Meine Hurrikan Kinder
by Jochen Kranz

For this Katrina dad, it was a harrowing party, indeed. Let alone his wife, Dawn's, gig.

Where I come from, there are no hurricanes. In fact, if you do not venture too far away from the marked ski slopes, you are even fairly safe from avalanches. New Orleans is a bit different, even though, admittedly, one is even safer from avalanches here than in my native Austria. My mom still asks me, “Why? Why did you move away from here [Austria] to over there [Louisiana]?” Echoing the favorite argumentative Catch-22 of my eight-year old stepson Ty, my instinctive answer to that is usually, “’Coz.” Truthfully, though, Ty is a big reason for my being here, as is my better half, Dawn, and since August 30, 2005, our son Evan.

Evan was born in a formerly Methodist hospital in Southern Mississippi without power, water or anesthesia for his mother. He was brought into this world about 36 hours after Hurricane Katrina’s eye swept over our modest 1970s ranch home in Pearl River, Louisiana. We saw the 145 mile per hour winds crack our pine trees like a lawnmower’s blade smacking tall leaves of grass. We saw the power poles topple, the lines snap, and we heard the freight trains that were really tornadoes take out the trailer park on the other side of I-59.

Once Dawn and I had found out that we were pregnant, we went to all the pre-natal exams, took pre-natal courses at the hospital, toured two hospitals, finally decided on Slidell Memorial, had two baby showers, prepared our eight-year old (then seven) for the awesome responsibilities that would come with being a big brother, and turned our attached two-car garage into a bedroom so the baby could have his or her own room. I write “his or her,” since our Ob/Gyn doctor changed his mind from pre-natal exam to pre-natal exam as to whether we were looking at a boy or girl on the ultra-sound image. Had he been a girl, Evan’s name would be Amelia.

Besides poor Dawn being sick a great deal, the pregnancy was an excellent one. Evan, still in the womb, routinely gave us the thumbs-up or some sort of “Peace” sign on ultra-sound images. On August 14, 2005, Dawn woke me up at 2 a.m. and told me that it was time. I did not ask “What time?” as a new daddy in a B-movie would have. I knew what time it was, grabbed the gym bag we had packed a week earlier, and off we went to Slidell Memorial, running red lights and all. Once there, the doctor on duty decided that, since he could not get in touch with our Ob/Gyn doctor, and since we were a couple of weeks early, he would give Dawn some drugs to stop the contractions. They did—to my great disappointment, since my birthday is on August 15, and there had been a slight chance that Evan and I would have shared the same birthday.

A week went by, a few storms danced around in the Gulf, and nothing much else happened. Then Katrina crossed Florida as a category 1 hurricane and started heading north. People started filling gas canisters, our Slidell Wal-Mart was about to start running low on Bunny Bread, optional evacuations turned into mandatory ones and Bob Breck was conjuring up some gibberish about Judgment Day. Dawn had been put on bed rest and could not ride in a car for more than 10 minutes. It was going to be any day now, as they say. Even if we had to, we would not be able to evacuate.

On August 27, I went to get water, cans of food and ply-wood. On the 28th, I got the rationed 25 sand bags we could get in Pearl River, picked up branches and boarded up the house. On the 29th at about 7:30 a.m., the sun had not risen, and the winds started blowing. I was talking to my dad in Austria on my cell phone as suddenly, half-way through the conversation, the phone went dead. The ensuing hours were traumatic.

After the winds had subsided, we realized that our street was completely cut off from anything. There was no way to get a car out, and it was incredibly hard to get to Highway 11 even on foot. Our neighbor from across the street offered his help should we have to deliver the baby in the bathtub. He was a tug-boat captain and, for some reason, had delivered three babies before.

The morning of August 30 was sunny and hot—very hot. We had no power (of course) and no running water, but we had gas, so Dawn fixed us some really nice omelets for breakfast. The neighbors came by with good news. The fire station a mile-and-a-half down the street had made it, and there was an ambulance there. What is more, one could get to Slidell! So, we made the decision to start fighting our way out of the neighborhood and toward the fire station. The plan was for Dawn and Ty to get on the ambulance and be chauffeured to Slidell Memorial. After gathering up some toiletries and clothes, I would join them there shortly on foot.

We were about two-thirds of the way to the fire station as Dawn’s contractions started. They were the real ones, not the Braxton-Hicks fake-outs. A fireman, damaging his pick-up truck, plowed his way through to us from the other side and got us to the ambulance. I kissed Dawn and Ty goodbye, assuring Dawn that she did not need to worry since I would always find her. Little did I know the magnitude of the promise I had just given my future wife.

Dawn and Ty were taken to the Slidell Memorial Hospital Annex, since the actual hospital was out of commission. They were not admitted, though, since the hospital had no surgical capabilities after the storm. They could not risk having a hypothetical Caesarian delivery on their hands. So, they were sent on to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which is about 80 miles to the northeast of us. The catch was that I had no way of knowing that, and no, there was no cell or other phone service.

After I had made my way back to the house from the fire station, something close to a miracle happened: a bulldozer came down our street. A couple of guys had decided to start up a bulldozer from a nearby construction site and clear a narrow path down Nelson Road. It was narrow, but wide enough to get a car through. Enthusiastically, I packed up two sets of clothes for everyone (including the baby), the car seat-and-stroller system, water and my laptop computer (I am still not sure why). Off I went to Slidell! My high spirits were dampened as I saw nurses and doctors tending to patients under the hospital annex’ carport.

