Gamma

Dear friends and family,

I’m a little over halfway through my time in Australia. It feels like it’s going very fast, while at the same time I’m eager to be back with Lillie, who is now in New Orleans.

Lillie moved on Friday 18th, with the assistance of her sister Laurie and brother-in-law Glenn (Ann’s husband). It all went smoothly, with the help of a little hired muscle each end. We’d bought a bunch of household stuff in Houston prior to returning home, stuff we knew would be much harder to obtain back home, and so there was a full truckload to move. On the New Orleans end, the personal trainer of one of Lillie’s colleagues helped out. He’s doing moving work and various other bits and pieces at ridiculously low rates just to help people reestablish themselves in New Orleans. Lillie told him some of the items were very heavy and would require at least two people, and he said his girlfriend would help. Lillie suggested the weight might be excessive even so, and he replied that she hadn’t seen his girlfriend. She, too, is a body builder, and evidently they make quite a team. The two of them – I keep wanting to call them Atlas and Amazonia but I know that’s not right; both names start with “A” – managed to unload the truck and put everything in the house in an hour.

So, Lillie’s back in the city, but not living in our newly rented house. That’s because while it has electricity and running water, that’s the end of the mod cons. No hot water, heating (it’s getting chilly in New Orleans now), cooling (it’s also hot in New Orleans – typical “cold season” weather, where one day the temperature is a mere fraction of the next), no mail, no phone, erratic garbage service. The city is a dust bowl, with most of the streets looking like dirt roads. Around the corner from our place, part of the side street just disappears in a chasm. And it’s so dark at night without any lights it’s not good being out.

Until we get gas on – the date is anyone’s guess – Lillie’s hanging out at her sister Jane’s, one of the few places around to have gas and electricity. One of our Mid-City neighbours managed to get herself on TV complaining about the slow pace of gas restoration in our neighbourhood, and we’re hoping that may have an impact. Entergy says it has added hundreds of workers to increase the pace of reconnections, but we’ve yet to see the evidence of this.

The city now has around 100,000 residents, a bit over a fifth of its pre-Katrina population. All our activity has a temporary feel, and that’s because the Federal Government has yet to make any solid, clear commitment to giving us decent levees. Every other aspect of rebuilding is contingent on such a commitment, so the deafening silence from a White House which promised so much in the days after Katrina is a huge obstacle.

All the news about the levees has been truly dismal. What was supposed to have been a system which could protect the city from a Category 3 hurricane has now been found to be so thoroughly flawed in its initial design that it couldn’t provide that protection at all. But then, in true New Orleans fashion, it appears that the contractors took that sub-standard design and failed to build the levees even to that defective standard. So we ended up with a bunch of concrete poured into mushy, semi-liquid soil, just waiting for a little shove from the water to shift and collapse it. In fact, it’s been discovered that the levees were flawed in “conception, design, construction and maintenance”.

Now the Feds, after saying they’d do what’s needed to get New Orleans rebuilt, are trying to find ways to weasel out of any meaningful support. One has to wonder whether the Republican White House and Congress is all that perturbed at seeing one of the few Democrat strongholds in the South beaten down and its population dispersed and nicely diluted across many electorates. They certainly don’t seem to be too keen on doing anything to help get the poor reestablished.

The excuse that people hide behind is that it’s an awful lot of money to spend on a very vulnerable city. I find the “below sea level” argument against New Orleans not particularly convincing. It’s certainly a good reason not to build a city in the first place, but it doesn’t carry the same weight when you’re talking about rebuilding a city that has been home to hundreds of thousands of people for centuries, that has a big economic value and an even larger cultural one. I’ve yet to hear anyone suggesting that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger should lead his people out of California in anticipation of the inevitable disaster that will ensue when the “big one” hits the state. After all, at least in New Orleans you can build levees to withstand very large hurricanes; no-one has yet invented the staples that can secure the west coast to the rest of the US mainland.

Of course, the $13-$20billion required to build Category 5 levees doesn’t appear such a big ask when compared to the monthly expenditures in Iraq (around $5billion/month) or the tax cuts that have gone almost exclusively to wealthy Americans (around $1.1trillion for the top few percent of individuals and for corporations over the next decade). As usual, it’s all a matter of priorities. One of the starkest examples of this is the following series of photos contrasting the New Orleans levees with their counterparts in other parts of the world:

How the British do it on the Thames:

And the Italians in Venice, with tidal gates which can be raised and lowered:

And the clearly serious-about-protection Dutch:

And, meanwhile, this is the best attempt of the US of A:

While the funding for rebuilding gets knotted up in politics, life in the city remains hard for most people, on hold for many, and unbearable for some. The paediatrician who looked after Lillie’s niece Lisa (and her brother Stephen, before her) committed suicide a few days ago, hanging himself. He leaves behind a wife, who discovered his body, and children. It’s quite possible the almost childless state of post-Katrina New Orleans was too much for him on top of all else. Whatever the reason, I find it disturbing to know that my fellow New Orleanians – this doctor is not the first suicide I’ve heard of – can no longer take it.

To top it off, the current hurricane season has set yet another record by spawning Tropical Storm Gamma, the 24th named storm of the season. Although not a hurricane, Gamma has killed a dozen people in Central America.

In the meantime, I’ve celebrated my 50th birthday and have been working hard on getting as healthy as possible prior to my return to dusty, mouldy, precarious ol’ New Orleans.

Love,

Rose

Comments

[lesbonstemps]

I love the pictures comparing various flood protection systems. Sad, isn't it? The minute Katrina faded from the national news, the U.S. lost the political will to fix the levees and restore the wetlands.

[Rose Vines]

It really is sad. And you're right about the lack of public interest after the initial media frenzy. It makes New Orleans very vulnerable: I don't believe Congress has the gumption nor the integrity to give New Orleans the help it needs now that the public outrage is off the boil.