There's one annecdotal piece of information I talk about a lot when he comes to New Orleans, and it has to do with a dog grooming place in New Orleans East. I honestly don't know what this particular place hit me so strongly. When I first went to post-storm New Orleans in October 2005, there was misery and horror all around. The place fairly stunk of death and destruction. And when I went back this past April, things were only some measure less horrible, but still fairly awful when you consider that this is a major American city in which we expect people to make their lives once again.
Anyho, Sheralane Dog Grooming just happened to stand on a road I just happened to drive drive in 2005, and I stopped to take a photograph of it. Here's how that looked then:
Boarded up, with some horrying marks on the door indicating that not only had a dog died there, but that it had been left in a crate for more than a month. Okay, so that was taken in October of 2005. When I went back to New Orleans in April of 2007, I made a beeline for Sherlane. Again, I don't know what it is exactly about this obscure dog grooming outfit that so capture my imagination, but I figured it was at least worth heading back to and capturing another picture.
So here we are, one more, at Sheralane, some 20 months after the storm, some 19 months after the picture above was taken:
Ain't much has changed, kids, not much at all. Still boarded up. Still grown over with weeds. Still vacant. It doesn't look to me like anyone has been in or out of the place in the intervening 20 months, so who knows what has become of the dog in the crate. (Though I can't imagine that the city would allow it to sit and rot for that long. Health services does seem to have made a strong effort at addressing the most serious health risks post-storm.)
Yeah, I know that this is just one dog grooming shop, but in my mind it stands as a proxy for what has become for much of New Orleans. Things stand still the way they were just after the storm hit. In the grand scheme of things, two years isn't an overly long time. But it's a ridiculously long time when it doesn't seem like much progress is being made at all.
Anyway, when I began to forget what it's like down in New Orleans today, I think of Sheralane. Maybe you will too now.
The good folks at the Huffington Post requested another piece on Hurricane Katrina, and who am I to say no to Arianna when she calls? Seriously, called me on the phone. Asked me herself. Didn't want to break her heart. Love that accent too much.
This post attempts to answer why hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians can't, or won't, return home again. I gently suggest it's because going back is so difficult as to be a bit crazy. Hope you'll give it a read. And with that, I'm off to eat my birthday dinner, somewhere in the East Village. It's a surprise...
I
have a
post by that title up on Huffington Post on this, the two year anniversary
of the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast. I'm lucky
enough to have it featured on the home page of the site -- thanks HuffPo! I
went to New Orleans in October of 2005 and again in April of this year, and
while some homes have been gutted and some neighborhoods rebuilt and some lending
programs established in the intervening 20 months, so much of that city stands
frozen like it was just after the storm came through.
The post doesn't get into policy or politics, really, though those are the
root reasons why New Orleans is still stuck on August 29th, 2005. Jane
called it an "emotional" piece. I'm okay with that. It's meant only
as a reminder. Poetry is about the grief, politics is about the grievance, right?
I'm not saying that piece is poetry, but it's more or less about the unending
grief of the Gulf Coast.
(The photo is from a house I helped to gut on Caffin Street in the Lower Ninth,
working with ACORN. More photos from that trip here.)
I've
been back from New Orleans for a few days now and have gotten a chance
to sort through my thoughts, notes, and research. I went down with the
intention of focusing on the rebuilding process and it seems to make sense
for me to chop up what I have into three posts. The first up is this post,
on the scope and impact of Hurricane Katrina in post-storm New Orleans.
The second will look at major factors in the rebuilding process. The third
will be a report on the day I put down my pen and camera (mostly) and
picked up a crowbar to help ACORN gut a house in the Lower Ninth Ward.
It doesn't take long back in New Orleans to figure out that Katrina is
embedded in every fiber of this city's being. It's all "storm,"
all the time, some 20 months since the storm.
Here's what I mean. On the radio, for example, were advertisements encouraging
applications for the HUD-funded Road Home program championed by Governor Blanco,
an interview with locals starting an ambassadors program that just sent its
first envoy to Boston, and pitches for home demolition services. Actor/write/HuffPo
blogger Harry Shearer does ads for Levees.org
and proposing a 9/11-style commission on levees. Talk show hosts discussed how
useful local bloggers were in keeping the community updated in the days and
weeks after the storm. (The
local New Orleans blogosphere -- including honorary New Orleanians like
the bloggers at First
Draft -- is vibrant and active. More on that later.) Then there were local
celebrities promoting the need for New Orleanians to have a voice in the national
discourse and talk show hosts ruminating on the importance of New Orleans as
an American city.
