Remembering Hurricane Katrina

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i'm jane marie and this is the dream this week marks 20 years since hurricane katrina hit our southern coast At the time, I was a very junior producer at This American Life.

I'd only reported one piece, ever, and it was about a shop in Chicago that sold spy gear.

Nothing like reporting on a natural disaster.

About a week after the flood, Ira Glass, Lisa Pollock, and I went to Houston to tape at the Astrodome, which had become a massive shelter where folks who had lost their homes were convened to find new ones, or to get medical care, or food, or rest.

I brought Lisa in to look back on our time there and to revisit that reporting, the pieces we made 20 years ago, which you'll get to hear.

Let's back up to, you know, before the levees broke, it was still like a big story, you know, like the storm was bad.

And we had started brainstorming of like how we wanted to cover the hurricane.

And of course, the rules of what gets on this American life are weird.

And I don't remember who pitched going to Houston, but it was like, we were just having these brainstorm meetings kind of every day at that point.

I feel like it would have been us.

I mean, I, I, I, well, because I want to go there.

I want to go someplace where something's happening.

The first thing I think I learned when we were planning this is like, because we had such a hard time finding a vehicle at a hotel.

Remember that?

We had to drive around in that moving van that didn't have seats in it.

Yes, I forgot about that.

We were in like a budget rental van, moving van, because it was the only vehicle we could find.

And so we flew into Houston, we got the moving van, and then we stayed at like a really bad motel.

That is what I remember.

I will always remember the bar of soap

because

it was like

generic soap.

You know what I mean?

And it was the thinnest bar of soap.

And then I remember the towel being like kind of as thin as, you know, a

really scratchy.

A little towel.

Towels.

That was a really bad hotel.

It was.

Motel.

But, but, you know,

people had nowhere to live.

What are we talking about?

I mean, people had nowhere to live, but also a lot of the hotels in Houston were being used.

There was the voucher system, right?

And so

like the nicer hotels were booked up kind of right away

by giving people a free place to stay for a little bit.

And so we had to kind of stay outside of town, which if you've never driven around Houston, holy moly, that town is big.

That was very far.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Beltway.

There's a beltway.

I don't know if they call it the Beltway, but it's...

It's over an hour side to side, that city.

So we were kind of all over the place so we get there we get this like weird moving van one of us has to sit on the floor in the back and we head to the astrodome

which

was a little bit better than what the super dome had been described you know like the roof wasn't caved in or anything but it was it was oh it was bad chaos do you want to describe it

actually

no

i mean i just remember it was cots and cots and cots

and announcements, announcements, announcements over the loudspeakers.

Bright lights.

They never turned the fluorescent lights off.

And it was, you could tell that like a lot of people were ill.

And so it had like a germ haze and like big bottles of sanitizer that probably weren't that effective.

It just felt so.

And all these people, some people just

collapsed on the, on the cot in the middle of the day in the the bright fluorescent lighting and

it was it was tough there wasn't a plan yet really

so

it was a lot of just sitting around waiting for the powers that be to announce what to do next you know i felt like nobody well first of all not everybody had their cell phone

Not everybody had their wallets or anything.

People didn't have, yeah, people didn't have ideas.

They didn't have money or driver's licenses or anything that you would need.

It was really chaotic, and the way that the government at that moment chose to manage it was with National Guard, I think.

Those guys had the with the machine guns, but there wasn't like a plan.

One program that they did kind of have slightly organized, but it wasn't really organized.

I don't think there was like a vetting process, but there was a room outside of the superdome, which housed all of these tables from different states

and and like luring people to their state.

Yes.

It was one of those efforts by lots of different types of nonprofit organizations.

So, you know, sometimes it would be like a church would be funding people moving to Wyoming and a, you know, another kind of organization would be funding people moving to Michigan.

And like no one was taking advantage of it.

I know.

That was so weird.

Well, the tables, the different states were giving away different things, but jobs, utilities paid for, apartment, car, like it depended on what state you were going to go to, what they had to offer.

But it felt like being at a science fair, like a, or like a school.

I was going to say like a bake sale almost.

It was so low-tech.

Poster board with the word Colorado written on it.

The Colorado table, yeah.

We can play my piece.

Forgive the way I'm doing my video.

It was my second time ever recording my voice, and Ira was directing me.

And

if people don't already know, like he, you know, wants it flatter, flatter, flatter

oh my god that's I mean my but mine's the same the same like you're dead it sounds like you're dying and you're depressed or something yeah and I just sounded so quiet like I don't want to say anything yeah back then yeah yeah same

and I'm mushmouthed and I just I don't know what I'm doing but anyway so this was like

this is a little bit of a bright spot

this story eventually Colorado did actually manage to get some people to relocate

They got 35 people after two weeks of trying and the reason people finally said yes was desperation.

