Debate Now Katrina - Ten Years On

[Book of Jeremiah]

A massive cleanup begins... tower of detritus placed at Beauregard Circle, Esplanade at Carrollton, Mid-City, just outside of NOMA (New Orleans Museum of Art) -- for perspective, see the fence at the bottom. It's about five feet.

View attachment 48719​

Unbelievable! That photo is incredible!

 

[Pogo]

Humor gets us through...

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There were refrigerators everywhere in the streets in early October. After five weeks of New Orleans heat and no electricity, everyone arriving was advised to tape our refrigerator door shut and haul it out to the street where it would be picked up. We did, and they did. I don't know anyone who actually opened one up to look inside.

Tom Benson is the owner of the Saints.

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

oh my gosh. Listen, I know this said on title debate now but there is no debate -this was bar none the worst disaster for hurricanes in the history of America - it had to be - what other hurricane displaced so many people and changed so many lives? I cannot think of any. Not a one.

p.s. I hope Tom Benson was not in that refrigerator!

 

[Manonthestreet]

I was in New Orleans on vacation. Stayed at the Windsor Court hotel in CBD. Extended our stay an extra day on a whim. At no point did I see even the slightest concern or prep. Exited via the Causeway Bridge in light traffic, went on up to Graceland. Wife gets call that night from her friend concerned about our whereabouts as Katrina came ashore.

 

[Pogo]

I was in New Orleans on vacation. Stayed at the Windsor Court hotel in CBD. Extended our stay an extra day on a whim. At no point did I see even the slightest concern or prep. Exited via the Causeway Bridge in light traffic, went on up to Graceland. Wife gets call that night from her friend concerned about our whereabouts as Katrina came ashore.

Must have been the week before?

Interesting note about communications... in 2005 when you had a cell phone it connected through your home area code, regardless where you physically were, so if your cellphone area code was 504 (New Orleans) and you had evacuated to 617 (Boston) and were placing a call from there to 312 (Chicago), your call would still shunt down to 504 to make the connection. Since those systems and most of the towers were wiped out, most people's cell phones became effectively useless.

We did figure out that we could get through the severely limited bandwidth problem by texting, which takes far less system resources. You'd text to your loved ones with the number of the landline where you could be reached, and went from there. That was the only time in my life I've ever found a use for text messages.

Have to give big props to Verizon. They stayed on the phone with me working on the problem to get me a working phone, and finally switched me to an entirely new number in Houston, a city I've never lived in. After that the voice calls worked. A few weeks later I called them back and said, "what about my bill?" Their answer was, and I quote, "you don't HAVE a bill".

Today the cell system no longer works that way. I was assured of that a few years back when a big storm was approaching Houston, and I asked them if we were going to have to change it again, but they assured me it no longer switches that way.

 

[rdean]

The storm was bad enough. The real disaster was what happened after.

 

[Manonthestreet]

Week of

 

[Vandalshandle]

I worked for Charity Hospital, and everyone there is under contract on either the before hurricane, or after hurricane shift. Failure to show meant being fired, no exceptions. I was on the post hurricane shift. I chose to go, anyway. We were damned lucky to get a full tank of gas within 2 hours of getting in line. We drove all the way to Pensacola to get a motel room. The traffic was so bad, we never got above 10-15 MPH. There were no restroom facilities on the way. The Rest Areas on the freeway were totally overloaded and trashed.There was no place to stop for food or water. Once we were out of town, the levees broke, and there was no going back, so we moved in with friends in Missouri for almost a month. The poor and infirm, with no cars or credit cards, had no way to get out. Charity Hospital closed after the flood and never reopened.

The Super Bowl was about the only safe place to go. FEMA responded to the emergency with all the speed of a wounded snail. Very few boats were left above water in New Orleans, and it did not seem to occur to anyone to bring them in for a week or two after the flood. FEMA subbed out the flood damage adjustment duties to companies like Allstate, who missed 5 appointments with me over 2 months, before finally showing up after I copied my complaint to them to the LA Insurance commissioner. The people who saved our bacon was the National Guard, who gave out combat rations and pure water at the shopping centers every day, and the Red Cross, who not only immediately replaced all of my maintenance medication (without prescriptions) , but gave us clothing and money for food, while we were waiting to get back into the city, which had been closed. FEMA delivered my trailer 5 1/2 months after the flood. I told them to take it away. Later, it became known that those who lived in them for months were exposed to extreme levels of formaldehyde, which is toxic. When a hurricane hit Haiti, a year later, the US offered them to Haiti. Haiti turned them down. I, personally, became acutely aware of what it is like to live in a third world country. We felt that the USA government had about as much concern for our welfare as they did for Somalians. I can't prove it, but I thought that it seemed quite a coincidence that a city that always voted democratic did not seem to get much attention during a USA republican administration

I am amazed at how opinionated some people are about Katrina who were not withing 500 miles of it.

