My Christmas trip to visit my father, now in Austin, also included a few days in New Orleans, to see for myself the devastation that has befallen my hometown. I have to say that images on television or magazine articles don't fully convey the magnitude of destruction here.
While I've taken some video and photographs, they, like those from CNN, will only give another 2-D visual perspective of what has happened here. It was only when I stood on the streets of my old neighborhoods and looked around at the height of the watermarks on the houses that I really got the true sense of what has occurred. I stopped at a friend's house in Lakeview. For miles, this part of town boasted some very nice upper middle-class homes; now detroyed and uninhabitable. At his house, I had to hold an 8" stick over my head to touch the waterline left by the flood.
The repair is slow to start. There are signs posted at every major intersection which advertise home demolition, contracting, mold removal, etc. There's still no electricity in the hardest hit areas, so most major intersections don't even have red lights, only 4-way stops signs.
There are many other areas that are similar, if not worse. I didn't even try to go into St. Benard Parish, as I had heard that it was off limits to sightseers. We stopped to see an aunt who lives on Magazine St., near Jackson Ave. She had over $50k damage to her roof, but no water damage. Apparently, near the river is higher ground, but as you move across St. Charles Ave., it deepens quickly.
I also didn't venture to Metairie; traffic jams are to be avoided. Traffic also prevented us from driving across the lake to view the area where my uncle's house was completely blown away. We heard that a lot of the local population has temporarily relocated to Covington and St. Tammany, commuting in and out of town via the 24 mile Causeway.
A gleam of sunshine in all of this was on Pine St., near Audubon Park. Not only was the home of my first 8 yrs minimally damaged, but the Audubon Park golf course was open, with a few golfers attempting to put aside their troubles and find comfort in its serenity.
I returned to Austin on Christmas Eve, and have had some time to digest all that I saw. Though there is much to consider, my first conclusion is that it will take a few years for New Orleans to rebound, and I am optimistic that the spirit of those folks can't be broken so easily.
See ya'll soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment