for which Gale is thankful.

“It’s pretty awesome how one devastating situation brought so many people together, and now we’re all best friends and obsessed with each other,” Gale said.

“Honestly, I thank Katrina for it. That’s the one good thing that came of it.”

Jett echoed Gale’s sentiments.

‘Legacy is a big influence on what I do. I feel like if I would’ve opened a dance school earlier, it wouldn’t have been done right. My whole mindset was different after LSU and Legacy.’

TAMIKA JETT, CEO of Passion Dance Center and LSU alumna

(Left to right) Destinae’ Johnson, Laurynette Griffin, Julia Lemann, Alexis Rolle and Kayla Broussard (far right) participate in a hip-hop dance class on Aug. 25 at Passion Dance Studio in New Orleans. The class is taught by Tamika Jett (second from right), CEO of the dance studio and an LSU alumna.

“I know Katrina was bad, but I’m glad it pushed me away,” Jett said. “I would’ve went to UNO again, and I would’ve just been wasting time when I could’ve been at LSU dancing with Legacy.”

Gale, like Jett, is a New Orleans native and had to evacuate to Baton Rouge during the storm.

“Everyone lost materialistic things, but my family lost a piece of their souls,” Gale said. “Though most have recovered, some family members still won’t go to the [Mercedes-Benz] Superdome because that’s where they were for days.”

Gale said she tells people Katrina was about the emotional and mental loss that held everyone back for so many months trying to rebuild.

Gale likens the dance group to a sorority created in a huge time of need.

“In commemorating the anniversary of Katrina, we just try to remember how far we’ve come and how our friendship has only gotten stronger after every year,” Gale said.

Gale came to work with Jett after they both graduated from LSU. Jett told her she was opening Passion Dance Center,

and Gale offered to help manage her first recital.

In recalling her time with Legacy, Gale said she will always remember that first performance in the Student Union and the standing ovation the group received.

“The standing ovation wasn’t because we were the best dance group in the South, it was because we gave them a piece of what was missing for them,” Gale said.

“You saw everyone who was so down and depressed come alive all of a sudden.”

Gale said the crew danced like its members were back home, choosing not to do traditional ballet and jazz but rather New Orleans hip-hop, which she said the crowd enjoyed immensely.

Now, Gale and Jett give all their energy to the students at Passion Dance Center.

Gale said she’s still in awe of all they’ve accomplished, going from such a dark time to the present and that she couldn’t be prouder.

“We’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into this,” Gale said. “I mean we used to practice in the classroom at LSU. That’s the only passion that we had during that time.”

[Left, above] Dancers practice on Aug. 25 at Passion Dance Studio in New Orleans.

10 Years Later

page 10

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Monday, August 31, 2015

New Orleans poet finds inspiration from Hurricane Katrina

BY SARAH LEBOEUF

Music venues across New Orleans experience recovery, reopening after Katrina

page 11

Words of the Storm

TREME

MID-CITY

10 Years Later

Monday, August 31, 2015

FRENCH QUARTER Fon tain ebl eau Dr.

UPTOWN

CENTRAL CITY

GARDEN DISTRICT

A

|

@sleboeuf23

rtist, writer, chef, teacher and LSU Communication across the Curriculum studio coordinator Vincent Cellucci is a man of many talents, each of them affected by Hurricane Katrina. His poetry, though, proves the most inspired by the storm.

But it wasn’t until after Katrina that he began to publish his works.

Cellucci always chased his interests, despite roadblocks in his way.

When Loyola University did not offer glassblowing courses, Cellucci forged his own path and enrolled at Tulane University. He cross enrolled at Loyola for painting and poetry and at Tulane for glassblowing, receiving his undergraduate degree in English writing.

While in school, he also became a cook for Emeril’s Delmonico restaurant in New Orleans.

He focused most of his time before Katrina on visual art and gourmet cooking.

“I actually think painting and cooking have a lot in common,” Cellucci said.