 

[Pogo]

I worked for Charity Hospital, and everyone there is under contract on either the before hurricane, or after hurricane shift. Failure to show meant being fired, no exceptions. I was on the post hurricane shift. I chose to go, anyway. We were damned lucky to get a full tank of gas within 2 hours of getting in line. We drove all the way to Pensacola to get a motel room. The traffic was so bad, we never got above 10-15 MPH. There were no restroom facilities on the way. The Rest Areas on the freeway were totally overloaded and trashed.There was no place to stop for food or water. Once we were out of town, the levees broke, and there was no going back, so we moved in with friends in Missouri for almost a month. The poor and infirm, with no cars or credit cards, had no way to get out. Charity Hospital closed after the flood and never reopened.

The Super Bowl was about the only safe place to go. FEMA responded to the emergency with all the speed of a wounded snail. Very few boats were left above water in New Orleans, and it did not seem to occur to anyone to bring them in for a week or two after the flood. FEMA subbed out the flood damage adjustment duties to companies like Allstate, who missed 5 appointments with me over 2 months, before finally showing up after I copied my complaint to them to the LA Insurance commissioner. The people who saved our bacon was the National Guard, who gave out combat rations and pure water at the shopping centers every day, and the Red Cross, who not only immediately replaced all of my maintenance medication (without prescriptions) , but gave us clothing and money for food, while we were waiting to get back into the city, which had been closed. FEMA delivered my trailer 5 1/2 months after the flood. I told them to take it away. Later, it became known that those who lived in them for months were exposed to extreme levels of formaldehyde, which is toxic. When a hurricane hit Haiti, a year later, the US offered them to Haiti. Haiti turned them down. I, personally, became acutely aware of what it is like to live in a third world country. We felt that the USA government had about as much concern for our welfare as they did for Somalians. I can't prove it, but I thought that it seemed quite a coincidence that a city that always voted democratic did not seem to get much attention during a USA republican administration

I am amazed at how opinionated some people are about Katrina who were not withing 500 miles of it.

Thanks Vandal. Please watch the political references, but great story. If you have any pictures you can share, those would rock too.

 

[Pogo]

Was just on the phone with the ex-GF reconstructing the memory and there was a very surreal moment...

Sunday morning, frantically packing, getting everything needed, trying to round up the animals, one animal in hand the other at large somewhere, the sky turning an ominous grey, the gravity of the circumstances so thick you could cut it with a knife... and suddenly up the street comes a motorized street vendor, "Mr. Okra", selling vegetables. As if it was like any other day.

I literally froze in my tracks, thought I must be hallucinating.

 

[candycorn]

I was in Operations on the "Operation Dome"/"Reliant City" shelter for the survivors of Katrina. It was amazing that in the expanse of a week, your entire life could be washed away to where your address was nothing more than a letter and a number (as I recall, the letters were the rows of cots, the numbers were the numbers from 3rd Base to 1st Base in the old Astrodome so the cot on row J nearest 3rd base was J1; furtherst was J50 or something like that).

The bleakness was quickly replaced by hope. Over 1800 medical professionals volunteered (I got paid JSYK) to give medical and psychiatric care to the survivors.

Interestingly, A little while after that, we ourselves evacuated due to Hurricane Rita and a whole lot of intentional hooplah on the part of channel 11 and 13 to build hysteria. Damage was almost insultingly minimal in Houston; we lost over 100 people during the evacuation. I always thought the news stations in Houston owed an apology to the town for their intentional sexing up of the threat.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

This thread is a great reminder that mother nature can certainly redirect the course of people's lives in a short period of time.

And when you stack people on top of each other, all dependent upon a city infrastructure.....it's a little scary.

The story of Hector was heartwarming.

I am glad he and Sophie were able to live out their days.