Hurricane Isaac: Katrina, Part II

After being in a heightened state of anxiety for most of the past ten days due to the 24/7 reporting on the approach and devastation surrounding Hurricane Isaac, I feel compelled to give my first person narrative as one who experienced Isaac first hand.

My 90 year old father and 84 year old mother have been 35 year residents of the State of Louisiana, living in the New Orleans metro area, approximately 25 miles from Slidell, Louisiana.

After losing a home in Arizona five years ago and political and quality of life issues there at the present time, after 45 years I have taken up residence with my elderly parents for both financial, and personal reasons as their part-time caretaker.

Which, at almost my retirement age with absolutely nothing left in savings to speak of, is no small task. I was mostly entertained over the weekend watching the reporting from the mainstream news media, especially the weather channel and Fox News.

One Fox report from Slidell, an area hard hit by the flooding which occurred, had a young, blond reporter wearing L.L. Bean hip waders, a powder blue (tight) t-shirt, manicure and spray tan standing in the middle of Old Town Slidell while the waters rushed by.

I hope she got her shots, but I guess her commander in chief was unaware that there are water moccasins in those waters, and those L.L. Bean hip waders weren't going to give her much protection in any event.

But such is the reporting on this major "natural" disaster.

The drama all began a week ago today, when the path of the hurricane was taking it's northwestern turn toward New Orleans.

Each and every hour the reporting confirmed the path, and those in the area started preparing for the worst. We were going to leave, as my parents had done for both Katrina, and Gustav before only this time my father was on thrice weekly dialysis, as he has congestive heart disease and has been in and out of the hospital at least a dozen times in the past year.

He has stabilized for the time being (this month), but we knew due to the severity of his condition, we couldn't go far so decided to "hunker down" for the duration, as one of my sisters who still lives in Arizona so aptly put it.

My other sister and brother-in-law, also long term Louisiana residents, decided to also do likewise since they, at least, did own a generator which my brother-in-law purchased during Katrina when he patrolled the neighborhoods with his neighbors during the month long power outages at that time.

He was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but became one of those dreaded gun-toting Southerners within a few short years of moving here.

My parents truly do not get out much anymore as both suffer from heart disease...my mother merely to the store and back, or to my father's dialysis appointments. Short trips, mostly, to places she is familiar. Due to also his debilitating arthritis, my father stopped driving years ago.

I went to three stores looking for "D" batteries since the entire community was out. None at Wal-Mart or Walgreens. I got the last two at the local Radio Shack.

Why is it that all flashlights require "D" batteries, anyway?

There were lines and lines at the gas pumps. And, surprise, surprise...only Supreme was available at $4.25 a gallon.

There were recurring messages here to report any and all "gouging" to a local enforcement agency. I just wonder how many reported those out of control gas prices...up over $1.25 a gallon from where it was a month ago around here.

Then the grocery stores.

When the power goes out, there is no electricity for those ovens and stoves, or crock pots. So I bought tuna, canned chicken, snack crackers, energy bars, water, bread and peanut butter.

My father is on a special diet due to his dialysis, so other than the peanut butter which was a no-no, I thought we were set for the long haul.

I decided to go to the local bookstore to get a book, just in case.

Walked in about 7:00 Monday night and all the shelves were covered with blue tarps and plastic wrap. The store was closing and wouldn't reopen until after the storm had passed.

We decided that as soon as the electricity went out here, we would all go to my sisters where there would be a room air conditioner.

Six of us in one room for the duration, since my niece had decided to stay at LSU and attend the Hurricane parties there. Of course, the real brunt of the storm had yet to come.

Tuesday passed, and we waited...as did everyone...there were no cars on the road, all who were leaving had left on Monday or Tuesday morning and there was an eery quiet that night as we waited for it to make landfall.

I was up until after midnight listening to the progression.

It hit around 12:30 and it was windy for an hour, and then silence again.

Isaac had gone back over the Gulf again, waiting... I slept on the floor that night since my parents house is surrounded by trees...pines, oaks, and number of other varieties. Huge trees that had also experienced both Katrina and Gustav during their ownership, and for which they merely got a new roof for Katrina.

But then they were not living where there was the most damage that time.

My father was a wood technologist, and bought this house in the late 1970's due to its brick construction, and an old 100 year oak on the property which he liked.

The builder had built the house for his son, who had died in an auto accident when they were looking for house to live in.

I, asthmatic that I am, had stayed in Arizona when they moved, but had visited since my children were babies almost annually until a divorce.

Living in Arizona, I had experienced our annual monsoons (now haboobs?) and flash flooding. The desert isn't used to quite so much rain, and there is nowhere for it to go in the parched ground which is the Arizona desert.

But this was unbelieveable.

