Tree branches crushed cars. Boats smashed into rooftops.
I saw a coffin floating down the street in floodwaters.
Streetlights didn't work. People drove the wrong way on the Interstates. Packs of wild dogs ran through downtown New Orleans.
It smelled like wet rot and despair. The air was hot and angry. The wind blew chaos into everything. Nothing resembled the civilization that had been there three weeks previously.
Twenty years ago, I spent 15 days embedded with a rescue team called California Task Force 5 after Hurricane Katrina. Photographer Bruce Chambers and I (we were working for the Orange County Register) rode along with a 90-member team, mostly comprised of first responders from the Orange County Fire Authority. We went by bus to the scariest, saddest and most shocking place on earth during August and September of 2005.
I remember the level of frustration as the rescue mission began. Our bus brigade stopped in Dallas, awaiting instructions from FEMA about where we should stop in Louisiana.
FEMA didn't make a decision about our destination for four long days. A team of rescuers sat around the hotel lobby getting angrier as its members watched tragic images on television of people stranded on their rooftops (because the water had risen so high), calling out for help.
I got to know Nick Sanchez, a firefighter who was the father of then-USC quarterback Mark Sanchez (who later became an NFL veteran). Nick was so motivated to help, he left the hotel and volunteered to hand out water to people who had come from New Orleans to Dallas with nowhere to stay.
When we finally got permission to move our buses, we went as close to downtown New Orleans as we could get.
We camped at the New Orleans Saints' practice facility in Metairie, Louisiana. My cot was on the 10-yard line. Chambers and I wrote stories and transmitted photos in a tent in the parking lot.
I focused on the work of interviewing and telling stories, trying not to let emotion into my work. I didn't cry until I got home. The trigger for my tears was turning on a light switch in my California home. When the light came on, when the world worked again, I was more appreciative than I have ever been.
In New Orleans, we rowed boats through what were once city and suburban streets, trying to rescue the injured, trying to locate the dead. I saw men use axes to hack their way into homes, where the water line was on the second floor. I saw National Guard soldiers shoot rabid dogs that threatened rescue workers.
I saw acts of heroism and kindness. The team from California found a woman who had been trapped in her home for almost two weeks with no running water. She said she didn't want to be rescued. She just wanted a bath. So the firefighters filled up a tub for her. She cried and thanked them all with hugs.
I saw an elderly man pulled from his house, where Mission Viejo doctor Peter Czuleger performed a delicate surgical procedure in front of me on his front walkway. A doctor made an incision beneath his shoulder blade and inserted an IV line.
I have never seen such drama.
I have never been happier to get back to Orange County, where I could pet my dog and hug my wife and kids.
Now, 20 years later, the world kept churning. Hurricane Harvey. Hurricane Maria. Hurricane Ian. Last September, Hurricane Helene. The recent flooding in Texas. The world has changed with social media and artificial intelligence, but the job of reporting disasters has not. Interview, photograph, write, edit and publish.
I've been to the aftermath of hurricane zones in Louisiana twice since 2021, reporting about people living in FEMA tents and the parents of special needs children who had to drive to other states to get medication.
It has always been my job to find the rescuers with heroic stories to tell, and the survivors who may pass along knowledge for the next time.