FEMA had let everyone know that the temporary housing was ending, hotel vouchers were ending for families that were in hotels and people were being moved out of the astrodome.

First in line for the bus to Colorado were twin sisters, Coquini and Kayla.

They're six.

And here's what they know about the place they're about to move.

I know that it's beautiful.

It's a beautiful place and it has lots of mountains.

And I know that

it's so beautiful anybody will anybody will want to go there where did you hear that

I heard it from a snow

a snow movie that like snow dogs and a snow dog it took place in um

what's the name of the place

Colorado and Colorado Colorado

How's the last couple of weeks been?

It's like a adventure.

Let me tell you.

It's like an adventure that we're going all over.

We've been almost everywhere.

We had so much fun.

We went to Baton Rouge, we went to the shelter,

and then Alexandra, then back to Baton Rouge,

then

we had to live in a hotel.

The Scottish.

Yeah, the Scottish Hotel.

And sweets.

That's weird.

When I talked to their mom, Cookina, she said that they overheard her talking on the phone, telling a friend that the last few weeks have really been an adventure.

She was being sarcastic.

But the girls picked it up.

And just as well, it took a little more convincing for their mom.

I thought at New York, the cost of living is too high to start, make a start there.

And I thought, I don't want to go to Florida by any more storms, so Colorado seems safe.

And why not Houston?

Well, I was trying to establish in Houston, but like I said, I only had 14 days to get everything done.

Otherwise, we'd be on the street trying to get it done.

So, when I heard Colorado, I jumped on it.

Oh, Jane, you ought to be ashamed.

You let the boy kiss you and you don't know his name.

At this point, the girls decided I was done talking to their mom and they wanted the microphone back, which they suddenly realized was real.

And I actually was from the radio

and they had business.

And about the hurricane and our sister and brother, we can't find them.

You can't find your brother and sister?

No.

When Katrina hit,

we haven't heard from them since we left.

If Kiana and Jamal is listening to this, we love you and we miss you.

We met lots of people at the Astrodome who were still missing friends and family.

There's an office that reunites families with listed survivors in their locations, but their mom says the last time they saw Jamal and Kiana was when she she dropped them off with their dad and grandparents in New Orleans before evacuating, just before the storm.

She's acting confident that they're okay.

So the girls are acting confident too.

I love that story.

They're like, we got to stay in this hotel and suites.

Really cute.

Oh my God, that was really good.

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But when we went out together, you and I, you had this story about the vouchers for apartments, and I kept fucking up during that reporting because I hadn't, I'd never done that sort of reporting before, and I didn't, it was so

wait, how did you fuck up?

Well, because I was so racist, and I kept stepping in to try to help people.

And you and Ira would have to be like,

you know, like, shut up, like, don't, because you just let them be racist.

yeah, or just, or just, you know, let the story happen as it's happening.

And it was so hard for, I was just, I was inexperienced, I didn't really understand what my job was.

And when I was seeing like a whole bus full of black people being

put through the ringer by these racist white people, plus, we had, you and I had been out in the world those couple of days.

Yeah.

I had been observing a lot of casual racism.

Yeah.

I believe there was an Applebee's near our hotel.

And

the bartenders and the people kind of sitting near the bar were just like using the N-word and talking about how their city is being overrun and all the crime that's been coming in.

And it was like people were really very casually super racist.

The paper actually had to write a story saying there isn't more crime here.

because of all these refugees from Katrina.

But it was what all the white people were talking about.

Just how destroyed Houston suddenly was and was going to remain if these people, you know, kept their housing vouchers and stuck around.

It was insane and offensive and ridiculous.

It's 3 p.m.

when we get to the housing center and it's not a happy place.

There are hundreds of people here, slumped in folding chairs, jostling in lines, pleading for volunteers to help them.

Tense-looking cops are everywhere, in soldiers and camouflage fatigues.

It makes the DMV look like a day spa.

In the section of chairs where we're standing, there's this sudden wave of movement.

People stand up and there's some yelling.

Turns out an official with a bullhorn just told the whole group to leave and come back tomorrow.

They won't get apartments today.

And one of the women standing near us has clearly reached her limit.

You should have apartments first

before you bring the people in, you're bringing the people in before the apartments is available.

Now we see.

Her name is Ina May.

She's been here since early this morning, she says, just like she was told to be, looking for a place for herself and her teenage sons.

And at this point, the only way to manage her frustration is to share it with everyone she sees, including apparently one of the less tolerant cops in the room.

The police just told me that they would arrest me, you know what I mean, and put me out.

Put me out where?

Where are they going to put me out at?

Why did the police threaten you?

Oh, if we get loud and all this kind of stuff, they're going to put us to jail.