Almost 24 straight hours of gusting winds, and pelting, horizontal rain. I had also been here during Gustav in 2008 (my mother had two heart attacks that year). The winds were much stronger then, but it only lasted about six or seven hours.

We were fortunate. We never lost power, although the neighborhood looked like a tornado had gone through it.

The rebuilding has started, although Slidell and the surrounding communities are still under water. And the heat now is unbearable, even to a former desert dweller who isn't used to the off the charts humidity which is also a result of the storm.

Traffic was backed up for miles on Friday, with all those who left returning to survey the damage to their property.

The Lakefront took a huge hit, and the rivers are swollen and overflowing, with a number of dams in danger of breaking.

Life goes on.

But the question I would have liked to ask those reporters, and photographers with all their equipment and spray tans, and the manufactured dramas in many instances...

Why is it that science can now create life in a test tube, created the nuclear bomb, put a man on the moon, and can seed clouds for agricultural purposes in order to make rain - but at this point we don't have the technology to redirect or stop a hurricane?

Or due to all the coincidence with this hurricane which occurred...not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything...but with the timing of this during the Republican convention (as with Gustav), seven years to the day after Katrina, and with all those out of work and with the oil companies continuing to use any excuse imaginable in order to continue to bleed the public dry at the gas pumps.

Maybe, just maybe, perhaps we have the technology to create these hurricanes for "economic" and political reasons?

Where is that female reporter in those hip waders, anyway?

I watched part of that convention...at least the end...and I have only one observation with all the hoopla and celebrating that went on.

As with the many here that suffered through Katrina, and seeing the literally hundreds of dollars per month my parents pay for their medications in order to survive, and what I have experienced personally in the years since Katrina...

No, we are not better off than we were four years ago...or even ten years ago...

This tragedy was definitely not a Katrina, Part II...the government did not fail the citizens of New Orleans THIS time.

But as an aside, in order to assist my parents and myself as an Arizona homeless refugee...

I'm working a temp position that pays me what I was making in 1982, with no benefits, the only position that I had been able to find, and which is not at all in my field of expertise (corporate law, and then subsequently leisure travel & tourism, which just about died with 9-11, and Katrina here).

And what's broken politically, can not be repaired as easily as the Louisianans will rebuild after Isaac...

Not by a long shot...

Post Katrina: New Orleans Five Years Later

It has been interesting reading the mainstream media news reports and their select interviews with people from the New Orleans area on the fifth anniversary of Katrina as one who has had family living in the New Orleans metro area for over 30 years, and who visited that city often both before Katrina and then spent an extended period thereafter as a homeless Arizona refugee and whose parents medical conditions and concerns and other reasons led to an extended stay on and off from late 2006 through early 2010 and who was then in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for Gustav in 2008.

New Orleans has changed from a frequent long time visitor, but "outsider's" point of view, and it is a city still reeling from the effects five years later.

When I arrived in late 2006 for the Christmas holidays after storing what was left of my property after an enforced sale of my home in Arizona, even the area in which my family lives was much changed since I had not been back to visit for several years while parenting teens in the Southwest and due to numerous trips when younger and stretched finances also, were beyond entertaining with the usual tourist sites in their older years.

The area in which my parents live which is across the lake from New Orleans population had exploded, and traffic in the area worse than Phoenix metro area, which is saying something due to its huge growth from the 1960's, mostly due to all the residents of New Orleans that had fled their homes and decided afterward to sell and get what they could for their damaged properties and now commute from across the lake.

This was an area that was also heavily affected by the high winds of Katrina, but did not suffer the flooding after the levees "broke."

There is still much dispute there about what truly did happen that resulted in the breakage and lawsuits flying five years later over the homes that were flooded, many of which in poorer areas, with allegations that due to the rising Mississippi imposing danger to the bread and butter of New Orleans, the levees were "helped" to break in order to protect both the Quarter and the Garden District from extensive damage.

During that storm, my sister's husband, who also live in area, stayed instead of evacuating and purchased a generator and lived in their home for three weeks after Katrina hit, patrolling the neighborhoods with others in order to protect their homes and property from any further damage since the lake was also reported to be rising and there was such an influx of stranded people fleeing for weeks thereafter.

The sewage lines were also contaminated, so those that stayed ended up bagging their refuse and hauling it to parish dump sites for two months thereafter. The electricity and power was not restored for six weeks in their area, and even longer in parts of New Orleans.

My parents almost didn't leave. They had left in 1996 when there was another threatened hurricane and went to Mississippi, but returned after two days and my mother and father were in their early 80's so another "false alarm" trip for them was not something they were looking forward to at their advanced age. It took them 16 hours to make a normally six hour trip to another sister's house in another state further north.

