It is Tuesday at about 9 p.m., and Gabe Delatte is somewhere between Slidell, La., and Hattiesburg, Miss., driving a box truck emblazoned in green up I-59, tired as hell and emotionally spent.
He’s on the back end of a 36-hour rescue mission to deliver both supplies and people from storm-torn New Orleans to Tulane’s new centralized sports hub, Birmingham, Ala.
Courtesy of Tulane Athletics
Delatte, TU’s 30-year-old director of equipment, and a handful of others, arrived in the city 24 hours after Hurricane Ida left it windblown, shell-shocked and completely powerless—a blacked-out minefield of debris.