Despite the danger, the misery, and the sheer scale of destruction, I look back on Hurricane Katrina with an odd sense of fondness. Not for what it did—but for what we did. The camaraderie, the improvisation, the resilience... it was a kind of satisfaction only found in surviving something that had no script.

We knew a major storm was coming. But knowing didn’t help. Nothing could have prepared the city for what Katrina became. It was unprecedented. The only playbook we had was gut instinct, duct tape, and the commitment to figure it out one disaster at a time.

The Storm Plan (That Got Torn to Shreds)

I was still assigned to the Sixth District, and like everyone else who’d worked hurricanes before, I knew the drill: if you’re working when it hits, you hunker down. If you’re off, you find your way in before it gets bad or you’re stuck.

My plan was twofold: prep my house on Dublin Street, then stay at my in-laws' place on Jackson Avenue—closer to the station, easier to get to work when the city inevitably turned into a swamp. I boarded up windows and made the hard choice about what I couldn’t live without. It came down to photos of my daughter Bridget’s early years. They were on my computer—this prehistoric tank of a desktop—so I pulled the hard drives and took them with me.

I decided to hole up at the Carol, a condo tower at Jackson and St. Charles.  My in-laws lived there and they and everyone else was out of town, so I took the keys and went to the top. A glass-walled palace, perfect for admiring the view… and perfect for watching death come from the sky. 

As the storm hit, the wind pushed so hard the windows pulsated. I kept expecting them to blow in or for the building to snap like a toothpick. It didn’t. But the fear didn’t pass as fast as the storm. When the skies cleared, the city was unrecognizable.

Trees blocked everything. Even military vehicles couldn’t pass. Sgt. Manuel Curry, a legend with over 50 years on the job, was out on St. Charles manually dragging limbs off the road.  This man had joined NOPD after WWII—and here he was, in a hurricane’s wake, moving trees like it was just another Tuesday. I helped him, then lost sight of him in the madness.

Word spread of a levee breach. Captain Tony Canatella called an emergency meeting. Panic ran high. Rumors flew. People said the Sixth District station would be underwater in hours. No one knew what was true. So we did what we could: evacuated everything to the Westbank. My wife and daughter had already made it to Baton Rouge. I had one job: do my job.  

Wal-Mart Headquarters (and Hellish Produce)

We slept in a church with National Guard soldiers. Pew-as-pillow setup. Communications were toast—no phones, and radios worked like a Magic 8 Ball: sometimes accurate, mostly frustrating. Motorcycle officers became our carrier pigeons, zipping across the city for recon.

When we returned, the station was inaccessible. The water had moved in. Our new HQ became the Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas, right by the river and mercifully dry. Inside was a looted mess. Produce had gone full horror show. The smell? Unforgettable. The book section, however, was untouched. Every single book, pristine. We found this hysterical.

Wal-Mart corporate gave us permission to take what we needed. Tarps. Grills. Utensils. Someone built a makeshift kitchen in the breezeway. Cops who could cook took charge. I remember Kristen Krzymenecki and Sabrina Richardson, but many others pitched in. We became a strange little community. People began arriving from other districts—those who couldn’t reach their assignments. Others didn’t show up at all. Everyone had their reasons. We dealt with that later. No blame.  

Paul Accardo

One of the officers who showed up was Paul Accardo, from Public Affairs. He wasn’t in contact with his unit, so he stayed with us. We were sitting around the 110-degree parking lot when Paul casually took a pill.

“What’s that?” someone asked. “Prozac.” Laughter followed. "I didn't know you were crazy!"  Dark humor—the lifeblood of any cop.

A day later, Paul killed himself. He hadn’t been able to reach his family. Someone told him “they’re gone,” meaning they’d evacuated. He thought they were dead. Paul was kind. A gentle soul in a brutal business. We all miss him.  

Building a City Out of a Parking Lot

A gas truck arrived with a pump attached.  Everyone from all around the city came there to get their fuel.  A mobile cell tower arrived a few days in, too.  People could finally reach their loved ones.

Early on a very large construction machine was located near Walmart and officers used it to clear streets of debris, trees and other vehicles. The first path cleared was one to the hospital. This was super smart. Officers began daily treks to flooded areas to load up into boats for rescue efforts. On the way to rescue people, officers stopped by their own homes to find devastation and total loss. They were all very strong, held tight, and kept going heroically saving people day by day as long as daylight would allow. Night was dark. Darker than I’ve ever seen. The rest of us were in charge of anti-looting in the non-flooded areas.

Sgt. Ron Dassel is a really smart guy. He had lots of ideas and we used most of them. One genius idea was changing the way we did our 12 hour shifts. Most were on 7A – 7P – 7A. Day watch on 7A – 7P had daylight their whole shift and no time to tend to personal matters while night watch from 7P – 7A worked in complete darkness their whole shift but had all day to tend to personal matters. Ron suggested a Noon to Midnight shift. Genius. We did it and everyone shared darkness and the ability to tend to their ruined houses and lives while not at work.

