Catastrophic Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast 17 years ago this month. This podcast remembers Katrina in an interview with Chris Franklin, New Orleans native and Chief Meteorologist with WWL-TV, in part 1 of a 2-part podcast.

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Transcript:

00;00;00;01 - 00;00;02;07
Hal Needham
Coming up next on the GeoTrek podcast.

00;00;02;20 - 00;00;26;10
Chris Franklin
And we kind of had a makeshift news production facility in one room, the control room, some small offices. EDIT Bay is the newsroom, the news desk, the weather center. The anchor desk was just all in this one big room that was still kind of open to the elements. We had porta potties outside to go to the bathroom. We had armed security guards because as far as New Orleans, Gert Town is not the safest of neighborhoods.

00;00;26;10 - 00;00;31;28
Chris Franklin
And once you tack on the fact that we're one of the few areas with our you become kind of a target.

00;00;33;03 - 00;00;58;27
Hal Needham
Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast in August of 2005, inflicting a widespread catastrophe. The impacts of this disaster are mind boggling. It caused more than 1800 fatalities generated the largest storm surge on record in the Western Hemisphere and inflicted the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Howell, host of the GeoTrek podcast, Episodes 42 and 43 of the podcast.

00;00;58;27 - 00;01;27;02
Hal Needham
Look back at Katrina, which occurred 17 years ago this month to remember this disaster and learn the lessons that we can apply where we live. Our guest for these episodes is new Orleans native Chris Franklin, chief meteorologist with WWL TV in the Crescent City. You're going to love these episodes if you have ties to the Gulf Coast. Are interested in tropical meteorology and hurricanes where if you just want to learn valuable lessons to apply back home to make yourself or your community more resilient.

00;01;27;23 - 00;01;58;10
Hal Needham
This podcast also has great insights for young meteorologists coming up and covering high profile disasters. But first, a bit about the podcast. The GeoTrek podcast travels the world to find stories about the relationship between people and nature. Our stories investigate the impact of extreme weather, disasters and hazards on individuals and communities. Our goal is to help you understand better how the world works so you can take actions to make yourself, your family and your community more resilient from all the extremes Mother Nature can throw at us.

00;01;58;22 - 00;02;19;13
Hal Needham
Hey, before we get into this episode, we have a favor to ask of you. We'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Your subscription helps us mark progress, which enables us to make more professional partnerships moving forward and ensures many more episodes of the GEO podcast in the future. Well, hey, let's hop over to the French Quarter to meet up with Chris.

00;02;19;21 - 00;02;39;04
Hal Needham
We'll be at Cafe du Monde and order an extra plate of beanies for you. These are going to be great episodes that focus on New Orleans. Katrina and what we can learn from this disaster. Let's learn a little more about this week's guest. Born and raised in the New Orleans area, Chris Franklin is currently the chief meteorologist at WWL TV.

00;02;39;16 - 00;03;07;14
Hal Needham
After earning a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology from the University of South Alabama, he began his broadcast career in 2004 in Topeka, Kansas. After about a year of snow forecasts and tornado chasing, he returned home to WVU ETV. In early August 2005, Baptism by Fire was how Chris describes forecasting Hurricane Katrina as it approached the Louisiana coast, covering the buildup, landfall and aftermath of the storm.

00;03;07;27 - 00;03;33;20
Hal Needham
After about ten years at WVU, he as the morning meteorologist Chris moved across town to WWL in 2016 and was later promoted to chief meteorologist in 2019. Chris has received numerous awards from the Press Club of New Orleans, the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters, and he and his team earned the distinction of best weather in the country from broadcast and cable magazine for their coverage of Hurricane Ida.

00;03;34;02 - 00;03;56;14
Hal Needham
In 2021, Chris holds the AMS television, television seal of approval and is married with two young children. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the Geo Track podcast. Hey everyone, welcome to the Geo Trek podcast. This is a very special edition with Chris Franklin, chief meteorologist of WWL TV in New Orleans. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

00;03;57;00 - 00;04;05;29
Chris Franklin
A pleasure. And you know, reliving some past storms is sometimes a benefit and a curse of having to go through it again. But you know, maybe we can learn something.

00;04;06;04 - 00;04;25;00
Hal Needham
Yeah, it's both. Chris, I really enjoyed getting to meet you at the National Tropical Weather Conference in South Padre. You're in New Orleans and you have all these amazing stories from the past. I really want to get into your storm stories and perspectives. But before we do that, I want to go back even farther. I mean, you're just you're such a good weather communicator.

00;04;25;00 - 00;04;31;27
Hal Needham
You can tell you have a passion for weather and meteorology. Like how did this start? Is this something you were interested in when you were like a child growing up?

00;04;32;19 - 00;04;48;19
Chris Franklin
You know, growing up and this was a part of mainly school talks that I do because I do a lot of community talks to adults and kids. But one part that I really stress when I do the school talks to some of the younger kids is the fact that when I was younger I was always interested in science.

00;04;48;19 - 00;05;08;08
Chris Franklin
I was always very curious. The science was always very intriguing to me. But all the fields of science. But what really started guiding me toward weather meteorology was that when I was a child, I was scared to death of the weather. If I saw dark clouds on. I mean, a typical New Orleans summertime day is we begin sunny.

00;05;08;08 - 00;05;29;06
Chris Franklin
You start to see those dark clouds building by the mid afternoon. I wanted curtains closed. I didn't want to go outside. I was scared to die. That wasn't anything that specifically ever happened to me. I just was terrified of the weather. So when you hear that alert and the crawl come across the bottom of the screen with severe weather, my God, I was I was terrified.

00;05;29;19 - 00;05;54;19
Chris Franklin
And especially when the meteorologist was coming on on air to talk about a hurricane and threatening and they were showing the court as I was petrified of that. So at some point in my life, I realized if I maybe start learning about it, maybe I can overcome that fear. Because if I understand what the meteorologist is talking about on television, maybe then I can get over this fear.

