'Hurricane on the Bayou' stresses bayou itself

Louisiana is about more than just the Big Easy. There’s the jazz, the Mardi Gras parties, the beignets and everything else associated with N’Awlins. Then there’s the bayous, the gators, the Tabasco sauce, and everything else between Lake Charles and Slidell.

The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center’s latest movie, “Hurricane on the Bayou,” includes parts of Hurricane Katrina and the damage it caused, but the focus of the movie is on the bayou itself. What is politically known as a wetland is called a bayou by Cajun folk and sometimes called a swamp outside of Lou’siana.

“Hurricane on the Bayou” features fiddle prodigy Amanda Shaw, who was 14 years old when Hurricane Katrina hit. Protection of the bayou is of even greater concern to the stewards of the land who live there than to the environmentalists, and before the big one hit Amanda was working on a science fair project – and a benefit album –about the loss of the wetlands.

When the Cajuns moved into Lou’siana, they didn’t mess with the bayous. The loss of wetlands didn’t start occurring until the last 75 years. In the 1930s some civil engineers, who meant well but probably drank a few too many hurricanes, built levees to protect certain areas from floods. That meant that the soil which had been added to the land when the Mississippi River overflowed its banks was now carried to the Gulf of Mexico, depriving the bayous of the soil it needed to thrive. The building of canals brought the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico into freshwater areas, killing all sorts of life in the bayou and ticking off the Bubbas who angle for freshwater fish and hunt for birds even more than the tree-huggers.

The loss of the wetlands is a cultural problem as well as an environmental problem: Lou’siana just ain’t Lou’siana without the bayous. But there’s also a serious environmental problem associated with the loss of the bayous: since hurricanes use oceans as fuel the bayous had acted as a speed bump for past hurricanes.

It’s questionable whether an intact bayou system would have prevented the damage of Hurricane Katrina, which took out a few other areas first and impacted New Orleans more through location than raw wind speed. What “Hurricane on the Bayou” shows is that Hurricane Katrina damaged the bayous – including the gator life – as well as the city.

“Hurricane on the Bayou” has an emphasis on music. Jazz and gospel join the fiddle and banjo, thus providing a link between the urban life of the Big Easy and the rural atmosphere of much of the rest of Louisiana. That is appropriate for a movie which focuses both on the hurricane best known for its damage of the big city and on the bayou which was also part of the devastation.

“It’s about preservation of our wetlands and preservation of our culture,” Shaw said.

In fact, the hurricane was underplayed in the movie; Katrina also caused severe damage in Mississippi before its assault on New Orleans. The focus was on the bayou, although there was plenty of footage of the hurricane damage in New Orleans.

“It’s basically a story of revival and survival,” said Jeffrey Kirsch, the Executive Director of the Fleet Science Center.

If you expect the movie to focus on Hurricane Katrina itself, you’ll be disappointed. But if you want a comprehensive taste of Louisiana life, including the nature which fulfills the educational mission of the Fleet Science Center, “Hurricane on the Bayou” presents a side of the hurricane you didn’t already see on the news.