Louisiana Hurricanes (not the football team)
The following passages are re-worked excerpts from personal journal entries. After what I've seen and heard over the last few days, I felt they were warranted.
[Edited for clarification 3:00pm CST, February 26, 2009]
This first entry was written following a breakdown or "freak out", as I like to call it, concerning everything I had witnessed during and after Hurricane Katrina. Being a resident of south Louisiana, I did not watch the events unfold on a television screen far away from the action (the exception being WDSU. Thank $deity for WDSU!). For myself and my loved ones, everything came to pass over frantic telephone calls and various evacuation "shelters".
My best friend, a child of NOLA born and raised, was a nursing student at the time. The call went out for as many capable volunteers as could be found to report to the Cajundome and assist with incoming evacuees from the waters that had engulfed the city we loved. We answered, and on the overnight shift she assisted in the care of the sick and infirm while I was stationed at an "intake" post where all arrivals were "processed".
The events described below are just a small sample of what we dealt with in our many days of volunteering before the Red Cross huffed in and clusterfucked the whole operation.
This second entry came about following a viewing of the February 25th episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". I suppose I should thank Mr. Stewart for making me want to hit him because he drove home what the rest of the US seems to think of south Louisiana.
There is far more to Louisiana than New Orleans. Katrina's scope was far more than New Orleans. I can't think of many people outside the affected area that can identify Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian or Long Beach. Utter those names to most of the nation and the nation is clueless that these are the names of the communities in southern Mississippi where countless lives were lost and vast stretches of land were wiped completely clean by the storm's fury. No one remembers these people and places because they are too busy making fun of New Orleans.
Hurricane Katrina herself did not do insanely large amounts of damage to New Orleans. Residents in the city as the hurricane came through reported dry streets and no more damage than any other hurricane in the first few hours after landfall. The damage done to the city occurred when the levee system failed. That damage was compounded, many believe, when the Army Corp of Engineers called for the pumps that had kept the city dry throughout the storm to be shut down. The pumps themselves were then flooded and rendered inoperable for weeks, long after the levee breeches had been patched.
Evacuations of the city failed due to governmental failure. The Louisiana state government had already issued several unnecessary evacuations earlier in the season for storms that lacked both the strength and the track to pose a true threat to the area. This lead to a "cry wolf" situation where the older residents, who had survived Betsy and Camille, left in the earlier evacuations but found themselves unwilling to believe in danger again. When their elders refused to leave their homes, many stayed against their better judgment, hoping to provide assistance and protection should the need arise.
Evacuations also failed due to their massive impact on family budgets. I have kept track of how much my family of five spends on a single evacuation. The average is $1800USD, more than a third of our family's net monthly income and more than our monthly mortgage payment. That number includes only food and transport, as we are lucky enough to have family outside the "cone of uncertainty" who are willing to house us until we can return home. The cost for other families includes added travel to an available hotel in addition to the cost of the hotel itself. It is not unusual for a single family to spend more than $3000USD on a single evacuation. In the end, each family has to decide for itself when the risk justifies the cost to their household.
Finally, I'd like to ask where the proponents of abandoning coastal Louisiana expect us to live. I'd like to ask them to name me one area of the country that is not at risk due to tornado, blizzard, wildfire, hurricane, volcanic eruption or earthquake. The way I see it, the residents of coastal Louisiana are the smart ones. We've settled in an area where, up to a week beforehand, we are
armed with the information of when to expect our disaster and how extensive the damage may be. We can then decide for ourselves to stay or go. We actually have some experience in this area, and just because one storm caught us by surprise does not make us fools.
There's so much more I want to say, but just can't find the words, so I'll simply provide a link to this rant's required reading 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose.
[Edited for clarification 3:00pm CST, February 26, 2009]
This first entry was written following a breakdown or "freak out", as I like to call it, concerning everything I had witnessed during and after Hurricane Katrina. Being a resident of south Louisiana, I did not watch the events unfold on a television screen far away from the action (the exception being WDSU. Thank $deity for WDSU!). For myself and my loved ones, everything came to pass over frantic telephone calls and various evacuation "shelters".
My best friend, a child of NOLA born and raised, was a nursing student at the time. The call went out for as many capable volunteers as could be found to report to the Cajundome and assist with incoming evacuees from the waters that had engulfed the city we loved. We answered, and on the overnight shift she assisted in the care of the sick and infirm while I was stationed at an "intake" post where all arrivals were "processed".
