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Back in the Big Easy

The final chapter in this series brought us to New Orleans last night. Despite all the destruction we've seen, nothing prepares you for the sight of this hobbled city -- even if you've been here several times since Katrina, as most of our crew has. I think it's the sheer SCALE of damage: block after block without electricity. Neighborhoods devoid of any actual neighbors. Yes, the French Quarter is open and happily serving reporters and FEMA employees. But nearly two months after the storm, parts of New Orleans are still the urban equivalent of scar tissue.

We won't spend the day here. We're going to Plaquemines Parish, far to the south and an area which took a unique punishing from Katrina. I have no idea what our story will be tonight. Right now, we're wrestling with about 20 Mexican migrant workers who, like us, are trying to muscle in on the coffee pot at a nearby Shell station.

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Dumb luck & oysters

I couldn’t agree more with Al’s entry about discovery journalism. It’s probably the main reason I’ve found this week to be so rewarding.  But I would like to add one anecdote to help illustrate his point.

I’ve spent a good part of my week traveling ahead of the team trying to get a general feel for the themes we should try to focus on in the next day’s story.  On Wednesday I left the team in Forked Island, La. and started heading east. Al had told us there were a lot of oyster fishermen who lived in the area and Carl agreed it might be a good opportunity to focus on the storm’s effects on the seafood industry. Other than that my marching orders were fairly vague and I set out to see what I could find.

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Neverending stories

I guess this journey's almost over... as if measuring Katrina's impact has a finish line... I am assigned here for the foreseeable future so I may park the car for a week or two, but then I'll put it in gear once more and find the on ramp. As result I look at this trip not as over, heck, we were just scouting ahead for stories to come. There are so many more to be told.

What would I have done different? Well, maybe ask for a cooler car. If I knew a camera crew was going to chase me down a highway filming me as I go, then, really, is a white Camry me?

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Discovery journalism

Just a few thoughts about "Team Carl's" road trip this week. We have been doing what I call discovery journalism. We show up, record what is happening, and package that into a story for Nightly News. Generally, we decide in advance where to go, but not a specific topic, just a snapshot of where we are and what we have found. It's challenging to go someplace with a minimal amount of setup and just trust that you will find something interesting enough to justify a story for a national audience.

That being said, I wasn't worried at all. I have done hundreds of stories in this part of the world. I love the people you find "off the highways." Everyone has a story, you just need a forum for someone to hear it. I have been a journalist since I was 20 years old. I love my job. As a journalist, you have an automatic license to ask anyone just about anything. It's also a huge responsibility to use those answers in a thoughtful and responsible manner. The answers we used this week I hope were both thoughtful and responsible.

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Shootout at Pass Christian

Photo by Marisa Buchanan, NBC News

When I first heard this story, I thought it had to be an urban legend, but yesterday in Pass Christian, Miss., when police chief John Dubuisson showed me the bullet holes I knew it was true. On the day Katrina hit the chief and several officers went off to rescue some folks trapped by rising water. They got everyone out only to be cut off themselves by the storm surge.

The group sought shelter in the town's library. It's up on higher ground and in the shadow of city hall. As the streets outside raged like mountain rapids, they felt safe in the recently renovated structure. But that's when the flaw to their plan started to seep in.

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Sad to see it end

It's dawning on me that tomorrow is the last day of our series -- which means no more trolling around the Gulf Coast like a band of gypsies. This saddens me.

We'll keep bringing you the stories from here, of course. There are enough to fill a million Nightly News broadcasts. But the treat of parachuting into a small town and delivering it to viewers in just 12 short hours is one few of us want to see end. Maybe that's because the spirit of the Texans and Louisianians we've met is infectious. They almost seem more concerned with making sure they've offered us a drink of water than with their own, much more pressing troubles.

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Dredging for oysters

Lesson of the day: BlackBerries work even in the deep Louisiana bayou.

We're on an oyster boat. Just met LeRay Billiot, a 35-year oyster fisherman who, in between brief bits of conversation with me, dredges hundreds of pounds of oysters from the bayou into his boat, "Lady Linda."

It's hard work. And it's getting harder. Hurricane Rita dumped hundreds of thousands of tons of marsh grass onto the reefs, suffocating the oysters. The sudden rush of salt water killed them too. So not only have some fisherman lost their homes and their boats, they've also lost the resource that would have allowed them to work and get those things back.

Tonight we'll introduce you to LeRay. He's a great guy. I just wish I'd had some chest-deep waders like he had. I have oyster schmutz all over my pants.

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Lakeshore at last

Made it to Lakeshore, Miss.... Took some work. An aid worker literally had to talk us in. It's a one traffic light town. Not on many maps. It was responses to this blog that told us to get here. So you can't say we don't listen.

Town is poor, devastation's bad. We're near where the eye of Katrina landed. Folks here not standing around for FEMA handouts... Though as I type across from me the finishing touches are being made to a FEMA trailer-ville. It sits on the town little league field, so things are not looking too good for next season.

Anyway, town is a mess, but it's how they are getting out of it that's interesting... a saw mill and how it changed one man's life and is now changing the life of a town. This is going to get muddy...
Got to go.

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On your mark, get set...

Another day. It starts with a cup of coffee. It should start with the firing of a gun and the squealing of tires. We have a lot of ground to cover.

Yesterday was a real nail biter. Cross-checking information in the Katrina zone is time consuming. Most of it has to be done in person since no one is in their office anymore and phones can be tricky. Checkpoints slow you down. Some areas are said off limits without a government pass. We don't have a government pass so we have to talk our way in... that can take time.

Don't want to tell you how close Wednesday's Nightly spot came to being NASA's newest black hole.

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Losing everything

While the rest of our team spent most of their day in Vermilion Parish on Wednesday, I spent a good portion of mine in Terrebonne Parish.  I was working my way down Highway 315 talking to the oyster, shrimp and crab fisherman who live along the bayou in preparation for Thursday’s story.

I came upon a couple - a retired fisherman and his wife - who were cleaning their front yard.  We chatted for a few minutes.  It was a fairly normal conversation, at least as normal as any conversation between a Midwestern kid from the suburbs and two Cajuns whose home sits on stilts can possibly be. They hadn’t lost much, but then the woman informed me that their daughter…

"…she lost everything."

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