<p>I just got back from a legal conference in New Orleans and worked on a Habitat build yesterday- along with 60 other lawyers. My employer donates a lot of building materials to Habitat, and our legal department all participated in this build yesterday. After Katrina the company donated a massive amount of building materials to the re-building effort.
On Friday, several of us took the car and drove through the Lower 9th Ward to view the devastation. Throughout the week we talked to a number of local people, both professionals and people who had been more directly impacted and lost homes, etc. There is tremendous frustration with the city government and the wheels turn so slowly that even Habitat is handicapped. Of course, don’t even get them started about FEMA. (You should see the t-shirts for sale…)
I have truly never witnessed anything like the destruction that was caused by Katrina. Almost no damage was done to the “original” footprint of the city, by the way. The French Quarter and even Canal Street had very little damage. There was some, of course, from the winds and rain, but the flooding was nothing like in the areas of the city which were always at risk. The population of the city is half of what it was. There is almost no chance that the lower 9th will come back. It is just empty. Houses are pushed on top of each other. There are markings on the fronts of the houses indicating when the home was checked by the National Guard, what unit did the checking and how many dead bodies were found.
Our Habitat work was at Musicians’ Village in the Upper 9th Ward.
<a href=“http://www.habitat-nola.org/projects/musicians_village.php[/url]”>http://www.habitat-nola.org/projects/musicians_village.php</a>
It is an amazing undertaking. We worked side by side with some of the homeowners as well as with young people from Tulane and a Tulane professor. He told us Tulane is coming back, and that he is optimistic. He is not optimistic about the Lower 9th Ward.<br>
There was a pre-Mardi Gras parade Friday night downtown. The French Quarter folks expect a big turnout for Mardi Gras. They appreciate the convention business that is returning to the city, and the huge help for Habitat. There was a Sherwin Williams convention there at the same time we were there and they spent 3 days doing Habitat work.
Just thought I would report in.</p>
<p>MoWC~</p>
<p>Thanks for this report! Sometimes, when things aren’t constantly in front of us, they slowly slide from our consciousness as we’re all so very busy and absorbed in our own lives.</p>
<p>How wonderful that you were able to lend a (literal) hand to the recovery effort through your work with Habitiat. Donating money and materials is fabulous, but to go out and actually put in the physical work is not only gratifying but also a tremendous way to show support.</p>
<p>WAY TO GO! Good work, and I’m proud of you and everyone else who took part!</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>MWC, Thank you for a very nice report!</p>
<p>MWC, Glad you shared the experience. I just spoke to a displaced Katrina victim yesterday, and it was another reminder of the devastation of that area.</p>
<p>I visited NO last Nay and will be going down again in a couple of weeks. I am pretty skeptical about the towns long-term prospects. The problems go way beyond FEMA. The state and local governments are not effective and have not been effective for a long time and the towns economy was stagnant or declining even before the hurricane.</p>
<p>Another thing that kind of bothers me about the news coverage was the emphasis on the lower ninth ward which while it was one of the worst hit areas was hardly the only one. It has tended to make the rest of the country think that this was a disaster that only affected poor black people. Drive on past the lower ninth which was really a working class neighborhood rather than poverty stricken and the destruction goes for miles into St Bernard parish, and up by the 17th St canal which probably had the deepest flooding you find mostly upper-middle class neighborhoods. That water spread through low lying areas of varing economic groups all the way down to the Central Business District and Canal street.</p>
<p>The main difference in the impact of Katrina was between those who had the means and the sense to evacuate and those who did not. </p>
<p>Where to now and what can the rest of us do for the city? Working on a Habitat house house is a wonderful thing but the biggest impact you can have is to go visit. Book a vacation, book a convention, send your kid to one of the many colleges in town, go to a bowl game. These thing will pump the money into the local economy that will convince the residents that have not come back or who have fled that there might be a future there.</p>
<p>Hi MomofWildChild, I’m so glad you participated and got to see the 9th ward up close. There is just no way that TV pictures can convey the scope of the damage, even for people who are used to hurricanes. And kudos for being able to pack up and fly home after a day at Musician’s Village. I am not in very good shape, so I was so sore I didn’t get out of bed the whole next day.</p>
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<p>Another thing you can do to help, for those who can’t visit, is to learn more about the situation. Misinformation is one of our biggest enemies, and as higherlead points out, there is an incredible amount of it out there. </p>
<p>Especially about the situation with the levees. There are still people who don’t understand that (except in the 9th ward, where the levee was hit by a barge) the main reason the levees failed because the sheet pilings weren’t driven deep enough to meet standard engineering practice. What happened is that soil conditions were averaged over a much wider area than standard engineering practice called for, so some places simply didn’t get the sheet piling they needed. Since the piling wasn’t on anything solid in those places, the water pushed into the canals by the storm surge percolated through the soft soil under the pilings and they collapsed. It was like trying to stick a spoon up in a can of coffee grounds. You can make it work for awhile, but when you start pouring water in, it’s going to fall.</p>