00;05;55;08 - 00;06;00;04
Chris Franklin
And so I did. So I started learning more about and reading about it and yeah, that's fascinating.

00;06;00;12 - 00;06;03;09
Hal Needham
So Chris, you grew up in New Orleans then.

00;06;03;28 - 00;06;23;23
Chris Franklin
So, yes, I'm from New Orleans. So so to be chief meteorologist in my hometown where I was born and raised is truly a blessing. So it's a place that I know very well, having grown up here. And so, you know, there's a part of me that has gotten familiar with the weather patterns over the last 40 years, just having experienced it every single year.

00;06;23;23 - 00;06;31;16
Chris Franklin
So, yeah, it was it was it was more of a fear. And then and then trying to overcome that fear by learning that really got me into the passion of weather.

00;06;31;17 - 00;06;47;16
Hal Needham
Okay. So you're like, it sounds like you had an aptitude for science and you said, you know, let me learn more about this and see what it's all about to kind of leave those fears. And obviously, as you got more into it, you became even more interested because here you are, you know, as a meteorologist. So what about like university years?

00;06;47;16 - 00;06;50;14
Hal Needham
So you studied meteorology at university?

00;06;50;14 - 00;07;11;25
Chris Franklin
Yes. So then once I realized that this is what I wanted to do as a career, and it was definitely before high school that I realized this is what I what I could say was probably middle school. Sixth grader, so that I realized I wanted to do meteorology. I went to the University of South Alabama in Mobile, so I stayed along the Gulf Coast and studied meteorology at my Bachelor of Science of Meteorology.

00;07;11;25 - 00;07;39;19
Chris Franklin
From there. And as far as being a broadcaster in this field, I really didn't do a whole lot of broadcasting courses. My my focus was actually environmental meteorology, so I took extra environmental science courses, hydrology courses, some other geology because I knew for TV I'd probably get that experience either as an intern or a couple of courses that I did do in broadcasting, but I didn't want that to be my primary focus, to be honest.

00;07;39;19 - 00;07;47;14
Chris Franklin
I wanted to do more science. I wanted to get as much science out of it as I possibly could before going into the work field.

00;07;47;14 - 00;08;07;12
Hal Needham
Yeah, and University of South Alabama has a great program. There are a lot of Gulf Coast meteorologists go through that program. They do a great job and a little shout out the parent company that funds Geo Track in this podcast. They're based in Mobile, C and D, catastrophe and national claims. And a lot of times there's a really nice relationship there with the university because mobile is just so central along the Gulf Coast.

00;08;07;12 - 00;08;30;25
Chris Franklin
There it is. And it was a great university. And despite the fact that we were on the Gulf Coast and did a lot of tropical weather forecasting, our professors there were great about having US forecasts for various parts of the country to where when I got my first job out of school in Topeka, Kansas, I was totally ready to do snow forecasting for real this time and also severe weather forecasting.

00;08;30;25 - 00;08;36;16
Chris Franklin
But you know, the bread and butter at at at south is is tropical weather.

00;08;36;25 - 00;08;50;12
Hal Needham
So, Chris, let's let's transition then you get your bachelors in meteorology, you get this first job out in Topeka and there you are in an environment completely different from south Louisiana. What was it like living there and forecasting out there?

00;08;50;29 - 00;09;09;14
Chris Franklin
It was it was different. It was different. It's a completely different environment. Our station where I worked was literally in the middle of a corn. It was out on a rural highway. You would just drive and drive and drive and then all of a sudden there's a transmitter tower and there's the building in the middle of a cornfield.

00;09;11;14 - 00;09;32;12
Chris Franklin
But it was it was different. I started there in October of 2004, and so I had just kind of basic weather that I had to contend with at first. But then we had the first big snow forecast. This is my big you know, here's the verification. Let's see, this is your big moment. The pressure is it, This is it.

00;09;32;21 - 00;09;49;17
Chris Franklin
And thankfully, my first snow forecast was outstanding Later. Snow forecast may not be as great with in terms of the timing of changing over to snow or the amounts. But but I was able to handle the snow forecast and that severe weather season. I mean, Great Plains, it's huge. And so.

00;09;49;24 - 00;09;52;02
Hal Needham
Yeah, the springtime that really ramps up out there.

00;09;52;06 - 00;10;12;28
Chris Franklin
It ramps up and it and it's completely different because I'd never done there was a class that you could take where you did some storm chasing. I didn't do it. So this was totally different from just sitting at the computer forecasting severe weather. I was forecasting it and then being sent out to go chase storms. And you know, it's funny, This is really before cell phones were as big as they are now.

00;10;12;28 - 00;10;33;01
Chris Franklin
This was oh four. So I would have no signal on my phone and I'd have to record what I could as I'm chasing and then stop somewhere and get on a payphone to then do a phoner with the station, live on TV about what I had just seen. So it was it was it was a new experience for about snow forecasting but actually experiencing it.

00;10;33;11 - 00;10;55;21
Chris Franklin
And then also for for severe weather. So it was it was a great learning station where it's it's a small station. Everybody's pretty young. Everybody's for the most part just starting out, I was able to work under a very experienced meteorologist there, but then also kind of learned the the very basics of of snow, winter forecasting, severe weather forecast thing.

00;10;55;29 - 00;11;00;14
Chris Franklin
And then we can kind of fast forward to my tropical forecasting experience with Katrina.

00;11;00;22 - 00;11;20;20
Hal Needham
It is. And before we do that, something I wanted to touch on. I lived in South Louisiana for eight years, you know, and I was surprised. I pictured severe weather like North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas. I was surprised how many severe weather outbreaks sometimes do reach down to the I-10 corridor and then winter time as well. So I wonder if that time in Kansas kind of helped you prepare.

00;11;20;20 - 00;11;24;13
Hal Needham
I know we don't get tons of winter storms in south Louisiana, but it does happen, right?

