20 Years Later, Tulanians Replicate on Hurricane Katrina’s Legacy

As the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, the Tulane Maritime Law Center convened a strong panel of Tulanians who lived via the storm in very other ways. What emerged was not only a historical past lesson, however a reminder of resilience, management, and above all, group. 

Dean Emeritus Lawrence Ponoroff, who led Tulane Law School within the aftermath of the catastrophic storm, opened the night with a vivid account of steering the varsity via one among its most unsure chapters. He recalled being in Houston with then-President Scott Cowen, whose mantra was “Survival, Recovery, Renewal” after which organizing campus leaders to rebuild packages and convey the campus again. 

When college students lastly returned in January, the semester was not like something Tulane, or every other regulation college, had seen earlier than. Dubbed a “semester on steroids,” college students attended courses six days every week to make up for misplaced time. “There was just this attitude that semester that we’re all in this together, and we’re going to get it done, no matter what it takes,” Ponoroff mentioned. 

For Judge Meredith Grabill (L’06), then a 3L and Editor in Chief of the Tulane Law Review, the storm examined not solely her resolve but additionally the continuity of one of many college’s most essential establishments – its flagship regulation journal. Separated from her fellow members by bodily distance and restricted by the expertise of the time, she remained decided to see that 12 months’s quantity revealed. Why? To honor contracts with school and lecturers who have been dedicated to supporting the Review, to make sure the switch of institutional information between courses, however most significantly, as a result of, as she put it, “whenever you’re in a crisis, routine, familiarity, and friendship are what get you through.” 

Friendship and connection additionally outlined the expertise of Hari Krishna, an LLM scholar from India. As the one one among his cohort with a working cellphone, Krishna turned a lifeline connecting classmates with regulation colleges throughout the nation prepared to host them. “I doubt that there’s anybody in the LLM class of that year that does not owe what they ended up doing to Hari Krishna,” mentioned Professor Martin Davies. 

If Krishna’s position embodied group, Michael Vitt’s embodied braveness. A Tulane Law graduate working as in-house counsel at Bisso & Son, Inc., he spent the storm on a tugboat on the Mississippi River, charged with maintaining an under-construction vessel secured at a shipyard. After Katrina made landfall, Vitt (L’01) and his crew turned from shipkeepers into first responders, evacuating lots of of individuals, combating fires, and ferrying gasoline to fireplace vehicles and mills throughout the town. There was, he mentioned, “no way to explain what it was like to see the city suffer the way it did.” That heartbreak solely underscored the significance of the work he and his crew carried out. 

The night’s ultimate voice, Grady Hurley (A&S’76, L’79, LLM’81), president of the Maritime Law Association of the United States, tied these tales along with a broader reflection on the position of legal professionals in instances of disaster. Serving as president of the New Orleans Bar Association throughout Katrina, Hurley evacuated to Houston, the place he labored out of Jones Walker’s workplaces. That expertise, he famous, compelled the occupation to adapt, embracing distant work and new expertise, whereas drawing on legal professionals’ present “don’t lose” mentality. 

Hurley left college students with a strong cost: 

 “Lawyers are important people. You are important people. Katrina is a great example of what countless nameless lawyers gave back to the community because of their insights, their analysis, and their abilities.” 

The thread that certain collectively every of those Tulanians’ accounts, whether or not informed from a regulation overview workplace, a tugboat, or an evacuation web site, was unmistakable: group. And that was the message they left with immediately’s regulation college students, who now carry ahead not solely the legacy of Katrina but additionally the duty of their occupation. 

Watch the panel in its entirety here.