Remembering Hurricane Katrina 18 years later
Today we remember one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history on the 18th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
“It was heartbreaking to see it like that.” This is how Brother Eduardo describes living through Hurricane Katrina. Today marks 18 years since the natural disaster battered the Gulf Coast.
Several brave individuals at St. Stanislaus College stayed with students who were unable to evacuate and rode out Hurricane Katrina.
Brother Eduardo has been a teacher at St. Stanislaus for decades and he filmed the worst moments of the storm. “It was an unbeatable experience. Things I never want to experience again. Very powerful winds, the water, especially the water. When I took the video of the thing the water on Bookter Street kept getting higher and higher.”
Like many places on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, St. Stanislaus is no stranger to hurricane encounters. The school was almost completely rebuilt after Hurricane Camille.
Now the school sustained millions of dollars in damage after Hurricane Katrina, but some of the brothers at St. Stanislaus says the damage hit a little closer to home. “My family has a house that was right across the street from the school and it was completely caved in. I was here when my relatives came to look at it and they were all crying. It was really hard to see.”
Brother Eduardo’s family home and many of the locations in his video have been reconstructed. Life after Hurricane Katrina was a season of loss and resilience.