00;11;25;00 - 00;11;56;28
Chris Franklin
No, we do. And you know, what's interesting is when we do, they're probably more impactful because such as North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, they're going to get it every single winter. And they're right. Several of these big winter events when we get them in New Orleans, south Louisiana, every couple of years, they could shut us down. I mean, if we get ice on bridges and it wasn't too long ago, 16, seven, maybe 17, we had an ice storm here and there was ice on the Causeway Bridge, which connects the south shore on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

00;11;57;11 - 00;12;24;26
Chris Franklin
That shut us down. I mean, I'm sure if our bridges are impassable, this is a city surrounded by water that's right. And the one morning I was going into work that we had the ice storm. It was advised do not cross any bridges. And I'm thinking between my house in Jefferson Parish and Orleans Parish, where our station is, I'm thinking about the number of bridges, overpasses that I, I drive across and I'm thinking I've got to avoid all of those just to get to work.

00;12;24;26 - 00;12;47;04
Chris Franklin
It added another half hour just to get into the station. So winter weather more impactful and even our severe weather, it's funny with Lake Pontchartrain, there is almost a dividing line between how far south the real severe storms get. I'm talking the the more significant tornadoes. Sure. Orleans Parish, south of the lake, it's it's few and far between.

00;12;47;04 - 00;13;16;13
Chris Franklin
But you get to the north shore and then just across the state line, southwest Mississippi, it's night and day. It is definitely that that Dixie alley of that southern tornado alley, it's it's very much a dividing line. And you could even say that dividing line kind of cuts across our viewing area from the North Shore and in Mississippi to the south shore, whereas Metro New Orleans, we really don't it it's a it's a rare occurrence, but north of the lake and farther north, it's it's fairly common in springtime for us.

00;13;16;16 - 00;13;19;24
Hal Needham
Yeah. You get north of 12, you start to get a lot of severe weather really quickly, right?

00;13;19;24 - 00;13;27;20
Chris Franklin
Yes, very much so. And you'll get those more long track tornadoes, whereas Metro New Orleans, we've had some in our history, but it's just not as common.

00;13;27;22 - 00;13;44;29
Hal Needham
Sure. For sure. No, that's very interesting. Thanks for covering those different types of severe weather hazards. I know most of the year along the Gulf Coast, it's hot and humid. Hurricanes and tropical weather are the big concern. But you're right, these other other events like winter weather and severe weather, maybe not as common, but when it happens, it can be a big impact.

00;13;45;14 - 00;13;51;10
Hal Needham
So, Chris, there you were wrapping up in Kansas and what was next on your career path after that?

00;13;51;20 - 00;14;08;12
Chris Franklin
Well, like I said, I started in oh four in in Topeka, and I was always itching to get back home, though. I mean, I'm from New Orleans. It was it was a little bit farther away. I went away to college in Mobile, but it was only 2 hours away. And I'm a homebody, so I wanted to get back all my entire families here.

00;14;08;25 - 00;14;32;18
Chris Franklin
And so thankfully, the parent company that owned the station in Topeka also owned WVU in New Orleans. And I had been an intern there from high school and into college. So I knew the meteorologists, I knew the staff there, and I was very familiar with the station and the chief there at the time, Bob Breck, was always trying to get me to come back as well.

00;14;32;18 - 00;14;58;00
Chris Franklin
He liked me. I was kind of a protege under him and was always trying to get back. And here was an opportunity to come back less than a year out of school and from Topeka. So I spent only about nine, ten months in Topeka. Okay. And by August 25, I was coming back home to New Orleans thinking, Oh, good, this will be just kind of an easy homecoming.

00;14;58;02 - 00;15;00;02
Chris Franklin
And that was 2005.

00;15;00;02 - 00;15;01;05
Hal Needham
That sounds familiar to me.

00;15;01;05 - 00;15;21;20
Chris Franklin
For some reason it does. The mindset of a lot of people. Yeah, but this is early August 2005. Our world had not changed as of yet. When I came back home and when I started back home, I was kind of the number four meteorologist. I was I was more of the feel end guy. I would help weather produce and fill in when the other when the other folks would take vacation.

00;15;21;20 - 00;15;28;07
Chris Franklin
So I didn't really have a set shift that was more of a floater and just kind of did whatever I needed to do. But it was it was good to be home.

00;15;29;05 - 00;15;49;05
Hal Needham
Yeah. So. Chris Yeah. So here you are. You're back home. It's August of oh five. You're only out of school about a year. You're settling in, You're probably just still moving and transitioning, and all of a sudden this storm named Katrina comes into the Gulf. Could you kind of walk us through I mean, what was it like watching Katrina approach South Louisiana, maybe just in the days before?

00;15;49;05 - 00;15;54;24
Hal Needham
I mean, what was it? What was going through your mind? And then how did that play out for you personally and professionally?

00;15;55;28 - 00;16;17;16
Chris Franklin
You know, initially and if you look back at the forecast of the hurricane center and it's what's incredible is how how far more accurate the forecasts are not only in the computer models, but in the forecast from the National Hurricane Center. I mean, they're spot on. You know, days out with Katrina. It took a little time to really get that forecast set in stone.

00;16;18;05 - 00;16;37;25
Chris Franklin
If you remember earlier on, this formed an east of Florida. And initially it looked like it was just going to move along the East Coast and stay well clear of the Gulf. Well, then the next day we started to see that westward trend in the models and it looked like, okay, it's getting into the Gulf. So even at first, none of us were really too concerned about it.

00;16;37;25 - 00;16;56;27
Chris Franklin
It looked like this was going to stay to our east and we would be on the dry side. So dry side of the storm, we get usually sunny days here in southeast Louisiana. And then as we got further and further into the that the timing of when this was going to be making landfall, it started looking like this is coming at us.

00;16;56;27 - 00;17;21;18
Chris Franklin
And very similar to the eye to forecast. There is nothing in the Gulf that's going to stop this from just intensifying rapidly. And that's exactly what happened. It started to get a little more harrowing. And I guess I market down to just being young and naive and not really having any connections. I mean, as I said, my family is from here, but I wasn't married.

