It’s still hard to think about because the emotions it stirs are a storm as well. The anger, the horror, the sadness and guilty relief whirl around my recollections at the eye of one of our nation’s worst national disasters.

Out here on the rim of Katrina’s crater, I was fortunate to be spared but unlucky enough to witness what the hurricane stirred from the souls of many around me.

Mobile is a scant two hours up the road from New Orleans. There’s a common heritage but the Crescent City is certainly the capital of the Creole Coast, our humid strip of quirky madness along America’s underbelly. It was never my home in fact, but in spirit, it fit the bill. Friends would frequently relocate to New Orleans and it was easy enough traipse down there, to get to know her from a resident’s perspective.

The Crescent City has been home to some of the best memories of my life, times spent in bohemian flats, galleries and restaurants, lolling on Uptown porches as parades flowed past, clubs and coffee shops, even one wild New Year’s Eve babysitting a coterie of friends tripping on LSD amidst the throngs at the Riverwalk and bumping into Robbie Robertson. Any place that cherishes music, art and food like they do there is dear.

I knew its wiles and also its warts and still the balance fell on the side of favor.

But we always knew how precarious it was. Mobile shared the same potential for destruction from the Gulf, but it’s never been as tenuous. Mobile is at least above sea level.

The wife and I evacuated in the face of oncoming storms before Katrina since my health issues make it a near necessity. Electricity for nebulizers and humidity-depleting air conditioners becomes vital and life in the wake of a storm can be a throwback to the early 20th/late 19th centuries. But as Katrina neared, our options disappeared. My widowed mother-in-law refused to evacuate, which emotionally hijacked my wife into remaining as well. Therefore, I was obligated.

I rode it out in a backroom at my mother-in-law’s house, me packed into the sultry darkness with our dog and two cats as my wife and her mother stayed up front. All I could do was nap to try and get past the heat and moisture and my labored breathing.

We discovered a battery-powered TV, watched what we could from local stations until dozing off from boredom. Every few hours, I would climb into our car parked out back and take a breathing treatment, hooking up the nebulizer to the cigarette lighter and basking in the sweet coolness of the air conditioner.

The storm faded but we were still without electricity for days. For us, it was merely a hassle. We soon found out what horrors it visited upon those further west.

In those hours of boredom, we watched reports from Mississippi and Louisiana, discovering the tragedy and destruction. We saw reporters talking to devastated people wandering shocked though the streets of Biloxi.

We were also mesmerized by the travesty that unfolded in New Orleans, the desperation of the unfortunate and the impotence of those who claimed to be prepared for large-scale disaster.

I took notes from those hours and for the days afterward, recording it for personal edification. Among the scribblings:

-When wondering how things broke down so quickly in NOLA, one only has to remember that some cops in New Orleans are little better than criminals themselves. The Crescent City has been rife with corruption for a while. It seems “reform” was the platform Ray Nagin was elected on and he made initial headway, creating enemies as soon as he got into office. 

-Biloxi experienced its share of looting on Wednesday night. Residents of better neighborhoods are readying themselves with firearms and signs that warn, “You loot. We Shoot.”

-Hattiesburg experienced looting. Nasty behavior erupted in gas lines with traffic cops having to halt violent behavior. A Hattiesburg man shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice.

-In Mobile, people broke out in fistfights while in gas lines. Others filled up their cars on one day only to discover the next morning it had been siphoned out in the night. One man almost started a riot as he let gas overflow from his tank while he obliviously chatted on his cell phone.

-In the city of Daphne in Baldwin County, a fast-growing White Flight region over the bay from Mobile, a shelter was setup in a neighborhood. Not long after the first group of evacuees arrived, a collection of residents began to call their neighbors, lobbying them to phone city hall and complain about the shelter. They described the arrivals as “scuzzy” and said they couldn’t “put people like that right in the middle of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Daphne.” Enough of the neighbors sympathized and called the city. The evacuees were relocated to another shelter 24 hours later.

-The Mobile media was all a-flutter about Pres. Bush arriving on Friday. Being limited to only Mobile-based local media, we could get no sense of what was brewing nationally in reaction to the disaster. The locals love ‘em some Bush.

But then again we’re talking about stations that put Baptist ministers on-air during their storm coverage to talk to people about keeping their faith in these times and turning to God for consolation.

-My Southern Baptist mother told me of a conversation with my grandmother. They agreed perhaps this was God “sweeping his hand on the (casino) boats and the whole New Orleans to cleanse it.”

I responded with abhorrence about “God killing people” and was met with “not killing people but wiping the area of mobs, gambling, prostitution, liquor, etc. Sodom and Gomorrah.”

-Is Katrina a boon to Big Oil? They can easily use it as an excuse to jack prices. They have already used it as an excuse to suspend regulations about fuel blends and shipping of oil.

And Jeb Bush, in a Thursday press conference kept hitting the phrase “no new refineries built in a generation.” I keep hearing this new mantra coming from the corporatists.

