The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

Ellen Urbani, a Portland author, came to Cathlamet last Friday to talk to a local book club about her novel, Landfall, which tells the story of two families in New Orleans struck by tragedy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

She took a few moments to set the scene of the city and the storm.

"Katrina was coming toward New Orleans," Urbani said. "It looked like it was going to be a direct hit on the city as a Category 5 hurricane. It was the first time in history a mandatory evacuation order was issued for the city of New Orleans. A lot of people judged those who stayed behind and didn't evacuate. What a lot of us didn't realize is that over 20 percent of the citizens of New Orleans had no access to a vehicle. There was no way they could leave. They had no way to obey the order and they were trapped. They opened the Superdome and had tens of thousands of people show up. That's when they realized they weren't prepared to help that many people. They closed the doors and sent people home to the poorest of neighborhoods that lined the canals.

"Katrina came in in the middle of the night," she continued. "It turned just before it hit the city and it went east around the city and came up and went north again. But north of New Orleans is Lake Pontchartrain, which is a lake of gargantuan proportions. It's a lake you can't see across. So when Katrina spun north, it blew all that lake water toward New Orleans, and it hit the canal walls. What they think actually initiated the breaches, which numbered over 70 by the time it was done were the barges in the canal. So much wind and so much water hit those barges which are the size of six city blocks and broke the moorings. The barges were blown into the walls of the canals and they collapsed. The water which was 30 feet tall when it finally breached, blew in like an explosion."

She described the distance of the houses from the canal wall. Some were no more than 20 feet away.

She talked about the Gretna Bridge, the Superdome, about men shooting at helicopters and fishermen who roamed the neighborhoods in their boats, tirelessly looking for survivors.

Urbani was engaging, knowledgable and frequently had the group laughing.

She also shared some of the positive response to her book but acknowledged that she took flak for trying to write from the perspective of a culture that was not her own and for writing about New Orleans and a storm she did not personally experience.

"I've got to hand it to you," one man told her, "this is the most authentic rendering of the story of this storm I have ever read. Don't apologize to us for being an outsider. You told the story better than anybody in this town has."

The book has garnered a lot of praise but she keeps it in perspective, especially her book tours to the South.

"I'm not an idiot, I'm from the South," Urbani laughed. "They may have just been being nice to my face. But they were nice to me while I was there."

Urbani has written two books, Landfall and When I Was Elena.