00;17;21;18 - 00;17;42;11
Chris Franklin
I had no children. To me, it was going to be fun. This is going to be great. This is I'm I'm only out of school a year and I'm getting a major hurricane in my hometown. This is going to be an incredible experience and this is going to be maybe fun is not the right word, but it's going to be a learning experience, but it's going to be one of those heart racing.

00;17;42;11 - 00;17;46;06
Hal Needham
Sure, there's excitement with it, right? This storm's coming. You're covering it.

00;17;46;19 - 00;18;07;08
Chris Franklin
Right. And I think you know what I'm and I may see that from a lot of younger meteorologists on social media. Sure. That I know they have all the right intentions and they have the knowledge, but they tend to get a little too excited about these storms that after Katrina, you realize that the the personal impacts and it it totally changes you.

00;18;07;11 - 00;18;35;17
Chris Franklin
Sure. And I think after Katrina, it it totally changed me in how I see this. I started coming to it not from a scientific standpoint and looking at radar, satellite and the data on a computer. I then saw it as how people are reacting to a Category five off the Louisiana coastline. Sure. And it may be that a lot of residents here, because we had gone this is now generations that we've had any kind of a threat like this.

00;18;35;28 - 00;18;59;11
Chris Franklin
And so I think even a lot of folks here didn't completely comprehend and appreciate the the the gravity of the storm, which is why when the weather service locally started issuing their discussions and saying, you know, unsurvivable in their in their text, I think that's when all of us professionally the laymen realized, oh my God, this is going to be bad.

00;18;59;16 - 00;19;01;16
Hal Needham
This is going to be really catastrophic, going.

00;19;01;16 - 00;19;20;12
Chris Franklin
To be catastrophic, and it's going to be something that will change you. And we actually at our station after the storm, they had psychologists come in and talk about from now on, your life is going to be before Katrina and after Katrina. And it's funny, even now, in 2022, we'll still talk about things and say, oh, my God, that was right before Katrina.

00;19;20;12 - 00;19;28;26
Chris Franklin
All that was before Katrina and everything now in New Orleans is that is our kind of dividing line of life. Before Katrina and after Katrina defined.

00;19;28;28 - 00;19;49;03
Hal Needham
Yeah, yeah. pre-Katrina and post-Katrina. You know, I lived in Baton Rouge for eight years and I bought a house in a subdivision that was built, I think, in 2006. So most of my neighbors were Katrina refugees. And I remember hearing these stories. There was a sweet woman across the street and she was like 82 when I got to know where she was from, Saint Bernard Parish.

00;19;49;12 - 00;20;08;06
Hal Needham
And she just talked about evacuating the day before Katrina. They left all their family heirlooms on the ground floor. They just thought, we're leaving for a day. We'll be back tomorrow. And she talked. She was the queen of the Mardi Gras parade one year and had the crown and all these pictures lost it all. And she just said they just thought they were leaving for a night and coming back.

00;20;08;06 - 00;20;17;01
Hal Needham
You know, it just it wasn't really registering to a lot of these folks like that. I think it put 12 feet of water in their house and they left all this valuable stuff right on the ground floor.

00;20;17;15 - 00;20;37;22
Chris Franklin
In my in my generation. I'm 40 years old. In just my generation that the small handful of times we would evacuate for a storm. That's what we did. We if you might if if we had the energy of three younger brothers. So if we were all up to it, we would lift some things off the floor if we thought it was going to be bad.

00;20;37;22 - 00;20;59;20
Chris Franklin
I remember rolling up carpets and putting them on top of sofas and putting other things on top of dining room tables and whatnot. But for the most part, the the rule of thumb was, yeah, you leave, you're gone for a couple of days and then you're back home. It was yeah, sometimes I remember for Hurricane George in 98, it was just kind of a mini vacation we all left with.

00;20;59;20 - 00;21;20;27
Chris Franklin
Family, went up to central Mississippi and kind of enjoyed ourselves and then went home a couple of days later and everything was fine. We were back to normal. You're going back to school and that's it. That was life You evacuated. You probably get one scare maybe every few seasons that you might have to evacuate for. Of course, you're going to get the the the die diehards that I'm not evacuating for that at all.

00;21;20;27 - 00;21;44;13
Chris Franklin
And then for the most part, there was never really a need to evacuate for most of the storms here up until, you know, you go you kind of look back at it, to be honest. You go back to like the Betsy Camille years in the late sixties through the seventies, eighties, nineties, there was a really everything I'm remember in Hurricane Andrew 92, it came at Morgan City as a Category three.

00;21;45;01 - 00;22;03;07
Chris Franklin
There was never really talk about evacuating. As a matter of fact, that was one of my first experiences of trying to learn more about the weather. I remember my parents still asleep in bed and I walked outside with our dog just to experience the winds whipping up here during the hurricane. So even then, a Cat three, we're going to stay home.

00;22;03;07 - 00;22;04;13
Chris Franklin
We're not evacuating for this.

00;22;04;13 - 00;22;17;06
Hal Needham
Yeah, I think for a lot of people was a few days off school. It was extended time with family. And then if your house doesn't get any destruction, no one, you know, is injured or killed. It's like, hey, that was actually kind of fun, right?

00;22;17;06 - 00;22;28;27
Chris Franklin
So and you completely forget about it. You think, Oh, it was last year we had to evacuate for what storm name was. I don't remember. We got a couple of days off of school, but it actually ended up being a mini vacation, as we said.

00;22;28;27 - 00;22;52;18
Hal Needham
Sure. So in the in the recollections for a lot of kids, hurricanes were positive memories. It was a fun time. Everyone's together, but all of a sudden, Katrina is a little different. So here we are, August 28th, it's a Sunday afternoon, and all of a sudden Katrina is about, I don't know, 18 hours before landfall, geographically huge max winds, 175 miles an hour.

00;22;52;29 - 00;23;00;29
Hal Needham
What is going through your mind when you're seeing those satellite images and you're you're just seeing the the updates from the National Hurricane Center?