If we have any problems, they're going to put us in jail and all.

Don't you mean,

you know, man, come on give us a break man give us a break

if we get loud you know what i'm saying and we're not gonna let you holler at us well which i feel like screaming what you mean i'll let you i could scream to the top of my do he understand the pressure i'm under

but right now mister you holding me up right now i'm just because the people i'm getting in line in a may go to stand in another line the line to sign up for tomorrow's line which turns out to be the wrong line.

A volunteer points her in the right direction.

Excuse me, man, but you don't have to, Mr.

This line.

Okay.

This is the four-bedroom.

I am sorry, okay?

It was confusing.

Yeah, thank you.

I don't know what happened.

As soon as they walk in in the morning, we're getting buses and we're taking people out to their homes.

It is a success story beyond their imagination that you may need to print or say something about on radio.

This is Guy Rankin, the man with the unenviable job of running this place.

When I stumble onto him in the middle of the arena, he says things are actually going pretty well here.

And he means it.

The 25,000 people that are in Dome.

Now we're down to 3,000.

had to go somewhere.

We housed most of them.

We had 3,144 people taking the housing over the last five to seven days right off the dome floor.

Okay, 800 seniors we took right off the dome floor, provided transportation, social services, and a full aspect of training, nurses, doctors, and all of that.

I just got back.

If all these numbers don't quite match up to the chaos around us, it's for a reason.

The housing voucher program, like so much of the Katrina aid, is a work in progress, being assembled on the fly.

At first, when hurricane victims showed up, they were told to sign up and then they'd be called when housing came available for them.

Lots of people never got calls.

And because that system was moving too slowly, it was changed midstream.

Now how it works is what we're seeing today.

People come to the housing center and wait for buses that will take them directly to the apartments that have been chosen for them.

But the system is still messy.

IMA, for instance, needed a three-bedroom apartment, and not enough of those were ready today.

But the one-in-two bedrooms,

we didn't have enough people to fill the one in two bedrooms.

It was empty.

I just know you see that look on your face, but we've been housing people day after day, minute after minute, taking buses out, full buses.

Those are the stories you need to tell the world and what we're housing, and those are the units you need to go see.

Well, how can we come out and see some of it?

I know there was a bus just leaving now that we were hoping we might come along on.

Did I?

Yeah.

Well, girl, I'm going to call y'all when I'm in the house.

They told me they are lovely.

It's the Timber Ridge Aparmes.

As it turned out, the bus he said we missed was running late, and we caught the last one just as it was loading.

The people lined up didn't really know where they were going, just that they'd have an apartment when they got there.

There were seven families, mostly couples, one little boy, and a very, very pregnant woman named LaShawn Price, who said she didn't want to have to bring a new baby back to the Astrodome.

I asked her when she's due, and she says any day, which turns out to be an understatement.

Do you have a doctor here or anything?

No, I'm too far along to get a health care doctor.

I just have to wait it out.

And I'll just tell you to go to the ER ER when you go into labor?

Yeah, I'm already three centimeters, so I'm just waiting on the next centimeter.

You're in labor.

But they can't keep you until I'm four.

Could you let the other set of seats come?

We all get on the bus.

LaShawn, still completely calm, is having contractions at this point.

And the housing official who's coming with us hands out the voucher forms.

We drive for a while on the freeway, and people are starting to get nervous.

We seem really far from the astrodome.

Finally, after 45 minutes, we get there.

This is it.

This is it.

It's a nice-looking townhouse development with garages and tidy landscaping and new brick and siding.

And for the first time all day, there's a sense that things are getting better.

Boy, we got lucky.

We got lucky.

I got lucky because after six months, all those

hair.

All right.

Well, on the inside, it looks very, very beautiful.

We're in the clubhouse now.

It's big, kind of like the lobby of a Hampton Inn, and there's a love seat and wing-backed chairs and a fancy flower arrangement on the front table.

Out the back, through the glass doors, you can see a pool and basketball courts.

Can you describe it?

The families line up as if out of habit.

They all stand there, looking around, flipping through the brochures.

A few minutes go by.

A few more.

In the back corner of the room are two young women.

They obviously work there and they see we're here, but they don't come up to us or even say hello.

They're talking about what to do, and everyone knows it.

And Lashawn says what everyone's thinking.

Is there a problem?

But the women don't hear her, and the waiting continues.

Finally, after 15 minutes, one of them comes forward.

She's the assistant manager, though she doesn't introduce herself.

She asks everyone to get out their social security cards and birth certificates, and she gets some incredulous looks.

She hands out the applications.

Everyone can get an apartment tonight, she says, as long as they have no previous evictions and a clean criminal record.

There's awkward silence in the room, and then the questions begin.

So if the people have a bad criminal check, they just have to be homeless.