It just did not end. You hear updates on progress from neighborhood rebuilding
projects, talk about wetlands reclamation, and ads from banks encouraging residents
to restructure their debt, saying "you survived the storm -- now start
your financial rebuilding." One show discussed new reports on post-storm
depression rates, especially in kids but in everyone, really -- stemming from
lost photos and from parents and grandparents moved away. This isn't right,
a woman says. In southern Louisiana, she says, you're supposed to live by your
family for life.
Two commentators debated Mayor Nagin's dig on the comparative cleanliness of
Philadelphia, with the lead-in, "Ray Nagin is at it again." Jefferson
Parish President Aaron Broussard took questions from callers and Army Corps
of Engineers officials delved into where the levees stand now, about six weeks
before the start of 2007 hurricane season.
In the French Quarter, "Make Levees, Not War" is emblazoned on mousepads
and t-shirts for sale, alongside shirts showing an outline of a FEMA trailer
and offering a twist of the New Orleans slogan, "Proud to Call it Home."
Then there are "Proud to Swim Home" bumper stickers and t-shirts offering
new takes on what FEMA stands for: Fix Everything My Ass or Find Every Mexican
Available. Tchotchke shops sell copies of storm books: 1
Dead in the Attic, Do
You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, Waters
Dark and Deep and Not
Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans. The gorgeous Times-Picayune
Katrina photo book is for sale in cooking stores in the French Market.
On late night television was a compelling program that offered a comprehensive take on
the storm, covering everything from how the levees broke to mold remediation
techniques. Between segments, quotes from the House
"Bipartisan" Select Committee on Katrina's final report flash
on the screen.
Of course, once you spend time in the city, all this is no wonder.
When
I posted earlier that I was going down to New Orleans, several commenters
suggested that I delve into the city beyond the Lower Ninth Ward. So I did that.
On their recommendations, I explored a handful of racially and economically
different neighborhoods: the Lower Ninth (in crude generalizations, black and
working-class), yes, but also Lakeview (white and middle-class), Gentilly (racially-integrated
and middle-class), New Orleans East (mixed in race and class, as far as I can
tell), and Chalmette (white and working-class).
With
just a few hours of daylight left on my first night, I found myself in New Orleans
East. One of the first places I headed was the Sheralane Dog Grooming Shop on
Downman Road. I had driven past Sheralane when I was in town in October, 2005,
about a month after the storm. On that trip, I was so chilled by the spray-painted
notices like "Dead Dog Left in Crate." (Something about animals...their
fates are probably just easier to let my mind contemplate.) And when I visited
again on April 21, 2007, and it looked little different from the outside, other
than that those markings were just barely painted over.
So
much still looks the same in New Orleans. (I have a
full set of photos up on Flickr.) So many houses still bear the spray-painted
markings on their doors and faces from the first days of the storm. Still,
there's progress. Houses have been gutted, there is construction here
and there. I toured neighborhoods, the Ninth Ward and New Orleans East,
for example, where I would see one rebuilt and landscaped house on an
otherwise empty street. In one neighborhood, I found a boy of maybe nine
years old shooting hoops on the street, alone, and not another soul around
-- other than me and the folks in the National Guard humvee rolling by.
The whole city is a study in contrast, but Lakeview in particular. In a strip
mall there, there was a women's clothing store (photo)
that I swear I was the first person to set foot in since the storm. Like so
many of the buildings still vacant in the city, the door is left wide open.
A
brand new shoe store stood next to a completely wasted fast food place. In the
Lower Ninth Ward, one house had a bed post still sticking through the front
window, still strung with Mardi Gras beads. On the front porch sat a television
set and some children's toys. Those back had hung signs that say, "Welcome
Home, Holy Cross Neighborhood," (Holy Cross is a section of the Lower Nine)
and "We're Home -- Rebuild the New New Orleans." Also in the Lower
Nine, someone has painted his car with the plea "I'm Back. RU?"
In Chalmette, signs lashed to fences read "St. Bernard Proud -- We're
Coming Back!" (photo)
Still, piles of trash and debris five and ten feet high sat in front of gutted
houses, apartments, and stores (photo).
After a hot afternoon in Chalmette, I went into Brewster's, a restaurant offering
"Fun, Food, and Spirits" and newly reopened in an otherwise-empty
shopping center (photo).
