Return to New Orleans/Mississi...

Hey folks,

Some of you have been getting updates from me from time to time since the days before the landfall of Hurricane Katrina to some of the aftermath. Honestly, I thought that I was done doing the big bulk updates. This weekend changed all that. This was the first chance that I had to go back to south Louisiana. Needless to say, what I saw blew me away. I am hoping from writing this, I can gain some sort of cathartic relief, as well as trying to get across all I have seen and witnessed.

It is called Black Friday cause this is the day that most stores will go into the black for the year, from all the purchases made on the day following Thanksgiving. To me, it will be “Black Friday” for a whole different reason. It will be black from the things that I bore witness on Friday when Mom and I went to New Orleans.

We had decided to head down to New Orleans on Friday, since there were not going to be many people out and about down there, and we could possibly hit one of the malls that recently opened. A town that was around 475,000 pre Katrina, now boasts a population of 75,000 at night, but during the day, around 150,000 (since most of the area is still under a look and leave, dusk to dawn curfew). From the two experiences that I have had down there, I would say that number is slightly exaggerated, though it was a holiday weekend. After a couple of hours of surveying damage, etc., neither one of us felt like seeing anymore, so we left… but that is for later.

Driving down I-10 into New Orleans, a familiar trip to me, since I had made it probably 50 times in the 8 years I lived in Baton Rouge, was an eerie experience. It was around mid-morning traveling into the city, and there seemed to be more traffic headed west (towards Baton Rouge) than east, into New Orleans. Another eerie site was the complete lack of overhead air traffic. On the trip into New Orleans, I can remember only seeing 2 jets. If you have ever flown into Louis Armstrong, you know that you pretty much fly from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, paralleling the Mississippi River or you take off right out over Lake Ponchartrain. I only saw one plane land and one plane taking off, which for the once busy New Orleans International Airport is strange.

You notice there are subtle differences along I-10 driving into New Orleans. Thick and lush swamp forests are noticeably more barren, as trees have been blown over and the leaves are long gone. Hunting is still occurring, as there were numerous trucks pulled off onto the side of the road, as is usually the case this time of year. Not being a hunter, I’m not sure how the hunting is going there, but some were out, probably getting some relief from the past 3 months.

Once you arrive in LaPlace (which is the southernmost terminus on I-55, about 20 miles west of New Orleans), there is a noticeable change in the scenery. Blue roofs start to appear, especially in the Belle Terre subdivision that was partially destroyed during Hurricane Andrew back in 1992. Signs are starting to be blown over or down; a large billboard had been ripped from the ground and tossed over. After LaPlace, you drive across the Bonnet Carre Spillway, which takes you over the spillway which connects Lake Ponchartrain to the Mississippi River. The damage to some of the swamp houses went from minimal to catastrophic, as one had been ripped from its foundation and was skewed at an angle. From the bridges, you can see into suburban New Orleans (Kenner), and as I remarked to Mom, it was the first time that I could see houses along the lakeshore from I-10.

After getting off the Bonnet Carre bridge, you arrive in Kenner, and it is almost evident that things are different. The number of blue roofs that you see from the highway sky rockets once you get into more densely populated areas. Billboards have been left in tatters, though; there are some that have been repaired. Businesses in Kenner and Metairie and open for the most part, though, there have been some that were significantly damaged. There is a storage facility along I-10, near the Airport that you can see inside, and people’s stuff has been blown about. There were a number of tents set up at a local motel, as well as a number of other tents at a storage facility further down the road.

Damage becomes more evident, once you cross over the 17th Street Canal and into New Orleans proper. The one stark thing you notice around town is the water line, which denotes where the water was for a couple of days/weeks until the pumping started to draw the water out of the city. Driving down into the CBD, again, you can see damage, but nothing like I was going to see in the hours and days ahead.

