Watching The City Die
It was a year ago today that the real disaster happened. The largest engineering failure in American History: Levee Failure.
Here are the posts made from the hotel in W. Memphis as we watched in horror. We were some of the few people not from the 9th Ward, and as we watched the city drown the fear and pain were palpable.
Here are the voices of two residents of the Lower 9 that afternoon while we watched the devatation unfold:
http://humidcity.com/2005/08/30/woo-woo-from-the-9th-ward-shouts-out-podcast/
http://humidcity.com/2005/08/30/112542287999615332/
Then news of looting, which really angered me. New Orleanians take care of each other after hurricanes. It was just wrong.
http://humidcity.com/2005/08/30/to-the-looters-anger-warning-podcast/
We were in a beat up hotel room with condensation on every surface, crammed in with the cats and fellow evacuees. Every window in the place had some kind of animal or child visible in it as the entire population of the site was made up of refugees. (Yes, refugees. When you are forcibly displaced that is what you are and no amount of PC verbal dancing changes that). It was at this point that we realized we were not going home for awhile if ever.
The fear and uncertainty of that day hangs heavy in my heart still. There is nothing, thank god, that can equal that first blast of images across my screaming retinas images heretofore relegated to news feeds of natural disasters or wars overseas. Little did I know that the true horror would be the lack of response.
Yesterday I realized that I was constantly going back, in my mind, to the events of a year ago. I would think, “Just now we were waking up to the news after finally getting some sleep,” or, “Oh god, right about now was when I ran into that guy hauling ass to the lobby yelling “the levees broke!” Since I cannot get the running taly out of my mind I will be flashing back to it here on the site. Each days pot will have a link at the bottom to the one I made exactly one year prior.
This is why we CANNOT forget!
Leave me a comment. Where were you the day the levees failed?
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I’m posting from Ohio and was here, in Akron, when the hurricane struck. It seemed that the looting at lawlessness got more coverage than the plight of citizens like yourself. The news cameras seemed to be racing to the riots and the images of the superdome dominated the coverage.
I had the opportunity to go to Pass Christian Mississippi last March to volunteer for a week. I don’t think people here have a sense of how extensive the devistation is there. I wish you well and thank you for your blog, which we have been reading.
When the levees failed we were in Houma and we had very intermittent TV usage due to power/generator issues. So I remember seeing one image of water just rushing over the wall and asking something really clever like “the what just what?”
When we were staying at Gary’s Grandma’s house she introduced me to some neighbor and said something like “this is my granddaughter-in-law the refugee from New Orleans. Then she caught herself and said “oh, evacue, refugee isn’t right.” I had to interrupt her and say “No, I AM a refugee. I don’t feel like I got “evacuated” from anywhere.”
I was in Inova Fairfax Hospital watching over my Dad, who was very sick at the time. In fact, the week that Katrina left her windy and watery calling card of destruction and death, my Dad took a turn for the worst and ended up in the ICU. Fortunately, my Dad got better over time and was home by Christmas. I kept hoping the same thing for New Orleans.
Today, my Dad is up and around. Looking a bit older and smaller, to be sure, but is none the worse for wear. The fact that the pictures of NOLA today appear no different than those of a year ago fill me with equal parts of sadness and rage.
I have never visited the Crescent City, but am making plans to try and attend Mardis Gras in 2007. My tourist dollars may not add up to much, but they’re better than nothing.
Y’all keep your chins up. We haven’t forgotten you.
The memories of waking up on Tuesday morning, and venturing out to assess the damage, trees and power lines covered the street most of the houses in the neighborhood were in pretty good shape. I was only getting bits and pieces of what was really happening from the radio. It looked bad but I was optimistic that the city would recover.
Gathered at Miss. Mae’s a group of people were drinking warm beer and listening to the reports of massive flooding on the radio. A friend asked me if I thought it would get this far I could only shrug my shoulders and say I don’t know. By Tuesday night the whole scene had changed looting was getting pretty bad, friends had witnessed the local grocery stores being ransacked.
Tues night my friend Layton came over at about 9:00 PM. He said we need to get out of here. Layton has never been the kind of person to cut and run, when he said we need to leave I gave in and started to pack a few things in the dark.
Packed my mom and the pets in the car and we were off. Three dogs, three cats, and three people. We made our way down Tchopitoulas to the bridge. As I looked over my shoulder from the top of the bridge at the dark city I wondered when and what I would be coming home to, it left a sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach, it still seems like yesterday.
I was in Texas, looking for a doctor to give me chemo. I called the D.C. to see what the plans were for the Walking Wounded like myself. They had no plans. I kept begging until I got it
Okay, this was crossposted to the New Orleans Livejournal Group and the responses (a lot of them!) can be found here:
http://community.livejournal.com/neworleans/2358274.html
Thanks for the participation, keep ‘em coming!