The neon signs out front and inside advertised various brands of beer. When
I order one, the waitress seemed a bit taken aback and says, "oh no, not
yet."
A
FEMA trailer parked in front yard and in driveway is a sign of progress (photo).
It means that the homeowner has gotten some FEMA money and that the neighborhood
has a clean water hook-up, and that's no small feat some 20 months after the
storm. When I talked trailers with Mary Rickard, ACORN's web campaign coordinator,
she had a great quote -- "When George Bush says to be patient...In his
next life, he's going to have to live in a FEMA trailer."
Of course, that boy playing basketball in New Orleans East needs to go to school.
Leaving the neighborhood one day, I passed by a school building. What struck
me was that the door to the library was propped about half-opened. The gate
to the school grounds was also opened, so I stopped the car and went in. Amazing,
the way it still looked (photo).
A friend of mine who is doing PhD work in sociology with a focus on disasters
says that the photos I showed her of the Barbara C. Jordan in New Orleans East
remind her of Chernobyl. A moment stuck in time, late August, 2005.
Schools,
of course, need not only students but teachers and landscapers and food workers
and principals. What will it take to bring people back to New Orleans? Infrastructure,
for one thing. They need schools and stores and electricity and water and roads.
Livability of the city is a problem, and crime certainly is too. I keep coming
back to the idea that it seems just so difficult for residents to get firm footing
in the city, no solid ground to start building on. The Lower Nine, for example,
lacks grocery stores (and did so before the storm), schools, hospitals, and
religious services. It's not exactly a situation that screams 'welcome home.'
You have to wonder if the people who have moved back in and rebuilt lives
here -- almost like frontiersman -- are courageous or, shoot, just a bit
crazy. But those brave souls may well be what it takes to get the city
growing to the point where momentum takes over. They are attempting to
regrow the city from the bottom up, house-by-house, business-by-business.
One
aspect of New Orleans circa 2007 that is still so striking to me is the
water line. You see it everywhere in the city, from the sides of homes
in New Orleans East to the overpass support pillars in Lakeview, a line
of muck showing just how high the waters rose -- and stayed, of course,
for days and day and days (photo).
Along those lines, my mom (who is from Cottonport in central Louisiana)
met me in New Orleans and we went up towards Monroeville, Alabama for
a local production of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Along the way,
we stopped in Mobile and went to the excellent A
Day in Pompeii exhibit at the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center
there. The sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24, 79 A.D., killed
about 2,000 and the diagrams showing the lines to which the ash rose,
the stories of people trapped on second floors -- the similarities to
Katrina are a bit eerie. (Also looking forward to Hurricane
on the Bayou, an IMAX movie on the survival of Louisiana's wetlands
that wasn't getting to Mobile until June 1 but is now playing around the
country . If you happen to be in DC, it's now playing at
the Museum of Natural History.)
All signs point to this being a long, hard, slow slog. New Orleans is
New Orleans, for better and for worse -- city living that's less about
granite countertops and central air conditioning and more about old urban
life. Mary Rickard suggested that Americans living in newer cities might
not get understand what's important about a city as old and as gritty
as New Orleans. She put it well: "If you've always lived in a new
city, new is better. So many cities in America are interchangeable. People
don't get why we just don't move to Salt Lake City."