We took the Poydras/Superdome exit into downtown, and the first thing you notice is that traffic signals are still not working. It is quickly obvious that this was going to be a surreal experience. The Superdome has gotten the once over from the outside, as it does not look anywhere near what it did in the days after Katrina. A new coating on the roof has been put on and the outside grounds are relatively clear. Continuing down Poydras, you look up into the buildings and you can see the damage… windows blown out, glass on the ground, plywood over openings, vents blowing air into the buildings, etc. Another surreal experience? There is nearly nobody in the CBD. On a Friday afternoon, after Thanksgiving no less, those streets are usually packed with shoppers and revelers (the Bayou Classic is usually held at the Dome the Saturday after Thanksgiving). We continued driving down to the Riverwalk and then up Canal, which was ground zero for a lot of the looting, and you can tell, as almost all stores on the strip are shuddered or boarded up, and some have been cleaned out with damaged equipment, material out on the sidewalk. Along Canal, you can see that water was anywhere from 1 to 2 feet deep. We hooked a U-Turn on Canal and then headed back down to into the French Quarter.

It was as quiet as I have ever seen a major city.

The French Quarter is returning, but there were a good number of businesses still shuddered or boarded up from the looting. The Feds have a large complex in the parking lot between the Jax Brewery and the Hard Rock Café. Café du Monde has reopened and it was packed out for a Friday afternoon, which was nice to see, though it does make trying to maneuver through double parkers and gawkers a little more difficult. The French Quarter Market is still closed down, though the Flea Market on the far end had reopened. After you leave the Quarter, you turn north toward the Interstate on Elysian Fields. It is at this point, you start to get into flood damage. The search and rescue X’s on the houses become evident, and I will say, that is an eerie sight, though it is somewhat edifying that we did not see any fatalities in my time in the city.

We drove out east, into New Orleans East and toward Slidell. I would say everything from the High Rise bridge on I-10 to the Twin Spans is gone. Flooding damage and wind damage to structures was enormous. It was along I-10, somewhere before the turn off to Chalmette where you can see where people clawed through the roof to avoid the high water, in hopes of being rescued. One building even had the tell-tale help sign scrawled in spray paint on the roof. We pass business after business that was closed, and car lots with their entire inventory noticeably flooded and hence destroyed.

There was no life stirring.

Leaving New Orleans East, you travel through a National Wildlife Refuge, whose name escapes me right now. It was torn up by the winds and the water damage. You can tell the high water mark, as everything that was under water was jet black. Continuing north, you see the Twin Spans, and you see the ample missing sections that were pushed into the lake. Work is continuing on restoring the westbound (into New Orleans) bridge. I believe it will be opened, soon, which is nice, as once the bridge is reopened; I believe construction on a new Twin Spans bridge will commence.

We got off the interstate in Slidell and worked our way back to Highway 11, which is the parallel bridge to the Twin Spans, back towards New Orleans. It was at this point that damage to Slidell was evident in the Oak Harbor/Eden Isles (?) area. Most structures have been entered and their contents spilled out to the side of the road. There were few structures that would be considered habitable, but those were seen from afar. The damage gets worse as you head towards the lake. Houses were ripped apart or moved from their foundations altogether. We drove back over the Highway 11 bridge and into Irish Bayou, Louisiana, which was much of the same.

It was in Irish Bayou that the damage started to really get particularly bad. Houses were torn apart or knocked off their foundations. Some houses were gone; all that was left was stilts and maybe a walkway up to the stilts. Looking out across the swamp land, you could see containers or boats in the trees. There was also one boat that looked to have been dropped and planted at a 30 to 45 degree angle in the ground out in the marshland. I can not say if that is wind or water that did that, but it was a difficult sight nonetheless.

Highway 11 terminates at Highway 90, which runs through the various hunting and fishing camps, which are now gone, either by wind or water, and back into New Orleans East.

