New Orleans Can’t Budge From Square One

Over the past week, I traveled around many different areas of Southeast Louisiana. As I gazed upon tremendous amounts of devastation throughout the region, I began to wonder why I hear less griping from people outside of Orleans Parish. Certainly, New Orleans had more than its share of ill fortune, but large portions of other parishes were completely shattered.

Driving through Belle Chasse, the views along Highway 23 appeared similar to those of my pre-Katrina excursions. Many buildings did have blue roofs, but damage seemed minimal. As I drove progressively south, more and more damage to homes and businesses could be readily observed. In Myrtle Grove, where lush woodlands once graced the roadside, the scenery now appeared barren, almost like a desolate, flat, tundra. Once past Myrtle Grove, the picture quickly changed to one of complete destruction. Not one structure remains suitable for human habitation. Many homes, once hundreds of feet away from the curb, were torn apart and pushed onto the side of the road. The bridge near Empire remained closed and drivers were detoured to another road heading south toward Venice. On this route, meager remains of past human tenements could be seen as far as one could stomach the journey.

In Lafitte, where Hurricane Rita, rather than Katrina, proved the destructive forces of nature, the ruin was equally apparent. Nearly everyone in Lafitte experienced some sort of flooding and wind damage. The effects of storm surge could be found especially on the south side of the Goose Bayou Bridge. Past this bridge, many of the poorer fishermen and laborers lived in trailers and mobile homes, even prior to the storm. Trekking through this area, I saw the contents of many of these manufactured homes strewn like paper in a windstorm. Most of the trailers were utterly destroyed. As for the more permanent structures, each sustained, at the least, major flooding. Most families living in this low-lying area lost every personal possession.

St. Bernard Parish’s appearance was much the same. Homes swept away from their foundations, dark waterline-coated overhangs, and an overabundance of other structural defects could be found on nearly every street. The shear amount of residences and businesses affected by Katrina in St. Bernard renders the parish virtually non-existent. When one considers the other parishes impacted, St. Bernard was the most devastated, percentage wise—nearly one hundred per cent.

Finally, I visited Slidell. One of the first subdivisions in Slidell is Eden Isles. Here, every home was inundated by water from Lake Pontchartrain. Once again, some homes could be found totally demolished, left in heaps of rubble; still others were shifted from their foundations, almost guaranteeing eventual demolition. After exiting Eden Isles, I drove down Carr Drive, a side road on the shore of the lake. Every home on this once beautiful street experienced catastrophic damage—some remained as proof, most were wiped away entirely. Evidence of storm surge could be found as far away as Old Town Slidell, an area where antique stores and other novelty shops once dotted the historic streets. Flooding was severe in the old town. Now, all of the antique stores stand empty.

Alas, amongst the decimation lies promise and, indeed, life. In all of these locations, the sounds of power tools and hammers echo through the air. Throughout, people are living on their property making repairs or preparing to rebuild. From Lafitte, where FEMA trailers sit beside destroyed mobile homes, to Eden Isles, where FEMA trailers are positioned on the land of expensive homes, people are making an earnest effort to reconstruct every aspect of their lives. Recovery is not a class issue.

All of the places mentioned in this article share another similarity. Each is either completely or partially outside the protection of a levee system. Everyone living in these affected areas knows that they are at risk of the same fate next year, or at some other time in the future. This being the case, many still made, and are currently making, the choice to rebuild. No leader warned of taking eminent domain of their properties or threatened to take away services from their areas, making a smaller city “footprint.” If any such suggestion was made, the only footprints to be found would be the many on that leader’s back side.

In New Orleans, many neighborhoods still resemble ghost towns. No work is being done and the silence is only disrupted by calls of distant, raucous crows. People are afraid to return and begin renovations. Threats and uncertainty make any move toward recovery a risky undertaking. Unfortunately, apprehension and discouragement seem to be the only true successes for Orleans Parish’s leadership. While many plans are still being floated around, the one that appears closest to approval allows for an individual to rebuild anywhere in the city, with the caveat that his or her property might eventually be forcefully acquired, due to neighborhood population sparsity. This approach certainly would not entice the return of a majority of those affected. Would you want to rehabilitate your property, only to have it taken away and bulldozed?

The advertised rationale for not whole-heartedly rebuilding “flood prone” areas of New Orleans seems moot when considering other municipalities outside of Orleans Parish, such as the ones before mentioned, that have virtually no flood protection at all. In actuality, the pseudo-philanthropic scheme of a “smaller footprint” appears to be simply a method of pandering to the population while sneakily enacting another, sinister, plan. The local administration’s main target is New Orleans East, a segment of the parish that includes some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. I guess when you’re down and out, you get used to being constantly kicked. During the upcoming mayoral election, we can only hope that the kicking shoes will be on their feet.

December 29th marked the four month anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in Southeast Louisiana. Still, many neighborhoods lie dormant without any evidence of life or indication that repairs to the many thousands of residences damaged by the storm will soon be underway. The majority of New Orleans’ residents remain displaced and there seems to be no realistic plan for their return. Though Mayor C. Ray Nagin has traveled to many parts of the country in his post-Katrina tour, he has shown no such initiative to work, here at home. His pleas for residents to return fall on cautiously optimistic ears, but those who do come back find that life here is no bed of roses; in fact, a bed of any kind, or a place to put one, is difficult, if not impossible, to locate.

Bickering between various local governmental entities has stalled the placement of FEMA trailers throughout the city. New Orleans City Council members have maintained that they want to have input on where trailer communities are placed. Mayor Nagin continuously refuses to involve council members, thus creating a stalemate situation. Earlier this month, council members passed, unanimously, an ordinance giving them a say in trailer placements, a measure later vetoed by the mayor. Not to be dissuaded, the council overturned his veto unanimously—legally enacting the ordinance. Think this battle was over? No, the mayor’s legal department issued a statement declaring that only the mayor, not the council, has the right to call the shots in times of emergency. Last week, the mayor made his first real decision following the disaster—to approve the locations of trailer sites throughout the city. In this release, Nagin declared that the “not in my back yard” mentality would be fruitless. Of course, tempers flared among both the city council members and the residents of communities slated for encroachment. Now the Mayor’s Office is taking a cautious step back, putting the city, once again, at step one.

Leadership has been severely lacking throughout Louisiana, but this was the case even before Katrina. This disaster could not have happened during the administrations of any less competent leaders. Prior to Katrina, neither Governor Kathleen Blanco nor Mayor Nagin could point to any sincere successes during their terms in office, at least ones that truly empowered and improved the lives of their poorest constituents. Both talked the talk, but neither did anything more than hold fruitless meetings on important issues. The same sort of inaction by committee is going on today, through Governor Blanco’s Louisiana Recovery Authority and Mayor Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission. Neither team has a true leader and both seem equally dysfunctional. Of course, they contain members of the local aristocracy, who seem to only have their own best interests at heart. Well, this is Louisiana.

So here we are, stagnant at the origin of a long, winding road. Still, no one has drawn a line in the sand and has become entrenched in a leadership role. Both Louisiana’s governor and New Orleans’ mayor seem content to poke a dot in the sand and continuously run around it. Stupefied kingpins will get us nowhere and will only succeed in our ultimate ruination. No one knows exactly where this road will end, but we must, at least, start the journey.