So it goes for New Orleanians. For whatever reason, it was as I sat in
the Clover Grill (motto: "we love to fry and it shows") in the
French Quarter eating a grilled cheese and tator tots, with Natalie Cole
singing "Pink Cadillac" on the stereo system, and enjoying the
spectacle of Vic the waiter and the fry cook berating each other back
and forth over who messed up an omelette order, that I realized that I
have a great deal of love for this place and that it would just be a damn
shame should we lose this city. New Orleans
May 1, 2007 All Storm, All the Time One of my strongest impressions of post-Katrina New Orleans from my trip last week was this sense that the storm is just embedded in every fiber of life in that city. I've just posted on that on MyDD. I'll be following it up with two more posts: one on the ins-and-outs of the rebuilding process and the other on the day I spent gutting a couple Lower Ninth Ward homes with ACORN. New Orleans
April 30, 2007 20 Volunteers, One House Through the magic of Windows Movie Maker, I whipped up a short video on the day I spent gutting a home with ACORN on Caffin Avenue in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward. The goal was to return the house back to its owners with it stripped down to the studs -- leaving nothing but frame, roof, foundation, and siding. With 20 or so volunteers, it was short work:
It was like we were termites or some sort of scavenger animals that just strip a building or a body down to the bare bones. But, you know, in a good way. New Orleans
I've been looking for a clean and elegant way to display here on the blog a selection of the photos I took last week. I didn't want to use the built-in Flickr slideshow as deciphered by Paul Stamatiou both because the design has too many distracting elements, I think, and because it scrolls through photos automatically -- I think it takes something away from the pleasurable experience of interacting with photographs if they're served up to you after regular 5 second intervals. So I settled on Flickrshow. I'm not entirely happy with it (for one reason, the javascript that drives it is hosted offsite), but heck, it's free and seems to be fairly reliable. I can't quite figure out how to display a Flickrshow inline in the blog format, because it requires that you add a unique head tag to the page where you want to display your photos. So I'm going to have to ask you to jump over here to have a look at the subset of forty or so "best" photos I've culled from all those I took in New Orleans. New Orleans
April 26, 2007 Gutting New Orleans Working with ACORN, yesterday I helped to gut two houses in the Lower Ninth Ward, one on Caffin Street and one on Tennessee Street:
We more or less gutted all of the Caffin Street house down to studs in one day, and finished clearing out the Tennessee Street house after lunch. New Orleans
Now why on God's green earth did I not frame the shot to include all of the smashed window? Argh. Anyway, the Barbara C. Jordan School in New Orleans East is mud-caked, busted, and broken. New Orleans
April 23, 2007 Walls of the Lower Nine It was a learning and interviewing day today. And I indeed learned a great deal about some aspects of rebuilding New Orleans -- I think. Tomorrow I get my hands dirty a bit, both observing one home-gutting project in the Lower Nine and busting down some moldly old walls myself:
I'll soon write up what I've found here -- this weekend most likely -- but for now, I'm taking everything I can about rebuilding in and starting the process of processing it. New Orleans
April 23, 2007 Five Neighborhoods When I posted notice on MyDD about me coming down to New Orleans, several commenters raised the idea that while the focus of national post-Katrina attention has been on the Lower Ninth Ward, neighborhoods like Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East, and Chalmette are also still quite devastated. On their recommendation, I hit the western part of New Orleans East yesterday and went through the other three today -- as well as the Lower Ninth, as I'd never been. Wow, just wow. More on that later. But I ended up with about 400 photos (I've borrowed my brother's Nikon D70s digital SLR for the week) and just finished selecting out a set of 82 for Flicker. I'll be posting a bunch of them in the coming days and sharing some thoughts and observations on New Orleans, but I'm a bit pooped. Here's just a taste of a few of my more random shots. First, a car that nature's made a planter, in the Lower Ninth:
And the view through that car's window:
Next up, also from the Lower Ninth, Mary. doing her best:
Now this was eerie. I stumbled upon the deserted Barbara C. Jordan School in New Orleans East, and investigated. It was completely washed out and it seemed like other than a bit of clear-out work, things were pretty much frozen as they were in August of 2005. In the school courtyard were piled the students' desks and chairs:
And finally:
This puppy found stuck in a windowsill in Chalmette says g'night.
(It seems like it's all-hurricane, all the time here. For example, the local television station I have on in the background is showing a program that covers every aspect of the storm, from the levees breaking to how to hire a licensed contractor to handle mold removal.) New Orleans
April 22, 2007 The More They Stay the Same I'm just crashing now from my first day back in New Orleans. I visited here last about five weeks after Hurricane Katrina, in 2005. It wasn't that I didn't know intellectually that not much rebuilding had been done places like the Ninth Ward since then, but I guess I somehow didn't expect things could in places still be so strikingly similar to the way they were what, 19 months ago? Here is a shot I took in 2005 of the Sheralane Dog Grooming Shop on Downman Road:
For whatever reason, those spray-painted signs chilled me to the bone back then. I took this photo of Sheralane today, more than a year and a half later:
But that's not to overgeneralize. Houses here and there in the northwest corner of the Ninth have been rebuilt or rehabbed. But they're still on streets that are largely deserted, from what I've seen. Here's an example of that:
The house of the left was beautifully manicured -- new mulch, flowers in the yard. The one the right was barely more than a shell, and you can still clearly see the line to which the flood waters rose. New Orleans
That's the long, lonely road that takes you out to a FEMA-run trailer
camp in Baker, Louisiana. When I visited the Baker camp back on
October 3, 2005, a contractor called the Shaw Group was just putting
the finishing touches on the installation of 573 trailers, and a
thousand or so Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in shelters or
bunking with friends or relatives were preparing to move in.