00;23;00;29 - 00;23;20;20
Chris Franklin
I was at that time kind of split at work, doing on air coverage and running back home. I think at that point, my family, parents, siblings and, you know, close aunts and uncles were all planning to leave. So that part of my mind was really they were leaving. I didn't have to worry about them or have to check in on that.

00;23;20;20 - 00;23;40;27
Chris Franklin
But now they're worried about me because they know now my new job a year out of school is, Oh my God, you have to stay for these. You can't evacuate with us like you always did. So you're staying. I had an apartment in Jefferson Parish, and I remember being told, okay, go home, pack some stuff, and then bring it back to the station and you'll be here for the duration.

00;23;40;27 - 00;24;01;09
Chris Franklin
I said, okay, so I'm packing computer some books. The old book that I had and the few mementos that I wanted to bring in, packing a bag. And while I'm packing, the general manager of the station at the time calls and says, No, we've decided you're going to be in the last convoy out, and I'm going back to Mobile.

00;24;01;16 - 00;24;27;29
Chris Franklin
You're going to be going to our sister station in Mobile, and you'll be broadcasting from there if we need to hand over broadcasting capabilities. Up until then, you look at the history of television in the city of New Orleans. We've never had to relay our stations coverage to another location. We've never had to sign off in New Orleans and and go to another station.

00;24;27;29 - 00;24;53;14
Chris Franklin
So in the history of New Orleans television, that's never been done before. And this will be the first time we have to do it. It was starting to look bad. And where we is located is in Gert Town and it's a low area of the city where I am now at WWL. We're in the French Quarter. It's actually some of the highest ground in the city of WWL in the French Quarter, flooding the whole city is under water or we were in Gert town it's low so it flooded fairly frequently.

00;24;54;01 - 00;25;11;19
Chris Franklin
So I'm being told you're going with the last of our convoy is to mobile to work out of our sister station. I said okay so I'm packing my stuff, go back to the station and I'm in a convoy with a few other cars. It took us eight, 9 hours to get to Mobile, which is normally a two hour drive.

00;25;12;02 - 00;25;35;18
Chris Franklin
We get to mobile and I can't remember what time of night it was. It was after ten, 11:00 and they told us where we're signing off in New Orleans. We're going to you. So here I am again. Not a year out of college, only about a month on the air in New Orleans. And I'm taking the reins to do our storm coverage up to the point of landfall.

00;25;36;18 - 00;25;58;17
Chris Franklin
It's me and a reporter that I'd never met before. We are sitting at what is amounted to much, no more than a car table with a curtain behind us. We're in the garage, George, at our sister station in Mobile, and it's go. The chief has signed off. They're evacuating the building in New Orleans. And you're on the air for the duration.

00;25;58;17 - 00;26;27;05
Chris Franklin
Because when I got to Mobile, it was me and another meteorologist who then said, I'm going to bed, you're going to take it. So we went on the air. So we were on the air from 1011 that night until our replacements came in maybe six, 7:00 in the morning. Storm was making landfall. And not long after that, our transmitter, which was on in Saint Bernard Parish in Chalmette, the transmitter flooded when the water started rising.

00;26;27;05 - 00;26;46;24
Chris Franklin
And we went off the air. And so we were off the air for about two and a half, three weeks that we could not broadcast anything. And so my first experience was the landfalling of Hurricane Katrina. And basically seeing us sign off for a kind of undetermined amount of time when our transmitter flooded. So you had all.

00;26;47;04 - 00;27;05;15
Hal Needham
You had coverage that night of Katrina's landfall. It made landfall, I guess, around dawn or, you know, in the early hours there. So you were covering that through the night. I'm imagining you're up to date with the latest NHC information. Were you getting any word of what was going on on the ground? I mean, or is it was it more meteorologically based?

00;27;05;15 - 00;27;10;02
Hal Needham
These are the latest Winfield wind speeds, storm surge forecast, things like that.

00;27;10;13 - 00;27;34;10
Chris Franklin
We had a landline phone in between us that we could then call officials and reporters putting our mikes up to the the the receiver to hear what was going on. We couldn't see anything, but it was very much meteorologically based. And I had all of our computers the the the the CPU's themselves are in house in New Orleans.

00;27;34;10 - 00;28;13;07
Chris Franklin
So I couldn't access any of our computer graphics. So I am solely basing everything on the nature's website and what few satellite radar services were available online at that time. But it wasn't nearly as abundant as as we have now. And so at that time we were looking for whatever information I could find on online to then take my laptop, turn it around to the camera and show them what I'm talking about, turn it back to me, Find another website term that I mean, it was it was not an easy night of coverage by any means.

00;28;13;07 - 00;28;21;17
Hal Needham
It's not like you're all set up in a studio with with all these screens and cameras. You're there basically in a garage showing people off your laptop the best you can.

00;28;21;18 - 00;28;41;09
Chris Franklin
It's it's not the fanciest of equipment by any means. It is a laptop, a single camera and a curtain backdrop with an anchor, a reporter that I had never met before. This was our first introduction to each other because I had only just started a month ago. So I wasn't really familiar with everyone on staff yet. And it was go, you're you're you're taking it from here.

00;28;41;09 - 00;28;42;06
Chris Franklin
This is all on you.

00;28;42;21 - 00;28;59;26
Hal Needham
Chris So landfall happens in the done by bureau is Louisiana and Plaquemines Parish and then there was a second landfall up in Mississippi. All this is in the pre-dawn to the morning, you know, then post on and Mississippi hours. At what time did that technology go underwater in Saint Bernard Parish and you guys go off the air?

00;29;00;29 - 00;29;22;17
Chris Franklin
It was it was sometime in the maybe morning to midday, as a matter of fact, on our website. And it was a pretty antiquated website in 2004. And we we had some of our graphics and there is a point where the graphic images stopped updating and that was when the the station flooded and then when the transmitter then flooded as well, which knocked us off the air.

