I went to New Orleans for a spot of some guerrilla vlogging last month around the anniversary of Katrina.
I roamed around the city quite a bit with Eddie Mims, my favorite taxi driver, and stayed at the Hotel St. Marie in the French Quarter with my favorite restaurant staff: Ed; Hillery; Katie; Gregory and Thaddeus. It was nice to see all of them again and to see that they' re still surviving in the city they love so dearly.
This diary is just a coming attractions. I hope you read these vlogs or watch some of the tape in them and think about people living down on the Gulf Coast who have been effected by Katrina and Rita because what Katrina spared Rita then took that year. An area the size of Great Britain was wiped out between those two storms and so many thousands struggle to reclaim their lives and their homes from the water, the politics, the storm - that damn storm.
Katrina is everyday in New Orleans.
A vlog is a video blog and it's pronounced "vee-log" not like Vladimir.
The Extent of the Problem
So much still needs to be done since, as you know, so much of the city was destroyed in the flooding from the massive cascading levee failures that began as early as 4:30 AM on Monday August 29th, 2005. The definitive accounting of what really happened is conveniently available online from the Times-Picayune in a five minute flash presentation.
I heard a new expression down there from someone that got about a foot of water in an Uptown neighborhood, "10 inches is as good as 10 feet."
In this diary I'm going to post my thoughts and feelings about the city and the people I meet there on the anniversary last month. All the photos are posted in order that I got these interviews chronologically, so the photos don't necessarily correspond to the embedded text here. By which I mean Maurice is not completely unhinged and Karran still lives in Gentilly.
The Quarter and much of the downtown or Central Business District is back and looking as good as it ever did, but the story out in the neighborhoods is very different.
Most of the debris that I could still see in March is now gone, debris is technically stuff not attached to anything. Houses that yet have to be demolished because they're ruined technically don't count as debris, but the city has cleared the streets of debris all over including NO East and the Lower Ninth. Much of the Ninth has been cleared of houses too, but now there's now a different problem in the Ninth Ward: the grass.
The void created by the removal of the debris and most of the houses in areas of the Lower Ninth has turned it into a swampy savannah-like grassland, but it's bad grass. Much of the Ninth needed to be completely removed; it was a thickly settled group of neighborhoods comprised of shotgun style homes on small lots and slab foundations. All those homes, churches and schools are now gone.
Few have rebuilt although some have. I talked to a woman who was getting out of her trailer back into her home in the Lower Ninth. She's happy that she's going to have air-conditioning, but she's the only one on her block back so far. She lives in an area of the ninth that didn't get really high water like the northern half of the neighborhood, yet still: 10 inches is as good as ten feet.
House demolition and removal still continues in other neighborhoods like Gentilly, Upper Ninth and New Orleans East and all over the city. Rehabbed homes that look great sit next to homes with the mark of Katrina still spray painted on them from the rescue workers.
I read a message in the Upper Ninth scrawled on the outside of a totaled shotgun: ASPCA Food Please. I read that scrawled on the side of a house on August 28th, 2007.
But they retake their city one lot, one house at a time.
The diehards are back and even with all the complications, stress, isolation, sickness and financial duress that Katrina has thrown their way, they take their city back one lot, one house at a time. In the face of obstacle after obstacle from insurance companies, FEMA, the city, whatever, they maintain their hope and vision for a new New Orleans. They need to be there. They can't just leave and start somewhere new. They are connected to the city in a fundamental way.
Those that are back have something else in common. They're able to be back. They had some money put aside, they had a pension or a steady job after the storm in the area, they had a choice to return. Many didn't have the financial resources to make the same choice.
When I was in NOLA I watched a good deal of the 24/7 news coverage on the cables since it was on everywhere. The media emphasized that people aren't coming back to the region because of the levees and the fear of the next big storm. Those people exist, true, but they're only half of the story. So many simply didn't have the money to return or weren't homeowners to begin with. That is the only reason they aren't home today. Because even if they've done well and moved on with new lives in Atlanta, New Orleans, Seattle, where ever, they still have the same connection to their home. Their home. An irreplaceable and incomparable gem of ethnic fusion and one of the truly great cities in all the world with a living breathing soul. There's nothing like New Orleans anywhere else in this country. There's nothing like home for New Orleanians.
For the most part, homeowners that have rebuilt all said that they just up and did it themselves. Some got insurance, most didn't. One person that I talked to received Road Home money from FEMA and one person that I talked to received money from an insurance company; all paid out of pocket for a majority of the work they needed to do. One person that I talked to sold their home in Lakeview and moved outside the city. Luckily he can still work in the French Quarter so he commutes now, but rebuilding is extremely difficult.
Prices have tripled for materials and your insurance payout doesn't take that increase cost into consideration; for labor it's worse. I heard some good stories and I heard some horror stories on contractors. I spoke to a woman who got ripped off for 21,000 by an unlicensed contractor and she has absolutely no recourse. She just had to figure out how to pay to get all the work redone before the city would okay the renovations and hook her up to power and water. No recourse.