-I’ve seen and heard about middle and upper-middle class folks who can easily afford the expenditure getting reimbursed for their new generators by FEMA. Couldn’t that FEMA money be put to better use right now?

What makes it doubly frustrating is these are the same folks who vote conservatively based on things like “keeping their taxes low” and “reducing bureaucracy and government handouts.”

-Bush refers to Katrina as “worse than 9-11.” Does that mean he will now declare a War on Weather?

-I noticed Florida is sending their people and resources to Mississippi, not New Orleans. Does this mean they think NOLA is beyond help?

-Mobile officials say they are expecting an influx of 10,000 refugee students to the local school system. Now, there’s been tens of millions of dollars of damage done to buildings in the Mobile system, a system that continually ranks as one of the nation’s poorest and worst. So on top of that, they are going to throw more kids into the mix.

This might be the blow that does in the Mobile Public Schools once and for all, an end that powers-that-be and local culture has allowed to happen over the last half-century through apathy and withdrawal.

Mobile will finally get another Old South vestige back, a large, uneducated work force that will toil for next-to-nothing.

Maybe they’ll work on bringing back malaria next.

-The sheriff of Plaquemines Parish reportedly put 150 deputies at the parish border to repel “looters.” He said, “We’re not going to let happen here what’s happening in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes happen here.”

So how do they know what the looters look like? Did they get a bulletin?

Hmmm, how would they be able to tell…?

No one will ever be able to dissuade me. I believe the inadequate federal response was marred not only by incompetence, but by a lackadaisical approach laced with a desire to shatter one of the Deep South’s remaining Democratic strongholds in New Orleans.

Federal authorities had every warning the disaster would happen. A mock hurricane drill just a year previous foretold every aspect of it. Dr. Ivor van Heerden of LSU’s Hurricane Center expressly warned the Bush administration what was barreling up the Gulf and what was about to happen. None of it was acted upon.

Just a year before, I watched as Florida was strafed by a succession of storms and the response was immediate, coordinated and comprehensive. Why had things changed so much in a year?

After seeing what I have of the Bush years and their method of business, of implementing torture and using the Justice Department for political assassination, there’s little doubt in my mind they used Katrina as a political football.

If it all had to happen, if there was no way to avoid it, I wish it had been 12 months earlier. At least then, the tragedy would have served to rid us of the second term of George W. Bush.

In south Mobile County, the storm took its toll. The fishing village of Bayou La Batre was all but destroyed, its shrimping fleet wrecked. It was the last of a long death for an industry that has been hit hard by cheap shrimp imported from Asian farms.

Dauphin Island, a barrier island immediately off the coast and not far from Bayou La Batre, was decimated. Scores of vacation homes vanished beneath the waves. A gigantic oil rig was beached on its shores, driven 66 miles northward by the storm.

Property owners there have been raped by insurance ploys in the time since.

Also unsettling was the blame game that quickly unfolded from politicos. We all know about the Bush forces and their attempts to strong-arm Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the way they stuck her with the blame. It was also notable how former RNC Chair-turned-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour quickly trotted out lines about “the good hardworking people of Mississippi rolling up their sleeves” and his contrasts to those “waiting for help and handouts.” The racial underpinnings were obvious.

Some Mobilians quickly followed Barbour’s lead. While there was some sympathy expressed, a pattern quickly emerged. A great number of white folks focused on Mississippi and decried New Orleans. It was sickening.

Also repulsive was the excitement that began to emerge among some locals at the arrival of those relocating from points westward. The joy of booming population was everywhere.

They thought Mobile’s importance would suddenly be boosted. Often I heard “We’re the only major city left on the Gulf,” conveniently ignoring the detail that Houston-Galveston, Tampa-St. Pete, Baton Rouge and Sarasota still existed. Baton Rouge, in fact, had doubled in population since the storm.

I wasn’t surprised by the locals as there is historical precedent for the chip on Mobile’s shoulder regarding her little sister-grown-big. Mobile was founded more than a decade earlier than New Orleans and was the initial capital of French Louisiana. When focus shifted to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, Mobile was left behind, floundering as a third-rate frontier town until the Cotton Boom.

Talk of Mobile’s newly exalted position was everywhere. Even the periodical for which I work ran feature stories about how Katrina created a wonderful new future for Mobile. So what if it eradicated our neighbors? One such issue featured a cover shot of a smiling young woman holding a bowl brimming with cash, a satellite photo of Katrina churning behind her. I found it revolting.

When all was said and done, the vast majority of those who relocated chose to return home or just opted for places other than Mobile. The Alabama port town returned to its usual also-ran status.

What the storm washed up has yet to retreat. The racism it laid bare has intensified since the election of Barack Obama and the selfishness it revealed rises even more in the health care debates.

And all we can do is retrieve the flotsam of our shattered democratic ideals.