Hi friends and family,
(Apologies to those of you who’ve already heard this by some other route.)
Things continue to worsen in New Orleans. Unfortunately, today has almost proved worse than previous days. We heard this morning that the 17th Street Canal did break, not far from our house. The breach is pretty close to where the canal joins Lake Ponchartrain. Flood waters are continuing to raise the level of the lake, and all that water is pouring in through the breach. The water has spread throughout our area into Mid-City and beyond into the French Quarter and Uptown. Many of these areas were almost dry before the levee breach. We are now almost certain that our whole house (two storeys) has flooded.
The breach happened after the storm had passed, so people in the Lakeview area who thought they’d escaped with just wind damage suddenly saw the water rising in the streets and it has continued to do so ever since. This breach has vastly extended the area of the city which is under water. The local newspaper, The Times Picayune, distributed its Tuesday edition as a collection of PDF documents online, and you can download it or view it at:
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/katrina/
(scroll down the page and look for the PDF Images section). The photo on Page 7 (of the flooding near Filmore and Orleans), shows our Lakeview neighbourhood. The houses there are as far away as possible from the 17th Canal levee breach on the other side of Lakeview. The yellow wall you can see on the right side of the photo is the Orleans Canal, which was not damaged. So, as you can see, the water has filled up the neighbourhood between the two canal walls. Being New Orleans, which has no natural drainage, the water will remain there until they can get the pumps going and the lake level goes down enough for the pumps to work.
We’ve just heard that Lillie’s sister Ann with her husband Glenn and daughter Lisa, who are in Baptist Hospital in New Orleans where Glenn works, have had to move up from the fourth floor to the fifth, in order to escape the rising waters. We finally managed to get through to them on the phone this morning. They’re safe enough, but have little food and water. The hospital staff and their families are now making a human chain to carry the patients up to the rooftop helipad for evacuation.
Lillie and I have just been out to the stores to buy some clothes, as we only had a few with us. We really didn’t expect this storm to be more than a Category 3 with a good chance of missing New Orleans when we set off to Baton Rouge on Saturday. So, we have very little with us and assume everything else we own is gone (including my lovely pickup truck).
We’re glad to be safe and to know that all our friends and family evacuated safely or are doing okay in New Orleans.
A reminder to use our landline. The mobile phone network is completely swamped, but some landline calls are getting through.
Lots of love,
Rose
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