Evening Roundup: Legionnaires' Outbreak Persists, the Story of a Katrina Survivor in New Jersey, and a Taste of Summer Foods.

[MUSIC - NYC Now Intro]

Sean Carlson: Legionnaires' outbreak persists, the story of a Katrina survivor in New Jersey, and summer may be coming to a close, but summer foods are still around. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Sean Carlson.

A seventh person has died in central Harlem's ongoing outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. It comes a week after the last reported death tied to the outbreak, which had shown signs of waning. The death total is the city's highest since a 2015 outbreak in the Bronx that killed 16. As of Thursday, New York City had 114 confirmed cases of Legionnaires'. Six people remain hospitalized.

A federal judge has extended a temporary order requiring US Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding rooms in New York City to meet certain conditions. Under the order, ICE holding rooms at 26 Federal Plaza are required to provide at least 50 square feet per detainee. The requirement drastically reduces the capacity across the facility's four holding rooms. The order was set to expire this past Tuesday. It's now been extended through September 9th. The order follows a recent lawsuit filed by immigration rights advocates against the Trump Administration. The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to a request for comment.

Three correction officers at the Rikers Island jail complex have been suspended after a man died in his cell there last weekend. Jail officials say 29-year-old Ardit Bila was found unresponsive early Saturday morning as officers toured the facility where he was being held. Staff tried to revive Bila, but they were not successful. The nonprofit, Legal Aid Society, which was representing him in court, is calling for an independent investigation into his incident. City medical examiners are working to determine his cause of death. The Department of Corrections did not immediately comment.

Two decades ago, Terrance Leon George II and his family escaped Hurricane Katrina and found a new home in New Jersey. He captured their journey in a short film. We'll have more on that after the break.

[MUSIC - NYC Now Interlude]

Sean: 20 years ago, Hurricane Katrina barreled into the Gulf Coast, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. One of them was Terrance Leon George II. The storm forced him and his family on an unexpected journey from the hot swamps of Mississippi to North Jersey. The experience fueled both anger and an artistic passion that, many years later, would lead to the aspiring filmmaker's first documentary. It's called Terrance vs Katrina. It looks at how, as a little boy, he survived the storm and its aftermath. My colleague Michael Hill recently sat down with Terrance to talk about his experience and his filmmaking. He started off by recalling the storm's first moments.

Terrance Leon George II: Initially, after it first hit the port, it was you heard little giblets on the roof. Then the howling, the whipping noises of just the wind brushing the windows. Then the glass shattering and everything breaking, then you hear the trees snapping. It started to pick up really quickly, and next thing you know, there's a tree in our house, the ceiling collapsed, my head's bleeding.

Michael Hill: Terrance says his family was poor before the storm. Hurricane Katrina's 125-mile-an-hour winds and 28-foot storm surge left them hungry, homeless, and nearly helpless.

Terrance: My mom was really worried about getting her check every Tuesdays. They told her, despite her working 40 hours that week, they would not pay her, and we were really in a tough position.

Michael: Then came a chance encounter with a non-profit organization, Feed the Children, that ultimately changed Terrance's life and his family's future. It gave them food and then later filmed the family for a TV spot about Katrina's devastation. Terrance was fascinated when he saw the crew's camera.

Terrance: My twin brother used to speak for me back in the day, so I just whispered in his ear, and he was just asking questions. We were just asking, who are they? What are they doing? Are they superheroes?

Michael: The ad featured Terrance's mother, Niki, giving a tour of their destroyed house.

[excerpt from Terrance vs Katrina begins]

Niki: Okay, this is the room we were at when the storm came. We were laying in the bed, and the roof came in, and we had to try to get out of here, and everything fell down.

[excerpt from Terrance vs Katrina ends]

Michael: Niki would borrow a crew member's cell phone to call her father in Bergen County, New Jersey. What did you think when you saw that spot? Reginald Buggs Sr: Yes, they were very desperate, so I had to go down there and get my kids, and that's what I did.

Michael: Reginald Buggs Sr and his wife loaded up the car and made a 20-hour drive to Mississippi.

Terrance: That moment, to me, he was like Superman. That was my hero.

Reginald: Well, I love my grandson. I'm glad he felt that way. It was a proud moment.