00;29;22;17 - 00;29;43;02
Chris Franklin
So there was a time when all of our computers went underwater in Gert Town because we had our building and taken on six or more feet of water. So we were we knew we were kicked out of our station for who knows how long. And then once we went off the air, it became kind of a dark place when people didn't know what we were going to do.

00;29;43;02 - 00;30;07;08
Chris Franklin
We've never experienced this. Our building is underwater, our transmitter is off the air, and all the while, our parent company at the time was trying to sell us. So we had a parent company, but they were kind of trying to get rid of us, so they were trying to sell us to somebody. So we did have some decent support from our parent company up to a up to a certain level.

00;30;07;23 - 00;30;25;09
Chris Franklin
But it was it was a stressful time because you're being in television stations are bought and sold all the time. And during those periods they can do layoffs, they can make drastic changes to management, to a new owner, can come in and say, you know what, I just don't like this Chris Franklin guy. He's out. We're bringing in somebody different.

00;30;25;28 - 00;30;28;27
Chris Franklin
So people are already nervous about a station. Sure. Fire.

00;30;29;06 - 00;30;30;28
Hal Needham
I know friends of mine that work in media.

00;30;31;08 - 00;30;31;14
Chris Franklin
And.

00;30;31;15 - 00;30;32;02
Hal Needham
Friends of mine that.

00;30;32;02 - 00;30;49;16
Chris Franklin
Work underwater and we can't broadcast who's to say this? This gunman doesn't just say, you know what, we're down with WB, we shut them down. We don't know. We were totally in the dark as to what's going to happen and it did become kind of a dark place And maybe again, I'm young, I'm naive. I'm thinking that's not a big deal.

00;30;49;21 - 00;31;08;06
Chris Franklin
If if we go out of business, I'll try and find a job somewhere else. I'm not that I don't have a family that I'm trying to take care of. It was it was just me at that time. Now, fast forward to where I am in my career now with a wife, a home, two kids. These things are a little bit more and I do come to it from a completely different place than I was during Katrina.

00;31;08;06 - 00;31;33;01
Chris Franklin
And I do credit Katrina with really ramping up not only my professional on air presentation and skill, but also personally and maybe taking a little bit more of an adult approach was selected at 23 for forecasting. So this was still very much my my infancy of my career. But that that that you became an adult pretty quick after that storm.

00;31;33;08 - 00;31;50;02
Hal Needham
Well, yeah, not only professionally, but then the town where you grew up and just got hammered by one of the worst disasters in US history. So there you are in Mobile. You're going there to do coverage and everything goes off line. I mean, so the rest of that day, August 29th, 2005, I mean, what next?

00;31;51;19 - 00;32;20;16
Chris Franklin
I guess it was the being left alone with your own thoughts that really was you know, sometimes when these things are happening, you can at least work and kind of distract yourself, especially when it is your home town. You know, we talk about this a lot. It's completely different when when these guys from the networks and the Weather Channel come down and do these storms and talk about it, there's a little bit of a I don't what's the right word for it?

00;32;21;25 - 00;32;39;24
Chris Franklin
Animosity maybe toward some of these folks because they come down, they want to get the big show and have the big presentation and the great backdrop. But then once they're done, they leave, they go home, they're done with the storm. They're moving on to the next one or the next Big story for us. This is home. This this is the story.

00;32;39;26 - 00;32;41;22
Chris Franklin
This is my life. This is all I have.

00;32;41;22 - 00;32;48;22
Hal Needham
Your disaster stricken city is a platform for them. And then they go home that weekend back to their stable life. Right. And they're.

00;32;48;22 - 00;33;04;16
Chris Franklin
Fine. And they've they've forgotten about us. They may. They may remember us. But, you know, for for most of it, that they are moving on to the next big story. And so for us, it's and like I said, for me, I'm from New Orleans. So really, I didn't want to move away. I didn't want to go anywhere else.

00;33;04;16 - 00;33;24;26
Chris Franklin
This was home. I wanted to be here. And this was my life in and it was hard driving past places. In the aftermath that you grew up knowing your entire life, having seen either damaged or just gone old neighborhoods that you knew growing, growing up, like where my grandparents lived out in eastern New Orleans, the neighborhoods just gone.

00;33;24;26 - 00;33;44;29
Chris Franklin
It's just a ghost town in places that all you ever known are are just damaged beyond repair or beyond recognition or wiped off the face of the earth. Was it was it was it was an experience that, as we still say, it was it was definitely a before and after Katrina type type life change.

00;33;45;04 - 00;34;09;24
Hal Needham
There's something about that disaster hitting your hometown, too, where, wow, that's where I went to elementary school. Wow. That's where my first girlfriend lived. Or what? Whatever it is. Right? All of a sudden, these things have a personal impact. And the strange thing about Katrina, too, was how slowly a lot of information was trickling out. I mean, even the government didn't even know parts of New Orleans were starting to flood or just media was It is we don't have the technology we did we do today.

00;34;09;29 - 00;34;24;14
Hal Needham
But still, a lot of people were in the dark. A lot of people were cut off. And I remember information was a bit slow trickling out of what's actually going on. I mean, so so in the days after Katrina, I mean, what did you do? Were you trying to get back into the city? Were you did you stay out in Mobile?

00;34;24;14 - 00;34;27;14
Hal Needham
I mean, what did those days and weeks after Katrina look like?

00;34;28;02 - 00;34;57;17
Chris Franklin
We we stayed in Mobile another few days. What was interesting was that we then, as you said, it's amazing how we're not that far removed from Katrina, but maybe technologically we are still pretty far removed. There was no social media. The first time I ever sent a text message was after Katrina. But that wasn't. We suddenly realized cell service was scant or nonexistent, but you could text.

00;34;57;17 - 00;35;16;11
Chris Franklin
So that's how we started Community. I remember getting a text message for the first time about I didn't know what this was and it was from our station and it was just kind of a check in, see how everyone is doing. Because when I left in the final convoy to go to Mobile, we still had a small skeleton crew in New Orleans.