Counting my parents and my two sisters' families, and their in-laws who had a home in Chalmette, one of the areas most affected by the levee breakage, there were all told 12 people and three dogs at their home for four weeks. My parents, both on medications, could not reach their doctor however did finally get refills on their prescriptions at a local pharmacy that was kind enough to waive the requirements for a doctor's okay on their refills.

They survived and had insurance and got a new roof, and two of their trees that were stripped away and damaged were removed by some volunteers from a local church, and they only applied for a small sum for the food which was contaminated that was in their refrigerator and pantry due to the power outage for those four weeks, although a few years down the road a large settlement crack in their bedroom appeared and as with many of the homes due to the amount of water there have been some have had further lasting effects in "sinking."

I stayed for Christmas, but had thought I might be able to make a fresh start in New Orleans as part of their restoration as a photographer/artist, and my own rather need to rebuild, so I left and took a small room in East New Orleans in one of the hotels that had been converted to weekly housing that was still left standing.

Most of those there were working for the government contractors on the repairs, and the parking lot was full of heavy equipment for the ongoing repairs.

In fact, in order to get into my room after leaving, I had to show identification since there was a National Guardsmen at the entrance who was charged with protecting the equipment from vandalism, not the security of the residents there.

The elevator did not work for the entire time I was there, which was over three months until that spring. The 7-11 on the corner had no power and was only open during the day, and all the food that needed refrigeration was in ice chests such as beer or soda. There were sea shells everywhere and as you walked through some of the neighborhoods there would be homes still standing untouched, while right next door several homes were missing. Toilet seats and other items were buried in the sandy ground throughout neighborhoods.

On one tour I made from East New Orleans to Slidell there were boats washed from the lake all the way across the highway. The Irish Bayou was devastated and the homes looked like haunted houses, abandoned. There was a Six Flags amusement park near the Chalmette exit that looked like it was right out of one of those horror movies, the huge wooden roller coaster was missing so much timber and the park abandoned.

Huge thirty foot car dealership signs were bent in half, and former large scale department stores closed and boarded up. That was in 2007, but on a trip back in 2008 and 2009, although most of the large debris had been cleared away, the vacant and abandoned homes and businesses for the most part remained.

Although right down the street was a reminder of "home."

In front of the local Home Depot there was a taco stand and cart, and day laborers waiting to be picked up to work on the repairs. For those that have left New Orleans, others have taken their place - many of them the illegals working for the government contractors, and also the large scale opportunists who have moved in to score post-Katrina. Similar to what occurred after the Civil War during the reconstruction, I would imagine.

Few in that area of New Orleans could afford to rebuild.

Many were fishermen, or Cajuns who lived along that swamp and who owned their own land, but had mostly small fishing shacks and shanties with their boats their most prized and expensive property. Many of those, of course, washed away during the storm. And most of their money went into providing for the repairs to their fishing boats, rather than their homes - and when you live in a swamp without air conditioning and a fisherman or shrimper, you aren't in your home very often to begin with.

New Orleans proper has changed, and the Quarter much less trafficked than in years past unless there is a Saints game going on.

The street artists and such that battled for space along Jackson Square are not as abundant, and many have been replaced by card readers and others. The costs of permits has gone up, so most of those that sketched or worked their magic in plein air landscapes are gone.

And there is a quota and "approval" process now for most of those that wish to work their art for those permits. The cost was out of my league, definitely.

The British have moved in and bought most of the housing and commercial buildings in the Quarter, since even many of the wealthy could not afford to keep their properties due to rising costs of insurance and other costs of ownership after the storm. And their currency, of course, is much greater than our own. Many working for BP and the government contractors working on those repairs with some of those major contracts.

New building standards also have been imposed for rebuilding which has prevented many from finishing the work on their homes, requiring many be built now ten feet off the ground, and insurance costs for those now "flood prone" areas once again are pricey.

And while I can appreciate Mr. Pitt's involvement in rebuilding, I'm just wondering how many are going to be able to even qualify for that low cost housing with the insurance costs and such as they are. And many even five years later are fighting with insurers, if their homes were mortgaged, over some of those repairs.

In addition to those new building standards, I was also informed that there have been new city ordinances passed which require those that own land in the flooded areas to either rebuild, or forfeit their land. It does appear that the developers have arrived and the city/state and developers just may be using Katrina as an excuse for one of the largest land grabs ever. Many cannot get bank loans or funding to even rebuild, although the developers can. Thus, the price of that land and property has been driven down even more so than what is occurring in the West and Southwest in those flooded areas.

Even the outlying areas have been affected along the River, since those beautiful restored plantations that were also stops for many a visitor to the area are also facing declining revenues.

And now, BP.

The South will rise again. But the character and those who made New Orleans what it was pre-Katrina are clearly being replaced by "foreigners" more and more.

Even the jazz sounds different.