Rainbows and Believers: Tales of Hope

After the great flood there was a rainbow...and the believers

Devastation

Welcome Home Cafe
New Orleans, LA

Arkansas
National Guard

New Waveland Cafe and Market
Waveland, MS

How To Help

Be Prepared

Links and Contact

About The Assignment

Home

I travelled from Pittsburgh, PA to New Orleans, LA to document the relief workers who were rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.

I became interested in this story after meeting hurricane survivors who had been relocated to Pittsburgh. Vincent Eirene asked me to come along with him on a trip down to the region. Vincent had met the people at the New Waveland Cafe on a trip he had made a month earlier. Alison Roth, a graduate student at Duquesne University, joined us.

I pitched the idea of the story to Marty Levine, the News Editor for Pittsburgh City Paper. He was interested, but could not go with us on the trip. I told him that I would collect audio as well as photographs. From there he would build the story. In gathering the interviews, I realized how much spirit was captured in the sound files. I wanted to make them available along with the photos as a documentation of this time so I built this site.

About the trip
Eirene, Roth and I flew in to the New Orleans Louis Armstrong Airport. From there we rented a car and drove to the Welcome Home Cafe in New Orleans 9th Ward. Communications were less than perfect in the area. We weren't sure where we would stay or what the conditions would be like. Throughout the trip navigation was difficult because so many road signs had been destroyed. Also, in the most hard-hit areas power was out. Traffic lights and street lights were not functioning.

We stayed two days in New Orleans sleeping in a tent in Washington Square Park at the Welcome Home Cafe. During that time we connected with the National Guard who toured us through the hardest hit areas including “The Forbidden Zone” where law enforcement keeps everyone out because it is dangerous.

We stayed the third night in Jackson, Mississippi and headed to the New Waveland Cafe and Market for the last two nights of our journey.

What I learned
Most of what I think is important could land in a twisted muddied mess on the roadside in a second.

People can be good and giving.

If someone needs help reach out--if I am ABLE to make the RESPONSE, then I am RESPONSE-ABLE. (Thanks Clovis.) Do not take the word of beaurocrats who turn help away because they do not know how to account for it.

Step up. Believe.