00;35;16;11 - 00;35;42;18
Chris Franklin
They were then said when they realized they were probably in harm's way, knowing the threat of flooding, they were sent over to the West Bank in Harvey, to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, and they kind of rode out the storm there. No, they didn't have broadcasting capabilities. It was basically just to get them to a safe place. Few folks that had larger news vehicles, news units, were able to go back to the station through the floodwater and kind of wade through the station to see what they could save.

00;35;42;18 - 00;36;02;01
Chris Franklin
At that point, we realized on the first floor it was really nothing that could be saved. Our computers were underwater. Everything was being shut off. So a few folks did go back to the station. A few folks stayed in Harvey, and then a lot of those folks kind of went west and we were east. The folks that went west were kind of isolated and couldn't get back.

00;36;02;01 - 00;36;21;23
Chris Franklin
So, you know, fast forward a few weeks after I would say they told us, look, we can't go on the air. And, you know, as hospitable as the folks in Mobile were, they were also saying, but we need to get back to our jobs and let our people come back into work. So where I was sleeping in someone's office, well, she had to come back in.

00;36;22;06 - 00;36;38;14
Chris Franklin
And so at that point, they kind of told us, look, if you can leave, leave for a few weeks, then we'll get back in touch with you. We didn't know we were leaving and what they were getting back in touch with us about. So thankfully, my family had all evacuated up to Oxford, Mississippi. We have a lot of family up there.

00;36;38;14 - 00;37;00;22
Chris Franklin
So I went and you know, there was that little okay, it's kind of a mini vacation. We were able to somewhat relax, but it was also trying to collect food stamps just to buy things. You know, my family only had what we had evacuated with. We were starting to get reports at that point that where we lived in Jefferson Parish was high ground and the homes likely did not flood.

00;37;01;05 - 00;37;29;08
Chris Franklin
But we didn't know what the conditions of the homes. Right. We had no rules were ripped off of the water. We got an enemy and flooding from either floodwater or rainwater. The damage was done and we needed to know we get back to and I remember at that point, NASA's started sending out images, aerial images of bands of the city, and you could go and click on your band of where you lived and have a more real time aerial photograph of your home.

00;37;29;08 - 00;37;48;13
Chris Franklin
So that's how we first checked on property and we could kind of decide for its you're doing aerial reconnaissance on, okay, that's definitely my home. But I don't know if this is damage or is this just a tree down or what that was. So we're trying to, you know, determine with remote sensing. I go work for the folks that have never taken a remote sensing class.

00;37;48;19 - 00;38;10;27
Chris Franklin
What exactly am I looking at to figure out if their home was damage? And it wasn't until about maybe three weeks later, two or three weeks later that we were finally given the not all clear, but the clearance to at least go and check on our property. So I remember my dad brothers and I drove down, stopped, got a bunch of barrels of gas in the back of our car and then drove into the city.

00;38;10;27 - 00;38;29;10
Chris Franklin
We went to go check on our house, other family members houses, my apartment. Everything was okay. We were able to at least decipher that the structures were still there. And so the the immediate was try and relax a little bit, but knowing I don't know what condition my home is in, get back to New Orleans to check on things.

00;38;29;10 - 00;38;50;13
Chris Franklin
But you were not allowed to stay so once you could go home, check on your property or clean out your fridge, which at that point had been two weeks of food turning rancid and trying to get that out, you needed to leave. And so then we had to go back and I think we then stopped and some family members in Baton Rouge who had power and, you know, things life in Baton Rouge was was fairly back to normal.

00;38;50;13 - 00;39;14;12
Chris Franklin
They had some damage. Even Mobile had some damage from Katrina. It was like, as you said, a massive storm. So both of these locations had damage, but not to the extent of New Orleans. So few weeks later, we were able to at least go back, check on our homes. We went back up to Oxford for a few days, and then I was given the text of, Hey, we found a way to at least broadcast online if you can, when you can come back to Mobile.

00;39;14;12 - 00;39;37;28
Chris Franklin
And so we got back to mobile, a few of us. Then, you know, steadily as folks started returning and we were in Mobile from Katrina's landfall to the weekend after Thanksgiving, that's how long we had to stay in Mobile. And even once we got back to New Orleans, we had a couple of production studios on as well as our new studio newsroom.

00;39;37;28 - 00;39;59;01
Chris Franklin
All those facilities and we kind of had a makeshift news news production facility in one room, the control room, some small offices. EDIT Bay is the newsroom, the news desk, the weather center, The anchor desk was just all in this one big room that was still kind of open to the elements. We had porta potties outside to go to the bathroom.

00;39;59;01 - 00;40;15;06
Chris Franklin
We had armed security guards because as far as New Orleans Girt Town is not the safest of neighborhoods. And once you tack on the fact that we're one of the few areas with power, you become kind of a target. So we had armed guards around us at all times, and it was kind of a rough area to go back to.

00;40;15;06 - 00;40;31;01
Chris Franklin
In fact, driving in, once I was able to finally return home, even after Thanksgiving, driving back into the station, I would have to go past a Army checkpoint and show ID before I could cross into Orleans Parish just to go to work every morning.

00;40;31;17 - 00;40;54;15
Hal Needham
Wow, that's amazing. So you were in Mobile until around Thanksgiving. Then post Thanksgiving, Greektown got power back. Things started being mucked out. You could kind of get back into the studio. But like you said, there were security issues. Obviously, a lot of New Orleans was still in bad shape. And like you said, national Guard was there, security checkpoints were there, and and you were maybe one of the few areas that had power and things were kind of up and running again.

00;40;55;00 - 00;41;18;15
Chris Franklin
Yeah. Where we were, you know, it was it was like partially up and running. But but you you're kind of an island in the middle of just devastation. And Gert Town was hard hit. It all flooded and really all of our surrounding areas had flooded. So you had abandoned homes for months, two years after the storm. And I mean, and there's still some parts of the city, even even now that you still see those scars.

