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An apology and condolences to anyone with friends or family who were or are still in New Orleans
September 2nd, 2005 9:45AM
I am drafting this while waiting for my family's flight to our new home in Ohio tomorrow. We've just come through hell and high water (literally) just to reach a point where I might fire up this notebook and draft anything. I've already been composing an outline and notes. Enough has happened to us since last Saturday that I can probably write an entire book. We are extremely lucky to even be alive. Watching the news makes it clearer how unbelieveable it is that we are safe and sound. I know I said I don't watch the news. Currently the news is my only source of information, and after seeing everything for myself firsthand, I know this time they aren't exaggerating. If anything, there are a few officials and media representatives who seem to be trying to paint a prettier picture than the truth. Make no mistake, these liars are condemning survivors by giving them the false hope that if they hold out long enough New Orleans will somehow be fixed. Trust me, from first hand experience, based on what I saw New Orleans will not be an operating city any sooner than six months from now, and that is an extremely optimistic appraisal. I'm not sure if New Orleans will ever recover.
The primary purpose of this post is to apologize for my previous post that I have since removed even though it was written before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. It was written with a cocky, "you don't know what you're talking about" kind of attitude, and I have since been forced to eat those words, almost died multiple times, and put my family at the same risk because of them. I am not the only one who believed that if New Orleans survived Camille it would also survive Katrina. But we were wrong. Whoever left the comment telling me we needed to get out was right. By staying I put my family through much greater danger than was necessary.
I was correct in my assumption that Katrina would not hit New Orleans directly. In fact, as of Monday night, once the storm had passed, it appeared the worst damage that was suffered were trees being uprooted and power being unavailable for at least a week. We had running water, telephone, enough food to survive at least a week, longer if properly rationed, a gas stove, and the basic necessities for survival. What I was not expecting was to get woken by Brigitte because she could hear someone get shot, and several other gunshots throughout the night. I wanted to stay awake with her, but could not - I had stayed awake the night before through the entire storm.
The next morning I saw a flooded front lawn that had previously been dry after Katrina had passed. We learned a levee had broken and Lake Pontchartrain was emptying into the city - as predicted in the links provided by the anonymous comment on the pre-hurricane assumptions post. Nobody expected it. We had thought Katrina had passed, we were safe, power would be restored in about a week, and we would be able to get back to our French Quarter apartment, live poorly until the tourism kicked back in just in time for the Halloween season, and everything would be hunky dorey.
With the breaking of the levee, it slowly became clear that the city was doomed. Plumbing had been torn up throughout the city by the roots of trees knocked over by Katrina - we had running water for a few days but it was compromised - the sewer system of New Orleans had also been torn up by the same trees. The levee could not and still has not been properly sealed, the last I checked. Because we were on high ground we understood that if we were seeing flooding, the water was already too deep to wade through in some places. We were trapped in my employer's home by the rising waters.
By nightfall the first floor of Sidney's home was beginning to fill up with water. We noticed gas was leaking and were forced to shut off the gas lines, taking away our ability to boil the tap-water to make it safer to drink, and taking our ability to prepare much of the food we had stockpiled. The phone - our only communication to the outside world - went dead sometime after midnight thanks to the rising water short-circuiting the phone jacks on the first floor. The water had oil in it, and sewage. I had to wash my feet in the bathtub each time after I went downstairs to retrieve something and bring it upstairs. The only benefit of the flooding was that it made it harder for the looters to come out again, although we periodically heard gunshots in the distance after the sun set.
The only beauty in all of this was being able to see a clear starlit sky and the Milky Way for the first time in the entire seven and a half years I've lived in New Orleans. This was only possible because there were no city lights drowning out the stars by reflecting off the layer of haze constantly over New Orleans.
We escaped only because someone or several someones were watching over us, making sure we were in the right place at the right time to receive help from complete strangers to make it to the next step.
But I'll save that horror story for later.
For now, please accept my apologies. I have been deeply humbled by my experiences, and am incredibly lucky to be alive and well, with my pregnant wife and daughters. At this time I still have no idea whether the others we stayed with have survived and/or escaped since we were rescued by two men in their canoe (we were with Sidney Smith, owner of Haunted History Tours, Inc, Adele, her mother, and our pets). I can only hope that somehow they managed to escape and survived the process, just as I hope that all who were not as fortunate as us managed or will manage to survive and escape New Orleans, and find their loved ones if they were separated in the process. Our prayers go out to you all.
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