If you know that you have a criminal background, and when I say criminal background, I mean no felonies whatsoever, no matter what it is or how old they are.

Misdemeanors for any drug-related, sex-related crime, or violence against person or property.

Okay, so that's what I mean by criminal.

So if you don't, if those, if those four things do not apply to you, or if you do not have an eviction, or if you do not owe a property any money, then yes, you will be in.

LaShawn turns to me.

This is BS.

This is straight.

Do you have one?

Do I have a conviction?

Yeah, I have a conviction.

But a felony or misdemeanor?

It's a felony, but it still doesn't stop me from working.

I just took a charge for my sister.

She went to the money.

That's not it.

Now it's getting really tense.

The housing department guy is arguing with the assistant manager.

People are pulling out their cell phones.

There's some yelling.

In a way, it's no different than things we've been for weeks now.

The rules keep changing and no one tells them, and nothing ends up quite how it's supposed to be.

Remember last week when the big story was the FEMA debit cards?

Some people got them, others didn't.

Next to me, LaShawn's getting more agitated by the minute.

I can't believe she's not four centimeters dilated by now.

Her old life, with her own apartment and her job as a medical records assistant seems as far away as ever.

That's the part that you're about to go insane behind.

You know, you're not in your right frame of mind no more.

Because if you think about everywhere you go, you're standing in the line for six, seven damn hours to get up there for somebody to give you the damn runaround.

You know, after a while, it's starting to be, then you can't even go home to somewhere and relax.

You're going back to a damn center with 15,000, 20,000 people in it.

You know, you can't even sit down there and have a peace of mind for a second.

I wish I had an answer for myself right now, but I don't.

Lisa, the assistant manager, seems a little overwhelmed.

And

basically, what happened is that they were supposed to be here earlier in the day, and they came five minutes before we were supposed to close.

And then the bus driver is giving them 15 minutes to get back on the bus, and that's just not adequate time enough for us to be able to get them in and out.

I mean, I feel really bad.

A regional manager shows up, promising to help people, but it's too late.

Everyone feels discriminated against here's lashan and another woman as they get back on the bus them bads looked at us like we was misfits and y'all negroes ain't getting in here that's not right you coming from nowhere you have nothing they know you don't have nothing and if you to turn around and try to make shift throw a little little you know a little stepping stones in front of you like that bro that's not right that's not right

the housing official he's back on the bus too tells me he doesn't know why this has happened It's his first day, he says.

But there's another complex open tonight, which also accepts the vouchers.

So the bus gets back on the freeway and drives to a neighborhood on the northwest side of the city.

Out the bus windows, more and more of the store names are in Spanish.

Someone spots a man pedaling a little food cart, and a bunch of people snicker.

By the time the bus stops in front of a weathered two-story apartment complex called Villa del Sol, most of the passengers seem a little freaked out.

One thing's for sure: this isn't Timber Ridge.

For starters, when we get inside, they're ready for us.

We have a really nice kids' center

We crowd into the rental office.

It's more basement rec room than Hampton Inn, with mismatched furniture and no slick brochures.

But it's clean and comfortable, and a table in the center of the room is piled high with food.

Pizzas, sodas, chips.

Take as much as you want, people are saying.

On the wall is a photo collage.

The neighborhood kids at Summer Day Camp.

It's a big party.

Okay, I'm going to need your initials right here, please.

LaShawn sits down down at the manager's desk and picks up a pen she looks exhausted and right here

right there

one more

right there too

and I'm gonna need your signature here

it was that simple she had an apartment six months rent free so how you feeling while you're writing this I don't know just whatever

whatever it's got a roof and a door and I can sanitize it and have a new maiden use.

That's all I'm looking for now.

No one else from our group even fills out the paperwork.

They eat the pizza and drift back to the bus.

They'll find something better, they say.

I grab one of them.

Can I ask you why you want to stay?

Why I'm not staying?

Cause look out four wheels from here.

Then look at it.

Look at the look at the look around you.

You see yourself.

Ain't no good environment.

Mexicans and all the people around you.

It's hard to miss the fact that some of the same people who were complaining the loudest about discrimination at Timber Ridge were the quickest to say they didn't want to live around a bunch of Mexicans.

One of them told me later, If you were in our shoes, wouldn't you feel out of place?

It's a different community, a community you're not a part of.

Our kids might get picked on or ridiculed.

They'll be outsiders.

You got the kid, Ryan?

Okay.

Laura Rodriguez, the assistant manager, is going to give LaShawn a tour.

Jane, my co-producer, walks over to the apartment with them.

And halfway there, LaShawn grabs Jane's hand.

You want to feel a contrashed?

Still having one?

Yeah.

Now.

Okay, this is the apartment.

