Six Degrees of Katrina

Author’s Note: Now 16 years later, I am finally publishing a story I wrote in 2006, shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Its message continues to resonate as so many of us and our loved ones currently experience natural disasters of all ilk.

My first introduction to the concept of the entire human population being connected by linking acquaintances with strangers was when I saw John Guare's stage play Six Degrees of Separation. According to Wikipedia, however, it was Hungarian writer Karinthy Frigyes, who first proposed the notion of linkage in her short story called Chains. 

As Americans continue to live through the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and, on its first anniversary, relive its horrors through documentaries, tributes, and interviews, it occurs to me that every human being could make a personal connection to the disaster. If we would just take the time to discover the links that separate us from those who experienced it firsthand.

My own connection begins with my daughter, Ariel, a full-time student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who needed to renew her passport. The student visa the United Kingdom issued to her further complicated the process but with nine weeks before her departure, there seemed to be plenty of time. She filled out the paperwork and paid for an overnight delivery of her application and old passport to the office assigned to the Nashville region. It was located in New Orleans.

One week before her scheduled flight, she mentioned that her passport had still not arrived. I checked the calendar and noted that even in the worst of bureaucratic times, six weeks turnaround was a normal expectation. It had now been eight weeks. I looked at the receipt from the overnight service she used and saw the New Orleans address printed on it. Instantly an image of a government office with five feet of standing water appeared in my mind. I saw desks jumbled in a pile, mangled in-baskets, papers of all kinds waterlogged beyond recognition, filing cabinets turned over with hundreds of file folders growing mold and mildew, and my daughter’s newly issued passport floating on the surface of the stagnant water. I imagined the woman who officially stamped it on the Friday before Katrina hit, placing it in her out-basket ready for mail pick-up on Monday morning. But, on Monday morning, that woman would be doing her best to pack up her family and find a way out of the city, her out-basket the furthest thing from her mind.

The National Passport Agency website instructions for those in need of an immediate passport were not encouraging. However, the site gave an emergency number for those with an urgent need. Ariel spent the next two days phoning the number and waiting for hours before then getting disconnected. She persevered, managing at last to get a real person on the phone. With only five days before her departure, she was instructed to fill out a new application and send the package overnight to the Miami office, making sure she wrote “Hurricane Katrina” in the reference area. She was promised that it would be processed within two days and sent back to her overnight. As we counted up the days and factored in a day or two extra, my mother unhelpfully insisted we call Senator Frist and demand his intervention. I willfully ignored her because I thought the very suggestion that he should care about this problem was ridiculous. Her persistence was finally rewarded with my hot-tempered response, “Mother. I am not going to call the Senator when he more than likely is inundated with calls from people in a panic about how they’re going to recover the corpses of family members.” I later felt terrible about the outburst although I never apologized.

In an effort to relieve some of our stress, I called the airline to explain the situation and asked about postponing Ariel’s flight. They gave us good news. Due to the circumstances, they would rebook her for no additional charge. Furthermore, if the passport still did not arrive in time, they would accommodate another rebooking as well. 

There turned out to be no need to rebook a second time because, contrary to what I initially imagined about the woman working in the New Orleans office, she had, per emergency office protocol, sent all her work to the Miami office. Upon receiving Ariel’s second application, the clerk in the Miami office was able to locate all the original paperwork. She finished processing it and sent it by two-day express. 

On the morning before Ariel’s rescheduled departure, our postman trotted up to our front door where he dutifully handed the National Passport Agency envelope to my relieved daughter. Thus completed the human links of our particular connection to Hurricane Katrina.

As we all participate in the remembrance of the event and witness the continued struggle of those who are still displaced, let us be aware that we are all connected in some way to each and every one of those individuals, unknown and unexplored though those connections might be.

Many people have recently been posting to be kind to one another. This is good advice as with just a bit of a scratch beneath any surface, we can find that we can link ourselves to each person on the planet.

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2006