‘You’re not lost in the ideals. You’re very much in your environment and your sensory experience when you’re in New Orleans’ VINCENT CELLUCCI, poet

BY GRAYSON SENNER

|

Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans in late August 2005, devastating vital aspects of its neighborhoods. Music venues were no exception.

As residents returned, the local venues picked up the pieces and reclaimed their places in the lives of the many New Orleanians that frequent them.

Ten years later, the music community has proved resilient, with old favorites cementing themselves as staples in communities.

1

2

Blancher adds that Rock N’ Bowl has emotional ties to the city’s residents who have grown up with the business and are now experiencing it again with their children.

@graysonsenner

Maple Leaf Bar Located on Oak Street in Uptown New Orleans, Maple Leaf Bar experienced a short closure of less than a week after the storm. The bar’s only amount of damage was losing a portion of its roof.

It hosted its first live music show after Katrina at the end of September 2005, with singer and guitarist Walter “Wolfman” Washington.

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, owner Hank Staples said the bar is doing much better business than it was before the storm.

Rock N’ Bowl Considered a cemented part of the New Orleans music community since it opened in 1989, Rock N’ Bowl reopened its original location on Carrollton Avenue in late fall 2005, but since 2009, it has operated from a new location down the street (2a).

Owner John Blancher said the venue’s reopening was an emotional experience for patrons, connecting friends and families.

3

Saenger Theatre The historic Saenger Theatre, which opened in 1927, reopened more than eight years after Hurricane Katrina.

Arts Center Enterprises General Manager David Skinner, who manages both the Saenger and the Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts, said the goal of the venue’s renovations was to bring the building back to its original ornate design. He said there are very few venues in The Big Easy considered as iconic as the Saenger.

4

Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts The venue, which opened in the early 1970s and reopened in early 2009, served as a replacement for the Saenger Theatre after Hurricane Katrina.

Skinner said he recognizes that the Mahalia Jackson filled a gap for the performing arts in New Orleans, and without it, the city would have experienced a loss in the availability of the performing arts.

5

Tipitina’s Zack Feinberg, of the Revivalists, got his start at local bar Tipitina’s when he met Andrew Campanelli, the band’s drummer.

Feinberg credits Tipitina’s, which opened in 1977, for giving his band a platform to begin its career. He said Tipitina’s is as close to a home base that a venue can offer.

While Hurricane Katrina inspired Cellucci’s writing, it physically destroyed another one of his creative outlets.

The storm wiped out most of New Orleans and along with the broken levees went his glass sculptures. The storm forced him to harness his creativity in a more feasible manner.

“I realized that practice was unsustainable — just the energy bills alone and the specialized equipment that you have,” he said.

He forfeited glassblowing in favor of practicality while he lived out of his Jeep, traveling back and forth between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Like many New Orleans residents after the storm, Cellucci was in limbo, but he continued painting, writing and cooking.

“I like painting so much,” Cellucci said. “It’s portable. You can stretch canvas anywhere. You can throw paint on the wall anywhere. That’s why the poetry was so handy, too, is because all I need is a notebook and a pencil.”

And he now only cooks for fun.

Cellucci received a Master of Fine Arts from LSU in 2008 and used his master’s thesis for the basis of “An Easy Place / To Die,” a book of poems influenced by Hurricane Katrina. For Cellucci, the book is a metaphor for New Orleans.

“You can really submit to your earthly appetites, and I think it’s more beautiful to that,” he said. “You’re not lost in the ideals. You’re very much in your environment and your sensory experience when you’re in New Orleans.”

Since “An Easy Place / To Die” was published, Cellucci has collaborated on several projects with fellow creative minds.

“I like collaborating with people,” he said. “It’s

RONNI BOURGEOIS / The Daily Reveille

Poet Vincent Cellucci holds up his book ‘An Easy Place / To Die,’ a book of poems influenced by Hurricane Katrina. more rewarding to me, artistically, and I think it’s less [selfish]. I like the socialization aspect of working with other artists.”

Through it all, Cellucci remains humble. He jokes about being a “lowly poet” and is sarcastically self-deprecating. He commends the artists he collaborated with as well as those who derived inspiration from Katrina’s destruction.