I was at home in San Diego, feeling releived that the city I love and her people had bypassed the worst of the storm. I remember wondering what my dead father had against the Gulf Coast. (His birthday is Aug. 29). I got home from work the next day and started the castrated vigil. Water, anger, abandonment, desperation poured in through the news channels (I would get poetic and say “like the flood waters themselves”, but we all know nothing was as bad as the flood waters themselves.) I felt so helpless. No money to donate, no computer to search databases for lost souls. Just the idiotic TV heads to talk to.
I wouldn’t turn off the TV for weeks. I got out my old New Orleans street map and compared satellite footage to the neighborhoods I knew. I just about punched anyone I encountered that said anything remotely positive about the government’s handling of the situation. I watched desperate people do desperate things. I screamed at the TV to shut up about the looters, it doesn’t fucking matter if they die with a TV or new shoes, try not to let them die!!! Punish later, naughty, waggle fingers, who fucking cares, can’t you see the music scene dying? Can’t you feel the spirit changing? Even when CNN started looking for other things to report on, I desperately searched all the channels I could find for something, some hope that my old friends were ok, my old neighborhoods were ok, the musicians were ok, the animals were ok, the spirit and history of NOLA was ok. Nothing was ok.
I used the computer at work to search the web for contacts. Where the hell were all the people I knew? No way of knowing. I found a few. Reconnected with one who’s father was presumed dead in Waveland (after weeks, he found out his dad was ok in MS).
I work at the San Diego Humane Society and SPCA and we were sending crews to go help rescue animals and support local animal care workers. I got busy helping with the effort. Though I desperately wanted to go there myself, I knew I was the best choice to stay behind in the medical center and hold down the fort. I organized supplies and sent supportive emails. I greeted the dogs as they limped off the plane, as dazed and desperate as the people of New Orleans flung to cities they don’t love, among people who don’t understand. We tried to fix them, to mend their broken hearts, but if we couldn’t find their owners, many of them were too traumatized to accept a new home in this beautiful, but somehow too perfect a place. They would rather bite us than let us help, rather die than replace.
I stopped looking for old friends. They probably were fine, If they weren’t, there wasn’t anything I could do.
I went to Houston to reunite a sweet brown and white pit bull (never say pitbull to an airline -its a “Staffordshire terrier”) with her owner. I had a camera, I was ready for tears and hugs and pictures. It wasn’t like that. A tall handsome twenty-something black man with short dreads and a Bob Marley T-shirt arrived bewildered and frustrated with trying to navigate the huge airport, grabbed his car, we loaded the dog, and he was gone. He was happy to see her, she was thrilled to see him again, but you could tell they were all just out of joy. They didn’t trust anyone anymore. They searched for black faces to give directions, answer questions; why should they think any white person cared? I lived in Dallas for 4 unhappy years, I figured they didn’t like Houston any better than I liked Dallas. Texas -suburbany, SUVey, inconsiderate redneckey hellhole from whence dubya was spewn.
So, a year later, I finally have a computer, and on my first round of searching for interesting people and things, I come across George. Good old George. I miss driving around and seeing you walking hither and hence and giving you rides. I miss your crazy optimism. Do you remember me? The ugly apartments, the house parties, the films, the endless cats -glad to see you still have a menagerie as do I.
I’m married, 7 years ago I went back to school and got my RVT certification (basically a RN for animals) and now I work at an amazing animal shelter, anesthetizing, xraying, ultrasounding, and generally fixing up broken animals and hopefully repairing hearts and giving homes and hope. Mike is working on his 1st book, hopefully off to publisher soon. Since I left New Orleans there’s been a lot of death – my father, brother and 3 cats (one last week) Nevertheless, I’m happy. The happiness that comes from fulfillment which I didn’t know I desperately needed until I got it.
PLEASE send me an email so I can really really know you’re alive and well. I worried for a year. Let Dudley know I’m interested to know what he’s up to and am so glad he’s ok too! Kiss an oak tree for me if there’s any left!
Love and Lagniappe, Karen
I was at work but not working, for obvious reasons … I might be an outsider but as a Houstonian I’m still a neighbor, and a concerned one at that. I have acquaintances all along the coast, so that morning I snuck into a weather-related community so I could obsess over the play-by-play.
When I arrived at the office that morning I was in good spirits – Kat had taken a hard right at just the right time and it looked like NOLA proper would be spared the worst of it. Not to say I was glad to see that beast making landfall in any form on any stretch of coastline…. but at least she was weakening, and the fewer people affected, the better.
Stupid me.
I think it was early that afternoon – the storm was still clearing, damage reports trickling in – that the first person posted about the levees. They were listening to a police scanner – or was it weather radio? – and they said there was a breech in the levees along the 17th Street Canal, and water was pouring into the city. Intense debate followed: was it really a BREECH? Not just overtopping? Are you SURE? Can it be plugged? What are they going to do? There was a lot of denial, especially from the evacuees who were posting. But then came another report, and another. Massive breeches. Confirmed failures. Water to the rooftops. We were stunned. I was stunned.