The events described below are just a small sample of what we dealt with in our many days of volunteering before the Red Cross huffed in and clusterfucked the whole operation.
Re: Saturday night/Sunday morning's freak out.
It would be easy to shrug it off as being a drunken ass but I can't. I royally freaked out. For crying out loud, I texted [person] in the middle of it, in the middle of the night, just to reach out for someone who might have the slightest clue about the magnitude of what I'd witnessed. That bitch was nearly four years ago. I didn't have that large of a part to play in the events that unfolded, but I'm not over it. I'm not over holding an old man's hand as his life slipped away. I'm not over children who should be laughing and playing clustered together in whispers and haunted looks more befitting a funeral parlor. I'm not over cutting the reeking clothes off a young mother whose eyes don't reflect that she is registering anything around her while her three small, frightened children cling to her body in silent desperation. I am not fucking over it. Who the hell could be?
This second entry came about following a viewing of the February 25th episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". I suppose I should thank Mr. Stewart for making me want to hit him because he drove home what the rest of the US seems to think of south Louisiana.
- All of Louisiana is New Orleans. Seriously, check the map. There is nothing else here. Absolutely all of Louisiana's population is contained within metropolitan New Orleans.
- No one in Louisiana can get by without sticking their hand out and crying "Katrina!"
- Hurricanes hit Louisiana all the time.
- Louisiana is populated by morons. (I have to give partial credit here since a large portion of the population bears this out on a daily basis.)
- New Orleans was the only location affected by Hurricane Katrina.
I sit here wanting to throw up. After all that has happened, after all that we've been through, Hurricane Katrina is a punchline. I lay blame both on Bobby Jindal for pulling the Katrina card in an attempt to further his own politics and on the tasteless writers across the nation who took the bait. I'm ashamed of Jindal and embarrassed by his actions. I'm wounded by those, who sat watching their television sets far from the scene as it all unfolded, that think they are informed enough to criticize us, the survivors, while saying things to us that they would not dream of uttering to the residents of Greensburg, Kansas.
There is far more to Louisiana than New Orleans. Katrina's scope was far more than New Orleans. I can't think of many people outside the affected area that can identify Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian or Long Beach. Utter those names to most of the nation and the nation is clueless that these are the names of the communities in southern Mississippi where countless lives were lost and vast stretches of land were wiped completely clean by the storm's fury. No one remembers these people and places because they are too busy making fun of New Orleans.
Hurricane Katrina herself did not do insanely large amounts of damage to New Orleans. Residents in the city as the hurricane came through reported dry streets and no more damage than any other hurricane in the first few hours after landfall. The damage done to the city occurred when the levee system failed. That damage was compounded, many believe, when the Army Corp of Engineers called for the pumps that had kept the city dry throughout the storm to be shut down. The pumps themselves were then flooded and rendered inoperable for weeks, long after the levee breeches had been patched.
Evacuations of the city failed due to governmental failure. The Louisiana state government had already issued several unnecessary evacuations earlier in the season for storms that lacked both the strength and the track to pose a true threat to the area. This lead to a "cry wolf" situation where the older residents, who had survived Betsy and Camille, left in the earlier evacuations but found themselves unwilling to believe in danger again. When their elders refused to leave their homes, many stayed against their better judgment, hoping to provide assistance and protection should the need arise.
Evacuations also failed due to their massive impact on family budgets. I have kept track of how much my family of five spends on a single evacuation. The average is $1800USD, more than a third of our family's net monthly income and more than our monthly mortgage payment. That number includes only food and transport, as we are lucky enough to have family outside the "cone of uncertainty" who are willing to house us until we can return home. The cost for other families includes added travel to an available hotel in addition to the cost of the hotel itself. It is not unusual for a single family to spend more than $3000USD on a single evacuation. In the end, each family has to decide for itself when the risk justifies the cost to their household.
Finally, I'd like to ask where the proponents of abandoning coastal Louisiana expect us to live. I'd like to ask them to name me one area of the country that is not at risk due to tornado, blizzard, wildfire, hurricane, volcanic eruption or earthquake. The way I see it, the residents of coastal Louisiana are the smart ones. We've settled in an area where, up to a week beforehand, we are
armed with the information of when to expect our disaster and how extensive the damage may be. We can then decide for ourselves to stay or go. We actually have some experience in this area, and just because one storm caught us by surprise does not make us fools.
There's so much more I want to say, but just can't find the words, so I'll simply provide a link to this rant's required reading 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose.
Labels: disgust, louisiana, politics, television
posted by wlturland at
2:07 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home