We then drove down in St. Bernard Parish. Since a changeable message sign warned of a checkpoint ahead and a dusk to dawn curfew, I figured that we would just be able to see a little bit of damage before we had to turn around. The checkpoint was not being enforced, so we rolled in to Chalmette. Damage was pretty bad from the start. A 12 to 15 foot wall of water had inundated much of “The Parish” and it was evident in some of the buildings, as everything below that level was gone. Most businesses had suffered significant damage, and almost all residential structures that we saw were severely damaged. The parking lot at the Wal-Mart was packed full, but not with holiday shoppers, but it was a staging area for relief workers and/or the National Guard, whose presence was quite evident.

Then, somehow, we ended up in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which was the impoverished area of town that flooded in both Katrina and Rita. The feeling driving through the area was something that I can not yet describe. I wish I could, but I don’t have the words or the capability to fully explain it. I have explained it as if you were watching a funeral of someone you don’t know. You are sad because of someone’s loss, but you feel out of place and out of sorts. That really does not make sense, nor do I believe it encapsulates seeing what we saw, but it’s the best I could come up with at the time. Rows and rows of houses, each marked with an X, identifying who, what, when and fatality count. Streets blockaded, stretching as far as the eye can see, empty, lifeless. Cars, obviously inundated at one point with water, strewn all over the place. Houses bowing in the middle from the weight and effects of the water that sat in them for days/weeks. All businesses closed and with piles of debris lining the parking lots.

There is no one there.

We arrive at the Martin Luther King Library, and start to see National Guard troops armed with large rifles. God bless them, by the way. I didn’t really feel like pushing my luck any further or pushing any further into the Lower Ninth Ward, so we double back to the highway and out of the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish.

Mom and I are ready to leave, but I want to see one more section of town, out by Lakefront Airport, as I had worked out there on a research project for a summer during my junior year in college. We travel through yet another decimated neighborhood with water logged houses, and again, eerily silent. Damage at the airport was unreal. The Million Air terminal, which I remember as nice and clean is missing everything from 8 to 10 feet down, and the hangar on the backside has collapsed. A large crew of people in safety vests was outside the terminal, obviously there to survey the damage at the airport. Continuing down the road, Lakefront Arena suffered damage, but that damage was wind, and not water. Upon arriving at Elysian Fields again, more damage from water from the 10-feet of water that once stood there. It was hard to grasp while driving by that approximately 90 days ago the car I was driving would have been under water, but you could tell from the damage and water lines on buildings that was exactly what had happened.

We drove in near silence back to Baton Rouge, because I don’t think either one of us knew what to say or how describe what we felt other than utter shock and the state of being overwhelmed. I don’t think that either one of us could really understand all we had seen. We just knew it was bad.

In New Orleans, most everyone is gone. In Mississippi…

I left Sunday afternoon for home, but first, I wanted to go back and just drive through the New Orleans. I did not want to sight see like I did the Friday before again, but I wanted to get a final once over of the town. I did head down into the Garden District, where Tulane, Loyola, Children’s Hospital, and Audubon Park are located. Getting to the Garden District was more of the same that I had seen on Friday but, a pleasant surprise, that part of town was mostly untouched. There was some wind damage to some roofs (and one building was partially collapsed), but the inundation of water seemed to stop up on Carrollton and did not extend down to St. Charles. I would easily surmise that if there are 75,000 people back in New Orleans, the majority of them are down here in the Garden District.

After crossing the Twin Spans, I exited at the same place I did on Friday, but I took a right, instead, to get me over near the Rigolets, which is the link between Lake Ponchartrain and Lake Bornge and the Gulf. It amazes me that the Twin Span bridges were injured or destroyed in the way that they were, but the older bridges, the ones you would bet would fail, have stayed erect during this time. There is more damage, trees and house along this path out to the Rigolets, as it would be expected, as the closer you get to the Rigolets, the closer you get to the path of the eye.

I arrived at US 90, where there are these palatial estates, where some were destroyed and some did not look like there was a hint of damage. It is a very odd thing to look at a house that this gone and one that is pristine all in the same subdivision, and some right next to one another.