Michael: Life was not easy in New Jersey, but it offered Terrance certain opportunities, opportunities he says he never would have had in Mississippi. He got therapy at Englewood Hospital for his speech impediment. He thrived in school despite a brush with the law as a teen. His grandfather gave him a camera, and he became obsessed with photography. Then he found filmmaking.

Terrance: When I got to filmmaking, it was like, finally, I found a language where I can express myself, my emotions, my desires.

Michael: NYU was his dream school, but way too expensive, even with his grandfather's support, so Terrance turned to Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Fine Arts.

Terrance: It's a small program, but it cares so much. You can't beat that. It's love, you know? I have love for this school, and the school has love for me, and through that love, I'm able to be a better person. This school, in a way, healed me.

Michael: At Mason Gross, Terrance made the film Terrance vs Katrina,-

[excerpt from Terrance vs Katrina begins]

Niki: Terrance Leon George; he comes for seconds. I made the ground wet, and they dragged my name through the mud, submerged you like you didn't drown. Destroyed lives, childhoods, and your town.

[excerpt from Terrance vs Katrina ends]

Michael: -which delved into his own anger at the storm, something he says he'd been bottling up for most of his life. You said "anger." Anger with Katrina?

Terrance: Well, yes. When I was in kindergarten, I remember every day I used to play with blocks, I would simulate Katrina, so it was a lot of trauma for me.

Michael: Your anger now?

Terrance: My anger is in the camera. I put it in Terrance vs Katrina because, in a way, I felt like Katrina ruined my life, but as I got older, I realized maybe Katrina was a blessing for me. It wasn't the storm that caused all my problems. Maybe it's my internalized rage, and I was like, "How do I deal with that? How do I just make peace with it?" And, after I made the film, I achieved that peace.

[MUSIC - NYC Now Interlude]

Sean: That's Terrance Leon George II, a filmmaker who now lives in New Jersey. He's re-releasing his film, Terrance vs Katrina, to mark the storm's 20th anniversary. It'll be available on YouTube. His other short film, Can I Grow Old, is showing at the Newark International Film Festival on September 4th at 6:00 PM.

Summer weekends may be fading away, but summer produce is not. Amelia Tarpey is a Program and Publicity Manager for GrowNYC Greenmarkets. This week, she says farm stands across the city are offering more than 600 varieties of peppers this season.

[MUSIC - Vic Flick: Why Not?]

Amelia Tarpey: Peppers are at their peak late August into September, pretty much up until the first frost. Obviously, most markets, you can find your classic bell peppers, poblanos, jalapenos, serranos. Several markets have more specialty peppers as well. Think aji dulces, Korean peppers, Thai chilies. We're back to school in New York City, so one thing to look out for at the greenmarkets are the lunchbox peppers. They're a super-sweet variety of pepper. They're like a mini bell pepper. They come yellow, orange, red. They're super cute, super tasty. I always say, each year, you've got to make at least one hot sauce to last you through the winter, whether you do a fermented hot sauce or you just make a hot sauce and get it into your fridge.

For the hot sauce, you leave the peppers raw and just put them into your food processor. You can do a mortar and pestle until you reach your desired texture.

I like to use a variety of different hot peppers and then, sometimes, throw something sweet into the mix. A classic combo is like a peach-habanero salsa. We have peaches at the market at the moment, so I love combining those two.

You can also add spices such as toasted cumin or coriander seed. Some ground mustard goes a long way in hot sauce. One thing about peppers is they store the heat largely in the seeds, so the seeds of the pepper is where you're going to have the highest levels of the capsaicin. If you want a less spicy hot sauce, remove the seeds. If you like it super spicy, you can leave the seeds in there.

[MUSIC - Vic Flick: Why Not?]

Sean: Amelia Tarpey is a Program and Publicity Manager for GrowNYC Greenmarkets. She adds that most peppers are priced at about $4 a pound, up to $8 a pound for specialty peppers, or you can get a 0.5-gallon container of peppers priced at about $6 a carton.

Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. Our team is taking off Monday to observe Labor Day, but we are still here for you. We'll drop one episode in the middle of the day, so be on the lookout for that before you hit the barbecue, and have a good weekend.

[MUSIC - Vic Flick: Why Not?]

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.