I got my first ever text message during Katrina. It was from my family who had evacuated to Bunkie, Louisiana. It surprised me to see words on my phone screen, which was a VERY tiny Nokia. I fiddled around with it and figured out the T9 method of typing messages. I’m guessing many people reading this have no idea what that is. Google it, or use whatever method is in use now to look stuff up.

Some time during all of this I was riding around with Kenny Miestchovich and Ron Dassel when we saw someone pulling on a door in the Warehouse District. We drove near to investigate only to realize this super attractive young woman was the “perpetrator”. Her name was Alex Aversenti. She lived in one of the buildings nearby and was trying to get into her gym. Not only was this the first and only civilian we had seen in a long time, well the first one not looting a Walgreens or somewhere, but it was a hot chick. Everyone else was cops from around the country and military folks. Later, after it was all over, I remained friends with her, seeing her occasionally at Jazz Fest and other places.

Other stuff Help came from everywhere. Box trucks with clothes in them arrived. Socks, underwear, all kinds of stuff. Also, toiletries and other necessities. Food came in soon after. A Sheriff or two sent big BBQ trailers down and cooked for us. Other agencies and non-profits and just plain ole citizens sent food for us. It was really touching to see how the county came to our aid.

After a while this doctor showed up at Wal-Mart. He either arrived in a hearse transformed into an “Ambulance” or we had acquired this vehicle for him. He painted a huge red cross on it. Story is he wasn’t actually a doctor and he got run off pretty quickly afterward.

We had also acquired a limousine.We set it up as a suite for Sgt. Manuel Curry (the 50+ year veteran who was moving the tree on St. Charles) and Paul Ridolfo. This was off limits to everyone else.

We didn’t have a jail to bring anyone, including the looters. At first it was a catch and release program where we intended to get warrants for them at a later date. We never did to my knowledge. But after a while a jail had been set up at the Amtrak station powered by a locomotive. Somehow, they hooked up that train to the power on the building and this became our jail.

Gas Station MacGyver

Before the gas trucks arrived, we began to run low and had to get creative on where to obtain fuel. One officer had a plan, but he didn’t actually articulate what it was before we set it into action. We went to a gas station on Magazine and removed one of the fill holes in the ground for the tank underneath. A tube was sent down to the gas and the plan was to use a fish tank pump (maybe it was something a little more formidable) to pull the gas up. This was to be powered by a car battery. As the officer began this task we immediately stopped him when he started attaching the wires to the battery, sparking as he did it, DIRECTLY next to the open hole to a huge gas tank beneath the ground.

As luck would have it, a fire engine happened by at that exact moment. Agreeing that this was a very poor plan, they somehow hooked their fire engine up to the electric panel on the gas station and powered it on. Who knew they could do that? Firefighters are pretty clever.

At Wal-Mart, we tried to live, not just survive. We got haircuts and had a little fun too.   We started a message board for daily updates, inside jokes, and whatever sanity we could scrounge. I wish I had photos of all the messages from that board.

Slim Goodies was the first restaurant open. A girl named Kappa Horn owned it and we were in there every day. This was the first normal thing happening in a long time. It was there I ate my first and only ever order of Vegemite, provided by a cute Aussie girl.

The department required psychological exams. We went to Baton Rouge. Most of us got more out of it than we expected. Turns out, the mind can only take so much before it begs for a tune-up. Also in Baton Rouge, I realized my glasses were wrecked. I got a full exam and a new pair—for free—from a kind doctor whose name I wish I’d written down. Generosity like that stuck with me.

There was a great deal of private security, especially in the wealthy areas like the garden district. I had never heard of Blackwater before, but as we’d drive down pitch dark streets, occasionally a guy in all black fatigues would jump out with a rifle and night vision goggles. Everyone was on edge and it wasn’t good.

There was even an NOPD Headquarters rescue where boats were launched from the Broad Street overpass (The Barnes Memorial Overpass).  People were taken from HQ back to the overpass where they were transported to other locations.

There were fires everywhere.  All the time.  One time we were on the scene of a fire somewhere in the VERY lower Garden District.  FDNY was there with NOFD and the New York equipment didn't fit our hydrants.  Naturally, the firefighters figured it all out as they always do.  It was so amazing to see these people all working together from all over the place on a common goal.

Bodies

At the beginning we'd find a body, then another, then another.  We were leaving an officer with the bodies until we could get someone to pick them up.  But there was nobody to pick them up and also nowhere to bring them.  We finally had to abandon them and make note to come get them once that was figured out.

A Little Girl, a Plastic Doll, and the Whole Damn City

One image sticks with me more than most: a little girl, maybe the daughter of an officer, sitting in the Wal-Mart breezeway, quietly playing with a doll in the blistering heat.

She wasn’t crying.

She wasn’t complaining.

She was just… being a kid. In the middle of the worst disaster we’d ever seen. It was sweet. It was crushing. And somehow—it made me hopeful.