The Baker camp is some 10 miles outside of Baton Rouge and about
95 miles northwest of New Orleans. When I visited in late 2005,
no bus or other mode of public transportation served the Baker trailer
camp, and area commerce consisted of a convenience store attached
to a gas station. The camp's immediate surroundings were the sort
of remote, open space where you might think to build a prison. In
fact, the nearest building of any real size was a juvenile detention
center.
Perhaps not the best of settings for housing evacuees from New
Orleans, a densely-packed urban environment teeming with life. But
these were emergency measures. This was short-term solution. It
was temporary.
Today, some 442 days later, I open up the New York Times
and read this*:
BAKER, La. -- There are hundreds of children in the trailer camp
that is run by FEMA and known as Renaissance Village, but they
won’t be having much of a Christmas. They’re trapped
here in a demoralizing, overcrowded environment with adults who
are mostly broke, jobless and at the end of their emotional tethers.
Many of the kids aren’t even going to school.
...
The enormity of the continuing tragedy is breathtaking. Thousands
upon thousands of people are still suffering. And yet the way
the poorest and most vulnerable victims have been treated so far
by government officials at every level has been disgraceful.
More than a third of the 1,200 people in this sprawling camp
are children. Only about half of the school-age youngsters are
even registered for school; of those, roughly half actually go
to school on any given day. The authorities can’t account
for the rest.
A number of officials who asked not to be identified told me
they are concerned that large numbers of children are remaining
isolated at Renaissance Village, holed up in the trailers day
in and day out, falling further and further behind educationally,
and deteriorating emotionally.
Four hundred and forty two days. Living in vacation-sized trailers,
in what amounts to a gravel pit wrapped by a wire fence:
A downed street sign in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. I'll admit that I didn't know much about much of the specifics of the ancient city of Babylon and so I got a little bit of a kick out of the Webster's reference: "a city devoted to materialism and sensual pleasure."
Next Tuesday is, as you probably know, the one-year anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina touched down in Louisiana. I had the fantastic opportunity to travel down to Baton Rouge and New Orleans just a few weeks after as a guest of the Louisiana NAACP and I took a whole bunch of photos of the incredible devastation I found there. They're not overly good -- it was during what I like to call the "point-and-click" phase of my photographic development -- but I still never get tired of looking at them. They still capture, for me, what it was like to be there -- just a whole lot of emptiness and destruction. So I'm planning on pulling out and posting some of them in this space over the next couple of days. Notice the water level across the windows and doors of these two cars -- that's how high the flooding got in this neighborhood and it stayed that way for quite a while.
About 8 miles outside the center of Baton Rouge, in a town called Baker, a trailer camp has been built to house a few thousand of those hurricane evacuees still staying in area shelters and hotels. When I was down in Louisiana, I drove out to see the Baker trailer camp. A few days after visiting Baker, I toured New Orleans and the very neighborhoods the evacuees had evacuated from.
New Orleans was, of course, was a city environment and a densely-populated one at that. The area in which the Baker trailer camp has been built has no commerce beyond a convience store attached to a gas station. There was, at the time of my visit, no public transportation. It's the sort of remote open space where one might think to build a prison of some kind. In fact, the nearest establish of any real size is a juvenile detention center.
I cut together a video (.wmv), just over a minute long, showing part of the drive from Baton Rouge out to Baker and some of the 573 trailers in the camp.
(As the video itself has no real audio beyond just the sound of the wind whistling past the windows as we drove, I added in a song called Everything's Just Fine, Thanks by Flatwound that I found through ccMixter.)
Also, I am now officially a radio personality, having made my debut on 94.9 WQTQ LP FM Baton Rouge, interviewed about what I observed in New Orleans and Slidell. I was witty and urbane.
The good news is that I did in fact do a fly-over of New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish, and Slidell today with the Louisiana Air National Guard. The bad news is that it caused me to miss my flight to Baltimore and I’ll be sleeping over in Dallas tonight. But the somewhat comforting news is that the flight I was scheduled to be on this afternoon was delayed enough so that even if I had made that flight I’d be staying in Dallas tonight anyway.
As for the Blackhawk flyover. In some areas, particularly on the east side of New Orleans, it looked like as if you built a small Lego city, put it down on the ground, and stomped the crap out of it. Buildings that were just piles of sticks, cars overturned in the canals, boats standing up on end. Homes ripped off of their foundations and butted up against other houses. Tree after tree just snapped like matchsticks.
