(continued from previous post...)
The next day, we started early because the gang of five workmen organised by our contractor, Julie was due on our doorstep at 8am, to be followed soon after by what passed for an insurance adjuster. Julie, by the way, also lives in Lakeview so her house is equally damaged; we shared the workmen and moving van with her.
This was a really hard day, but we had a huge amount of help: Lillie’s sisters Jane and Laurie, Laurie’s boyfriend Greg, our friends Katy, Kerry, Nat and Treschelle and their friends Mal and Sadie, and the five workmen. We’d never met Sadie before and only know Mal a little. Their single-storey house had been completely destroyed, and there they were spending the whole day working in the mouldy awful downstairs for us. I was so overwhelmed with making decisions upstairs I barely even said hello to any of the girls and they left before I had a chance to say goodbye, after having done a huge amount of work for us.
I think the very hardest moment was when I walked upstairs, with all the blokes following me and waiting for work to keep them occupied, and had to make the first decision. The day consisted of decision after decision after decision: can I keep this? does it smell too bad? can it be cleaned? where should it be stored? if we keep it, will we ever have a place to put it? On and on, trying to ensure people weren’t hanging around waiting for me to make up my mind.
It took about five hours just to pack up my office. I managed to salvage my computers and I know that at least one of them is working – not sure about the others. I also salvaged some software, some books (not too many, as they smelled so bad and I feared they’d turn mouldy after months in storage), a few photos (most of the albums were downstairs), and my files. I tossed out about two-thirds of my clothes.
Lillie was going through the same process in the other rooms upstairs, while the girls took apart our beds and marched them outside and, downstairs, went through the unbroken glassware to see what could be saved. Laurie took that away to drench in an ammonia bath to decontaminate it and then wash and store.
Apart from the glassware and some plates, everything else downstairs was a write off. We couldn’t even get into the downstairs bathroom or the large closet off the den because the doors were so warped.
In amongst the devastation there were some really odd touches. A pottery bowl containing onions and garlic had floated from the kitchen into the sunroom and deposited itself neatly on the tile floor, with the onions looking almost edible. A bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin and a tea canister had settled side by side on the kitchen floor, standing upright with a Mardi Gras king cake baby lying in front of them (the king cake baby is a little plastic doll that’s baked inside the cakes traditionally eaten during Mardi Gras; whoever gets the piece of cake containing the baby has to buy the next king cake). The big fridge must have floated the whole time, with the heavy bottom underwater but the top and front above, so all the fridge magnets and attached photos were intact.
The best things about these really hard days were getting to see our wonderful neighbours, including Jane, Al, Nancy and Babs (who lost her thriving day-care centre on the corner of our street as well as her home), and the willing help we got from so many people. If we do all manage to rebuild in our neighbourhood, we will have a unique bond.
On the negative side was the sorry excuse for an insurance adjuster whose first words to Lillie were “Nice tree” and first words to me when he came upstairs “Oh, this is just fine.” In the midst of the destruction, it was grossly trivialising. He also fobbed Lillie off when she asked about demolishing the place and said “Get quotes on gutting the first floor.” I guess having a wooden structure that’s been sitting in sewerage and chemical laden water for weeks doesn’t make a blip on the insurance radar. Fortunately, a conversation with the uber-adjuster several days later gave us more hope.
Insurance is one of the hot-button topics in New Orleans these days, and surely will be for a long time to come. Some companies and individual adjusters are being fair; others are clearly out to argue every cent. Most of them will avoid having to pay replacement value because the damage was caused by flooding and not wind; the latter is covered by replacement-cost homeowner’s insurance, the former by government-capped flood insurance. Nancy, across the street, suffered both flood and wind damage, making her one of the fortunate ones. When she heard we had no wind damage to speak of, she commiserated. A homeowner’s adjuster told our friend Judith that they’d pay for water damage from her missing roof “down to the four-foot mark”, but that up to that mark they refused to pay.
The end result of this is we all end up having to deal with multiple companies who toss responsibility back and forth and gather in our monthly premiums on unlivable houses while delaying payouts.
My pickup truck, by the way, was nowhere to be seen when we arrived on Friday. We didn’t know whether it had been stolen for parts or taken by the insurance company’s salvage people. A few days later we learnt it was the latter.
We returned to Reserve on Saturday night having farmed out bags and bags of clothes to be aired and then laundered by various generous members of Lillie’s extended family. Sunday, we took the day off and spent time with Lillie’s relos.
On Monday, I persuaded Lillie to return to New Orleans once more before flying out in the afternoon. I had a really strong urge to go back there, partly because I knew I wouldn’t see it again for months and partly because Friday and Saturday had been so consumed with working and decision making and numbness that I felt I hadn’t really allowed myself to take it all in.
So we headed back in and drove and walked around our neighbourhood. We went up Bellaire Drive, two blocks west of us, which runs alongside the 17th Street Canal, and went all the way to the breach in the levee. Several blocks from the breach we encountered a collapsed house which had floated all the way down the road. Mud was piled 6-8 feet high, cars were hanging in trees, houses cracked open. At the breach itself, all the houses were missing, including a house Lillie and I had contemplated buying before we ended up in our place on 22nd Street. There was a newly formed lake by the levee, with three ducks floating around in blissful ducky oblivion. Fleur de Lis Park was a shambles, with most of the beautiful live oaks knocked to the ground or dying upright.
We ended up travelling back down Ponchartrain to Harrison, the street one over from us, where we sought out C. Ray and George at our petrol station, Fleur de Lis Car Care. There they were, cleaning up their completely ruined business, intending to open again in four months. We got big sweaty hugs and kisses from both of them.
Parked at Fleur de Lis was a Salvation Army prayer and meal station, with a bunch of Northerner volunteers handing out 600-800 meals a day. We had already had encounters with the Red Cross, who gave us water and offered us food; FEMA volunteers, who handed us brochures about Federal assistance and offered to answer questions to which, they said, “we have no answers”; and a National Guard troop from New Jersey. The guardsmen came down our street on Saturday in a truck, stopped outside Nancy’s place when they saw that the American flag and marine flag outside her place had become entwined (her late husband was a marine). Out they got, untangled the flags, then chatted with us and gave us more water. There’s nothing that drives home the sense of being a disaster victim more than being on the receiving end of all this official and volunteer aid.
Leaving was really hard, despite the dreadfulness of what we saw. Lillie is heartbroken to be away from her family again, and we’ve both been very depressed since our return to Houston. Our trip home gave me a real understanding of how big this is, both personally and for my city. The extent of the devastation is mind-numbing, with areas that were not so badly hit mere pockets in a ruined city.
The people, though, are amazing. We experienced a whole lot of support and love and ironic laughter (our lunch breaks amidst the piles of debris were particularly tickling in their own sorry way). I’d like to live with these people again.
Love,
Rose
Comments