Dispatches From the Edge_ A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival - Anderson Cooper [46]
At the height of Katrina, I’m holding on to the railing of a pier, surrounded by a whirling wall of white. Between live shots, my arms stretch out, my eyes close, I don’t care if anyone sees. The storm is a phantom, rearing, retreating, charging. It spins and slaps, pirouettes and punishes. I’m submerged in water, corseted by the air. I lean my shoulders into the wind, spread my legs so I don’t fall when the gust weakens. If I shift the wrong way, it will take me. I could just let it. I’ve felt the tug. A few more steps and I’d be gone. Crushed by the wall of water and wind. It’s that close. I can feel it.
It sounds a little crazy, perhaps, but you do get caught up in the challenge, trying to stay on air, trying to get as close as you can. During Hurricane Ivan, in 2004, I kept insisting on staying out longer and longer. We were on a balcony in Mobile, Alabama, a perfect spot to witness the storm. At one point, my producers tied a rope around my leg so they could pull me back if I got knocked down. Finally, they insisted we move inside. I reluctantly agreed.
In Baton Rouge, for a while I can’t see the camera lens because of the rain. It doesn’t really matter, though; I know what I’m supposed to say: “I am powerless in the face of the storm.” That’s what reporters always say. “The storm’s a reminder of how weak we humans really are.” Right now, however, at this moment, I don’t feel any of that. I feel invincible. The storm whips around me, flows through me. I am able to work, to stand, even when it’s at its worst. The satellite dish is up, we are on the air, we’re just about the only ones left. We have beaten the elements. We have won.
BY NOON THE worst of it is over. Katrina is moving on, heading toward Mississippi. I want nothing more to do with it. That’s the way it always is. The wind weakens, the adrenaline wanes, and my body shuts down. Face scrubbed raw, whipped for hours by the elements, eyes itching, I long for sleep, but have to stay up, look for survivors, locate the dead. We do a quick reconnaissance around Baton Rouge and see that the damage is limited. There’s no word on when the road into New Orleans will reopen, and I have to be on the air again in seven hours, so my producer, John Murgatroyd, and I decide to follow the storm as it heads east. We want to catch the tail end of it.
We leave the satellite truck, and head to Meridian, Mississippi, where we think the storm is going. We’re told that another satellite truck will meet us there. Wet, tired, we pile into the SUV, drive east, then north, constantly buffeted by dangerously high winds. The speedometer says we’re going a hundred miles per hour. I try not to check it all that much; we have to beat the storm.
Near Jackson, trees are down, roads are flooded. It’s raining so hard we can barely see where we are. We finally find the satellite truck, by a boarded-up gas station on the outskirts of Meridian. It’s not an ideal spot from which to broadcast, but we have no choice. We’re expected to go live in half an hour. It takes about twenty minutes for the engineer to set up, and when we finally connect to New York on the satellite, I can hear people in the control room nervously yelling, checking our audio levels, trying to fix some problems with the picture we are sending them. The minutes tick by. With thirty seconds to go, we’re still trying to make sure our transmission is working. Ten seconds before airtime I’m told we’re good to go.
We stay on the air for several hours, during which Katrina is downgraded to a tropical storm. By 10:00 P.M. we’re done. We’re almost out of fuel, but luckily CNN has gotten us reservations in nearby Philadelphia, Mississippi. Amazingly, a casino run by Choctaw Indians is still open for business.
During big storms most hotels shut their doors. Casinos, however, always try to stay open. They’ll do whatever it takes to keep the slots running and the cash coming in. When we arrive, a few elderly ladies, blue tint–washed hair, sit at the slots, pulling the levers, their eyes fixed on the flashing lights. When I