This is a two-bedroom apartment and one bed.

It's real nice.

It has a walk-in closet.

Let me show you.

I mean, they're nice and big.

You can fit a bed in there.

I'm sure you're gonna be happy here.

Everybody, I mean, people here is very friendly.

I've been in this property for five years.

So,

people are nice.

It's nice.

I'm glad.

Thank you.

To their credit, the people running this housing program are still working on it, still adjusting it each day, still trying to figure out how to get more people into apartments more quickly.

The next morning, we go back to the housing center.

Things are a lot the same.

Telling us to come back tomorrow.

I was here yesterday with my proof.

This is my proof.

I was here yesterday.

You see the third thing?

I try to talk to Guy Rankin, the guy in charge, but he's busy.

He's walking around the arena, going from section to section with a bullhorn, listening to people's complaints and trying to answer their questions.

But let me first explain the Housing Choice Center.

Some of you may have heard it before, but we need to do it again for everybody who's near.

The system's still got some problems.

Lots of people are asking why they just can't rent their own apartments with voucher money, instead of taking the places chosen for them.

in neighborhoods they don't know and don't feel comfortable with.

It might sound picky, but when I talked to a New Orleans mom whose son has already started elementary school here and is happy there and doesn't want to move again, I'm reminded of how complicated this all is.

I listen for a while to Rankin.

He tells the crowd he's heard that complaint, and that maybe soon there'll be a way to let people choose their own places.

It's still being worked out, he says, even as he speaks.

Later today, he says, there might even be a line for that.

That system will be set up today, and we'll be lining up for that, okay?

Lining up for that.

I'm going to take one more question from this group, and please be patient with us, because we're very, very busy.

I know you've been here seven, ten days.

Some of us have been here 17 days with it 20 hours a day.

Tell me about your last story from there.

Your last Katrina story that you reported.

Friday Night Floodlights, I think it was called.

So it was getting to be going back to school time,

and

I had the idea in my head that I wondered what teams were doing.

Like, you know,

you know, schools were shut down.

So I don't know why it just went in my head.

Like, what, what is, what, what's going to happen to the football team?

And the, like, like, basically, how does a high school keep running?

And how did you know that that would be something that would be important to those?

I, because I was not aware.

I didn't watch Friday Night Lights.

I think because I watched Friday Night Lights.

Okay.

And I had read the book Friday Night Lights even before that.

So you knew how important football was in these southern states that were affected by the hurtling.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I wondered what would happen.

Like, are they even going to have games?

And then I started looking it up and I saw that there were games on the schedules in these towns that I thought had been destroyed.

And

I called some coaches.

And this one particular coach

was like, yeah, it's all we got here.

So he

built a team from like who was left.

And there were kids who had been evacuated to other towns, but they came back and they were like sleeping in trailers or sleeping at the coach's house.

I can't remember the exact details.

And then

it was just one of those,

you know, you could have made a movie out of this group of kids, like a total bad news bears kind of, I had to take a middle schooler and put them, you know, get them ready, even though it was was high school.

And

trying to find other local schools to play.

Yeah, well, that, but somehow the other school showed up, and they were huge in gleaming uniforms.

They had not been affected.

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It was,

should I make it suspenseful and make them listen to the story?

Should we listen?

Oh my god.

Yeah, you should.

Let's listen.

The Bay High Tigers played their first game of the season on the Friday before Katrina.

They beat Hancock High 30-14.

After the storm, the joke was that they'd gone undefeated.

Everyone figured the season was over.

Players were homeless.

The high school was closed.

But just days after the hurricane, the Bay High coach, Brennan Compretta, started hearing from his players.

They wanted to play football.

They called his cell and sent text messages.

They stopped him on the street.

They wanted to play football.

They wanted something that reminded them of what life was before.

The thing that a lot of them were saying is it only takes 11 to play, and that they, no matter how many they had, they wanted to do this.

That was the only thing that they had to look forward to, you know.

You wouldn't stage a school play without a school, but football is different here anyway.

In Bay St.

Louis, game day starts at 6.30 a.m.

with a team breakfast at a church.

Newspaper stories about the game are posted on the wall at school.

In the afternoon, drummers from the band march through the hallways just before the pep rally.

Strangers in town stop players who talk about that week's game.

So even though school won't start again until November, the coach coach called a meeting to try to restart the team.

There were some challenges.

Only 19 players showed up of the 70 who were on the team.

They couldn't use their practice field since National Guardsmen were camping there.

Their field house was destroyed, and most of their equipment.

And as for their uniforms.

We pulled up a few days after the storm.

Just they had people running around in our jerseys and cleats and throwing balls around.

And, you know, I guess it was fathers and sons or whatever.

Wait, so you saw people wearing like your guys' football jerseys just as replacement clothes?