His collaborations range from helping translate a Bengali author’s chapbook of poetry and prints, to creating a vulgar anthology with more than 50 other poets called “F--- Poems.”

“I got tired of defending poetry as something vital and alive. A lot of people would be teasing me

see POET, page 15

10 Years Later

Monday, August 31, 2015

page 11

Words of the Storm New Orleans poet finds inspiration from Hurricane Katrina

BY SARAH LEBOEUF

A

|

@sleboeuf23

rtist, writer, chef, teacher and LSU Communication across the Curriculum studio coordinator Vincent Cellucci is a man of many talents, each of them affected by Hurricane Katrina. His poetry, though, proves the most inspired by the storm.

But it wasn’t until after Katrina that he began to publish his works.

Cellucci always chased his interests, despite roadblocks in his way.

When Loyola University did not offer glassblowing courses, Cellucci forged his own path and enrolled at Tulane University. He cross enrolled at Loyola for painting and poetry and at Tulane for glassblowing, receiving his undergraduate degree in English writing.

While in school, he also became a cook for Emeril’s Delmonico restaurant in New Orleans.

He focused most of his time before Katrina on visual art and gourmet cooking.

“I actually think painting and cooking have a lot in common,” Cellucci said.

‘You’re not lost in the ideals. You’re very much in your environment and your sensory experience when you’re in New Orleans’ VINCENT CELLUCCI, poet While Hurricane Katrina inspired Cellucci’s writing, it physically destroyed another one of his creative outlets.

The storm wiped out most of New Orleans and along with the broken levees went his glass sculptures. The storm forced him to harness his creativity in a more feasible manner.

“I realized that practice was unsustainable — just the energy bills alone and the specialized equipment that you have,” he said.

He forfeited glassblowing in favor of practicality while he lived out of his Jeep, traveling back and forth between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Like many New Orleans residents after the storm, Cellucci was in limbo, but he continued painting, writing and cooking.

“I like painting so much,” Cellucci said. “It’s portable. You can stretch canvas anywhere. You can throw paint on the wall anywhere. That’s why the poetry was so handy, too, is because all I need is a notebook and a pencil.”

And he now only cooks for fun.

Cellucci received a Master of Fine Arts from LSU in 2008 and used his master’s thesis for the basis of “An Easy Place / To Die,” a book of poems influenced by Hurricane Katrina. For Cellucci, the book is a metaphor for New Orleans.

“You can really submit to your earthly appetites, and I think it’s more beautiful to that,” he said. “You’re not lost in the ideals. You’re very much in your environment and your sensory experience when you’re in New Orleans.”

Since “An Easy Place / To Die” was published, Cellucci has collaborated on several projects with fellow creative minds.

“I like collaborating with people,” he said. “It’s

RONNI BOURGEOIS / The Daily Reveille

Poet Vincent Cellucci holds up his book ‘An Easy Place / To Die,’ a book of poems influenced by Hurricane Katrina. more rewarding to me, artistically, and I think it’s less [selfish]. I like the socialization aspect of working with other artists.”

Through it all, Cellucci remains humble. He jokes about being a “lowly poet” and is sarcastically self-deprecating. He commends the artists he collaborated with as well as those who derived inspiration from Katrina’s destruction.

His collaborations range from helping translate a Bengali author’s chapbook of poetry and prints, to creating a vulgar anthology with more than 50 other poets called “F--- Poems.”

“I got tired of defending poetry as something vital and alive. A lot of people would be teasing me

see POET, page 15

Opinion

Monday, August 31, 2015

Natural disasters can create opportunities for economically disadvantaged THE CERULEAN CONCILATOR JUSTIN DICHARIA Columnist North of LSU sits dilapidated shotgun houses, broken down vehicles, a lack of grocery stores and an environment unfriendly to those wishing to rise above it. The scene is similar to the Lower 9th Ward pre-2005.