I did not see Dawn or Ty anywhere. When I finally got a nurse to stop and listen to me, I found out that there were no patient lists. I grabbed a hold of another nurse and a doctor who assured me that nobody who fit Dawn’s description was there. As the doctor was walking away, she asked me if my girlfriend’s doctor was Dr. Berault. After I answered in the affirmative, she asked if Dawn had a little boy with her. I was expecting her to raise her hand and direct me to a location in the building in which the two were. Instead, she started scratching her head and said she might have sent them on to Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg.

That bit of information being all that I had, I jumped into the car, made my way back to Pearl River and then onto I-59. To my surprise, it was passable. I had not quite half a tank of gas, which should take me as far as 80 miles on an interstate highway. My confidence had just started to build up, as I ran into a road block close to Poplarville, Mississippi. It was, in fact, about a 10 mile-long roadblock of fallen pine trees that the military was in the process of clearing.

I soon found myself as part of a crowd of drivers that had decided that waiting for the Corps of Engineering to clear the path was not going to be an option. We proceeded to cut across the neutral ground to the northbound lanes of I-59 and started our own contraflow trek south toward Hattiesburg. As my fuel gauge kept dropping, I was still confident I could make it to Hattiesburg that way. My idealism found an abrupt end about 10 miles south of Poplarville in the shape of a mad Mississippi State Trooper who, his hand tapping his gun, angrily turned the pseudo-contraflow line around and back to the north away from Hattiesburg. My car’s gas gauge did not appreciate that move. Neither did it like my brief and futile excursion to the old Highway 11 from Poplarville.

Very much in the neighborhood of complete despair, and very low on gas, I found another State Trooper (a friendly one this time) and described to him my situation. “How can I get to Hattiesburg?” I asked, expecting a cruel snicker from the man. Instead, he answered that Highway 49 between Wiggins and Hattiesburg was allegedly open. After finding out where Wiggins was (22 miles to the east of my location) and after a nerve-racking trip there, the inevitable you-are-almost-out-of-gas light finally came on. Hattiesburg was another 20 miles from where I was.

At the end of that day, though, I made it to Hattiesburg and Wesley Medical Center, as my car rolled sputtering into the parking garage. The hospital was well-guarded, but the security guard permitted me to proceed to the ER reception desk to inquire if Dawn and Ty were really there. “Room 312,” was the short answer of the receptionist. It took me a moment to realize that I had really found them. As I proceeded—no, ran—past the sympathetic security guard and up the stairs (the hospital was only operating at emergency power levels), I started to cry. I regained my composure briefly as I reached the Labor and Delivery Department and asked the nurses gathered at the nurses’ station where Room 312 was. They pointed me toward it but stopped me short and asked if I was…oh my God—I was!

Since Dawn’s labor had somewhat subsided after reaching Wesley, she and Ty were about to be released to a Hattiesburg public shelter. The hospital would not keep her past a certain point—as much as everybody wanted to—should her labor not resume. Everyone was concerned about and sorry for her and her little boy who had had nothing to eat since he left Pearl River in the green Acadian Ambulance truck with his mom. One of the nurses found a can of ravioli for him, but that was all. In short, Dawn’s and Ty’s immediate future prospects were abysmal—no food, no clothes, no phone, nowhere to go but to a shelter in a strange town in Mississippi. Then I found them, which prompted the nurses’ cheering. Not only did it prompt cheering, though—it also brought Dawn’s labor back with a bang. We were officially admitted and got our own room. Sweet luxury! That is when Ty wrote his now legendary battle cry “We will rool!” on our room’s whiteboard. Two hours later, Evan Rivera Kranz was born while Ty played with his action figures at the nurses’ station. After he was allowed back in the room and touched his little brother for the first time, Ty changed his battle cry to a simple but profound statement on the whiteboard: “Evan is born.”

The days and weeks that followed were difficult, but at least we had each other. I scored a few gallons of gas the following day, some food for Ty (the hospital would only feed patients) and a phone call to my parents in Austria. We took two-day old Evan on his first road trip. After making it to Meridian, Mississippi, I was able to fill up our car so that we could go on to Birmingham, Alabama, and re-connect with Ty’s father and his family. We stayed at the house of a friend that none of us had ever met: a PhD student in theology who had just left town for a six-week trip to the Czech Republic and who somehow learned of our situation and turned her house over to us. I have not been able to contact that woman to this day.

For the first time, we saw TV coverage of flooded New Orleans, we learned of the tragedies at Charity Hospital, the Superdome and the Convention Center. As I looked away from the TV screen to Evan in his oversized Tupperware box that doubled as his crib, I could not believe what we had escaped.

We returned to Pearl River about a month later after we had received word that electricity and water were back online again. Step by step, we rebuilt our lives as Evan really just started his. He is ten months old now and, as his father, I can objectively point out that he is indeed the cutest baby ever. He is healthy to the point at which his pediatrician just declared that he outgrew the doctor’s growth chart. He gives me a big smile and screeches with joy when I come home from work, and as I pick him up and blow bubbles on his neck, I realize that, storm and all, we really did “rool.”

Jochen Kranz holds down the Dean's chair at Herzing College.
photos courtesy author.