Day Three.
The day mostly spent with friends. A good part of the afternoon hiding out from a rainstorm (actual thunder and lightning! yay!) at Marissa's house, with her adorable triplets. The evening spent out to dinner with Marissa (sans triplets), and old friend Rodney and his partner, Brian. I can't remember the last time I saw Rodney. Seriously, I think it was in the '80s. We recently reconnected via email - like a week or two ago - and I'm so happy that it timed out to my being in town. After dinner, we went to see Rodney's house (after 13 years of renovations, they were nearing completion when the hurricane hit, filling it with eight inches of water and lots of mold.) Luckily, they own a rental property across the street, so they've been living there. They live in this gorgeous section of mid-City that frankly, I never knew existed. It's like this little hidden street. And we all just sat for a while and caught up and got to know each other all over again.
The other cool thing that happened today was while getting lunch, I actually ran into an old friend from high school, Lisa. I keep looking at people while I'm here, thinking they look so familiar. And I do this over and over, wondering if I've ever met them. And in walks this woman and I think, "Gee, now she looks like Lisa." :) We're going to have dinner with her and her husband - also an old friend - next week. Which is fabulous. :)
That was all the good stuff. We did more driving around. I won't post all of my pictures here, because it would take up too much space, but I will start putting them elsewhere online and provide a link at the end of the trip. I will give you some highlights here, though.
It's all still so devastating. The fact that it's been nearly a year. The fact that people are stuck in a holding pattern. The fact that even sometimes people here - the lucky ones who didn't lose everything - don't fully understand what the people who did are going through.
The fact that some people STILL don't have FEMA trailers. And some have them, but have yet to receive the keys. And some have the keys, but are still waiting for the electricity to be set up. And still others are done with theirs, but can't get them removed.
The fact that even though, intellectually, I know the city inside and out, and have studied the flood maps thoroughly ... even I didn't fully grasp the scope of the devastation.
The news focuses on the Ninth Ward. The Ninth Ward this, that and the other. And it's all true. But it wasn't the ONLY area to be destroyed. There was another levee break. Some people are calling it a wealthy area, but I would say mixed-to-working-class, because to be frank, I once almost rented an apartment on that street, the street that butts up against the levee. And I've never been anything remotely resembling wealthy.
Those are the neighborhoods that I've been touring. And I have more to see. You have to understand: there are rows and rows of houses, blocks in and out, where you just see over and over again, everything from complete devastation to nearly-finished rebuilds, and everything in between again.
I just can't wrap my mind around it all. It would seem to me that this would be the time for everyone to band together. To say, "to hell with race, religion, political party - let's just work as a team to rebuild our beautiful city - and make it better, safer, stronger!" But clearly everything is just going in the opposite direction. Rapidly. There's a whole chicken-and-egg thing going on (we need more workers! the workers need somewhere to live! we can't get anything done because we need more workers!) and no one seems to want to come up with a plan of action.
My father made the comment that back in his day (ie, Hurricane Betsy, 1965, the last Big One the city saw) people just came in, cleaned up their own mess and got on with it. They didn't sit around waiting for government handouts, he said, with some contempt.
I snapped.
Waiting for handouts? Seriously. Think about this. Imagine that you have a house, and it was completely destroyed. But it's been months before you could even think about getting back into the city to really assess the damage for yourself, even though you're fairly sure you know what's coming. And then once that happens, the insurance settlement takes its sweet time (and sometimes, not at all). Meanwhile, you're paying your mortgage on a house you can't live in, and you've got your family of five living in an apartment somewhere else. You're paying on two residences, and living in one of them.
So maybe you'd like to rebuild. But first, the city keeps you on hold while they decide whether they're going to appropriate your land for increased levee support. And then if they will let you rebuild, whether or not the land is now too toxic to build on. Or how high you have to rebuild the new house. Everything changes, moment to moment. You wait and wait and wait for a concrete answer.
Let's say after all of this, you finally decide you WANT to come home, you WANT to rebuild. And you're two working parents with three kids. You're already overtaxed with the two home payments - where does the money come to hire the contractors to do the work? And do you live in a FEMA trailer in front of your house, all five of you? Do you send your kids to the schools in New Orleans right now?
And let's face it, the more you hear about how the levees aren't going to be improved at all, is all of this hassle REALLY worth it, when you think it could all happen again because no one will build levees (even though the technology exists) to withstand a category 5?
It's sad and awful, and really, pathetic.
They say the country is "tired of hearing about Katrina and New Orleans."
