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My friend Bill Crawford tells a bit of the life he is living right now in Thibodaux, LA (the eye of Gustav pretty much went right through the area.) If you can, please consider helping out in one of the ways he suggests.
This morning, my wife, e-mailed me a letter to the editor that appeared in our local paper. It comes from Susan Sperry or Metairie, LA:
I want to offer some support for what you are going through. It’s your Katrina. But I can assure you that you will rebuild, and you won’t miss your stuff as much as you think. OK, I still miss my shoes, but that’s about it. You can clean and repair more belongings than you think. Support each other and accept help. It’s almost three years since I lost everything, and I’m OK now. It’s a hard road but you all will be OK, too.
As I drove around before I left town late last week, I noticed two guys in a truck with Louisiana license plates (please note that a sighting of a LA plate in Iowa is about a rare as finding an alligator.) I’ve heard stories of churches throughout Louisiana and the Gulf Coast calling up churches in Cedar Rapids saying, “Y’all helped us out, now what can we do to help you out?”
These notes and gestures of compassion from the Gulf Coast are incredibly moving. As my wife said in response to Susan Sperry’s letter “I’m just floored that someone took the time to reach out to our community and encourage us like this.”
Thank you.
This week my current hometown, Cedar Rapids, has been affected by the most devastating river flooding in the history of the city. It’s far beyond anything that has ever been seen here and greater than what most imagined would happen. Other communities like Iowa City and Coralville are also currently experiencing flooding beyond anything they’ve experienced before.
One thing I’ve been hearing over and over again, on the radio, on the TV, in the newspaper, and by people just chatting about what has happened is this; “This is our Hurricane Katrina.” While damage is certainly beyond what people here could imagine, I absolutely object to this statement and to this comparison.
Folks, this is NOT our Hurricane Katrina. Why is that? Well, here are at least a couple of reasons:
1.) We have not had less than three days to convince an entire metropolitan area of over a million people that they need to move out of harm’s way before a hurricane passes, followed by a week of search and rescue operations over an entire urban area totally submerged in flood waters.
2.) We have not had a dozen hospitals, scores of nursing homes, a handful of housing projects, or thousands of people who because of a lack of resources and access to public transportation could not leave town before the levees broke.
3.) 90% of our city will not stew in flood waters for several weeks as we wait for the Army Corp of Engineers and others to try to figure out how to dam up breached levees before the water will even begin to recede from the area.
4.) Search and recovery efforts were not severely hampered by rioters and looters nor by others seizing the moment to create a situation of mayhem, nor were there significant political conflicts between city, state, and federal officials that got in the way.
While we are experiencing a disaster that is beyond comprehension to many of us here in Iowa, it is no where near the magnitude nor level of circumstance that makes a comparison to New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina anywhere close to appropriate.
Today is Mardi Gras Day! But since I now live far from New Orleans I don’t really get to celebrate it and I certainly don’t get the day off either. Thankfully my wife is a good sport and was willing to dress up for the occasion!
Today you get two photos of the day since I didn’t get a chance to take or to post a photo at all on Saturday.
We got to take in a Mardi Gras parade on our last night in New Orleans. It’s great to see the city pull together to keep the big bash rolling once again this year.
Since Saturday was a full day of travel and I had to finish my sermon when we got home late in the evening, this picture from the night before will have to count for Saturday’s photo of the day.
I don’t like black birds at all, but I guess they need to eat too.
Jeanette, the owner of this new Habitat for Humanity home, expresses thanks and joy for the work that is being done to rebuild her life. The home will be dedicated a little over a month from now. Thankfulness and gratitude are the words of the day to describe the feeling of being able to help out in just a small way. It has been a wonderful week being able to be a part of the recovery work here in New Orleans. More photos from our day our here.
Today as we worked on a Habitat for Humanity home in New Orleans I noticed a man across the canal washing his car. It was so good to see someone taking care of such a normal everyday task. It seemed like a hopeful sign of life in the midst of what is still a devastated area.
This empty lot and the house across the street are in the Lakeview neighborhood close to one of the many levee breaches. We took a tour today to get an overview of the destruction in this city: 80% of which was flooded in the aftermath of Katrina.
Today’s work was a lot harder both physically and emotionally. We were working in a lower to middle class African American community (the upper ninth ward). This home belonged to a family with a couple of young kids, so the debris we pulled out was what you might expect to find in any kids home.
