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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Thanks for joining us. For the past few weeks, we've been asking all of you, our listeners, to use your smartphones to record a few moments of your day and to share it with us, because we want to hear what your life sounds like. Well, this is what life sounds like the day after Hurricane Ida, when your family lives in New Orleans but made the choice to evacuate.

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Mother-in-law: We're at Jensen's house here in Cullman, Alabama.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is the voice of my mother-in-law, a fourth-generation New Orleanian. Now, she gave me permission to record our phone call on Monday. Ours was the conversation repeated, with slight variations, by tens of thousands of families on Monday when the raging winds of Category 4 Hurricane Ida finally slowed. It's a conversation we've had after other storms. First, you ask about the family.

Mother-in-law: My sister Iris is with her extended family. Corey, and his wife and kids, and her mother-in-law and brother-in-law, they are all at Atlanta. I'm not sure what they're going to do because they planned on leaving on Wednesday. Thia and her kids went to Houston, but they're back. They're going to find a place with electricity tonight to stay. Ava and her son Mike, they're in Houston. May is in Columbus, Mississippi. We're scattered all over.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Then you find out about the neighbors.

Mother-in-law: I guess there's a hole in the roof. She's trying to get blue tarp because she says the upstairs bedroom has a hole in it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Only then do you inquire about the house and any damage it might've sustained.

Mother-in-law: My neighbor says that she can see my house looks okay.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Eventually, when you're talking to New Orleanians, the deep-rooted, born at Charity Hospital kind, the ones whose first question when they meet a stranger is always, "Where did you go to high school?" On the day after a storm, those New Orleanians will eventually begin to reminisce, sharing memories of other storms survived.

Mother-in-law: We grew up in New Orleans. I can remember there was Hurricane Betsy and there was another hurricane. There was two hurricanes that were really bad when we were little, but people didn't really evacuate then. I remember the hurricane came through and decimated the Lower Ninth Ward that my grandmother lived. There was the one that came through the living room in my place. We didn't get any damage, we just didn't have electricity for a very long time. We had never evacuated before. It just never seemed-- Just listening to it on TV, but we stayed.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: The assumption of just staying, well, that all changed 16 years ago when Hurricane Katrina prompted my family to do what they'd never done before, evacuate.

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Mother-in-law: We were just lucky we left for Katrina. We were listening to the weather with the popular resume, and Bob Breck said his family was leaving. Jim and I looked at one another and said, "You know what? If the weatherman is leaving, we better get out of here too." We had a convoy. It was James, Jason and Marshall, Iris and her dog, my mom, Marshall.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's these memories of Hurricane Katrina and of all that was lost when the levees failed, that kept so many of us far-flung children up late into the night as Hurricane Ida approached. August 29, that date is etched in New Orleanians memories as surely as birthdays, anniversaries, and holiday. That Category 4 Hurricane Ida was threatening the city on August 29th, it was enough to tie our stomachs in knots and to prop so many of our family members to evacuate. Fortunately, the levees held. Here's New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell.

LaToya Cantrell: It did not happen. We did not have another Katrina. That's something, again, we should all be grateful for. However, the impact is absolutely significant. While we held the line, no doubt about that, now is not the time for re-entry.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Before it was downgraded to a tropical storm early Monday, the hurricane brought catastrophic flooding, high storm surges, and 150-mile-per-hour winds to low-lying coastal communities like New Orleans. The storm surge was powerful enough to temporarily reverse the flow of the Mississippi River. Most critically, Hurricane Ida toppled a transmission tower that provides electricity to New Orleans. The photos of the electrical tower lying in the river make it pretty clear just how long it's likely to be before the 1 million residents without power can once again light the darkness, cool their homes, or refrigerate their food.

All of which leads me to ask the one question which proves I came to New Orleans identity through marriage rather than birth. I actually asked my mother-in-law if this is enough. If facing a month-long evacuation or having to brave weeks without electricity finally is enough to make her and my father-in-law consider moving. Ultimately, it's a silly question. The New Orleanians, like any tree with deep roots and broad branches, New Orleanians do not transplant easily.

Mother-in-law: I think this time I'm just thinking like, "This is really crazy." Thinking that people could live any place so that every year you don't have to sit in the lounges as if you were the [unintelligible 00:06:06]. This is where we've been and this is where our investments are. You have a house and, normally, New Orleans is a nice place to live. It's just hurricane season, which seems to be more frequent lately to me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Did y'all catch that? My brilliant, kind mother-in-law flipped that question about moving into a conversation about climate change. They're not going anywhere, which means more hurricane seasons and more conversations that sound just like the one you've just heard.

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Here to help us think about Hurricane Ida and what the storm means for the city of Orleans is Sarah Gibbens, environment writer at National Geographic. Sarah recently wrote about how Ida could reshape New Orleans. Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Gibbens: Hi, Melissa. I'm happy to be here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Also with us is Oliver Laughland, US southern bureau chief for The Guardian. Oliver, great to have you here.

