New Orleans Part 1

3/5/06
This afternoon we got off the plane in New Orleans. As it was landing we commented on the roofs replaced by tarps and the barren coastline. The temperature was a moderate 63 degrees with a sweet smelling breeze as we exited the revolving doors at the airport. We then patiently waited, huddled under a tree outside the car rental place "Dollar Rental." Getting our keys we scrambled into the vans and started our adventure.
At first it didnt look like anything had happened at all.The land and houses near the airport were mostly intact and there were countless businesses open...but as we moved southeast there was a descernable change.
Saint Bernards Parish is about 15 minutes outside the city. A parish is a county, like "Albany County." This was where we would be working. There had been 3 types of flooding here. Rain, levy and river/lake water. There are no images or words that could convey what we saw appropriately. IT looked like a war zone. We drove for a half hour,all the way to the end of St Bernard, or the town Chalmette and were stunned to see house after house after house, after business after business completely destroyed. Nothing survived. All of the trees are dead. All of the houses either untouched since the hurricane six months ago, or gutted to begin rebuilding.
There are no open businesses, no electricity, gas or water lines. Nothing enhabitable within 30 miles. Each building is marked with grafitti labeling them checked for survivors.Easch still holding appliances, furniture, magazines and shampoo bottles.Homes where families had been, baby's first steps taken, fighting and fucking and love and family and connections all destroyed,or left in a pile. Private businesses that would never again see a customer. There are sporadic cars on the street and intermittent groups on front lawns using shovels and rakes, searching for everything, anything that had been lost. There are personal affects strewn on street corners, childrens shoes in gutters,boats on highway medians, cars full of mud and piled on top of one another in front yards. There are no children anywhere. Tired mothers and fathers, aunts and cousins continue the mass exodus of muddy, moldy sheetrock and dirty mattresses. They are trying to piece together a life for their children to come back to. There are 5 schools open out of 40. There are no animals either other than the well fed birds who scavenge the piles of refuse and debris on each front lawn.The mayor says there is no where to put the garbage and debris. I can see why. There are literally tons on every street corner.
We pass an empty lot with a car turned on its front end, leaning against a light post and a gutted house with a children's ball in the driveway. There are ghosts here where lives used to be. One thousand people found dead, one thousand still missing. The only store open is a makeshift Home Depot that has tents outside for the timber. The people needed them to even begin thinking of rebuildng.There are no gas stations,no restaurants. If we need something we will have to drive into the city.It is a deserted 1950's Western Movie. The savages came in an burned everything down leaving the people to move on or try again.
One house in the 9th ward is pushed right out into the street.Their bedroom window is eyelevel to the passing cars. They got it the worst. It is a bit closer to the city, still in St Bernard. The houses there didn't even stay on their foundations. It's no wonder they talked about just bulldozing eveything .There is literally nothing to salvage. Not even the wood. The houses were beaten and flooded for 2 weeks with no relief. In Chalmette at least, most houses stayed in tact, it was just the inside that was destroyed. Not in the 9th ward. There is nothing. People can't even drive on the streets there, there is still too much in the road. Trees, cars, wood, boats...
An hour into our circular drive, we found our tent village. It is run by FEMA. There are armed guards ar every gate and pictures are not allowed to be taken under any circumstances within the camp. We must wear a badge at all times and we will sleep in tents and shower in communal showers. I cant help but think each citizen on Chalmette would kill to live where we are staying. They are sleeping in shelters, or in their cars. They sleep in deserted schools.We all feel selfish for being worried about our living conditions. At the orientation they showed us a video taken the day after the flood. Each scene is a reiteration of what we had just seen only this time there were people. And water.There is 20 feet of water in some spots.Water up to the red lights, water up to the roof of the Taco Bell, resients living on roofs with buckets to pee in and blankets for the night. Old men and women in boats crying, the elderly in a nursing home sleeping on cots in the hallway of a school, a child on a mat sleeping on a bridge, we had seen first hand the gutted frame of the Walmart and here it is on the screen underwater.There were no sounds in the room, just the soundtrack of the video. The song was "Dreams."