It was weird hearing so early, watching how disconnected the officials were from reality and feeling like one of only a few who knew better. Watching politician after politicans stand up and state “the levees have not been breeched at this time”, watching them imply that the worst was over, and here I was screaming at the TV that things were NOT okay, and for God’s sake you need to be doing SOMETHING!
God, I did a lot of screaming at the TV that week. I’m surprised its still in one piece.
I wont go into the politics of it all …I don’t want to mess up your board with a bunch of cussing and such …. but that week was just so heartbreaking, even for many of us outside the strike zone. When Mayor White authorized bringing evacuees to the Astrodome, into our school system and into our city for better or worse, I actually freakin’ applauded. In my 6 years in Texas I’d never once considered myself a Texan – but I was proud of where I lived for the first time that day. I volunteered til they sent me home (would you believe there were too many there eager to help?). I just wished I could do more.
My heart goes out to all you guys on the front lines. I pray for you all the time. Please know that even in this easily distracted nation there are some people who still remember – not just on some silly anniversary, but every day.
New Orleans WILL rise again. She HAS to, she is the soul of the south…
I have to retract a little and say, since I was reminded by Karli how Houston, San Antonio and other Texas cities stood up and took in so many people and animals, that of course there are lots of good-hearted Texans out there, I just didn’t meet many when I lived in Dallas.
Karen, actually I hear ya about Texas and Texans, about the Hummers and the ridiculous sprawl …. this place is a straight-up Republican run zoo, and I’ve spent plenty of time missing my more nuanced midwest or the liberal enclaves of Denver. But like anything and especially any place its not all bad. I’ve learned to cope – LOL. And you can’t say the politics aren’t interesting. I’m very much looking forward to casting my ballot in November … I get to vote against Tom DeLay and for Kinky Friedman, all at one time. How many lefties get to do that? :p
Your job sounds wonderful – I have a zoo of my own, no one loves you quite like your pet does. Best of luck!
I was in Orlando. Dad and I had come here for my Mom’s funeral a few months prior, and had decided to stay for awhile to be close to friends and family. We were actually getting ready to go home when the storm hit.
Despite the early morning reports that New Orleans had been spared, I had a nagging feeling that all was not okay. I was working as an actress at Disney. In an acting job, one must be fully present in the role. Needless to say, that day I knew that I could not do what my job required. I went into work and immediately started working on getting the day off.
I got home a couple of hours later, and the first thing my Dad said to me was, “There’s been a levee breach.” I spent the rest of the week glued to the TV. That day I spent several hours on the phone and online, trying desperately to reach my friends. It was then I realized the disadvantage of living outside of mainstream society/technology as so many of my friends do. Many do not have cell phones or use the internet. Others I know only by street names. My ingenuity was considerably tested as I searched for friends of friends of friends. I located one friend weeks later by posting on the nola.com forums, where someone I had never met linked me to a CA newspaper article in which he was interviewed. Most of my searching proved fruitless of course, since those who did have cell phones were unable to use them. My own cell phone, with a 504 area code, worked only sporadically here in FL over the next month.
I learned the how cruel and heartless people can be. On returning to work, I continued to watch news coverage in the break room whenever possible. More than once I was forced to leave the room to avoid violence, as my coworkers kept up a running commentary: It’s their own fault. They deserved it for building below sea level. Only an idiot wouldn’t evacuate. Hateful comments were even directed toward me personally: Hope you called your friends to say goodbye, cause they’re all dead now.
Everything we owned had been put in storage in Kenner before we left. Mixed reports started coming in regarding the fate of the storage facility. Finally my union rep, a very understanding man, engineered a leave of absence for me so that I could go to New Orleans and see for myself. Sure enough, the storage facility had taken on several feet of water. Dad and I lost almost everything. However, we were able to salvage a few items that were stored up high, including my deceased mother’s collection of music boxes.
Seeing the destruction first hand was odd. But mostly, that trip was a relief. Being gone for months prior to the storm, then seeing the television coverage, had left me extremely dazed and confused. Going to see it helped me to put it in perspective, to appreciate the scope of devastation, yet also to see what was spared, the fragments from which we could begin to rebuild. The trip was cathartic. It was only 2 weeks after the storm, when the city was officially closed, yet we managed to talk our way in. Drove all through, with the exception of the areas that were still flooded. Saw my former residence in Mid-City that had taken water to the rafters. Then headed to Metairie, where Sal’s Snowballs was up and running again. I used to go to Sal’s a lot when I lived in Mid-City, and sitting on a log eating a chocolate mint snowball oddly normalized everything in mind. That was the moment when I knew New Orleans would survive.