(Todd A. Smith)
Growing up in Houston, like many Houstonians, I had most of my family come from Louisiana.
My parents both moved to Houston from South Louisiana.
Furthermore, one of my grandfathers was from New Orleans.
Therefore, when hurricanes barrel down on the “Pelican State,” it affects me as if it were headed for the “Lone Star State.”
As a result, I found myself glued to CNN as the hurricane made landfall back in August 2005.
Like many Texans, I began praying for my relatives, friends, fraternity brothers and former classmates from Southern University.
However, Gulf Coast residents have grown accustomed to riding out storms over the years, picking up some debris, repairing a few things in the home, and then getting back to business as usual.
As a result, I thought a New Orleans resident interviewed on television was lying when he said that officials said they would need to leave New Orleans for months or years.
How could that be?
No hurricane in our lifetime had caused such destruction to a city that people cannot return home for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, as video began rolling in, it became clear that the brother had not been misinformed.
It was clear that New Orleans would take years to fully recover, if ever.
As the nation marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina, the video footage remains shocking.
However, nothing was more heartbreaking than seeing it in real time.
There was a husband who could not hold onto his wife, as she slipped from his grasp and fell into the water.
He tearfully said that she told him to take care of their family.
Since no storm had ever caused as much horror as Hurricane Katrina, many elderly residents decided to ride it out, having seen this movie before and found it never as scary as the trailers had predicted.
As a result, it took people’s breath away when the bodies of elderly people from the “Crescent City” were pulled from their flooded and destroyed homes.
Many people had sought shelter in the New Orleans Superdome.
But I can remember when the storm ripped the roof off that iconic football stadium, making the shelter unsafe for evacuees.
Who can forget the stranded residents walking on the highways, desperate to leave their beloved hometown?
There were young adults, children, infants, middle-aged people and senior citizens looking for a way out and trying their best to survive without food and water.
Therefore, who could blame them when they did what they had to do to survive, even if it meant breaking the law?
Would you let your child or grandparent die just in the name of law and order?
Stories of violence began creeping out of the Superdome.
Yes, some criminals were just doing what they normally did in their neighborhoods.
But desperate times call for desperate measures.
And when one is fighting to survive, they might literally fight the man next to them to make it out of their dire situation.
I remember feeling relieved when the buses headed west on Interstate-10 and began pulling into the parking lot of Reliant Park (now NRG Park) and their new temporary home at the Astrodome.
Unfortunately, former President George W. Bush insensitively referred to New Orleans transplants as refugees, even though many only moved one to five hours away to cities like Baton Rouge, La., Lafayette, La. and Houston.
Houston has a plaque outside the NRG Astrodome that refers to Hurricane Katrina evacuees as refugees.
The term refugees on that plaque needs to be changed ASAP to survivors.
As my pastor, Ralph Douglas West, told evacuees during their first service at The Church Without Walls in Houston in 2005, they were survivors, not refugees.
I remember a young man from New Orleans shedding a tear as West properly labeled them, needing to get up and briefly leave the sanctuary because the sermon had become too emotional for him to bear.
Yes, some people will say that crime seemingly increased when New Orleans residents moved to Houston.
However, as more people arrive, more crime will also come, due to simple mathematics.
And let us not believe for a second that Houston was a city without crime before Hurricane Katrina survivors arrived.
No big city is immune to a big amount of crime.
Unfortunately, I remember the media’s focus on NFL star Brett Favre’s family and their evacuation from their Mississippi town.
I do not remember as much coverage for the late Steve McNair’s family, also from Mississippi, and affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Not to mention the countless number of players from New Orleans who had family members they could not reach in the aftermath of the storm.
It just showed that even amid devastation, people’s biases still came out.
I remember donating toys and clothes via The Church Without Walls.
I remember my mother wanting to welcome an elderly lady into our home, but not having the room to accommodate her.
I remember Houstonians helping our neighbors because that is what you do in an emergency.
Years later, when Houstonians experienced hurricanes, our actual neighbors all united to feed each other and look out for one another.
What truly saddens me, though, is that it often takes a natural disaster or other disastrous event, like a terrorist attack, for Americans to unite.
After a tragedy, many cynics will say, if God truly loves His people, why does He allow tragedies to occur?
The true question is, why do people need tragedies to bring them together when they could be united all the time?
We should support each other as a family during good times as well as bad.
- Movie Review: ‘731’ Another Film That is a Warning - September 26, 2025
