Opinion: In Remembering Katrina, Don't Forget Rita

(Aug. 28) -- A few nights ago, courtesy of our local PBS station, I spent three hours reliving the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My evening began with "Frontline: Law & Disorder," a harrowing look at post-Katrina police corruption in New Orleans. With relief, I moved on to "Still Waiting," a poignant but unsettling portrait of a large, extended Creole family trying to return home to St. Bernard Parish.

As a reporter on NPR's "Fresh Air" observed earlier in the week, television is the ideal medium for remembering Katrina, since it provided the first and most indelible impressions of the hurricane's devastation.

My recent marathon plunged me back into that terrible weekend five years ago, with Katrina looming on the television screen. From the safety of our home near San Francisco, my husband and I watched the nightmare vision unfold. I grieved for New Orleans, now underwater, and for her suffering people -- and for a piece of my own past. Fifteen years earlier, on my first visit to that strange and beautiful city, I had fallen in love with Cajun and Creole music. That trip to Louisiana -- the first of many -- altered the course of my life.

We had house guests that weekend, and for them, the threat posed by Katrina was far more immediate. Our visiting friends -- a Cajun accordion builder and his wife, plus two young men who played in a touring Cajun band -- all lived in southwest Louisiana and east Texas. Even though their homes were a hundred miles or more from New Orleans, they feared for their family and friends.

Thankfully, our house guests all returned to communities that had been relatively untouched by Katrina. Most of the people we knew in Louisiana had also fared well. My husband and I took some comfort in that.

From a distance, we tried to help. We offered housing to a Katrina evacuee. I volunteered the services of our Cajun-Creole band at local fundraisers.

The reprieve didn't last long. Three weeks later, in a devastating one-two punch, Hurricane Rita shattered the Gulf Coast once again.

Now, five years later, Rita has become Katrina's overlooked sister. She is the storm everyone seems to forget.

Rita was slow to gather strength, but it eventually became a Category 5 storm. In intensity, it surpassed Katrina. Rita ranks as the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.

As Rita approached, Mayor Ray Nagin canceled the planned reopening of New Orleans and ordered another evacuation. Once again, water began to rise over the tops of the levees.

In Texas, there were mandatory evacuations. Three million people left Houston and the nearby coastal areas and headed north. It was the largest two-day evacuation in U.S. history -- and it undoubtedly saved many lives.

The hurricane turned west and south. On Sept. 24, Rita finally came ashore on the Louisiana-Texas border. The eye of the storm passed directly over the area around Beaumont, Texas, a place we had visited during our most recent trip south. It was home to two of our musician friends, including the accordion maker who had stayed with us three weeks earlier.

That evening, our band played for a hurricane benefit, which I renamed a Katrina-Rita fundraiser. It felt surreal. How could this be happening -- again? I looked at the accordion I held in my hands. I kept thinking about the man who had made it -- our Beaumont friend. I had been trying to reach him all day. Only later would I receive word: He and his family had evacuated ahead of the storm and were safe with relatives in Louisiana.

More than a hundred people lost their lives during Rita and its aftermath. Many small coastal communities in Louisiana -- Cameron, Holly Beach, and Hackberry -- were destroyed. The area still hasn't recovered.

Yes, Rita caused less devastation than Katrina. But it wasn't just a postscript. It shouldn't be forgotten.

Blair Kilpatrick is the author of the music memoir "Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music" and the accordionist/vocalist in the Cajun-Creole band Sauce Piquante. Read her blog on Red Room.