New Orleans, post-Katrina

In February, I coordinated and managed a week-long education tour to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans for the jazz organization I work for. The tour was eye-opening in so many aspects. We had already gone to the Gulf Coast the year before, so we knew about the region, but this latest tour was AFTER Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Six months afterward, in fact. What we saw shocked all of us on the tour. Here is what I wrote a week later to family:

I've been trying to find some time to write about our New Orleans tour, partly because it will be therapeutic to me, and partly because I really want people to know what it's like. The media for some reason glosses over the real deal. Just today, cnn.com had an article that talked about how although some parts of New Orleans are in ruins, much of the city is getting back to normal. Really? We drove all around the city, through dozens of neighborhoods north, south, east, and west, and it looks like a war zone. The entire region looks like a war zone. What's normal about that?

While we were in the Mississippi Gulf Coast/New Orleans region for 6 days, a description of the first 2 days will epitomize our experiences. This first email will talk about our first day in the region.

Flying in to New Orleans, I looked out the airplane window and I saw lots of brown landscape with the occasional blue tarp/roof. It pretty much looked like what I expected. No big deal at that point.

My co-worker and I got off the plane, rented a car, and realized we had 4 hours before the musicians arrived. So we asked around for the nearest mall. We found one in Metairie. I ate my first beignets (yummy yummy!), shopped a little (of course), and then we went to lunch. The first sign that things weren't quite right was that every restaurant and shop had a Help Wanted sign. Later in the week we would discover that most French Quarter restaurants were closing around 8pm because of lack of staff. I guess when 3 out of 4 residents flee the area, the remaining 25% have to take on the extra work.

A few hours later, most of our crew had landed so we started the 90 minute drive east to Biloxi, where we would stay for two nights. As we drove from the airport through Metairie, towards the city of New Orleans, we saw more and more blue tarps on roofs. Then we saw fences down. Then we saw abandoned cars. As we drove north of New Orleans (we wouldn't be IN the city until 2 days later) we started seeing water lines on all of the houses. There were holes in roofs where, one guesses, people hacked their way out of their attics to escape the rising flood waters. Then, just east of the city, we came upon an area that was a ghost town. For miles. About 20 miles of ghost town along I-10. There were Home Depots, a Sam's Club, super markets, fast food restaurants, dozens of apartment buildings and neighborhoods, ALL DESERTED. Most of the windows were broken out. Burnt out cars. And mounds of trash. It was like a Stephen King book. Imagine driving from Bridgeton to, what, Wentzville? [in the St. Louis area] and seeing nothing but destruction. There were buildings burnt to the ground, abandoned cars, clothing, trash bags, shoes, papers, dead trees. FOR TWENTY MILES. At least. And that was just what we could see right along I-10.

There were lots of contractor pick-up trucks driving along the interstate. Some looked like established companies, others looked like they had just gone in to business. It seems like a very popular and profitable business to be in right now in that region. There were roofing signs everywhere, and I think a lot of their "supplies" came from abandoned houses.

We crossed the I-10 bridge that goes over the east side of Lake Pontchartrain. Several sections of the bridge were brand new, since half of the bridge was destroyed by Katrina. On the east end of the bridge we saw our first inland boats. There are - still - lots of boats in fields. We saw shrimp boats and sail boats tossed on their sides, just sitting in forests and fields, like it was the most natural thing to do.

By early evening we arrived in Biloxi. We knew Biloxi had been devastated and we were staying in one of just a few hotels that had reopened (the Imperial Palace hotel & casino). After checking in, we all decided to meet for dinner at the buffet restaurant in the hotel. My colleague went to check on the wait. There was a two hour wait and a line that wrapped around the restaurant and through the casino. I thought, I know this hotel is big, but are all of these people staying here? We quickly discovered that the answer was no. It turned out that the hotel was the only place to eat in the city.

We decided to drive around the city to find what we thought would be a quick bite to eat. Many traffic lights were out. We drove through several abandoned neighborhoods, many that had trailers parked in front of where a house once was. We drove down to Route 90 by the coast, where we remembered most restaurants could be found. It was completely dark. Street signs were nowhere to be found, traffic lights were out, a bridge was out. When we visited a year ago, this was a bustling town. Now, there was nothing.

After turning onto Route 90, I looked to my right and asked "what's that big mound?" I slowed down and everyone peered out their windows into the darkness. Suddenly it occurred to me that it wasn't a hill, or an old apartment building, or an abandoned restaurant. It was a barge. There was a barge three blocks inland, right next to the road. The next day we drove past it again and we discovered several bulldozers on top. They were breaking it down - removing it chunk by chunk - rather than trying to somehow tow it back to sea.

We eventually found a Super Wal-Mart several miles north of the city, away from the water, and ate there. The store was packed for a Sunday night. We later learned that it was the most profitable Wal-Mart in the country, most likely because it was the only thing open. Wal-Mart has the funds to reopen and recruit workers, and we were thankful for them that night.

To paraphrase Steve Martin in "The Jerk," that first day felt like 3 days. We saw so much, and we had just arrived. The most shocking thing wasn't the destruction itself - I realize what hurricanes can do - but the sheer magnitude of the destruction and that this is SIX MONTHS later. We weren't seeing this six days or six weeks later. This is half a year later. That's some storm.