The Axe in the Attic

The Axe in the Attic

I didn’t know what happened after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. None of us did. I read newspapers and watched TV news, but I had no idea. I learned the things they like to report: how hard the wind blew, how many inches of rain fell, what the early death toll was; that victims were living on a bridge, people were sheltered and/or imprisoned in the Superdome. Then another big story came along, and the news moved on, and I didn’t think about Katrina so much.

Ed Pincus and Lucia Small saw those pictures on television and decided to do something. They took an HD camera and set off on a 60-day road trip from Vermont to Louisiana. Along the way they interviewed refugees who had settled for the time being in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, smaller cities; government-funded trailer parks. “The Axe in the Attic” is their story of that journey.

When they arrived in Mississippi (they don’t make it as far as New Orleans), square miles are destroyed; whole counties are destroyed. Families are uprooted. A way of life is torn apart; these people are outraged by the pathetic inadequacy of FEMA’s response FEMA being that Federal Emergency Management Agency whose name always sounded so optimistic.

FEMA not only sets up a bewildering barricade of red tape, it treats hurricane victims as if they were homeless by choice. The National Guard is no better; at least one woman says troops leveled weapons at them on that bridge because many of those refugees were black: It was “as if they’re trying to drive us out with bulldozers,” blocking relief agencies from delivering food or water, because “that would only encourage people to stay.”

Not just blacks are angry: The film also listens to white victims who are angry on their own behalf, but mostly they’re angry on behalf of blacks they’ve seen targeted for abuse rather than aid. What they didn’t know, but I’ve since learned from another documentary (“I.O.U.S.A.”) is that federal accountants have discovered massive theft and fraud of FEMA funds, which paid for cars, vacations, champagne, lap dances and porno films.

What we don’t see on the news is this: The storm waters were contaminated by chemicals; even weeks later returning citizens had to wear face masks. Any clothes that get wet have to be destroyed; they burn the skin. One opinion about them was that instead of expecting government aid, they should have gotten jobs this at a time when tens of thousands of jobs had disappeared.

We talk with one man who has to walk 2½ hours each way to a low-paying factory job because he can’t afford a bus pass. He asks Lucia Small for money to buy a pass; she’s conflicted: “Documentary ethics say we shouldn’t pay people.” I say to hell with documentary ethics, buy the man a pass.

I could have done without her moral argument: Small and Pincus spend too much time on themselves. They argue too much; it quickly becomes not interesting anymore. It should let the victims speak for themselves instead of digressing into a story about itself.

But this is still an earth-shattering documentary. It’s about people who lost everything homes, things but also their city. “In New Orleans, nobody ever locked a door,” one woman says. She saw her friends every day; now she lives in Florida: “I don’t know anyone. Saturday at the mall is their family day.”

The title? After an earlier hurricane, many residents learned to keep an ax in the attic, in case they had to hack their way onto their roofs through the rising water. “That’s why you saw so many people on roofs.” Another says, “They say we got a warning. They got a warning six years ago, to strengthen the levees.” Strange that only the levee separating white and black neighborhoods broke on the black side of town.

Watch The Axe in the Attic For Free On Gomovies.