Before we took off from Baton Rouge, our National Guardsman pilot said to keep an eye out for holes in the roofs of the houses, where people cut their way out of their way out as the flood waters rose. But it didn’t really hit me until I saw it myself -- holes maybe six feet or so across in the roofs of large family houses, house after house. Some looked as if they had somehow been burnt out. Others looked as if they had cut with an axe. House after house, people clawing their way out to survival. And then there was the stuff that people had written on the roofs of their houses, things like “Need water,” or a list of the names of the families still inside. The handwriting on a few I saw was almost perfect block letters. It made me wonder how someone in a situation like that could manage to spray paint those words - cries for help - so neatly.
I’d post some pictures but I wisely separated all my electronics -- in my carry-on bag --from all of my plugs and cables -- in my checked pack. So I have a camera and I have a laptop, but, alas, nothing to connect the two.
(Just posted this now but wrote it up yesterday. One of the plugs I packed was the one for my laptop and it died after I wrote it but before I posted it. I'm back in DC now, after a lovely night in Grapevine, Texas.)
I'm writing up some notes from the last several days but want to share the exciting news that tomorrow I am scheduled to do a flyover of the New Orleans and the Louisiana coast in a Blackhawk helicopter.
UPDATE: Alas, the flyover was not to be today. There was some confusion this morning about whether the Air Force had to do some sort of official mission instead. I decided to use the day to drive down to New Orleans and I am hoping that it'll happen tomorrow.
Louisiana NCAAP President Ernest Johnson and sidekick Bob Brigham are doing what from many miles away looks to be remarakble work. The plan is to get evacuees to self-organize in the shelters in which they are staying. They can pick leaders who would then make decisions for the group on living conditions, what to do with the children, that sort of thing. Also, and very importantly, they want to make sure that those who were taken far away from New Orleans (as far away as Montana, Johnson says) can move back if they want to. The thinking is to make sure that they have a black voting base back there because some important decisions on the future of that city are gonna need to be made down there -- and elections to choose the area's leaders begin as early as February of next year. That right there is a smart humanitarian and political response to a horrible situation.
LOUISIANA NAACP PRESIDENT CALLS FOR EVACUEES TO TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR OWN DESTINY AND FORM "SHELTER COMMITTEES"
Ernest L. Johnson, President of the Louisiana NAACP called today for Katrina evacuees in shelters to take control of their own destinies by forming SHELTER COMMITTEES.
"Each SHELTER COMMITTEE should elect a Chairperson and a Secretary and begin holding meetings, organizing, and working as a team for better treatment," Johnson said. "In unity there is strength."
Johnson called for each committee to begin writing down the name, telephone number, and next of kin of every shelter resident.
This contact information must be put into the FEMA database for evacuees to receive financial assistance.
Johnson urged each SHELTER COMMITTEE to send this information to 1755 Nicholson Drive, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70802, or to fax it to (225) 334-7491.
The Louisiana NAACP is airing public service announcements on radio stations that explain the process for bringing participatory democracy to the shelter system.
"The Louisiana NAACP is with you in solidarity," Johnson said. "The NAACP will stand with all displaced people until each and every one return to a brand-new New Orleans."
Below is a passage from the Houston Chronicle in 2001, which quoted the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the three likeliest potential disasters to threaten America. They were: an earthquake in San Francisco, a terrorist attack in New York City (predicted before 9/11), and a hurricane hitting New Orleans.
Read this prophetic passage and weep: “The New Orleans hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all. In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city’s less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20ft of water.
“Thousands of refugees could land in Houston. Economically, the toll would be shattering . . . If an Allison-type storm were to strike New Orleans, or a category three storm or greater with at least 111mph winds, the results would be cataclysmic, New Orleans planners said.”
A convoy of 10 buses provisioned with food, water and officers to keep the peace left the District yesterday evening bound for the troubled city of New Orleans, hoping to return by Monday with as many as 400 evacuees who will be sheltered at the D.C. Armory.
Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), a leader of the effort, said he hoped it would be only the beginning. He called on other communities in the Washington region to take in those in need.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) echoed Catania's challenge by calling on mayors across the country to open armories, stadiums and gyms to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
...
D.C. police officers will accompany the buses for security, and each bus will have two drivers so the caravan can drive through the night on its 2,200-mile, round-trip journey.
In addition, a fuel tanker will be in the convoy, ensuring enough fuel without lengthy stops.
