Times-Picayune photographer reflects on how Hurricane Katrina changed his life

On Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005, photographer John McCusker joined colleagues at The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans to wait out Hurricane Katrina. They had volunteered to cover the storm, and many brought family members along. 

McCusker and his wife, Johanna, a reporter, huddled with their 16-year-old son in sleeping bags on the floor. The winds picked up outside, screeching like a baby in distress. But everyone stayed calm, talking about food, playing games and making music. McCusker strummed his 1979 Stratocaster guitar.

For McCusker, this would be the last night of peace for a long time. Hurricane Katrina would bring unprecedented destruction to the hometown he loved and it would break him in unexpected ways.     

“The best way to end up putting yourself in a bad place as a journalist, particularly covering trauma, is to think that you’re impervious to it,” McCusker said. “And I think that’s what happened to me.”

McCusker and a colleague were among the first journalists to venture into the misty, overcast morning on Aug. 29 after Hurricane Katrina’s winds subsided. They rode downtown in his truck, past buildings with glass gone and houses with hanging rooftops. 

“That’s something we usually don’t see, all the glass buildings and everything shattered downtown,” McCusker said.

Later that Monday afternoon, McCusker traveled back downtown, and there was nothing but water as far as he could see. At the newsroom that evening, two of his colleagues confirmed that they had seen a neighborhood near the lake was under 12 feet of water, indicating a compromised levee system. Things were getting worse.

“We went to bed that night knowing that our home was probably gone, our pets were probably dead, and a whole lot of our city was never going to be the same,” McCusker said.

The next morning, a Tuesday, the newspaper’s editor and publisher decided to evacuate the staff and their families out of town to higher ground. The water was rising too high and resources, like food and water, were getting low. The newsroom emptied quickly as people loaded into the backs of the newspaper’s big delivery trucks.

McCusker’s wife and son got on one, and McCusker ended up on another. The long, slow caravan snaked its way out of the city. During that journey, McCusker and nine others commiserated and made a stunning decision — they could not leave as the biggest story of their lives unfolded. Certain only that the worst was yet to come, they turned back toward New Orleans. 

“All I can do is make a picture, and hopefully it gets out,” McCusker explained. “That was the only act of faith we had. That was all we could do.”

McCusker had only a couple of camera bags and a change of clothes. Together, the ragtag crew had just a few flasks of water, not even a day’s worth, and no food. They stopped at a nearby Walmart, but it was being looted. McCusker grabbed his camera and walked inside.  

“It was like an ant hill that had been stepped on,” McCusker described. “Except they’re walking out with television sets and stereos.”

A police officer demanded their press badges. Investigative reporter Michael Perlstein, who was part of the group, recalled seeing the same officers with baskets of electronics. 

“It was disconcerting to see that lawlessness, especially by cops,” Perlstein added.

Meanwhile, Terri Troncale, the paper’s editorial page editor, offered her Uptown apartment as a makeshift office for her colleagues. Her area of town was not yet flooded, and she had some non-perishable food in her pantry. 

“I can’t remember who all ended up at my house that afternoon,” Troncale recalled with a laugh. “But people just went to work.”

Without electricity, the team resorted to the basics. Troncale scrounged up notepads, pens and pencils for reporters to write their stories longhand. Neighbors across the street had a working phone and allowed the journalists to use it to contact their bosses, who had set up makeshift newsrooms in Baton Rouge and Houma.

Later that evening, they heard that the entire city might flood, and so McCusker volunteered his mom’s house on higher ground on the west bank. She had evacuated but he found a way inside. 

Finally, on Friday, after three days of separation, McCusker was able to reach his wife and learned she and their son were staying in Zachary, about one and a half hours from New Orleans, just outside Baton Rouge. When McCusker made it there, Johanna was pacing back and forth, muttering words that were not understandable. McCusker arranged for her and their son to join their two daughters in Birmingham, Alabama. 

“This is the woman who had always kept my balloon tethered, so to speak,” McCusker explained. “To see her in that way was just one more thing that wasn’t right anymore.”

McCusker didn’t know what else to do but get back to work. While in an airplane capturing aerial shots of the city, he spotted his house. The playhouse he’d built for his kids had floated across the backyard. 

“We never had a chance,” McCusker said. “The water in our house, from what I could see in the plane, was up to almost the gutters.”

Over the next year, storm coverage was never ending, and McCusker found himself “living in people’s misery and your own misery every single day.”

Johanna and the kids stayed in Alabama, and despite McCusker’s regular visits, the distance took a toll on his marriage. When the newspapers’ editors summoned workers back to the office, he begged his wife to return and hoped for a triumphant reunion. She refused and lost her job. 

Then, one day in August 2006, it all became too much. McCusker remembers only waking up in jail, in restraints, with no idea how he got there. He said he was taking medication that left him in a “non-waking” state. A newspaper report says he was driving recklessly and got in an altercation with a police officer and begged the officer to shoot him.

“It’s the most famous thing I ever did, and I don’t remember any of it,” McCusker said.

McCusker spent a week in a psychiatric inpatient facility and eventually entered an Alford Plea, accepting a sentence without admitting guilt. 

“When you think, ‘Oh, I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost my house, I’ve lost my wife…’ No, you haven’t lost everything because now you’re in jail,” McCusker said. “Now your life is a complete disaster.”

For the next three years, McCusker and his family rebuilt their home and tried to rebuild their lives. Then, in March 2010, Johanna, his wife, died of complications from a brain aneurysm. 

“I’ll still wake up sometimes, half awake, and instinctively reach over,” McCusker said. “That never goes away.”

Now 62, McCusker lives alone in the city and writes a weekly column for The Times-Picayune. He also has written books about the culture and history of New Orleans. He’s learned to let go of the things he can’t change, but he still carries a photo of him and the coworkers who stayed in the city at its worst moment. 

“I keep that picture there to remind me to keep my head and make good decisions,” he said.