by nomo » Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:44 pm
<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>An update from a friend of a friend who lives down there:<br></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Dear friends,<br><br>Many of you email or call, wanting to know what it's like living in New<br> Orleans these days. Sometimes I muster a few paragraphs and comments,<br>but the situation here is so overwhelming, that I usually just shy away<br>from responding with any depth. Today, five months after the hurricane<br>hit and the levees broke, I'll try to update you.<br><br>Big picture in New Orleans: 3 out of 4 people lost<br>everything….house, contents, probably a car, possibly a job. Imagine<br>what that is like. If you were a family of four, and three of you lost<br>your homes and all your worldly possessions, it would be a mammoth<br>blow. It also puts a great strain on the one person left standing.<br>That is our city now. Three fourths of the residents have been<br>displaced. We had 470,000 people on August 29, and five months later,<br>we have around 110,000. About three fourths of the city is<br>uninhabitable. There are miles and miles and miles of houses, shops,<br>fire stations, schools, hospitals, playgrounds….gray, smelly, moldy,<br>destroyed. There are mounds of debris…soggy couches, sheet rock,<br>bicycles, clothes, appliances, mattresses…piled up and strewn about in<br>all of those desolate neighborhoods. Some of those areas are in poor<br>parts of town, some are in elegant lakefront areas. The bulk are in<br>working class and middle class neighborhoods…the places where people<br>paid taxes and had lived for several generations.<br><br>Loss is the overarching fact of life here. Katrina was a huge storm,<br>and vast parts of the region suffered terrible wind and rain damage.<br>But the breaches in the Army Corps of Engineers-built levees are what<br>did the real damage to 75% of the city. The critical distinction in<br>how individuals fared in the storm is whether they had flood, or just<br>wind, damage. Those of us who live on high ground….along the naturally<br>high ridges of land where the city was originally developed in the<br>1700's and 1800's…only had wind damage from the hurricane. We live in<br>what's called "the sliver by the river", and we are the lucky. For us<br>personally, we have about $55,000 worth of wind damage, and are making<br>some headway in getting the broken windows and missing roof tiles and<br>caved in ceilings fixed. In fact, we should be almost back to where we<br>were pre-K by Mardi Gras, February 28.<br><br>Daily life in our little bubble of normalcy is not too bad much of the<br>time. Many grocery stores are now open, though lines are long and<br>supplies are somewhat scarce. Traffic is astoundingly clogged. The<br>city is crawling with thousands of pickup trucks filled with Mexican<br>workers and ladders. Fewer than half of the stop lights are working,<br>so there are stop signs resting on street corners everywhere. Traffic<br>accidents are common, but you better hope you don't get hurt. There<br>are just 120 hospital beds in the entire city! Only one full service<br>hospital, one children's hospital, and a makeshift emergency room in a<br>tent downtown. The hospital where Larry and our children were born,<br>and where all our doctors were, flooded 14 feet and cannot be<br>salvaged. It will be imploded this spring, and hopefully a new<br>hospital will be built in its stead someday.<br><br>The 911 emergency service is severely compromised; the police and fire<br>departments are understaffed. Our neighbor had a kitchen fire and 911<br>never answered. We now have a cell phone number posted in the kitchen<br>for the nearest temporary fire station should we ever need it. In<br>addition to inadequate essential services like police, fire, medical<br>care, garbage pickup, telephone service, street lights in inhabited<br>neighborhoods, even mail service (we now get mail delivered five days a<br>week, but no magazines or newspapers. There are still not enough mail<br>carriers to support the few neighborhoods that are getting home<br>delivery…in other parts of town, people have to go to a regional post<br>office station to pick up their mail), the most critical problem is the<br>lack of housing.<br><br>Very few of the flooded houses have been repaired enough to live in<br>yet. Some folks are able to live on the second floors of their homes,<br>above the gutted-to-the-studs first floors.<br>So thousands of people are still living out of town, or bunking with<br>relatives or friends…<br>five months later. (My friend Hortencia has been living with her<br>husband and 16 year old daughter in a married daughter's small<br>house…staying in one bedroom that the rest of the family has to walk<br>through to use the bathroom, since October, with no hope of moving in<br>the foreseeable future. Like thousands of others, she is awaiting a<br>FEMA trailer.) Apartments are scarce, with long waiting lists. Since<br>only 25 % of the city stayed dry, and much of that still has wind<br>damage, the housing shortage is extreme.<br><br>FEMA trailers are beyond scarce. It is disgraceful. Fewer than 10% of<br>the needed FEMA trailers are operational. Some people have room in<br>their driveways or yards to park the trailers and want to live in them<br>while they rebuild their decimated homes. Others are looking to live<br>in FEMA trailer clusters of several hundred so they can return to the<br>city. One reason the city cannot get functioning is that there are no<br>places for people to live. There are not enough workers to staff gas<br>stations or grocery stores, restaurants or dry cleaners, doctors<br>offices, and on and on and on.