<p>The mistake was even caught by the Army Corps of Engineers internal review, but they decided to proceed anyway. The levees failed under exactly the storm surge conditions they were designed to protect against.</p>
<p>Thanks for the update MoWC! </p>
<p>Last year, our family spent several days in NOLA (and a night in Biloxi) and the devastation is unbelievable. ldgirl was considering a scholarship at Tulane and we felt we had to see for ourselves the situation there. While we were there, we took a riverboat cruise to look at the 9th Ward and even more disturbing than the damage was the sight of former homes and schools sitting lower than water level and literally backing those huge levees . And it was shocking then to see so little progress in much of the city. I’m discouraged to hear that it seems like not much has changed in the 8 months since we were there. </p>
<p>One point you made is very interesting…that the original footprint is basically unaffected. It makes one wonder doesn’t it? Having lived in Louisiana for more than a decade, I know a little of the history and controversy around the manipulation of the rivers and terrain in NOLA and in the Atchafalaya Basin. There are many who believe New Orleans should have never been allowed to grow past that original footprint and that the Mississippi should have never been diverted from the Basin. There is definitely a crescent of high land along the Mississippi that historically stays dry, even before the levee system was built which was the original city of NO. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the corruption in the local levee boards was a known fact. The city levees were the responsibility of the NO levee boards and they spent millions building casinos rather than maintaining the levees. (The river levees, which did not fail, are the responsibility of the Army Corp of Engineers.) Having spent that decade auditing governmental entities in Louisiana, I guess even I was a little jaded about the fast and loose way money was managed by those boards.</p>
<p>Interestingly, we found most of the Tulane campus took on water, but neighboring Loyola seemed to have not. This became the dealbreaker for us regarding ldgirl attending Tulane. Prior to visiting Tulane, Admissions insisted to us that only one or two blocks of the campus had been flooded. When we arrived, we could clearly see most of the campus had been affected. The huge oaks were severely stressed from standing in water for so long. Almost every building had new work going on in the lower floors. The faculty we visited with were very forthcoming about exactly what had happened. But Administration was definitely spinning the facts. That deception along with the closing of programs made us very nervous. We could deal with the truth, but not with the coverup.</p>
<p>New Orleans is one of my favorite places. I was just looking at pictures of the Super Bowl my husband and I attended the year before Katrina. It makes you want to cry. And don’t get me started on Biloxi. The damage is even more unbelievable there imho. Absolutely astounding that more than 10 feet of storm surge stood at I-10 which is 5 miles inland. Most of the Biloxi-Gulfport area just seems to be wiped off the face of the earth.</p>
<h2>I do think NOLA will be back. It will take a long time though. But…fortunately…every NOLA native I have ever known is a mixture of extreme stubbornness and a killer sense of humor. Those are the perfect ingredients for recovery.</h2>
<p>Conyat is right, everyone can help. I encourage people to visit and SPEND MONEY. The Quarter is fine (and just as weird as it ever was…lol!) We had wonderful dinners and a lovely time there. We did as much as we could, figuring every dollar we spent was a little mini-boost to the local economy. Heck…as much as I don’t care for the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie show, I commend them for buying real estate and shooting a movie in the city.</p>
<p>conyat is correct. The levees did not fail because the storm was bigger than they were desineg for but rather because they were poorly designed and constructed. At least twi levees failed besides the one in the ninth ward and those two failures caused all of the flooding you saw on TV in the city center and all of the flooding you were seeing under and around those freeways.</p>
<p>The scale of the devastation really is and was staggering and if you were to travel downriver through St Bernard parish you would see littlerally miles and miles of devastated strip malls and middle cladd neighborhoods. Continue farther down the river and you will more devastation in areas where frankly people ought never to have been living in the first place.</p>
<p>There is tremendous opportunity to rebuild a better NOLA in the wake of all of this but whether or not this will happen is more in the hands of state and local authorities than federal ones at this point. The feds have allocated a lot of money to rebuilding but that money cannot get spent until it clears local and state regulatory hurdles and some with FEMA itself.</p>
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</p>
<p>The deeper problem is the destruction of our marshland due to industrial activity. Many areas devastated by Katrina, did OK in Betsy and Camille (another Category 5 storm that followed a very similiar track to Katrina). But back then, we had much more marshy cushion and barrier islands to absorb the blow. The MR-GO canal is another problem. It speeds up the storm surge from the lake and acts as a funnel to concentrate it.</p>
