Mary Staes

"Friday night before Katrina I knew it was going to be bad," Margaret Orr, chief meteorologist at WDSU-TV, said. "We were on air nonstop from Friday night until Sunday night. We did 12-hour shifts."

 

"Many weather models had the storm getting picked up by a pressure system and moving away from the city. When that didn't happen, I knew it was going to be bad. The storm moved over warm water, which gave it the fuel it needed to intensify.

"I remember looking at it going, 'Oh my God, she's a Category 5,' and she was moving our way."

 

After telling her family to leave early Sunday morning, Orr said she packed all her clothes, her daughter's debutante ball gown and a few other items in her car. Then, she wrote a letter.

 

"I said, 'Dear Jesus, please protect and bless our home. Much Love, Meg.'

"I said a prayer, right here, turning around in a circle. 'Please protect our city. Please protect this area. Please keep us safe.' I had an overwhelming sense come over me that it was going to be major destruction."

 

"So then I drove back to work with my entire car packed, gathered up some people, and we went back to the Hilton.

"I tried to go to sleep. And I woke up, oh, it must have been 10, 11 at night. I thought I heard my grandmother's rocking chair. It was going 'creak, creak.' ... I realized it wasn't her rocking chair, it was the building going 'creak, creak.'

 

"This is the Hilton. I went, 'Oh my god, let me get dressed, take a shower, if this building goes down I want to be dressed.' And so I went downstairs and it was howling outside."

 

"All of the power was off at the Hilton at that point, and then the big window shatters, right next to the escalator, and all of this water starts coming in," she said.

"We had water covering the floor by morning at the Hilton. It wasn't from the storm surge from the canals, it was just rain water that had come in. "

 

"Then, we went out and looked at the city. I was with Roop Raj, Helena Moreno, and then eventually we get in a Humvee and go down Earhart, and the water was coming in, and we knew the canals had broken then and I knew the city was going to fill up."

 

"So I stayed Monday night and then we were getting reports of people being rescued off of rooftops. And I spoke to a family that had been rescued in Lakeview, because I didn't know what was happening in Lakeview, all we had was WWL radio. And people would gather at the Hilton around these radios and we were all listening trying to get information about what was happening. We were getting reports from all these areas, and I knew Lakeview was not good."

 

"At that point I thought, 'Well, my home is flooded, I lost everything.' But my thought was, my family is safe. And so you know, you kind of go, OK. And then I got reports, no, my little area was OK. And, I thanked Jesus."

 

"I think people are moving to New Orleans, they're building in New Orleans. We're making New Orleans a better place. There are lots of young people who are here who are making the city more diverse. Creating new jobs."

 

"There's lots to celebrate in New Orleans. I see what's happening in Hollygrove, with the farms that they've put in. I see Grow Dat in City Park teaching young people about business and growing food, I see that happening in the 9th Ward where there are orchards going in."

 

"I think Katrina has taught us that we need to be more self-sufficient. And I'm a big proponent for that. I think it has taught us bad things happened and you need to be prepared."