Indelible images of suffering

• Published in: Deseret news (Salt Lake City, Utah : 1964)
• Main Author: John L. Hart Deseret Morning News
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Salt Lake City, Utah Deseret Digital Media 17.09.2005
• ISSN: 0745-4724

During that two weeks I slept in my car, in LDS meetinghouses, in an evacuee's tent and on a cot at a bishop's storehouse. When I returned home, I was surprised at how soft my bed was. I drove more than 3,100 miles. I bought gas and drove into the damage zone, then returned to transmit photos and stories by connecting my computer to the hall phone in the Baton Rouge LDS stake meetinghouse. In the beach communities there is a powerful odor. The stench of death in the rubble is a troubling, lingering perception. As days passed it became worse. It is hard to get past those experiences. In Waveland, Miss., for example, I watched Maurice Stebben, a former Marine, dig out flags from the now-gone American Legion Hall and posted them on its bare foundation. He showed me around what used to be his town, speaking as matter-of-factly as a radio announcer. He untangled trash and rubble for a long time to get to those flags. He'd been helping the fire department remove bodies. The flags helped him make sense of his relationship to what had happened. Most of the media had zeroed in on New Orleans, which was largely inaccessible, so I crossed and criss-crossed Mississippi, where the worst wind damage had occurred. Most people had evacuated. It was eerie exploring damaged neighborhood after damaged neighborhood. "Looter shooter" signs were everywhere. I think it was [Katrina] they wanted to shoot, but you can't shoot a wind that has blown away any more than you can take it back and pretend it didn't happen. There was a whole ocean of silent and invisible suffering that you couldn't do anything about but which you respected by speaking low and acknowledging the pain in people's eyes.