<p>While it’s true that maintaining the levees is a local reponsibility, they were designed and built by the Army Corps of Engineers, and the main problem was the design. It’s now referred to as the biggest civil engineering failure in world history. Another problem was dredging, which probably should never have been allowed in the canals, because it broke the clay lining on the bottom and allowed the water to perculate more easily through the ground. The locals asked for it and carried it out, but the feds approved it. Had the levees stood up as they were supposed to, New Orleans would have only experienced minor street flooding from overtopping.</p>
<p>As for the places that “people never should have lived in”, the problem is, if you let those areas erode away, a place a little further inland becomes the place “people shouldn’t live in.” And so on. First it’s Plaquemines, eventually it’s Baton Rouge. Without the marsh to protect the coast, the coast will just keep moving further inland.</p>
<p>But back then, we had much more marshy cushion and barrier islands to absorb the blow. The MR-GO canal is another problem. It speeds up the storm surge from the lake and acts as a funnel to concentrate</p>
<p>Absolutely- and we are seeing it just not in NO but Indonesia and other areas around the world- man is making changes in land and offshore which result in much more damage inland.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dailymail.com/story/News/+/2007020218/Corps-names-122-levees-at-risk-of-failure/[/url]”>http://www.dailymail.com/story/News/+/2007020218/Corps-names-122-levees-at-risk-of-failure/</a></p>
<p>“There is tremendous opportunity to rebuild a better NOLA in the wake of all of this but whether or not this will happen is more in the hands of state and local authorities than federal ones at this point.”</p>
<p>Isn’t that THE problem? Local and state authorities have always sought to address the underlying problems of NOLA by making it a national problem, and have always refused to pay their share of a comprehensive plan to address the existing and future threats to the entire delta. Without such a plan, most efforts are futile as they represent bandaids on an amputated leg. </p>
<p>NOLA will remain a city of two visages: one city that targets the Mardi Gras and convention crowd and the visitors who come to spend their debauchery budgets, and another city that simply ignores its fundamental flaws and focuses on welfare and federal aid all the while continuing to be a monument to ineptitude and corruption.</p>
<p>By spending billions of dollars, NOLA could be … saved, but the city will never be a growing and modern city. The economy, such as the natural course of the Mississippi, is flowing away from the city. If the Port of New Orleans is indeed a national economic necessity, money should be allocated to the Region, and the allocation of the costs correctly done, starting with the State of Louisiana. </p>
<p>For what is worth, when asking for people to return to New Orleans and spend money, should we not be realistic in admitting that, when things were “better” and money flowed into the French Quarter and large companies maintained offices in NOLA, very little or none was spent on addressing the issues that are now front and center. Why should we believe that the same people would do anything differently? Didn’t the city reelect the same stable of entirely inept and corrupt leaders?</p>
<p>It’s an incredibly complicated situation and also not an all-or-nothing proposition. My son worked on the NO problem with a group at college and came up with an interesting report. </p>
<p><a href=“http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2010/finalwebsite/[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2010/finalwebsite/</a></p>
<p>I have good friends who live in New Orleans. A few took advantage of the boom in housing prices and bailed. Others are still there with major jobs. Others are still there with basic jobs and some hope.</p>
<p>The biggest problem for those that are left is that the housing for the middle and lower classes is greatly diminished. That short supply has pushed prices way out of reach. Also, many of the lower and middle calss families that are living in the region cannot afford to move back. It takes money to move cross country and these folks don’t have a few thousand to spare.</p>
<p>According to my friends, if the city doesn’t get employees for it’s industry and service economy, it will slowly fade to a small Disney-esque destination.</p>
<h2>“For what is worth, when asking for people to return to New Orleans and spend money, should we not be realistic in admitting that, when things were “better” and money flowed into the French Quarter and large companies maintained offices in NOLA, very little or none was spent on addressing the issues that are now front and center. Why should we believe that the same people would do anything differently? Didn’t the city reelect the same stable of entirely inept and corrupt leaders?”</h2>
<p>While this is true and a very good point…I was speaking of supporting the local business owner. In virtually every restaurant we visited, the owner came by our table to thank us for coming. We stopped in one shop to buy art prints and the owner spent an hour telling us his experiences during the storm and post-storm trying to get his business back open. I’m not a novice when it comes to understanding how things work at the state and local gov’t level in Louisiana and I have no illusions about the need to improve how public monies are spent. But if customers don’t show up, local businesses will be the first to go. (Said like a true daughter of a small business owner and the wife of an entrepreneur. 
