Nobody got what she got

By Daniel Nelson “This needs to be worldwide. Nobody got what I got,” Katrina survivor Kimberley Rivers Roberts tells a film crew. She’s right, on both counts. For documentary makers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, it’s pay dirt. Roberts’ footage is rough and frantic, but captures the drama of the catastrophic flood. “It’s going to be a day to remember,” she says excitedly into her new camera, as the wind and rain lashes her house. The hurricane zeroes in and she and husband Scott keep on filming, even as they clamber to the top of the house in a bid to escape the rising water, even as friends and neighbours are rescued. Not only has Roberts indeed got what nobody got, in terms of hurricane footage, but she’s a force of nature herself, with a big mouth, a bigger heart and, it turns out, a talent for rap. After the drama of the disaster comes the rage at the response – or rather, the lack of response. Lessin and Deal follow the Roberts’ and a troubled friend they have picked up on the way back to their street, where, two weeks after the collapse of the levees, the houses have still not been checked for bodies by the police. There they find the corpse of Roberts’ uncle. The camera tracks them trying to get money promised by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency whose chief, Mike Brown, resigned soon after President Bush gave him the kiss of death with the words, “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” (Brown, the film notes in passing, is now a disaster management consultant and motivational speaker.) “They are treating us like we are non-American… like we lost our citizenship,” says Roberts. They visit the naval facility that turned them away after their rescue from the floodwaters when they desperately needed help and shelter. It’s shocking, riveting viewing. It’s a human story, and it reveals a lot, if not about the US, then about the outgoing administration. * Trouble the Water opens at ICA, The Mall, SW1 on 5 December 2008

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