Right, exactly.

And

considering the circumstances,

I didn't get really upset about it.

I just was like, well, I guess if they need some clothes, they can go ahead and take them.

They're saying there's a possibility that they're saying it's probably going to be one of the most packed games we've played ever.

It's game day, the Tigers' very first game since Hurricane Katrina, one month after the storm, and I've flown to Mississippi, where Tyler Brush, the team's quarterback, is showing me around.

There's not a lot to see, just huge piles of wreckage, and near the beach, mile after mile of empty spaces, where houses and buildings used to be.

After the hurricane, Tyler's family left for a while, moved to Florida to a town where they used to live.

They got a nice house, and Tyler began high school there.

He was practicing with their football squad, and he was going to be a starter there, too.

But then Coach Comprada called.

Tyler says coming back here was a hard choice.

My dad

originally didn't want me to come back.

I mean he was pretty much against it, but he decided.

I mean he said that it was my decision.

I mean I had to think about it a lot.

I was nervous about coming back.

I mean I recognized the situation I was in.

I knew what I was taking the chance if I came back here, college teams might not see me playing.

But I felt that I still needed to come back, though, for whoever did come back.

His quarterback, he didn't want to let the team down.

So now his family is living 15 miles away in Diamond Head, and two of the team's other players, whose families didn't return, are living with them, too.

This is a strange place to be a kid right now.

With no school, they spend their days doing cleanup work, hauling out sheetrock and moving trees and debris.

It's bleak and boring.

Their favorite hangouts are gone.

Football is one of the the few things they have left.

We're actually pulling up to my house now.

Yeah, this is pretty much nothing left.

My house.

There's stairs right here.

We're right here leading up to

the house.

They're completely gone.

Literally, all we are looking at are the wooden stilts that held up the house and the foundation which looks like it was lifted up from the ground.

And I mean there isn't even like stuff around like furniture or clothes or where all this, where all the stuff go?

I guess the water just washed them up that way.

Wiped out.

There's nothing left.

Does anybody in here need pants?

If you need pants, come with me.

Over at the football field, the new uniforms arrive just in time.

A gift from a man in North Carolina, and the kids line up while the coaches open the boxes.

The new jerseys are blue and white, not blue and gold, the school colors.

But no one seems to care.

This isn't the team it used to be.

Over half the Tigers still haven't come back, so the coaches have filled out the roster with some new recruits.

A few seniors who've never played football, some freshmen from the school's ninth grade team, two guys from the Tigers' arch rival, St.

Stanislaw.

They canceled their season.

And to cap it all off, Bad News Bear style, some scared-looking 7th and 8th graders from the junior high.

In all, it's still just 29 players, a long way from 70.

Some of these kids are all but homeless, sleeping on other families' couches and floors.

One linebacker is living in a camper, alone, his parents hours away.

Also, he can play football.

With everything these kids have been dealing with and everything they've seen, they seem genuinely relieved and excited to be here today, putting on jerseys and lacing up cleats.

Everybody's just anxious to play again, to get things back to normal.

That's Trevor Adams, a senior tight end.

And for him, getting things back to normal means pretty much one thing.

I love hitting people.

That's.

I mean, there's no better feeling in the world, just unloading on somebody.

I mean, even now, dealing with all this, you have an extra feel of warmth.

You get just

that exciting feeling about, you know, hitting somebody.

There's no, you can't explain it.

Equally excited is Brandt, a a 10th grader.

I think Brandt might be one of the happiest kids I've ever met.

He doesn't stop beaming, even when he's talking about swimming through his flooded kitchen or living for weeks without plumbing or power.

He moved to Texas to stay with a relative for a while, but didn't stay long.

Texas was great.

Everybody was real kind, like scary kind.

It was just like, like, have you ever seen the Stepford wives?

How everything's perfect?

That's how it was.

They were all like, hi, how are you doing?

Can I get you anything?

Clothes, food?

And I'm like, I'm fine, man.

So, does this feel like a normal couple hours before a game, or does it feel different?

Way different.

One thing I'm going to miss before the game is the pre-game meals.

We don't have that here because

them pre-game meals are good.

All you can eat.

What kind of food?

Baked chicken with all these spices on it.

It was so good.

You're making me home.

That was like a month ago.

So,

you've stayed here this whole time.

What's there been to eat for you?

Three meals a day, MREs.

So, what's an MRE taste like?

Um, I tell you what,

meal number 20 and meal number 22, that's 20's spaghetti and 22's jambaley, the best.

I told my mama she's to step it up because that stuff is...

I'm going to start getting MREs just regular.

All right, hey, guys, everybody right here where these guys are, get down.

Y'all can take a na or something.

Let's go, real quick.

