Hurricane Katrina tore into the Gulf Coast and the hearts and minds of the entire nation.
The name
Katrina
will soon take its rightful place alongside other mournful moments in this country's history: the Chicago Fire, Pearl Harbor, 9.11.
For a few early autumn weeks, Americans stared at their television screens in stomach-churning disbelief. Katrina had ripped into the Gulf Coast with ***image2***near-200-mph winds, but it wasn't just the storm that cowed those who watched her landfall and whirling swath of devastation. Katrina's torrential gusts also blew the veil off a hellish world most Americans knew existed but had never seen: a world of furious poverty-black poverty-slipped conveniently behind the cobbled "rues" of the French Market, festering among the thick marshes and bloodthirsty mosquitoes of New Orleans' back alleys and bayous.
This was a time, an event, a story that transcended demographics, political parties, blue and red states. In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson deployed a contingent of 371 National Guard soldiers, as well as teams of urban rescue workers, local doctors and nurses, all of whom spread out along the Gulf Coast.
The beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Team activated a crack team of 22 New Mexico forest fire fighters, who set up shop in the sleepy Louisiana town of Pineville to help co-ordinate truckloads of relief supplies.
Locals like David Luckey of Santa Fe and Irene Tohtsoni of Picuris Pueblo traveled to Baton Rouge on their own to volunteer at the River Center, jam-packed with New Orleans residents who'd lost their homes and fled north in Katrina's wake [Cover story, Sept. 14:
].
A 25-man convoy of New Mexico State Police officers also was in the area, first conducting search and evacuation missions in New Orleans proper before helping Baton Rouge police officers patrol the streets of that city. But after just two days-Sept. 9 and 10-State Police Major Daniel Lopez pulled his team out of joint patrol operations after some of his men complained about local police [Outtakes, Oct. 26:
].
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According to New Mexico State Police, Baton Rouge cops smacked around suspects in handcuffs, tased innocent bystanders and tore up personal property for no reason. The complaint New Mexico authorities filed with Baton Rouge authorities caused a firestorm: The Baton Rouge Police launched its own internal investigation (still ongoing), the NAACP's Baton Rouge chapter convened a community meeting on police brutality and Louisiana press ate it all up. New Mexico State Police also decided to write up a report for the US Dept. of Justice [Outtakes, Nov. 30:
].
"I only hope law enforcement takes a close look at their officers with the same pride New Mexico State Police do. We expect, at a minimum, that every citizen is treated fairly," says New Mexico Department of Public Safety Spokesman Peter Olson.
Back home, New Mexico absorbed 1,141 evacuees-93 brought by FEMA; the rest came of their own volition.
"It hasn't been since some of the planning for the Cold War that we've even thought about moving mass populations around in this country," Tim Manning, director of the New Mexico Office of Homeland Security, which helped co-ordinate statewide relief efforts, says. "We were basically doing this in the middle of the night. New Mexico should be real proud. It was just amazing to see all of the cities and counties and communities go so far above and beyond to support this effort."
The fallout from Katrina also affected New Mexico in other ways. In the face of skyrocketing gas and heating prices, the state Legislature convened a special week-long session Oct. 6. A bill sponsored by House Speaker Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, granted $106 million in rebates; checks from $64 to $289 already have been sent out to many New Mexicans. A separate bill provided low-income New Mexicans financial assistance to help pay fuel bills.
***image1***Expect more of the same from the Legislature during the 2006 session. Lujan says there will be a few bills proposing more tax relief for low-income New Mexicans hit by high gas costs as well as beefed up incentives for industries to utilize and develop alternative forms of energy in New Mexico. "We have this unfortunate dependence on oil and gas," Lujan says. "Here in New Mexico, though, we have a lot of sunshine and wind so we feel it's important to be a leader in alternative energy."
Expect Katrina-both its powerful economic impact and deep-rooted social reverberations-to stay with us forever.
