The Unvanquished: A Cop's Story

http://ktla.trb.com/news/la-na-officer18sep18,0,6088833.story?coll=ktla-news-1

It was almost dawn. Patrick Hartman had not slept well.

Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, but that's not what disturbed him. He had slept only fitfully since a traumatic shooting three years earlier — and so little these days that his mother feared he was clinically depressed.

Weary and sleep-deprived, Hartman got up, ready to get to work. He was a New Orleans police officer. His regular shift wouldn't begin until 4 p.m., but he planned to leave around noon. He had been told that he would be part of a hurricane cleanup crew that evening, after Katrina had passed.

Patrick Hartman did not make it to work that day. Hurricane Katrina literally washed him away. It washed away everything stable and prosaic in the life of this Irish American cop, an intensely private and sensitive son of New Orleans. Like the city itself, Hartman was forever altered by what happened that day, by the privations he endured in the days that followed and the decisions he and others were forced to make.

The hurricane tested Hartman, 36, and he prevailed, but in a way that left him feeling brittle and unmoored. In many ways, his trials were the trials of an entire city: His home was flooded. He was submerged in fetid floodwaters. He was rescued. He rescued others. He was left bereft and homeless, wearing the same fouled clothing for days.

As a member of a police force shattered by the storm, Hartman lived a parallel life. He was both flood victim and working cop. The police chief said 80% of his officers lost homes to the flood, and a third of the 1,740 officers could not, or would not, report for work after Katrina hit.

...more worth reading (every word)...

Thanks for posting it.