So many of the people you'll see in these vlogs are going to be these diehard New Orleanians; this is the new brain trust in New Orleans and I predict these people will serve future generations well as they reseed the neighborhoods in the city.
It was very pleasant talking to so many people back in their homes and back to some small degree of normalcy, some degree of self determination in their lives.
I also talked to a number of immigrants to New Orleans. When I was at Stanley Restaurant, they do the lunch crowd in the Quarter and CBD, I talked to three couples that had moved to New Orleans after Katrina to be part of the new city. Two of these couples were young professional with great jobs and one was a retired couple, wealthy, he was born and raised in New Orleans but they had lived in Memphis. They retired before Katrina and they bought a place there after the storm, "to contribute instead of just enjoy," their golden years. They work with a church mission helping getting volunteers down there to gut and renovate homes.
On the West Bank (Algiers, Gretna, Terrytown) and out in places like Metarie on the way to the airport, life is booming. Rebuilds were few as they had spotty flooding. Parts of Metarie were completely destroyed and I talked to a woman who lost everything, but overall Metarie and the West Bank are in much better shape than the city. Many people moved over to the West Side of the river to escape the craziness of the city and as you can see from the graphic, the West Bank didn't flood much at all. In fact their levee defenses held, much of this flooding was due to rainwater and floodwater backing up in the system.
People who commute into the city for work have been challenged in an entirely different way through Katrina. They didn't lose their homes, but they lost their city nonetheless and some lost their businesses. Much of St. Bernard parish, to the east and south of the city, is also in a complete state of disarray; St. Bernard was inundated with water from the failure of MR-GO, Mississippi River - Gulf Outlet, plus levee overtopping. And that doesn't even mention Rita and the southern half of the state. So there's a lot to do, there is still so much that needs to be done.
So New Orleans really has a lot to work with going forward, they're hurting but they're surviving and they are not leaving their homes.
No place in this county is safe from disaster or hostile elements of nature. This is the place that they choose to live their lives. If the country of Holland can make their population safe, surely a vastly wealthy and technologically advanced country like America can keep their choice of home reasonably dry.
I suggest we specify an under ten inches kind of dry as the first requirement for the project.
The psychological damage from Katrina is really apparent when you speak to people and it comes in all shapes and sizes. Most of the people that spoke to me seem to be coping very well with the stress, but the stories of crime, suicide, desperation, isolation and death are very chilling.
The emotions are still raw, the losses endured mortally wounding, loved ones, neighborhoods are wiped out. The thing you have to understand about New Orleanians is that it's not just the city and its history and their homes; it's the neighborhood and the people too. The people are close-knit and family oriented and the neighborhoods form extended families. Those that are back in their homes are without their support systems around them. Families have been broken up on an unbelievable level. They can't be together the way they want to be anymore, they way they always used to be together. "It's not the same."
New Orleans has a broken heart.
But the love is still there, you can see it in their faces and it comes through loud clear in their interviews.
I talked to a young civil engineer and recent Tulane graduate at Stanley Restaurant on the anniversary. I asked him to explain his love of the city to me and why he chose to return. After he made a persuasive case to me that New Orleans is as great a city as Paris he just looked right into the camera and said:
I am a New Orleanian.
And so it goes. One New Orleanian at a time, they take back their city from the water, the politics, the neglect, the path beset with outrageous obstacles, the storm - that damn storm.
Here's the diary line-up for NOLA Speaks Part Deux:
- Public Housing is the first story:
- The issue locally and in the Congress
- Maxine Waters and her remarks to the public housing residents at the New Orleans Survivor's Council grassroots meeting and BBQ
- Meet some former residents of public housing at the NOSC BBQ
- Meet Robert and Janet at the NOSC BBQ
- NOLA East Candlelight Vigil:
- The history and neighborhood of New Orleans East and the memorial service held on the levee
- Meet the residents back in their neighborhoods
- Meet Cynthia and Lula
- Stanley Restaurant Cheeseburger Fundraiser
- Scott Boswell interview, a Katrina success story
- Meet the unsuspecting patrons that agreed to speak with me that day
These will take me a few weeks to research and vlog, but they're all coming. All the pics of people posted in this diary are screenshots of people that spoke to me on camera, you'll meet them all and many more in NOLA Speaks Part Deux. In order of appearance in this diary, Jennifer, Eva, Pearl, Margie, Janet, Robert, Karran, Anna, Maurice and Josh: thank you so much for speaking to me on camera. Stay tuned and I hope you enjoy these vlogs as much as I enjoy bringing them to you.
New Orleans is alive.
A big Thank You from everyone I talked to down there goes out to all the volunteers that have come down to help gut and renovate houses. If you can't make it down there yourself to do something then consider a donation to a good cause:
Enjoy the viral inspired by the March trip:
It a grassroots effort to rebuild the city. Get involved. They need you now.