You can sit down or take an A either one.

It's late afternoon now, about an hour before the game.

Everybody gathers around Coach Compretto and he urges them to think about the past month when they get on the field tonight.

Everything you have inside of you, let it out.

All the aggravation, the frustration,

having to get up and do all the junk you do every day because of this hurricane,

let it all out right here.

Play for your community.

That's why you're here, okay?

Some people can't be here.

Play for the guys who can't be here too

Play for Base St.

Louis and Waver

Does anybody have any questions

about anything?

Offense, defense, special teams, walk.

What?

I love everybody.

We love you too, Kyle.

Of course, there's only so much love one football team can take.

An hour later, as the team gets ready to run onto the field, the coach has this to say.

So, forget all the kindness and niceness right now, all that junk.

Go out there and get after their behind.

Do you understand me?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Now, we do want to win the football game.

Okay?

Everybody, touch somebody.

Let's go.

Let's go!

Walk up with it!

Lazy Gamers!

It's kind of hard to believe that out of the ruins of this town, just down the street from gutted houses and buildings, this thing has appeared, this movie-set perfect football game.

It's dusk now, with a pinker sky.

And under the stadium lights, everything's kind of glowing, and everyone showed up to play their part.

The cheerleaders, the PA announcer, the marching band, or what's left of it, a single kid with a snare drum standing in the bleachers.

Please join me in singing the national anthem.

The opposing team, the Long Beach Bearcats, line up on the other side of the field.

The moment I see them, my heart sinks a little.

Not only are there twice as many of them, they just look so determined.

Assistant Coach Keys sizes them up this way.

Big.

They came here on three buses.

We need a minivan.

Big difference.

And they don't have junior high kids out there.

We do.

Not even the quarterback's father expects the Tigers to win tonight.

They're missing so many guys that they'll have to play their good players twice as much.

Their starters will play offense and defense.

Guys will wear out.

Right there.

The Tigers get off to a great start.

The first time they get the ball, they go on a drive that lasts half the first quarter and ends with a touchdown on a six-yard run by Robert Labotte.

I watch Tyler pass the ball off to Robert, knowing that Tyler pretty much moved back to town for this moment, and that Robert, who's living with him, separated from his own family, did too.

Get out there, go, go, go!

On the sidelines, eight tiger cheerleaders are jumping around.

It's more than half the squad.

One tells me her uniform was the first thing she packed when her family evacuated.

When the girls aren't cheering, they're consulting this big, elaborate chart they've set up in front of the bleachers.

Celeste, the captain, explains.

This is our cheer list, and we have 63 cheers on it.

And every year we just take it and we add more to it.

Okay, so like, what's 36?

36 is G O go Tigers go.

And then what's 37?

37 is G O Go Go G O Go.

And what's 28?

Go, go, GO, go, Tigers go.

There's some similarity.

Yes, they're very.

The coaches are scurrying up and down the field, improvising to fill in for the key players they don't have, swapping kids in and out.

Brandt, the MRE kid, is getting trounced out there.

So the coach pulls him aside.

Hey, Brandt, not bad, baby.

Not bad, baby.

Let me go change and put somebody in there with a little more behind on him, okay?

I got manhandled.

I know, we saw that.

But the rookie players come through with some surprises.

For instance, at the very same moment that the coaches are grumbling to themselves about where exactly freshman Alan Velalta is heading on the field, Volalta recovers a fumble.

Oh, God, Velalta don't know where he is.

Oh, damn, he just made a play.

He just made a game play.

By the end of the first half, it's Tiger 7, Bearcat 6.

Good job, Walt.

The home bleachers are pretty packed by now.

And the thing I realize when I start talking to people is that this is the first time this town has gotten together since the hurricane.

One of the first people I meet, Gary Yarbrough, doesn't even have a kid on the team.

I'm just out here just trying to see who's still here and who's still in town and visit with the other folks and kind of see how everybody's handling everything and dealing with everything.

Is this the first time you're seeing a lot of folks in a while?

Yeah, some of them, yeah, because with the curfews and

nothing open in town,

there's really no place to go to see anybody.

As I walk through the stands, the one thing people keep telling me is what a normal night this is.

What a relief it is to do something normal again.

But talk to anyone for more than a couple minutes, and what you hear next is just how far from normal everything is.

They're worried about flood insurance and FEMA trailers and whether they'll have jobs.

I ask one man, the booster club president, what the highlight of the game is so far, and he nearly starts to cry.

Hurry up!

Down on the field, the Tigers are playing better than anyone had expected.

Going into the fourth quarter, the score is 21-6, Tigers comfortably leading.

But then, in the last five minutes of the game, everything falls apart.

The Bearcat star player, Tremaine Brock, rushes for a touchdown.

They miss the extra point, so it's 21-12.