...
City officials are preparing the armory to accommodate an extended stay by its guests. D.C. public school officials said they will enroll any children who arrive in the bus convoy.
...
The Washington Nationals, Mystics and D.C. United have offered to organize recreational events and make available some tickets to their games.
D.C. officials also will try to help those who come to the District locate missing relatives and get their affairs in order.
With 15,000 people filling the floor of the Astrodome and thousands more evacuees from New Orleans streaming into the city, Houston Mayor Bill White asked residents today to open their garages and homes to hurricane refugees.
“Houston is rising to the call of an unprecedented refugee situation,” White said at a press conference this morning. “People should be asking themselves in this region where they know of a garage or apartment.”
Thousands of children displaced from their homes by Hurricane Katrina have been enrolled in schools throughout the Houston area, and government officials were kicking conventioneers out of several centers so the buildings could be turned into shelters.
“If it takes someone suing us, then sue — and then explain to the American public,” White said.
MSNBC: Tim, there are people in New Orleans shooting at helicopters trying to deliver supplies and evacuate patients, people shooting at rescue boats. The mayor of New Orleans says the federal government doesn’t have a clue about what is going on in his town. There seems to be no one in charge in New Orleans. What’s the problem?
Tim Russert: It’s a question that our country is going to have to look inside its soul and answer. The fact is, those who were well off were able to evacuate the city and those who were poor stayed behind. And those who are suffering and those who are dying are those very same poor people.
It’s just unbelievable. The world is watching the United States of America this week. And we’re watching ourselves.
I think the response across the country has been universal and uniform. After Sept. 11, I think people realized we’d been attacked by an outside enemy and we were not in a position to be criticizing our own government.
That’s not the case with this crisis. The Washington Times — a conservative paper — and the Manchester Union Leader up in New Hampshire both just absolutely denouncing the response of the federal government, state government, local government. They are basically saying the government has one function and that’s’ to protect the citizens and it hasn’t happened this week in New Orleans.
I think liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, are just absolutely outraged and confused at the scenes we’re watching on TV. And the world is watching.
Why are we apparently incapable of rescuing people and in the process of witnessing an American city being lost?
MSNBC: This seems especially troubling to some, when America was able to offer aid to victims of the tsunami, a half a world away, but seemingly can’t do it in one of its own cities.
Russert: And it’s not as if we didn’t know this was coming. There were studies after studies. There were tests after tests. As recently as a year ago there was a tabletop disaster scenario played out as to what would happen to New Orleans in a major hurricane. And the results of those studies have now been proven to be true.
So the questions that have to be asked are:
Why weren’t the poor people evacuated? They don’t have SUVs. They travel by public bus. Could they have been evacuated?
Secondly, in terms of pre-positioning, where were the troops, where were the National Guard? If people were to be sent to the Superdome, why weren’t there cots and water and food there?
Second-guessing is easy, but it is also, I think, a requirement of those in a free society to challenge their government, when the primary function of the government is to protect its citizens and they haven’t been protected.
"This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out of resources at the Convention Center and don't anticipate enough buses. Currently the Convention Center is unsanitary and unsafe and we are running out of supplies for 15,000 to 25,000 people," he said in the statement read by CNN.
I normally think that CNN's Jack Cafferty comes off as something pretty close to a loony jerk, but I saw him say this (transcribed by lesliet on kos) today and it was brilliant:
I'm 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it's fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it's handled this thing.
...
We're going to talk about something else before the show's over, too. And that's the big elephant in the room. The race and economic class of most of the victims, which the media hasn't discussed much at all, but we will a bit later.
A newsman reacting with all the passion and outrage that a normal person would and should exhibit in such a situation. Bravo.
Update: video now available. New Orleans
A shaken and emotional Ellen DeGeneres said her 82-year-old aunt had to quickly evacuate her home in Pass Christian, Mississippi, as Hurricane Katrina headed toward the Gulf Coast.
"My aunt has lost everything, she has nothing," DeGeneres told AP Radio Wednesday. "She grabbed four pictures out of her house. She's lost her entire life."
DeGeneres, who was born in Metairie, Louisiana, said her childhood was filled with weekends at her aunt Helen Currie's home, just over the state line from New Orleans.
"It's where I grew up every weekend. I spent all my childhood there," she said. "Pass Christian ... is just gone. There's not one building left -- no church, no nothing."
Anyone else get the feeling that we here in official Washington haven't quite grasped the seriousness of what's happening in LA and MS?
