It indeed looked like the end of the world when everyone was fleeing the city. It started Friday night, August 26, when I heard on my car radio that Katrina had entered the Gulf of Mexico and the hurricane model showed it heading towards New Orleans. It was far away and traveling very slow (seven miles per hour)—no need to worry now. Saturday brought concern because Katrina was growing in strength, and New Orleans was in its path. People were gassing up and leaving town. Saturday night the Mayor announced that the Governor told him that the weather service predicted that Katrina would do major damage and everyone should evacuate the City of New Orleans. The Mayor said that the Superdome would be the shelter of last resort.

Delta and United cancelled all of their flights out of New Orleans on Saturday.  My wife and I had previously made reservations to leave on a vacation, which was planned months in advance on an 11:45 a.m. U.S. Airways flight. My sons left on Saturday for Birmingham, Alabama to their grandmother's home. Sunday morning traffic was bumper to bumper to the airport and beyond. The parking garage was full but I managed to find a spot on the roof. The airport was packed with anxious travelers, some stranded by airlines that had cancelled flights and others who were hoping to push up their travel and leave on stand-by.

Our flight left at 11:45 a.m. Sunday morning. It was the second to the last flight out and it felt like leaving Rwanda. We were so relieved when the plane took off and our hearts went out to the people we left in that airport.

Sunday night, we learned that Katrina has been upgraded to a category 5 hurricane and it was barreling towards New Orleans with 175 miles on hour winds. We were afraid that this was the "big one" that we were vulnerable to. Our one hope was that the last few hurricanes that came our way turned East before landfall. Early Monday or late Sunday we learned that Katrina was downgraded to a Category 4 and that gave us some hope.

Monday morning, hurricane Katrina was televised live and in color on CNN and the other networks. We and millions of others witnessed the destruction of our beloved New Orleans. While it looked pretty bad, the worst was yet to come. Water is always a problem when a hurricane hits New Orleans because it pushes water out of the Gulf of Mexico up the Mississippi river into Lake Pontchartrain where it can flow over the levee as long feared. Will the water actually breach the levee in several places?

On Tuesday morning, the flooding was televised – live and in living color for the nation and the world. Eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded. "Oh God" and a couple of other words I won't repeat. "What have they done to us, our city, our businesses, our communities?  In the last big hurricane, Betsy in 1965, we suspected that the levees were breached intentionally to divert the flooding from the downtown to the lower ninth ward in the middle of the night where unsuspecting poor Black people were asleep. Was this one intentional???  The jury is still out, but there is no doubt that the Federal government, specifically the Corps of Engineers knew that our levees would not protect the City of New Orleans from a hurricane stronger than a category 3 storm. They built a levee system that would protect the city from a category 3 storm, but they would not build a levee system to protect us from a category 5 storm because that would be too expensive. Too expensive, we, the people of New Orleans, were not worth protecting. They did not want to spend the money to protect our city, our families, our businesses, our schools, or our churches. Eighty percent of the city was flooded with as much as 10 feet of water in some neighborhoods. The city was destroyed. Entire neighborhoods, thousands of homes have been destroyed; thousands of cars, thousands of lives, and thousands of careers have been destroyed.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been scattered around the nation, many of our employees are all over the south. The Federal government's response was totally inadequate. Every American ought to be ashamed of this. It was bad enough that the government allowed the city to be vulnerable, but the government showed the same benign neglect in providing assistance to the victims. It was like the Federal government and the president were on holiday and they would deal with the worst natural disaster in the history of America in due time. Did they not see the women, the children and the old people in waist-deep water screaming for help?  They expressed outrage toward the crimes committed by the looters, but there was no outrage towards the crime committed against our city.

Now the Federal government said they will spend billion of dollars in rebuilding the Gulf coast, including New Orleans. But, the people whose lives have been destroyed will get only a pittance because of inadequate or no flood insurance, and no homeowners insurance protection; because the homeowners insurance companies claim that the damage was done by the flooding which is not covered by the homeowners insurance. The flood insurance covers the flooding and the flood insurance coverage is substantially less than the homeowners coverage, because New Orleans is in a flood zone. So we the citizens of the City have irreparable damage while the "Fat Cats" like Halliburton will make a bonanza rebuilding another city devastated by our government.

Our city looked like a war zone. The degree to which the infrastructure crumbled is mind boggling, unimaginable, and unbelievable. One day we are living here engaging in the hustle and bustle trying to survive and succeed and now we are simply trying to survive. The city did not have drinkable water for five weeks. After six weeks, we have not been able to get back to our homes and when we do, we must wear protective gear because of the mildew and possibly toxic mold. The Post Office won't be back in full operation until April and Bellsouth said they do not have a date for the restoration of high speed internet service in our downtown New Orleans. Our schools are shut down, commerce dried-up,families separated, and communities in diaspora.

I can go on and on, but pictures are worth thousands of words, and we have some pictures in this issue and on our website: www.blackcollegian.com.

So, where do we go from here?  There is so much confusion, so much is out of order, and so much to do. It goes to show you how quickly life can change. I left home on a planned vacation and I returned to a destroyed city. Life can change on a moment's notice. It can be caused by a hurricane, an earthquake, an accident, a fire, a heart attack, a robbery, a plane crash, a terrorist attack …  We can't foresee nor control these things. Anything can happen to anyone at anytime. How do we prepare ourselves for these misfortunes?  How do we recover?  We have to understand that this is not the end of the world, but it is the end of the world as we knew it. What happened was the will of God, and he has protected us through all of this, and He has taken us to a new place, a new world, a new life, a new beginning. We must understand that we do not control these things, and we must move on trusting that God's will be done. We must surrender to His will and trust in Him. This is how we should live. This is how we should move forward. Katrina interrupted our plans for our 35th Anniversary Publishing Year and our First Semester Super Issue, but we are rising out of the rubble of New Orleans. We have seen a great deal of destruction and suffering. The little children have given us hope and the old people have given us determination. We will rebuild our beloved New Orleans, our homes, our business, our lives, and they will all be better. If you know what it means to love New Orleans, you know why we need to rebuild, and we will!

Preston J. Edwards, Sr.
Publisher & CEO