00;41;18;15 - 00;41;39;00
Chris Franklin
But certainly in the the following months and years after Katrina, you were reminded of that storm every single day. And it was really years until we were no longer reminded on a daily basis of just how bad it was and what we had all gone through. I mean, it was definitely a a mental health concern as well here, because it was it rained on you.

00;41;39;00 - 00;41;59;23
Chris Franklin
And this wasn't one of those storms where it moves in, it moves out. It passes. A couple of days later, you clean up your front lawn and you're you're back to normal and you've completely forgotten about it, which is really been our history since the sixties with hurricanes. And now here we have Katrina, which then we're kind of reminded of on a on a daily basis for many years of just just what we went through.

00;42;00;29 - 00;42;23;10
Hal Needham
Really moving stories and sobering memories there from Chris Franklin as he recounted his experience as a young meteorologist covering Hurricane Katrina. He touched on so many important topics, but I wanted to reflect a little more on two in particular. The first one is the recurring theme. He brought up that in general, people along the northern Gulf Coast had no frame of reference to place a storm like Katrina when it struck in 2005.

00;42;23;18 - 00;42;52;22
Hal Needham
Metro New Orleans, for example, had not experienced a devastating strike since Hurricane Betsy way back in 1965. And by nearly every metric, Katrina's impacts were more severe than Betsy the day before Katrina made landfall, it blew up into a geographically huge hurricane with maximum winds of 175 miles an hour. The satellite images alone were so ominous, but people on the ground really didn't know what to expect from a storm that was so far off the charts from anything they had seen before.

00;42;53;01 - 00;43;12;28
Hal Needham
Many evacuees expected to leave for a couple of days, returned home to to the place they left and were shocked when their homes were unlivable for weeks, months or even longer. It's hard to imagine the scale of a disaster that far exceeds our frame of reference. The best we can do is realize that some disasters out there are far beyond what we've seen in our lives.

00;43;13;07 - 00;43;33;10
Hal Needham
This is why we build buffers. We should try to build higher than the previous record flood level, for example, if possible, and include a buffer in case the next storm is even worse. Keep in mind, too, that the disaster history for your community may actually have some very catastrophic events in the distant history that happened far before you were alive.

00;43;33;10 - 00;43;50;11
Hal Needham
So go back into those archives. This is what we try to do to really see what has happened in a place and in a place like coastal Georgia. The locals will often tell you the hurricanes always miss us. They hit south of us in Florida or they curve up and they hit the Carolinas, and they'll often feel like they're except they're not going to get hit.

00;43;50;11 - 00;44;12;14
Hal Needham
But when we go back to the late 1800s, we see a lot of really catastrophic hurricanes hitting southern South Carolina and Georgia. So sometimes we just have to look back a little farther, maybe back before our lives or even our grandparents lives. Also, keep in mind that looking backwards does not always work because sometimes the strongest storm on record hits a location and it exceeds the worst thing that had ever been recorded there.

00;44;12;26 - 00;44;31;11
Hal Needham
Also, with a warming climate, which is raising sea levels and helping hurricanes rapidly intensify, we may see some storm characteristics in the future that are more severe than what we've seen in the past. So the past can be an indicator and it can help guide us. But we should also build this buffer in the best we can to prepare for the future.

00;44;31;11 - 00;45;02;07
Hal Needham
We will do well to prepare for something more intense than what we've previously seen to the best of our ability. Chris, thank you also for reminding us that even though many of us find extreme weather exciting, we need to be sensitive and aware that many people in our communities may be suffering when a big storm hits. You shared that the idea of Katrina was exciting to you at first, as you are a recent meteorology grad and this was a major hurricane approaching your hometown, It sounds like your feelings about the storm quickly changed, however, when you saw the massive impact on people's lives.

00;45;02;19 - 00;45;23;25
Hal Needham
Many of our podcast listeners will benefit from this insight, as a lot of our faithful followers are weather fanatics. I can relate to this and this has been a lesson I've had to learn myself. I've been passionate about weather and climate since I was a little boy and I've always found big storms exciting. But living along the Gulf Coast had made me very aware of the human impact of these storms take.

00;45;23;25 - 00;45;42;23
Hal Needham
Last year, for example, in February 2021, Texas was hit by a snow and ice storm, followed by an extended period of extreme cold. When the cold air reached the Gulf Coast, it changed our rain to heavy sleet in Galveston, accompanied by thunder and lightning. I was ecstatic at first. I was out in the streets at 130 in the morning.

00;45;42;23 - 00;46;04;24
Hal Needham
Obviously, it is hitting me in the face. There's thunder, there's lightning. It was super exciting, but a somber mood quickly displaced my excitement after the power went out, forcing millions of Texans to ride out this frigid weather in the cold, in cold, dark homes. Actually, more than 100 people died from hypothermia or indirect causes like carbon monoxide poisoning from unventilated generators.

00;46;05;04 - 00;46;27;20
Hal Needham
I never shared my, quote unquote exciting videos of the thunder sleet in Galveston. At that point. It would have been inappropriate as millions of people in my state suffered or in some cases even passed away. For the young meteorologists and weather enthusiasts out there, keep your excitement and passion alive. Keep posting all those amazing pics and videos to social media and share your enthusiasm on most days.

00;46;27;29 - 00;46;45;22
Hal Needham
But if a storm takes a tragic turn, be aware that real people's lives have been impacted and may never be the same. There's a sweet spot where we can report on the weather factually without rooting for any kind of destruction or big impacts. Chris, thank you so much for reminding us of this very important lesson. Well, hey, everyone.

00;46;45;22 - 00;47;13;20
Hal Needham
This interview continues next week as we hear part two of my interview with Chris Franklin. That episode will air on Monday, August 29th, the 17th anniversary of Katrina's landfall. Incidentally, that date is also the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Isaac and the one year anniversary of Hurricane Ida, which both impacted southeast Louisiana as well. A special thanks to our geo track marketing and promotion team who helped share this podcast with a growing audience every week.

00;47;13;27 - 00;47;19;29
Hal Needham
This is Dr. Hal signing off until the next episode of the Geo Trek podcast.

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