Dispatches From the Edge_ A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival - Anderson Cooper [71]
I HEAD TO TEXAS, for Hurricane Rita, and when I come back to New Orleans, I notice a change. I see the number of TV stories about Katrina start to lessen. I can feel the viewers’ interest ebbing. As the floodwaters drop, the tide is slowly turning. It’s the fourth week since the storm, and I suppose it’s inevitable, but when it happens it still comes as a shock: Each morning we ask ourselves, “What can we do that’s new? What haven’t we seen?”
“We haven’t seen enough,” is all I can answer. My mind is racing; at times I feel manic. My thoughts jump from one to another: make sure the audio in the cop interview I just did is usable; cancel this month’s appointments; call Mom; check on the dog; track down names of wounded police officers. The list scrolls endlessly in my head.
I don’t want to go back to New York, to my job, to the way it used to be. Stories about missing coeds in Aruba and runaway brides, stories that titillate but aren’t as important. I talk to friends on the phone but don’t have much to say. I want to yell at them, “Don’t move on! Don’t go back to your normal life, get caught up in the petty falseness you see on TV!” It’s the same feeling I had weeks after my brother died. I was back at school, and everyone else seemed to have forgotten.
Martha Stewart has a new TV show starting. I see her picture in USA Today. I take it as an omen, a sign that the country has moved on. In the French Quarter a broken newspaper machine still holds the last edition of USA Today to hit the stands before Katrina hit. Martha Stewart’s smiling face is on the front page. We’re back to where we were before the storm. I’ve started to believe in signs and magical thinking. If I tie my shoes in the next ten seconds, people will still care about the story. If I make it through this intersection without having to slow down, I can stay here another week.
I REALIZE I’VE been dehumanizing the dead, calling them “corpses” or “bodies.” I should be ashamed of myself. They’re our neighbors, our countrymen. They’re people, and they deserve better care. I can’t understand why it’s taking so long to retrieve them. FEMA announces that when they start to collect the people who have died, they won’t allow us to videotape it. They say it’s to preserve the dignity of the dead. I don’t believe what they say anymore. I’m convinced that they want to cover up the horror of what’s happened. If they were so concerned with dignity, they would not have tied the bodies of storm victims to stop signs so they wouldn’t float away; they would not have let them lie out for so long uncollected, uncared for. We are not going to take pictures of storm victims’ faces. We are not going to be responsible for someone seeing a loved one’s body on TV. But America should see the conditions our countrymen have been left out in. If anything, covering up what really happened to them is what will deny them their dignity. CNN decides to sue to be allowed to videotape the body recoveries, and the case is settled. We are allowed to videotape, but when the recoveries actually begin, emergency workers on the ground often make it difficult for us to get a picture. They position their vehicles to block the shots.
“ALL I CAN SAY is there better be an independent investigation,” a police officer says to me on a street in the French Quarter. I’ve never met him before, but he clearly wants to talk about what he’s seen. It’s past midnight, and he’s been waiting for half an hour for me to finish my broadcast.
“They’re hoping people will forget,” he says, looking around to make sure no one sees him talking to me. “Honestly, I’ve forgotten things