In New Orleans, after desegregation, the white population migrated to higher elevations in the south of the city near the Mississippi River. The AfricanAmerican community grew in the north part of the city closer to Lake Pontchartrain, where the city’s elevation — already below sea level — is at its lowest.

When the storm hit and the levees broke, New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward transformed into an extension of the neighboring lake. Thousands lost their homes, and hundreds more who stayed behind perished.

The geography of the city dictated that the poor receive the brunt of the devastating flood water. Residents of these areas received an unfortunate once-ina-lifetime choice: Rebuild their lives in the city or rebuild their futures elsewhere.

In a New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell cited economists Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline and Emmanuel Saez’s study on economic mobility, which pointed to geography as the primary barrier for economic mobility. An impoverished child in New Orleans has a 5.1 percent chance of rising out of poverty into the top fifth of the U.S. income distribution.

The study found communities with good schools, strong families, low income inequality, racial integration and strong civic participation provided the best chances for a child to rise up out of poverty into a higher economic bracket. The minimum wage, college-loan programs and economic-growth rates are not as effective in bringing children out of poverty as is their immediate environment.

While Katrina’s destruction, chaos and corruption scarred the city, it provided a chance of rebirth for poor families. I commend those who returned to New Orleans to rebuild, but I also commend those who chose to rebuild elsewhere in a city like

Houston where their children are more likely to exit a life of poverty.

If the study is correct, the U.S. should rethink its approach to poverty. Can the government and nonprofit organizations find a way to aid families in moving to better communities? Should the government offer better tax incentives to private businesses and real estate developers that work in impoverished neighborhoods?

Whether it’s through direct monetary aid or the actions of private business owners, the ability to increase a child’s chances of having a better future by leaving poverty exists, and we can’t wait for the next hurricane to force people out of their previous environment.

In Baton Rouge, if the street has the name of a U.S. president, LSU students tend to stay away. The community living north of campus

is geographically confined by economic factors just as the people of the Lower 9th Ward were confined before Katrina. Floodwaters aren’t what the area north of campus needs. It needs our attention, resources and love.

Justin DiCharia is a 21-yearold mass communication junior from Slidell, Louisiana.

You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.

MAX BECHERER / The Associated Press

A hand made sign at North Rocheblave and Lamanche Streets in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans attempts to thwart the illegal dumping of tires and industrial waste.

Monday, August 31, 2015

Coastal erosion killing our state, culture ENTITLED MILLENIAL CODY SIBLEY Columnist If we want to prevent another Hurricane Katrina, we need to talk about coastal erosion.

If you’re from Louisiana, you probably know our levee system is killing our state’s ecosystem. If you don’t, here’s a rundown.

Levees prevent the Mississippi River from eroding land from its bank, which means it can’t deposit sediment at the delta near the Gulf of Mexico.

The sediment is supposed to restore the wetlands that the gulf and tropical storms wash away, but the river doesn’t have anything to deposit. Instead, the water washes away more wetlands.

Any Louisianan with a brain agrees our levee system destroys our wetlands, but environmental problems run deeper than our levees.

If Louisiana ever wants to fully recover, we have to be the leading voice in the fight against climate change and the oil industry.

The science is out there, and the brightest scientists in the world have reached a unanimous agreement: Climate change is real, and we’re causing it.

This isn’t a debate. There isn’t controversy. Man-made climate change is as factual as gravity, and if you disagree you’re part of the problem that’s sinking Louisiana.

Climate change is warming our oceans, and because of that, the ice caps at the poles are melting, and causing sea levels to rise.

Those rising sea levels are washing away our wetlands, so now we have nothing to absorb the brunt of hurricanes.

Katrina wouldn’t have been strong enough to flood New Orleans if our wetlands hadn’t been so eroded.

Our warming oceans mean we have the ingredients for stronger hurricanes, and our wetlands can’t survive this because they can’t naturally restore themselves.

Oil companies emit pollution directly related to climate change, and 247wallst.com ranked Louisiana as the tenth most oil-rich state.

Much of its oil comes from offshore drilling — the same kind of drilling that caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Our state’s major economic source isn’t only killing our state through air pollution — its pipes and canals are destroying Louisiana.