Too damn bad.
The other cool thing that happened today was while getting lunch, I actually ran into an old friend from high school, Lisa. I keep looking at people while I'm here, thinking they look so familiar. And I do this over and over, wondering if I've ever met them. And in walks this woman and I think, "Gee, now she looks like Lisa." :) We're going to have dinner with her and her husband - also an old friend - next week. Which is fabulous. :)
That was all the good stuff. We did more driving around. I won't post all of my pictures here, because it would take up too much space, but I will start putting them elsewhere online and provide a link at the end of the trip. I will give you some highlights here, though.
It's all still so devastating. The fact that it's been nearly a year. The fact that people are stuck in a holding pattern. The fact that even sometimes people here - the lucky ones who didn't lose everything - don't fully understand what the people who did are going through.
The fact that some people STILL don't have FEMA trailers. And some have them, but have yet to receive the keys. And some have the keys, but are still waiting for the electricity to be set up. And still others are done with theirs, but can't get them removed.
The fact that even though, intellectually, I know the city inside and out, and have studied the flood maps thoroughly ... even I didn't fully grasp the scope of the devastation.
The news focuses on the Ninth Ward. The Ninth Ward this, that and the other. And it's all true. But it wasn't the ONLY area to be destroyed. There was another levee break. Some people are calling it a wealthy area, but I would say mixed-to-working-class, because to be frank, I once almost rented an apartment on that street, the street that butts up against the levee. And I've never been anything remotely resembling wealthy.
Those are the neighborhoods that I've been touring. And I have more to see. You have to understand: there are rows and rows of houses, blocks in and out, where you just see over and over again, everything from complete devastation to nearly-finished rebuilds, and everything in between again.
I just can't wrap my mind around it all. It would seem to me that this would be the time for everyone to band together. To say, "to hell with race, religion, political party - let's just work as a team to rebuild our beautiful city - and make it better, safer, stronger!" But clearly everything is just going in the opposite direction. Rapidly. There's a whole chicken-and-egg thing going on (we need more workers! the workers need somewhere to live! we can't get anything done because we need more workers!) and no one seems to want to come up with a plan of action.
My father made the comment that back in his day (ie, Hurricane Betsy, 1965, the last Big One the city saw) people just came in, cleaned up their own mess and got on with it. They didn't sit around waiting for government handouts, he said, with some contempt.
I snapped.
Waiting for handouts? Seriously. Think about this. Imagine that you have a house, and it was completely destroyed. But it's been months before you could even think about getting back into the city to really assess the damage for yourself, even though you're fairly sure you know what's coming. And then once that happens, the insurance settlement takes its sweet time (and sometimes, not at all). Meanwhile, you're paying your mortgage on a house you can't live in, and you've got your family of five living in an apartment somewhere else. You're paying on two residences, and living in one of them.
So maybe you'd like to rebuild. But first, the city keeps you on hold while they decide whether they're going to appropriate your land for increased levee support. And then if they will let you rebuild, whether or not the land is now too toxic to build on. Or how high you have to rebuild the new house. Everything changes, moment to moment. You wait and wait and wait for a concrete answer.
Let's say after all of this, you finally decide you WANT to come home, you WANT to rebuild. And you're two working parents with three kids. You're already overtaxed with the two home payments - where does the money come to hire the contractors to do the work? And do you live in a FEMA trailer in front of your house, all five of you? Do you send your kids to the schools in New Orleans right now?
And let's face it, the more you hear about how the levees aren't going to be improved at all, is all of this hassle REALLY worth it, when you think it could all happen again because no one will build levees (even though the technology exists) to withstand a category 5?
It's sad and awful, and really, pathetic.
They say the country is "tired of hearing about Katrina and New Orleans."
Too damn bad.
posted by Tracy @ 10:02 PM
1 Comments:
At 11:26 AM,
Midlife Virgin said…
Thank you for the look at New Orleans. I know it doesn't compare but I remember driving around LA after both the riots and the Northridge quake and thinking that, sometimes, anybody who hasn't seen the devastation personally cannot understand the scope of it. Thanks for being brave enough to go and find a way to show it to us. And, yes, family dynamics are sometimes a battle/war that there is no way of winning. It's sad but it's true. I hope you find a way to make peace with whatever your situation with your fahter is and, yes, there are TWO people in the relationship. You can't do it all - good or bad. I hope the rest of your trip continues to bring you more light than dark. And I'm glad you have a wonderful man there at your side throughout.
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