Dawnsinger

This video is compiled from audioblogs and video coming into and leaving from New Orleans on Aug. 28-30, 2005, and photos from me, my colleagues and citizen journalists before, during and after the disaster. The music is the Tragically Hip’s “New Orleans is Sinking,” which was my mental background music that day, and “Orphans of God,” which is still our life soundtrack.

I’m posting this for those who haven’t seen it. This is the only video footage of the evacuation of The Times-Picayune at about midday on Aug. 30, 2005, as New Orleans was beginning to fill up with water from the breached levees. At the time we evacuated, water was just about to enter the raised first floor of the building. A riot was in progress at the Orleans Parish Jail, just across the interstate from the Times-Picayune building. As the video shows, at spots on Howard Avenue, the water was washing over the headlights of the Times-Picayune delivery trucks carrying out the 200-plus Times-Picayune and NOLA.com staffers and some family.

At the point of evacuation, I had lost contact with my daughter Sarah for more than a day. Last contact was about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 29, as we lost phone connection as Hurricane Katrina was reaching its pre-eye peak in downtown New Orleans. Sarah had evacuated from her Ninth-Ward apartment, but was only a block from the lakefront in Mandeville on the North Shore. Her account of the storm on the North Shore is recounted below.

I was being interviewed by NBC Nightly News several days after evacuation about my missing daughter, when she walked into our temporary offices in Baton Rouge, after being rescued from our Mandeville home. Both I and the news anchor shared an emotional, teary reunion.

Like most of my staff, I have not recovered. We are surviving.