Oil companies build canals around wetlands as access points for oil and gas wells, and salt water comes through the canals, killing our fragile freshwater wetlands.

Our current system isn’t sustainable. Louisiana could lose an area of land roughly the size of Rhode Island by 2050 if we don’t do something to combat climate change soon.

New Orleans cannot survive another hurricane as powerful as Katrina. If we want to preserve our nation’s most culturally-rich city, we have to stop arguing about settled issues and start coming up with solutions.

I’m not talking about the shortterm solution of building higher levees like our U.S. senators want.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., held a field hearing in New Orleans this summer and said we should build higher levees, and our new levee system is “all the safety we need.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy accompanied him, saying he didn’t understand why we needed levees to withstand 500-year floods.

These are the people who are supposed to represent and protect us at the federal level. One wants to only build levees, and the other doesn’t understand why the levees should be as strong as they are.

Neither senator addressed global warming. In fact, both deny humans cause climate change.

Gov. Bobby Jindal also doesn’t believe in climate change. He even told President Obama not to talk about the topic when he visited New Orleans last week. He didn’t listen, #ThanksObama.

Climate change affects Louisiana more than any other state in the nation, so it’s absurd that our leaders and representatives don’t fight against it.

If we don’t want New Orleans, and eventually Baton Rouge, to become the lost city of Atlantis, we need to be on the forefront in environmental issues. We could have avoided the Katrina catastrophe, but years of corporate greed and wearing away our land got the better of us.

Louisiana residents perpetuated Katrina and destroyed New Orleans.

Coastal erosion is a life or death situation in Louisiana, and it’s time we fight back against the oil industries that are killing our beautiful state.

Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.

The Daily Reveille EDITORIAL BOARD

Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez Rebecca Docter Jennifer Vance Quint Forgey Rose Velazquez Jack Richards

Editor in Chief Co-Managing Editor Co-Managing Editor News Editor Deputy News Editor Opinion Editor

10 Years Later

page 13

photo courtesy of UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

photo courtesy of THE TIME PICAYUNE | NOLA.COM

Rising sea levels have washed away many of Louisiana’s wetlands, which provide protection from natural disasters. Levees prevent the Mississippi River from eroding land, which means sediment can’t deposit into the delta near the Gulf of Mexico.

Facts about coastal erosion in Louisiana

1 2 3 4 5

Louisiana has more than 3 million acres of coastal wetlands.

Louisiana accounts for 80 percent of America’s coastal wetland losses.

More than 35 square miles of the Louisiana coast are eroded each year.

Louisiana could lose another 527,000 acres of wetlands by 2050.

Louisiana’s coast provides 21 percent of the nation’s natural gas.

Editorial Policies and Procedures

Source: http://www.lamer.lsu.edu/oceancommotion/facts.htm

The Daily Reveille (USPS 145-800) is written, edited and produced solely by students of Louisiana State University. The Daily Reveille is an independent entity of the Office of Student Media within the Manship School of Mass Communication. Signed opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, The Daily Reveille or the university. Letters submitted for publication should be sent via e-mail to opinion@lsureveille.com or delivered to B-39 Hodges Hall. They must be 400 words or less. Letters must provide a contact phone number for verification purposes, which will not be printed. The Daily Reveille reserves the right to edit letters and guest columns for space consideration while preserving the original intent. The Daily Reveille also reserves the right to reject any letter without notification of the author. Writers must include their full names and phone numbers. The Daily Reveille’s editor in chief, hired every semester by the LSU Student Media Board, has final authority on all editorial decisions.

Quote of the Day ‘It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.’

Richard Whatley

English economist Feb. 1, 1787 — Oct. 8, 1863

10 Years Later

page 14

_______________________________

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Call 225.229.4554 _______________________________

Monday, August 31, 2015

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10 Years Later

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Stop by Monday-Friday from 2 to 5. Be a part of our amazing team!

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Bored? Tired of constant studying?