Two minutes later, with just three minutes left in the game, Brock sprints 55 yards to the end zone as the Tiger coaches watch helplessly.

I see what he's going.

It's a two-point game now, 21-19.

The Tigers are still leading, but Long Beach has the momentum and they only need a field goal to win.

The Tigers are completely exhausted.

Many have been on the field the entire game, the kicker's limping.

Alan Velalta, the ninth grader who made that great play, is on the sidelines with an injured knee.

The Tigers get the ball back, their last possession, but they can't even manage a first down.

They punt it away, and there's still plenty of time for Long Beach to score.

Come on, Jeep, be ready to drop.

The Bearcats start to drive again.

They cross the 50-yard line into Bayhai territory.

The clock is running down.

Coaches are screaming.

Jason, be ready to drop.

The place is going nuts.

I can honestly say this is the only only football game I've ever been to where it really did seem to matter who won.

Earlier I felt bad taking sides against the Bearcats.

Their town was hit by the hurricane too.

But now I don't know what I'll do if the Tigers lose.

Their town was hit harder.

They're the underdogs.

They have to win.

And then they do.

They stopped the Bearcats.

It's over.

The clock runs out and the place explodes.

2119 Tigers.

It's every corny sports movie come to life.

People streaming on the field, hugging, players sprawled on the ground.

All these people in this wrecked town, ecstatic over a football game.

Assistant coach Jeremy Turcott.

I think next to getting married and having my baby, that's about the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life.

Hey, guys, listen up.

We'll let you go.

I know we got to get home.

Coach Comprada.

Never been more proud, okay,

in my coaching career.

Never been more proud in a group of guys in my life than right now.

Love you guys.

I love you guys.

Take tomorrow off.

Can you on Wednesday, 3.30?

Be here for 3.30, okay?

Everybody touch somebody.

Great job, fellas.

Great job, fellas.

Break it down.

What's up, win?

St.

Louis and Hancock County is still out there.

After the game, you'll need to go home as soon as possible.

And just like that, the place clears out.

A half hour later, the only people left are the coaches, still reliving the game.

Luke, one of the assistants, is on the cell phone with his brother in Alabama.

They had the ball with about a minute and a half left, driving with no timeouts, and we sacked them and no time left.

But I just want to call and tell you that, man.

I'll call you tomorrow sometime.

I just want to holler at you real quick.

I love you, brother.

Bye.

Bye.

Of all the coaches I met here, Luke seemed the most discouraged about everything.

He'd lost his house.

He sounded disheartened.

In the morning, he told me that when his contract is up in May, he'll probably leave here.

But now his mood is different.

And, you know, we play next Friday night here, and, you know, it's not like the town's going to be back to normal next Friday night.

So, I mean, they're still going to not have anything to do.

There's still going to be a curfew.

And, you know, I mean, this just starts it.

I mean, if you lose tonight, it's like, you know what?

You go home and you're sitting in a trailer and you have no AC and you lost the football game.

But no, it's a little easier to go home and sit in a trailer with no AC when you just won a football game that nobody gave you a chance to win.

Before coming to Bay St.

Louis, I felt the way I think a lot of us feel when we see these places on TV.

I didn't understand how you go back to a town like that, to all that loss, and live there in the middle of it.

What are you going back there for?

And how do you even begin to get over it?

Watching the Tigers win, 2119, completely outmatched, everyone together, cheering them on.

I knew the answer.

It was one of those times where

you're doing your job and you're, you're like, oh my God, I just feel lucky that I am here to see this.

And everyone in town came out because no one had done anything.

And so it was like everyone just, you know, like you'd just gone through this huge tragedy and now they're in the stands and,

you know, I don't know how they cobbled together a band.

There were some bands there.

There were cheerleaders.

And

they were moving forward.

I mean, that's like the coach was basically like,

I've got kids here wanting to play football.

So let's give them something to feel good about.

And it did.

And I think I would have cried if they had not won.

I think you probably cried when they did win.

No, you know, just some stories you remember.

I know it's cheesy.

I'm sorry.

No, but it's hateful.

You're right.

You're right.

Well, thanks for talking to me about this.

Thanks for asking me.

Hopefully we'll get in touch with Cokinya and Kayla.

I would love that so much.

I'm going to see if I can find anybody.

Okay.

Well, if anybody knows these folks, Our number is 323-248-1488.

Have them call us.

I should put this on TikTok.

They're way better at that.

Yes, please.

Like finding people.

I could probably put a post up today and find them by tomorrow.

Oh, you should.

I may do that

for this weekend when the show comes out.

All right.

Yep.

Bye, Lise.

Okay.

Bye.

The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere.

Give us a call on our tip line, 323-248-1488, if you have any stories.

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