Oliver Laughland: Thanks so much for having me, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oliver, I can hear that you're clearly joining us by phone. Can you tell us what you have seen on the ground there over the past 24 hours or so?

Oliver Laughland: Sure. I'm based in New Orleans for The Guardian and was here when Ida hit. It was an incredibly intense pounding storm. I, myself, write out at home. I live in the French Quarter. My roof started leaking. We had some roof damage and wind damage as well. I've been out and reporting in the city for the past 24 hours. A lot of people incredibly traumatized, obviously, being reminded of what happened here 16 years ago to today, which is when Katrina hit the city.

A lot of people were thankful that, obviously, the levee protection system that has received a multi-billion dollar investment from the federal government over the years, held and there hasn't been substantial flooding. Now people are really coming to terms with, A, damage to their own home, and, B, the fact that there is no power anywhere in the city, which is obviously having already devastating impacts on people's lives.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's talk about that for a bit. I think for folks who have maybe experienced a power outage for 24 hours, maybe even for two or three days, you have a sense of why it's irritating or annoying. Talk to us a little bit about what this may mean for the city to be without power for weeks on end.

Oliver Laughland: I think it's unfolding and people are starting to grapple with the fact that that's a real possibility. For me myself, I am struggling to file updates and stories to my news desk. Obviously, it's much more acute in communities around the city. I've spent some time out on the West Bank, and people who were hit hardest by the storm now are grappling with the fact that maybe they didn't bring in enough food to prepare for the next few weeks. Not really compounding the fact that long-term power outages could have been a possibility.

People are looking for whether they can evacuate. Some people simply don't have the means to do that at the moment, and so are sitting around in their humid home, incredibly hot and humid here, as you know, and really just trying to figure out what to do next. It's a very difficult situation and, obviously, difficult in different ways for many different communities here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah, I want to bring you in here because, as Oliver is talking about maybe not having brought in enough food and all of that, I always try to emphasize to folks when we talk about Hurricane Katrina, that it did matter that it hit on the 29th, which, of course, is also now true of Ida. Too late in the month if you receive a check at the start of the month, but not late enough if your monthly check comes on the last day of the month. The 29th is genuinely a disastrous day. for disaster to hit for folks who are living paycheck to paycheck, which is a lot of working people.

Can you talk to us a little bit about other ways that what we're seeing in Ida is returned to the experiences of Katrina, even with the levees, thank God, holding?

Sarah Gibbens: I'll also point out, too, that this storm spun up so much more quickly than Katrina. People were really caught off guard and had only just a few days to try to prepare for this storm. In a lot of ways, you mentioned the levee system that held, thankfully, after this storm, but Ida is exposing that the electrical infrastructure of the city still needs a lot of work. There's still a lot of ways that the city needs to adapt to these really dangerous storms.

Melissa Harris-Perry: My mother-in-law said, Sarah, that she feels like hurricane season is now longer than when she grew up there or when her parents grew up there, that it's more intense. Is that borne out by the data?

Sarah Gibbens: We're not necessarily seeing more hurricanes in the official tally, or lengthening of the season, but with warming atmospheres and the warming ocean, we are seeing more major hurricanes, these Category 3, 4, 5 hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast. Last year, Southwest Louisiana saw two major hurricanes back-to-back, Laura and Hurricane Delta. These storms, when they do manage to form, are growing a lot stronger than they may have in the past.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oliver, I'm thinking about the saying in military strategy that we're always fighting the last war. It certainly felt, just in my own social media feeds as I was following friends and family who were making decisions about whether or not to leave, that we were preparing for the last hurricane. Actually, not the last one, but the big one back 15 years ago, Hurricane Katrina, that the worry was about levee failure but not about electrical failure.

Oliver Laughland: It was obviously a difficult decision for a lot of people, whether to go or stay. A lot of people I spoke to stayed behind this time, people who actually evacuated during Katrina. As Sarah mentioned, for a lot of people, that choice was basically taken away from them by the fact that this storm formed so quickly. It came out as a tropical depression on Thursday and basically was here by Saturday evening, which is really not a huge amount of time.

One guy I spoke to in the Lower Ninth Ward, who had evacuated during Katrina, that he was watching news reports, basically, 12 hours before watching the category go from one, to two, to three, to four. People, basically, in many instances, just have the choice taken away from them. They weren't sure what to do. By the time that they had decided they were going to evacuate, it was basically too late. It was gridlock on the highway. No way of getting out. They had to button down.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah, I'm wondering about the ways that this experience, which is really just beginning in many ways in New Orleans, because now we're looking at weeks without power, might shape the city, might shape questions about the size of the population and also the composition of the population?