Need something to do on your time off? Then email lsugamersguild@ gmail.com and join us for a semester of fun. Our focus is table top and card games such as MtG, Smash Up, D&D, poker and whatever else you, the gamer, decides to bring. Open to anyone willing to learn and have fun. _______________________________

RONNI BOURGEOIS / The Daily Reveille

POET, from page 11 about it [being] a dead art,” said Cellucci about the motivation behind “F--- Poems.”

But 10 years later, his poetry

is hardly dead.

On Thursday, he held an interactive, multimedia poetry reading in honor of the 10th anniversary of the storm for LSU’s Katrina & Rita Symposium.

Through a website, the crowd read along with Cellucci, tapping words throughout the poem on their phones and sending them to light up colorfully on the screen and sound over speakers in the

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auditorium, essentially bringing his poetry to life.

Jesse Allison, a non-native of Louisiana who was responsible for the audio portion of the presentation, said that “An Easy Place / To Die” helped him understand the local environment in 2005.

“It’s sort of a little window right into what went on and what it would be like to have something happen now that I’m down here,” Allison said.

This window is a prominent theme in Cellucci’s writing. Despite other Louisiana natives finding solace elsewhere after Katrina, Cellucci thrived off his surroundings.

New Orleans is a focus for his works, but Katrina pushed him out of the city limits. He traveled around the state for his writing,

Vincent Celluci, an artist, poet, chef and teacher reads one of his poems from ‘An Easy Place / to Die’ on Thursday at the LSU Digital Media Center.

Need your apartment cleaned? Visit www.thekcclean.com to schedule your appointment today!!! We clean off-campus college housing--with packages as small as a single bedroom and bath to after party cleaning! Visit our website or call us today at 225-442-3151!!! _______________________________

and much of his work is focused around Baton Rouge and the Mississippi River.

“It gave me a greater appreciation of the state of Louisiana and the culture of Louisiana,” he said.

It’s this deep love and commitment to the state that has kept him from fully healing from the natural disaster.

“There’s a really thick callous that I think is a problem,” Cellucci said. “In some ways, I’m afraid to remove it. You don’t want to pick scabs too much. I won’t say they’ve healed over, but to me, I think it’s just all about focusing on what’s new, trying to be positive about it where I can — and that’s with these creative collaborations and that’s with making new work and celebrating other people’s work.”

10 Years Later

page 16

Monday, August 31, 2015

YOUR KATRINA STORIES Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast — destroying countless homes and lives.

The Daily Reveille sat down with students to ask where they were and what they experienced. asked by JOSHUA JACKSON @Joshua_Jackson_

photos by RONNI BOURGEOIS @ronnibooz

‘I was in China. I heard about it. A lot of media were covering it. I saw New Orleans was pretty bad. My hometown has typhoons a lot, so I can empathize with what they went through.’

‘I’d just moved from New Orleans and I was living in Houma at the time, and when it hit we went to Houston. We were stuck in Houston for two weeks and came back but our house was too damaged to move back in, so it took two months to get back in there. We were still getting Meals Ready-to-eat and freshwater sent to the house after we came back.’

‘I was in Baton Rouge at my parents’ house.

We had family in New Orleans and they stayed with us. We were OK, but they lost everything.’

Brandon Smith

Sijing Liu

Brent Duenckel

theatre senior

mathematics graduate student

marketing senior

‘I was at The Times-Picayune building the Sunday before. I was 16. Both of my parents were journalists, so they were riding out the storm. I babysat the kids and watched as they waited for the news to happen. I remember the wind sounding like a train going by constantly. The weirdest thing was when it passed we didn’t see any flooding, but then we watched as the water rose and didn’t know why.’

Ian McCusker mass communication graduate student

‘My dad was a police officer so he was stuck there. He had to get a boat to get out of the house. We stayed with my aunt and she had rats. It was awful because where we were nobody liked us. They wanted to fight my brother just because we were evacuees from Katrina. We found my dad living on a cruise ship and ended up staying in there for Rita and Gustav.’

Jaelyn Jones

biology frshman