)</p>
<p>Great article regarding Conyat’s point about the levee construction. But, it should be noted that it was a known fact that the city levee system needed upgrading. Many of the city levees were constructed by the Corp on behalf of the city in the 1940s through 1960s… and the city boards had authorized and spent money on several ‘band-aid’ upgrades post-Betsy. Design worries had been a major concern for years and a study exploring the inadequate design and the feasibility of upgrade was finally started in 2000. Meanwhile, monies earmarked for levee upgrades were funneled into development that would benefit the tourist industry including casinos, malls and hotels. While the city was ‘studying’, the money was being spent elsewhere.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901916.html?sub=AR[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901916.html?sub=AR</a></p>
<p>Yes conyat the marshes are eroding but the reasons are all manmade. The biggest problem is we leveed the whole river so the silt the marshes need nver gets there but instead is flushed all the way down the river and eventually dumped right over the continental shelp. Next having starved the marshes of replenishment we cut canals through them mostly for the oil industry. This sped the erosion. Now we have a real mess on our hands.</p>
<p>When you drive far enough down the river you can literally stand on the river leveee and lookmacross and see the bay leveee. The river is still above sealevel as it is in NOLA itself (which btw means it is well above the higher ground of the city as well) and then there is the bay. We crossed the levee on the bay side and yes there were all sorts of people living over there. It was nuts. You are standing on the road and the optical illusion actually makes the water look like it is higher than the land you are standing on and this on a bright sunny calm day.</p>
<p>It’s not true, as xiggi suggests that state and local governments have refused to pay our fair share of coastal restoration and tried to make it a national problem inappropriately.</p>
<p>It’s a national problem because the nation relies on the oil and gas industry that created most of the damage (as higher lead pointed out). What would we do without the oil and gas from Louisiana? The Mars platform alone produces so much of the US needs that its production has a huge impact on sour crude prices on the global market.</p>
<p>So why don’t we just pay to fix the damage? We are the highest or second-highest poverty state in the nation. We don’t have the money to fix this damage because historically, Louisiana has gotten an inequitable share of the oil revenues compared to the other oil producing states. Florida, California, Texas, and Alaska have all gotten greater percentages than Louisiana. If we were getting our fair share, the problem could have been addressed.</p>
<p>Every governor I can remember has threatened to block leases unless we got our fair share, and every governor has had to accept whatever the feds said they would give us. Now I understand legislation has been passed to give us royalties comparable to what the other states get, after the catastrophic damage we predicted has been done.</p>
<p>My corporation recently held a large meeting in New Orleans…I was very reluctant to go…because of the crime levels, especially murder rates. There was really no extra time to go far afield…nor do I think I would have… but, in retrospect, I am glad we went…they definitely are working hard to provide great service to conventions/meetings etc. We have had meetings all over the US…and we have been to NO before…but, the service at the hotels and convention center on this trip was excellent and better than many other cities we have traveled to…our dinners on Bourbon St and Canal St were well protected…many cops around…</p>
<p>I wish they would add a $1 charge onto each necklace they sell and dedicate that $$ to rebuilding/maintaining the levees…stop pointing fingers of blame and take ownership. The same is true for Biloxi…I hated it when they bemoaned the lack of taxes from the gambling boats…a percentage of that tax revenue should be going into a fund for reinforcing and rebuilding… because we should not have to absorb this cost again after the next hurricane. If those states want to have those commercial entities in harms way, they can…but they need to bear the burden to protect/rebuild, not everyone. IMHO…</p>
<p>MoWC
If you had a chance to talk with any of the Tulane students, how did they view both Tulane and NO? Other than organized community help type activities, are there place where they are comfortable spending much time off the campus? Do they feel they made the right choice in coming back to Tulane? Thanks for any insight.</p>
<p>I imagine it’s easy to criticize our casinos from Maine. The reason the coast is “bemoaning” lost tax revenue is that much of that tax money went into education and other civic projects. All of but one of the major casinos suffered epic damage because gambling was legally restricted to off shore sites. Fortunately, our state legislature (which is basically an assembly of ■■■■■■■■ farmers) had the presence of mind to let casinos move a thousand feet inwards.</p>
<p>I’d also like to point out that New Orleans has received far too much mention in the media, largely because their incompentent government attracts so much attention. I cannot fathom how Ray Nagin was reelected. The Mississippi Gulf Coast lost far more homes–several towns too small to get any national attention have literally disappeared.</p>