-- This is not a criticism of any one person or one agency. It's meant as a wakeup call to all of us. This could very well be the biggest natural disaster in this country's history; an entire city in ruins.
-- If this happened in Washington, you wouldn't be reading this. There would be no electricity; there would be no light; there would be no phones (even cell service would be nearly non-existent); your Blackberries would get no email; there'd be no subway; there'd be no newspaper delivered or available; you couldn't reach your friends; your office wouldn't exist or you couldn't get to it; your home would be gone; there'd be no schools to send your kids to; the graves of your family would be washed away; electrocuted family pets; snakes and other scary creatures everywere; and you'd have to move somewhere for at least 3 months.
-- And this is what life is like for those with means in New Orleans. MS is the 3rd poorest state in the union, according to a Census report released yesterday.
August 30, 2005 Times-Picayune Neighborhood Forums In a nifty use of tech, the Times-Picayune, the newspaper of New Orleans, is hosting online neighborhood forums that residents are using to contact each other to check on the state of their houses and how friends and family have made out. (No direct link, just go to the home page and scroll down to "WHAT'S HAPPENED TO MY NEIGHBORHOOD?") New Orleans
August 30, 2005 New Orleans My mom's family is from Louisiana -- Avoyelles Parish, actually, smack in the middle of the state -- and this Katrina is getting me down. New Orleans has of course long known that it's built to low (see this Chris Mooney article for more) but its strange architecture is part of the reason that the city is so ridiculously fabulous. For example, because of the high water table under the city, they 'bury' bodies there above ground in crypts. (They tried burying them below ground for a while but then a big rainstorm would come and the coffins would pop right up out of the ground.) The result is 'cities of the dead' scattered around the city. The last time that I was down there, I wandered through St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and got lost in the twists and turns of the cemetery. I'd find myself in some dead end, alone with a crypt tagged with voodoo markings and offerings like chicken bones scattered on the ground. That's part of what makes New Orleans so unique -- what feels to me about as far as you can get from Washington DC and still be in a major American city. It breaks my heart to think that we likely will have lost some of that.
Update: It looks like things are actually far, far worse down there than we I first wrote this. The point stands, though, that -- in addtion to the lost lives, the huge cost of rebuilding, and the suffering that those down there are going to be going through for a long time to come -- if we lose the unique blend of history, culture, architecture, and people that made NO such a spectacularly original city, that will be a damn damn shame.
I have always thought New Orleans is a useful dramatic counterpoint to the rest of the country. It has a different value system. It's not a money culture. It's a family--it's almost more European. It's, "who's your mama? Who's your granddaddy?" I had a moment--this is a very New Orleans moment. Liar's Poker came out. I was whoring for publicity and was sent out to be on every TV show. I was on the Letterman show. And after I was on the Letterman show, people stopped me on the street routinely because they recognized me from TV. And the tour, a week after that, took me through New Orleans. And I went there and I was staying with my parents, doing local media. I went over to the grocery store to pick up something for my mother. And I was walking down the aisle with a grocery cart and a little old lady was coming the other way. And she starts to point her crooked finger at me.
...
And I'm thinking, "I know you, you were on the Letterman show." But she gets closer and she says, "I know you, you're Malcolm Monroe's grandson." I said, "How'd you know that?" "I can tell by your face." And everybody is a celebrity in New Orleans because everybody knows you.
Emphasis added. My mom's family is from that part of the country, and I can attest that "who's your granddaddy?" is indeed a normal topic of conversation. Michael Lewis, New Orleans, social networks
While filming a movie in New Orleans, Brad Pitt noticed a pink fabric house that was being used as part of the set. He perceived the visual potency of pink houses as a metaphor. Working together with [the architectural firm] GRAFT, the idea was born to merge film and architecture into an installation that would bring immediate global attention to a pervasive local issue. The scenes within the assembly create emotive storyboards containing perspectives rich with history and memories. Like a tangram puzzle, the components of each house lay haphazard at the installation's commencement. It is only through monetary donations that these pink placeholders will become reassembled, registering the effects of a collective consciousness, ultimately enabling the construction of 150 real homes. Pink, a symbol rich with the promise of homes that will be constructed for the community of the Lower 9th, resonates with an immediate and cogent message: "They have not been forgotten."
James Carville, John "Night Court" Larroquette, and others have launched Friends of New Orleans, a non-partisan non-profit in support of the forgotten city.
