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Callaloo 29.4 (2007) 3101-3106

Louis Edwards
with Charles Henry Rowell

ROWELL: Did you remain in New Orleans during the hurricane?

EDWARDS: No, I did not. But I hadn't heard much about the storm until Saturday afternoon. I was in my car taking a ride to the grocery store, and a friend called and said, "Have you seen this thing?" and I said, "Well, no." We had heard it was just not going to really impact us prior to Saturday. That's what we were hearing. So when I got home and turned on the television, and I saw the satellite photos . . . my, oh my. Katrina had exploded into the Gulf of Mexico. It was a big red blob that had the potential of coming right for us. So I immediately made plans to evacuate. First, I thought I would try a flight to New York. I did make a reservation, but later during the day, as things started to deteriorate, and some flights were already being cancelled, I decided to get on the road to my mother's house, which is in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

ROWELL: And you drove there?

EDWARDS: I did. Very early Sunday morning, before the sun came up even, I was on the road picking up another friend, who lived in New Orleans East. We headed to my mom's house.

ROWELL: So where do you live in New Orleans?

EDWARDS: I live in the French Quarter.

ROWELL: Was there any damage done to your home?

EDWARDS: Nothing to speak of. There was some water that came in through a window. But nothing at all as far as flooding. The French Quarter, as you know, is now fully up and running. [End Page 1301]

ROWELL: When you look back on the whole experience of the hurricane, what do you think possessed you to leave? As you know, historically when hurricanes approach New Orleans, very few people leave the city.

EDWARDS: Right. Many people don't leave. We had a major evacuation a couple of years ago with hurricane Ivan and it was a horrendous experience. That was before we learned to implement what's called contra flow, where you turn all the lanes of an interstate in one direction, so that everyone can flow much more smoothly, which happened with Katrina. It was a very smooth evacuation, whereas with Ivan it took me thirty hours driving straight to get to Lake Charles, which is normally a three and a half hour drive.

It was excruciating and so much so that when it came time to leave for Katrina, I was hesitant. I think the Ivan evacuation scarred me, but Hurricane Katrina looked so powerful and appeared to have such a potential for devastation that even I, having had that previous horrible evacuation experience, decided I just had to go.

ROWELL: Of course, once you left the city and got near a television you saw what Katrina and the flooding was doing to the City of New Orleans. Do you recall some of your responses to what was happening in New Orleans? And when you returned to the city what did you think?

EDWARDS: I came back fairly early after two months of traveling. I want tell you a little about what happened over the months I was gone? I'll just abbreviate it.

As I said earlier, I wound up at my mother's house in Lake Charles, with not only one friend from New Orleans East but also with a very good friend, Denise Turbinton and her father Earl Turbinton, the great New Orleans jazz saxophonist. We were there at my mother's home for two weeks. We thought we'd be there for only two or three days. One of my friends wound up in Houston, where I stayed for a couple of days on my way to New York City. The company I work for, Festival Productions, was co-producing a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. So I was in New York for a couple of weeks, only...

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