Sarah Gibbens: It's important to point out, too, that New Orleans, for the past 18, 19 months, has really been struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. They've seen unemployment rates as high as 15% in certain times of year because this is a largely tourist-based economy that the city has. It's been really hit hard by COVID. They're going to be trying to recover at a lower point than they might have if they hadn't seen COVID-19 cases recently spiking.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city lost about half its population. That didn't hit equally either. Before Katrina, you had two thirds of the city's residents were Black. Now it was about half before Ida. Whether or not the city will be able to continue regaining some of its population that it was starting to recover since Katrina, I think before Ida it was a little over 300,000, remains to be seen if those improvements will be made.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's worth pointing out that when you lose population, you lose tax revenue, which makes it harder. It's hard to maintain city infrastructure for 700,000 people or 500,000 people if only 300,000 people live there and pay into the property taxes.

Sarah Gibbens: Absolutely. It also has an impact on businesses. My colleague, Laura Parker, spoke with Allison Plyer from The Data Center in New Orleans, and she described this chicken or the egg problem. You need people to return so that The Home Depot opens, but you also need The Home Depot to be open so the people can return and begin to rebuild their homes. Which one comes first is a waiting game for a lot of people.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oliver, as you have talked to folks, I talked to my mother-in-law, she's evacuated at the time, but it's pretty clear that despite being senior citizens, she and my father-in-law will be returning. They will be working to address and rebuild in whatever ways they have to. As you've talked to folks who were there in the city, are there people who are talking not just about evacuating, but potentially departing in a more long-term sense?

Oliver Laughland: I haven't spoken to anybody who's been talking about departing in a long-term sense, but there was this clear feeling in some of these communities I was speaking to in the West Bank, that the next hurricane that comes along, they're not going to try and wait it out. It's just too traumatic of an experience to sit through, having your house pounded by wind and rain, to lose your roof, to worry that you're going to die. I think, for a lot of people, this was potentially a turning point.

As Sarah mentioned, these intense Category 3, 4, 5 hurricanes are getting more frequent due to the climate crisis. One of the key factors contributing to that in New Orleans is, obviously, the coastal erosion that's happening. There was some protection for the city, but as more and more of the coast gets eroded, that protection is being lost, rising temperatures as well. I think whether people are conscious and linking that to the climate crisis themselves, I think they are, irrespective of that, saying, "This is just not something that we want to sit around and wait out any longer. The next time one of these comes along, we're going to evacuate as soon as we hear about it." That, to me, felt like quite a must shift.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oliver, I'm not surprised to hear that New Orleaneans are not talking about departing long-term. There is this other set of decision-makers, businesses and industry. Again, already it is mostly a tourist area. One that has lost so much business as a result of COVID and having responsibility to close many of the festivals that bring in tourists. Have you heard any talk on the economic side about the possibility that folks who are, The Home Depot, basically, in the broadest sense might not be returning?

Oliver Laughland: It's very difficult for me to obtain information about this sort of stuff because I don't have power as well. What I can do is refer back to what has happened over the COVID pandemic I've been very anecdotally. A number of businesses near where I live, which is a tourist hub, closed down and not reopened. Again, in conversations with friends who work in that industry, people observing that they have a lack staff and an inability to hire people.

This is going on as the pandemic is still ripping through this region. There's low vaccination rates in the Louisiana, Mississippi hospitals, where an all-time high just a couple of weeks ago. Really we're not just talking about the effects of a hurricane. We're talking about a year and a half of sustained economic downturn due to the pandemic. It's incredibly worrying.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah, I'm wondering about lessons that could be learned from Puerto Rico and the months and months without power after Hurricane Maria. Are there things that we can learn about what went wrong there about the federal government's response, about local response that could maybe go better in this post-Ida moment in New Orleans?

Sarah Gibbens: Yes, I think the longer we wait to address some of these disasters, the worst they're going to become. In a lot of ways, New Orleans suffered after Hurricane Katrina for a really long time, but in a number of ways, the city also improved as well. The school system before Hurricane Katrina hit in New Orleans was immensely struggling. After Hurricane Katrina, there was a lot of investment made and a lot of improvements, of course. It hasn't been made perfect, but it's significantly better than it was before. The longer people are left without jobs, without infrastructure and without their homes, the worst these types of disasters tend to become

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah, I might have to have you back. We could have a little fight about the post-Katrina public schools and the question of what happened there. It's a good point about the question of investment and also of community building. Certainly, the post-Katrina schools are one thing, and I'm realizing we will be facing the post-Ida schools because kids can't go to school without power. It's, again, after a whole year of remote learning from COVID. Sarah Gibbens is an environment writer at National Geographic, and Oliver Laughland is the US southern bureau chief for The Guardian. Sarah, Oliver, thanks for joining us.

Sarah Gibbens: Thank you.

Oliver Laughland: Thanks very much.

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