<br><br>So. Daily life for those 25% of New Orleanians blessed enough not to<br>have flooded, is far from normal. We do not put on blinders and hide<br>in our bubble. There is too much pain all around. The sadness is<br>palpable. Much like during the Depression, the movie theaters are<br>jammed (despite long lines with the shortage of ticket takers or<br>popcorn sellers) and lots of people have taken up jogging and yoga and<br>any other physical diversion they can manage.<br><br>And for the 75% still displaced, still homeless, still wondering when<br>and how they can ever return home…I cannot even imagine. When they<br>visit their old neighborhoods and see the ruins, it must seem a<br>hopeless future indeed. For all New Orleanians, spells of weepiness at<br>unexpected times are common…the slightest remark or sight or smell can<br>trigger a wave of despondency. And no one will wonder why you are<br>crying; we all have our moments.<br><br>Enough of the gloomy. What of the future? Why do we live amidst this<br>despair and desolation? For us there was no question of moving. Larry<br>has a business here with 42 employees, so he can provide jobs, and<br>health insurance and stability for a group. His business is solid, and<br>he is a lifelong local who has always been an advocate for the city.<br>And me, I'm alongside Larry. I cook comforting foods and there are<br>friends around the kitchen table several nights a week. We have folks<br>staying with us often, and I am repairing our house. I thought I was<br>easing on into a lazy life in Pass Christian, but Katrina changed<br>that. So, I am a civic activist again. Some days I weed and plant in<br>the botanical gardens of our suffering City Park. Lately, I've been<br>training as a volunteer lobbyist and will spend much of Feb 6-18 in<br>Baton Rouge, lobbying our state legislature to pass levee board and<br>levee district consolidation.<br><br>This has been a fascinating side effect of the storm…citizen<br>involvement in government reform. Our grassroots levee reform group<br>got 54,000 signatures on petitions statewide and the issue is agenda<br>item #1 in this special session of the legislature. "United we stand,<br>divided we flood." There is another group of young women I play tennis<br>with who have started the Katrina Krewe. Every Wednesday and Saturday<br>mornings, they gather volunteers (240 of them last Saturday) on a<br>different street and collect and bag debris. This is not candy wrapper<br>and beer can litter, this is heavy duty storm debris…roof shingles,<br>hubcaps, tarps, boots, paint cans, sheet metal, whatever. The city<br>sends a garbage truck and street cleaning machine out behind them and<br>it's astounding what a sensational job these folks are doing cleaning<br>up the city. Concerned citizens are engaged across the city. Those of<br>us who are here are the hard core committed.<br><br>There are so many opportunities in this crisis to change our community<br>for the better. For us to build decent low income housing, to overhaul<br>our miserable public education system, to consolidate our assessors and<br>dock boards, our criminal and civil courts, to reform our notoriously<br>corrupt government. And the great thing is that people truly are<br>involved. We have a mayoral and city council election April 22nd, and<br>issues of reform, race, and rebuilding are the hot topics.<br><br>Our son James is in southern California, where he will get his master's<br>in sports management next month and then look for work out there. Our<br>younger boy Brittin jumped into storm recovery work just weeks after<br>Katrina. He spent six weeks doing debris removal on the Mississippi<br>Gulf Coast, and for the past few months has been supervising a crew of<br>30 men rebuilding the largest employer in Plaquemines Parish, the<br>Daybreak fish processing plant. His clothes smell remarkably bad, but<br>he's out the door at 6 every morning, making money and accomplishing<br>work that needs to be done.<br><br>I hope this hasn't seemed too discouraging or too down. We are truly<br>among the blessed and know it. But it's somehow important to let you<br>know that life is not normal, even for those of us who whose homes were<br>relatively unscathed. Our community is torn apart and our neighbors<br>are in pain. We probably all wish we could wake up to discover this<br>was all an incredibly bad dream, and that we can have our pre-Katrina<br>lives back. Despite all the anguish, though, we do have remarkable<br>opportunities to remake our city, especially its school system and<br>governance.<br><br>I'll write again in a few weeks to try to justify why we are having<br>Mardi Gras. It was a tough sell to me, but I'm now agreeing that we<br>need to celebrate our uniqueness, and since it's going to happen<br>anyway, we may as well be on board. But I also hope I'll be able to<br>report on a wonderful project some friends and I are working on in a<br>new charter school…horticulture, nutrition, science.<br><br>Again, this is clearly not a situation anyone would have wished for,<br>but it is what it is. So we put one foot in front of the other. As<br>Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through hell, keep going."<br><br>Love to you all…and keep New Orleans in your thoughts, and in front of<br>your congressmen's thoughts too.<br><br>Karin <p></p><i></i>