We are home after 11 days covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
It’s strange to be back in Tampa with plentiful gas, electricity and cellular phone reception.
I was in a local CVS an hour after we dumped off the rental cars and ditched our rented recreational vehicle.
The normalcy was bizarre, even strangely comical.
Cold soda.
Ice cream.
Frozen dinners.
Why not?
Humor is an important part of covering a hurricane. It’s a release valve for the grizzly things we see and horrific stories we hear.
Photographer Crystal Lauderdale and I had stopped at an intersection in Long Beach, Miss., when saw a kid scream around the corner on a tiny motorcycle and wipe out. Lauderdale and I immediately erupted in laughter at the hilarity of surviving the most deadly hurricane in U.S. history only to crash while horsing around on a motorcycle.
We felt bad about laughing it until we saw the occupants of another car at the intersection doing the same thing.
The kid was fine. He got up, shook his head a few times and sped off.
On our last day in Louisiana we met up with my good friend Ethan Hyman, a photographer with the Raleigh News and Observer. He was covering the story with a reporter who was born and raised outside New Orleans.
The reporter, Ben Niolet, told us about going to see his home after being in the city a few days.
His mother told him a giant tree fell and crashed into his childhood bedroom.
He opened the door to the bedroom and saw the limb had caused his entire room to be blanketed in soggy pink insulation.
“It looked like my room was covered in cotton candy,” Niolet said. “I just broke out laughing.”
I am sure it was rather strange for Niolet’s parents to see their son laughing at what I am sure was pretty traumatic damage for them.
But it couldn’t compare to the tales of heartbreak he saw in the city, like the grim sight of seeing several bloated bodies floating in the coffee-colored water. How could his damaged bedroom compare to being at the scene were authorities found 20 bodies strapped together around a tree?
In that context, a little insulation in your old bedroom is pretty funny.