The night before Hurricane Katrina touched ground, photographer Kathy Anderson packed up her two daughters, then ages eight and nine, and put the family’s storm plan in motion.
Anderson and her husband, Doug Parker, both worked at The Times-Picayune newspaper and had agreed they would ride out a major storm with their girls, Olivia and Alyssa, at their employer’s sturdy, three-story concrete and steel building. It had a cafeteria and backup generator, so the girls would be comfortable and safe while their parents worked.
But what Anderson thought would be one or two nights away from home turned into many months of the most unimaginable ordeal. Anderson spent exhausting days and nights photographing the hurricane’s devastating impact and faced many tough decisions.
“Over the next several months, I would learn a lesson about the strength of family, the capacity of my children, and the kindness of strangers,” Anderson said.
Anderson saw for herself the first signs of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation when she made her way to the top of the newspaper building before dawn on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005, one day after the storm hit.
“I climbed up the dark spiral staircase and through a hatch to the top of the newspaper building tower while my daughters slept under the desk of society writer Nell Nolan,” Anderson wrote in a 2006 piece, reflecting on the storm. “Frame by frame, I witnessed the city drowning.”
Anderson offered the story she wrote as her most vivid recollections of her experience covering Hurricane Katrina. She described returning from the top of the building to an empty newsroom. The publisher had ordered an evacuation and those who had stayed overnight would be transported to Baton Rouge in the newspaper’s large delivery trucks.
Anderson landed in a separate truck from her children for the “so very hot eight-hour journey” from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, a drive that usually takes just an hour. She later learned that everyone on her family’s bus sang “Happy Birthday” to Alyssa, who turned 10 on Aug. 29, and now shares a birthday with Hurricane Katrina.
In Baton Rouge, Bill Feig, then a photographer for The Advocate newspaper, and his family took in Anderson and her family for a few days. Anderson commuted back and forth to New Orleans to work.
“When I drove back into New Orleans in a Humvee with the Army National Guard, my children were having French braids put in their hair by Feig’s college student daughters,” she wrote.
Throughout the chaos, one constant remained on Anderson’s mind: her family. After arriving in Baton Rouge, Anderson talked to her father, who told her that Hurricane Katrina would be her biggest story yet. So, she and Parker agreed to send their daughters to Wisconsin to stay temporarily with one of her sisters.
Anderson’s oldest sister, Julie, then flew to Baton Rouge and took the girls to Wisconsin. Anderson and Parker signed paperwork at the airport for Anderson’s younger sister, Laurie, to assume temporary guardianship of the children. At 8, Olivia didn’t fully understand what was happening — Anderson recalls watching her daughter skip happily through the airport terminal.
Now 27, Olivia said she remembers just feeling the weight of everything unfolding around her.
“I relied heavily on my sister,” Olivia said. “I was already the annoying little sister that followed her around, but in Wisconsin it felt like we were a team … I took all my cues from her about my opinions on our new home, how to act and who I was close with.”
The girls started school in Wisconsin and stayed connected to their parents through regular phone calls, emails and occasional visits.
“My parents let us make our own email addresses so we could talk to them, which I remember being a really big deal for us,” Olivia said.
The sisters experienced their first Wisconsin winter, and their teachers planned special projects about New Orleans.
“We got really close with my Aunt Laurie, who was and still is a saint, and hated disappointing my Uncle Mike when we didn’t finish our chores,” Olivia said. “We fought and played with our cousins, like siblings, but there was always a presence of otherness. We knew something really bad was happening.”
Many times, Anderson considered dropping everything to be with her girls, even if that meant quitting the job she had loved for more than two decades by then. In those times, Anderson’s family reassured her that both girls were thriving, making straight A’s, playing soccer on the school team and enjoying time with their cousins.
Anderson pushed through and kept working, constantly relocating, sleeping on couches close to the city — and once in a rental car parked outside the Belle Chasse Naval Base. Phones worked only sporadically, making communication difficult at times for work or when Anderson just wanted to hear her girls’ voices.
Eventually, Anderson and Parker moved back into their New Orleans house without electricity or gas. Then, on Jan. 15, 2006, the couple flew to Wisconsin to pick up their daughters. New Orleans was just beginning to recover, so the parents second guessed their decision. They were just ready for their family to be whole again.
“When we finally pulled onto our block, three of the neighborhood children that had returned from Virginia and Houston stood with ‘Welcome Home’ signs,” Anderson wrote. “They ran alongside the car screaming like maniacs until we pulled into the driveway, where doors were opened to hugs. A giggling gaggle of girls remained in the backyard the rest of the day.”
Anderson and Parker drove their daughters around the city to see the hurricane’s aftermath. The girls helped neighbors clean out their homes.
“It was my first true understanding of the importance of community,” Olivia recalled.
As spring rolled around, Anderson noticed that she was struggling with her memory — small, mundane things at first, like misplaced items and skipped appointments, until it became more. Therapy helped her work through what was identified as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms.
“I always joke that my mom made it harder to get over because she spent several months editing a slideshow of her Katrina pictures to the tune of ‘Angel’ by Sarah McLachlan, which people already associated with sad puppies in an SPCA commercial,” Olivia said.
But the storm helped Olivia appreciate her parents even more.
“The truth is, Katrina also revealed to me how badass my parents are,” she said. “They sacrificed so much and made such a deep impact in our city.”
Today, Olivia is the director of programming for Rebuilding Together New Orleans, which provides critical home repairs to low-income homeowners. “My entire career is focused on making our community more resilient, and the process of rebuilding less lonely,” Olivia said.
In 2010, Anderson, now 67 years old, started her own business, Kathy Anderson Photography, specializing in commercial, portrait and wedding photography. Parker works as a commercial photographer with her.
“I often wonder if living through that experience and witnessing such resilience helped give me the courage to start my own business,” Anderson said.
She knows for sure she learned some lessons. “It taught me not to stress over the small stuff, to be resourceful in difficult situations, and to truly value the support of my family, friends and colleagues.”