I’m not sure if this photo is of an actually wedding dress or not, but it certainly was a dress for a formal occasion. It is hard finding such things in the midst of the debris, and still it is a rewarding experience to know that we are playing just a small part in helping people get their lives back together.
I am however awestruck at the fact that we are doing this type of work a full year and half after the storm and there is lots more yet to be done. Don’t forget to click here to find more photos from today. I’ll provide captions for them soon.
It’s been a long day here in New Orleans. We spent about six hours today totally gutting an unbelievably soggy house, in what I’m sure was a pretty harsh neighborhood to live in in the first place (pre-Katrina). Our work today was a small drop of water in a huge ocean of need. Tomorrow we will move on to work on another home.
The story of the day comes from a trip to Walgreens to get Lori some drops for her eye (she spent a few hours today at Touro Hospital having her eye checked…she is fine, but somehow overnight sustained a corneal abrasion that will need some time to heal.) Standing in the check out line, the clerk asked us how we were doing. We said “Fine, how are you?” Responding she just shook her head with a look of resignation and sadly said, “Tired of being stressed out. I’m just stressed out all the time and I’m tired of it.”
It is hard to grasp what life must be like here day in and day out. Driving around we see stark contrasts. We are staying close to Tulane University, an area of town that was relatively unscathed and that is brimming with life, young people, and a lot of activity. But that is clearly not the way it is in the rest of this town. Huge pockets of town are totally uninhabited. Buildings are gone with just a pile of rubble to mark where they once stood (like a Wendy’s I often went to). Lots and lots of businesses are boarded up.
All the contents of this home are piled on the street after a full morning of work by our 20 person work crew. Salvage contractors lurk like vultures with their trucks down the block waiting for us to leave. They get paid by the cubic foot to haul and dispose of loads so the size of our load looks pretty good to them.
See more photos here:
Today we arrived in New Orleans to work for a week with Restoring Hope in New Orleans (RHINO) a service project through St Charles Presbyterian Church. This is just a small portion of a mural that awaits your arrival at the airport. It is great to be here, since the last time I was back here was almost exactly two years ago.
Our drive to the church revealed numerous businesses that are no longer open and lots of homes that are unoccupied, and this is just in areas of the city where minimal flooding occurred. I imagine it will be an eye opener tomorrow as we visit other areas of the city.
We head out tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM for a day of work. Sounds like we will have two days of gutting houses and two days working with Habitat for Humanity on their musicians village.
I’ll be at a party this evening so I’ll miss at least the first part of the game, but my heart is with the town I lived in for nine years and its often hapless team. Maybe, just maybe this will be the year…
Regarding Spike Lees film “When the Levees Broke” a review in the Time’s Picayune says:
The tragic story of black New Orleans trapped in Katrina’s path has found a supreme chronicler, but the flooded-out residents of Lakeview or Old Metairie who attend tonight’s sold-out premiere at New Orleans Arena will spend all night sitting on a hard plastic chair and then wonder: Where am I in this?
I watched Spike’s film (which is well done and worthy of your time and attention) on Monday and Tuesday night but found myself struggling with exactly the same thing. In the last few years of living in New Orleans I rented a home in the Mid City area of N.O. that later found itself deluged by the flood waters of Katrina. A number of good friends with family homes in the LakeView area had their homes and everything they owned obliterated by the flood waters. Some have returned but others have chosen (or their work has chosen for them) to make new homes in places like Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Boston.
Where were their stories in Spike Lee’s film? Where was what could very well have been my own story in his film? To be sure they did not endure the failure of the government in the delay of rescue and evacuation efforts following the storm, because they had the resources along with the foresight to get out of harms way.
I recently finished reading Douglas Brinkley’s book “The Great Deluge” and last night my wife and I watched the first two acts of Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” on HBO.
I simply cannot believe how irresponsible the Bush administration was in its delayed response, but what I find even more enraging is that the American public has not held this administration more accountable for its unconscionable efforts.
Sure Michael Brown lost his job, but he was just the fall guy. Let’s be honest, FEMA knew exactly what could happen to the city of New Orleans if those levee’s broke. (I worked for Tulane University in 2000-2001 doing Disaster Management and Hurricane Planning and worked directly with FEMA on an initiative called Disaster Resistant Universities…) so there was no excuse on the part of the Department of Homeland Security for not knowing what type of resources and how quickly they would be needed to get help to a city 80% submerged under water.
This was an act of pure negligence on the part of our government and quite frankly thousands of American citizens (both poor and middle class, black and white) were pawns trapped in a deadly and high-stakes political game.
And for that we ought to be mad.
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