Pearlington, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian in Mississippi… these towns took the brunt of the third landfall of Hurricane Katrina (once in Florida, and once across Plaquemines Parish in southeastern Louisiana). These were the towns that were directly east of the eye of Katrina, and hence took the worst part of the storm and it shows. From Pearlington to Bay St. Louis the main road shows some damage, but in these parts, US 90 is not close to the shore, as it is from Pass Christian to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Granted, there is damage. There are FEMA Trailer cities, especially in Waveland, which as far as towns in Mississippi go, probably took the hardest hit, along with Bay St. Louis.

I am sure you have seen the pictures of the missing bridges along US 90 in southern Mississippi. I have seen them, too. If you have not seen them, let me know… I have a couple of photos at my disposal. I knew driving along US 90 that I would get to these bridges. It was still shocking to drive up to the bridge and see nothing there. There were a couple of jersey barriers and debris from the bridge blocking the path of traffic at the bridge, which acts as a makeshift parking area for persons to look at the missing bridge. I parked close to there and walked out to the bridge and onto one of the bents. It’s hard to fathom, even as an engineer to stand there, look at the connections, bents, and structure, and figure out what took the bridge away. Of course, the water did it, but how? Mechanically how did it happen? I stood there and stared at the rebar bent to a 90-degree angle from its original state or the fist-sized hunk of concrete on a piece of rebar, and could only marvel at the force of nature that did such things.

Since the only land link from Bay St. Louis to Pass Christian was sitting in pieces at the bottom of the bay, I had to backtrack back to I-10 and backroad it into Pass Christian. Even though it was a lot of work to do so, it was worth the trek. Though, to be honest, I don’t think I have ever seen anything like what I saw in the 8 mile stretch from Pass Christian to Long Beach.

I knew it was going to be bad when I crossed Wolf River and saw this huge beautiful house with a through and through wound. It did not get any better as I neared the Gulf of Mexico. At first the damage was slight but evident, but as I crept closer to the Gulf, it became more and more pronounced. Houses buckled in the middle. Houses missing entire floors, while upper floors look in tact. Once you cross the railroad tracks, it is an entirely different story.

Everything is gone.

Everything.

Many slabs where houses used to be. Parking lots to businesses that are no longer there. The bank that is gone, with only the concrete vault remaining. Everything else, wiped clean… and it continued this way along Highway 90 for miles. The Wal-Mart, sitting around 2,000 feet off the water with the lower 15 to 20 feet missing. The condos with the first two floors gone. Businesses missing. Majestic old houses with through and through damage, split down the middle. I’m not doing it justice, I know. It’s just stark. I can only guesstimate, but at best, a 25 to 30 foot storm surge went through there. It is a wonder that anything is left down there.

It was all gone.

Once you get to Long Beach, Mississippi, the National Guard, this time unarmed, show you the way to get off US 90 and travel the back roads into Gulfport, which is fine, as I was spent, and I did not need to see anymore. I could have used my credentials as a state employee to get into the restricted zone, but it did not seem right, and it’s hard to pass off that you are working in basketball shorts, a hockey jersey and a tupperware container full of Thanksgiving desserts.

I would have taken pictures, but it did not seem or feel right. How can you document someone’s heartache or someone’s loss? There have been enough pictures taken and can readily be found across the internet. As I said, I have pictures, as well, of the aftermath and the destruction at my disposal.

This is not meant as a depressant. We will survive. They have survived. Their survival is not only a testament of their strength to persevere in the face of overwhelming destruction but also, it is a testament to those who have given and worked towards the betterment of the Gulf Coast region. To those of you who have prayed or given, thank you.

If you can give and you havent and are able to do so, please do, either through your time, your prayers, or your pocketbook. These problems are going to continue for years to come. Mind you, these places look starkly familiar to what they did 90 days ago, before the hurricane struck. It will be a long time before normalcy ever returns to the Gulf Coast region or New Orleans, if it ever does. It is creeping slowly in this direction, but it will be a long slow process.