NEW ORLEANS — During our assignment in Lake Charles, as we drove around the city to survey the damage from Hurricane Laura, I thought to myself, "well, at least they don’t have the flooding like the Lower 9th Ward did, or had people stranded in the Superdome or the convention center."
When I thought that, I wondered if it’s healthy or even natural to constantly use Katrina as baseline for comparisons.
As New Orleans is about to observe 15 years since the storm, Burnell Cotlon says Katrina is almost a constant in his life.
“I live seven blocks from here and driving from house to hear, Katrina is still alive. Where houses used to be, now there’s debris, trash, overgrown weeds,” Cotlon said.
Cotlon and his wife run Burnell’s Lower 9th Ward Market. It’s an island in a food desert.
“This is it, you want to wash your clothes? You’re coming here. You want something to eat? You’re coming here. You want to get your haircut? You’re coming here. There’s nothing else around us,” Cotlon said.
Cotlon is among countless people in Southeast Louisiana with a Katrina story. We’re still here to tell them.
More than 1,800 people died because of the storm on Aug. 29, 2005 and the catastrophic floods, levee failures and failed response that followed. Then there was the loss of homes, businesses and even communities. Cotlon says to emerge from all of that, on one hand, made him stronger.
“I tell myself, if I can get through Katrina, I can get through this here, so that’s what keeps me going every day,” Cotlon said.
But on the other hand.
“I feel that it’s not good because I shouldn’t be thinking about something that happened fifteen years ago,” Cotlon said.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of whether it’s healthy or not, it’s a natural reaction, when something traumatic happens,” said Dr. Michelle Moore.
Moore is a clinical psychologist LSU Health New Orleans. Dr. Moore says time often provides perspective.
“I think that if you can reframe what those experiences are to you, that’s having gratitude. You have gratitude for having the ability to have things like water right now, to have electricity right now, you feel grateful for those things,” Dr. Moore said.
Cotlon says in a strange way, he found a different sense of purpose after the storm. His next mission in the Lower 9th Ward is to establish a non- profit to build affordable homes in his community. If he gets enough volunteers, he wants to call it “Building with Burnell.”
Katrina affected us in unique ways and perhaps with each passing year, we get a bit better at putting the storm in its proper place in our lives.
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