NEW ORLEANS — When the eye of Hurricane Katrina roared through Bayou Sauvage, between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, it wiped out Pete and Clara Gerica’s house and four of their five fishing boats. It took Pete 12 frantic hours of paddling around the bayou to find his mother, her dog, his daughter, and then, finally, Clara.
Pete Gerica
For a time after the storm, Pete told participants at the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association’s biennial social justice conference here Jan. 13, “we stayed on a friend’s 54-foot boat that was okay. It got tangled in power lines which acted like an anchor.”
A shrimper and fisherman for 37 years, Pete spent the first days after Katrina helping out people even worse off than his family. “We went around salvaging food from refrigerators and distributing it to neighbors,” said Gerica, bristling at media reports that depicted such activity as criminal.
“We were not looting,” he insisted. “People just went in and took what they needed to survive, with everyone teaming together to help whoever needed help.”
New Orleans fisherman Pete Gerica talks about New Orleans seafood industry post-Katrina. Click image to play video.
That kind of scavenging became unnecessary as relief workers began pouring into New Orleans soon after the storm. “Thank God a lot of church people came down,” Pete said. “It was like going to Wal-Mart,” he said of the relief supply depots that sprang up, “and 90 percent of the stuff came from churches.”
With its rich mix of cultures that are reflected in its large number of award-winning restaurants, New Orleans is world-renowned as a “food destination.”
Peter Gerica talks about the damage Hurricane Katrina did to fishing boats. Click image to play video.
Surrounded by rich farmland and teeming gulf coastal waters, New Orleans has always been able to rely on locally grown food products to supply its markets and restaurants. Residents have also had a variety of options — from myriad “mom-and-pop” groceries to giant chain food stores — to choose from in getting food.
All that changed when Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent levee breaches here left 80 percent of the city underwater. “Katrina destroyed everything and everyone became dependent on the Red Cross,” Anne Baker of the New Orleans Food & Farm Network (NOFFN) said. “In Katrina’s wake there was no food access or business and most farmers, fishermen and harvesters all lost their businesses.”
Peter Gerica tells of his efforts to rescue his family after Katrina blew their house away. Click image to play video.
Save for the famed French Quarter, which was not flooded, very little infrastructure — including food distribution — has been restored in New Orleans.
Particularly hard-hit was the seafood industry, which normally employs more than 32,000 people and generates $2.8 billion in annual revenue. Like the Gerica’s, most of the fishers lost their boats and houses. “Most had some insurance but the insurance companies don’t want to pay,” Pete said. “The government is doing ‘mini-grants’ but they’re slow and not enough to really help, plus a lot of people are vying for the grants,” he added. Some of his co-workers have spent all of the insurance settlements on their houses getting their fishing businesses back up and running, he said.
“I think about 40 percent of the fishing business will come back,” Pete said, “but it’s going to take a lot of work and people acting like they’re young again and just starting out. I really don’t know how many of them will be able to handle it.”
When the food system does come back in New Orleans, organizations like NOFFN want to make sure it works for everyone. Much has been written post-Katrina about the social and economic problems that existed in New Orleans before the storm. “We’re so fortunate because we have the opportunity to start over and build a better system,” Baker said.
And other urban areas can learn from New Orleans, said Andrew Kang-Bartlett, associate for national hunger concerns for the Presbyterian Hunger Program. “This is a systemic issue in the United States,” he said, “because the shape of the food system determines how and what you eat.”
In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, NOFFN produced and distributed “food maps,” letting residents know where food was available in this devastated city. That effort is ongoing.
The group continues to partner with other food advocacy groups in the city, surveying neighborhoods to help determine what food distribution sources will best meet their needs, promoting healthy eating and organizing backyard and community gardening efforts.
Anne Baker of the New Orleans Food and Farm Network tells about the efforts by community groups to rebuild the food growing and distribution system in the city.
NOFFN and others are also pressing local, state and federal government agencies on a variety of public policy issues, promoting equal access to food for all of New Orleans residents, seeking more assistance for small farmers and seafood workers and lobbying for more funds to rebuild infrastructure – new fishing docks, processing facilities and farmers’ markets — so that all benefit as this devastated city rebuilds.
And people everywhere can do some of the things that are being encouraged by food justice advocates in New Orleans: buying locally grown agricultural products, supporting locally-owned businesses, writing letters to elected officials urging support of legislation that will hasten the recovery at the grass roots.
“Especially since the storm,” Baker said, “people around here REALLY GET buying local. We want that to be true everywhere.”
