After several months of no days off other than weekends and July 4th, we headed to New Orleans today for a long weekend. I thought the blog might be a good place to answer the questions that people have been asking that know I was coming. It seems everyone wants a firsthand observation of what the city is like, post Katrina, without the media bias. I’ll do my best to convey what I saw during my visit.

A little background, I’ve been coming to New Orleans at least once a year since about 1995. I love my trips here–the city has so much character which makes it very endearing. Some of the finest food I have ever eaten was done right here in New Orleans, both in the quarter as well as other places like downtown or the Garden District. Many of the best known chefs in the country either got their start in the Big Easy or have built their own little empire there. So it should really come as no surprise that when I head here every Labor Day, my taste buds are tingling from the time I make my flight arrangements until I arrive. My annual Labor Day trek was interrupted in 2004 due to a hurricane hitting Orlando that weekend and I didn’t want to leave the house unprotected in case there was damage. In 2005, of course, was Katrina so I stayed home that year as well. I’m very glad that this year the weather has cooperated and we arrived as planned.

So, flying into MSY, things looked pretty much like they always have, however you can see lots of heavy equipment around the levies and pumping stations. The blue tarps were scattered about the city as you can see on this photo out the window of the plane. Once on the ground, it was obvious that the airport wasn’t as busy as holiday weekends we have travelled into the city in the past. Which does remind me, when we booked the hotel room about a month before our trip, prices were great and every hotel seemed to have rooms available. A couple of years ago, booking less than three months out would mean getting stuck with something outside of the Quarter, and for the prime locations right in the heart of things, one needed to book several months early. Not this year, however.

When we left the airport, we drove down the highway where there was some evidence of high water marks on some of the buildings, but things still didn’t look as bad as I was expecting. Then we pulled into Lake View. This area was essentially “Ground Zero” when the 17th Street Canal levee broke. At first, you notice all of the lush vegetation, but at closer look, it becomes obvious that the shrubs and bushes that had been there before were killed by the storm and now are just twig sculptures providing support for the weeds to take over.

The next thing that you can’t help but notice is that every single building as an “X” spray painted on the front. The mark can be in any color, apparently in whatever color was available, and it is accompanied by some other markings as well. The marks were placed on the homes by the search and rescue teams and contain information about the search. This picture is an example of what they all look like. At the top of the X is the date the search occurred. Notice that this one was 9-22, the levee broke on 8-30, so this was over three weeks later. The left quadrant shows the team that did the search. The most grave number is the number on the bottom. This shows how many people were found it the structure. Thank God, most of them were zeroes, but we did see a few with “1″ or “2″ which are rather sobering. There were many that had a “0″ here, but below that “1 Dog DOA” or something similar. This sign was a little more optimistic for the animals as it indicated there were two dogs found which someone watered (often they said “fed and watered”) and that they need picked up.

Here is where the breech actually occurred which has now been reinforced with new pilings driven 70′ into the ground. God willing, such an event will never happen again. Across the street, we saw where a house had been picked up off its foundation and floated into the house next door which, of course, knocked it off its foundation as well. The signs hawking demolition and trash hauling are everywhere. From what we were told, the debris was piled up in the medians of the parkways until just recently when it was hauled away. There is still quite a bit of debris in the neighborhoods like this one where cleanup is slowly getting underway.

In front of many of the homes where people are rebuilding stands an unmarked white trailer. These are the FEMA trailers that provide housing for many of the people that are living in these hard hit areas now. The trailers frequently have a labyrinth of PVC pipes connecting the trailer to water and sewer. There is usually evidence of lots of work going on in the homes behind the trailers. A few blocks away we saw a little “city” of these FEMA trailers, all lined up in rows looking like a little white trailer park.

We also saw things like boats on the side of neighborhood streets, far from the water, and cars still covered with trees or other rubbish. And on almost every home is the tale-tell watermark. Considering how water will wick up walls and saturate virtually everything, one can just imagine what these homes must be like inside.

Here is a shot that shows the cranes working on the levee close to where the breach occurred. There is obviously massive amounts of work going on around the city. Even late into the evening on Saturday night, we saw crews working on buildings, streets, etc. trying to get things “back to normal.” It will still be a long haul.

I’ll write more later as this post has gone on long enough. It is very, very good to be back!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 7:26 am and is filed under travel, Vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.