September 18th, 2005
En route to Belle Chasse, we noticed that the hurricane damage got worse as we headed east from Thibodaux. The first time I saw a broken window, I whipped up my camera and took 5 shots of it. I was later to find that broken windows of standing structures got rare as we got closer to the eye of the hurricane. Rubbles instead of homes became more common. The scene just got grimmer. Those photos of broken windows were nothing compared to what lay ahead of me in the days to come. Here and there, we’d see businesses completely rummaged and looted. Dollar store, Lazyboy furniture store, even Burger King was not spared. Such times you don’t wonder about the integrity of such people as much as you do about their sanity. Running out of a store with a sofa tucked under your arm when most of the town is flooded comes in close contention to hijackers shooting the pilot before the landing.
There was a huge queue (at least 4 blocks long) to get into Walmart at 5 am and get supplies. Walmart employees were letting in people in small batches to control the crowd. They had armed personnel to assist them incase pandemonium broke. If you are lucky, you could be done with shopping for milk and bread in 8 hours (if the supplies last). Traffic lights were shattered, so most of the times at the intersections, we had to make an quick judgment and drive on hoping no one would slam us from the sides.
I-90 East took us over a bridge where we caught sight of New Orleans downtown with the superdome dominating the skyline on the left. It was stripped off its white roof. The tall neighboring buildings stood intact. On closer observation, the windows were all shattered and parts of the structure damaged. As I look at the city that prided itself to be the biggest party locale in the world, I couldn’t help the shiver from running down my spine. Not a soul in sight; the town was dead. ‘You should have come here before Katrina,’ said Matt. I don’t know if I could take it if I had.We crossed the Intercostal canal and we entered Belle Chase. There was a sign that said- Katrina has done her worst, now let us do our best.
We arrived at the Belle Chasse EOC (Emergency Operations Center) by 8 am. The two hour drive was going to kill us for sure. The EOC was swarming with the military (National Guard), Red Cross, Salvation Army, Army Corp of Engineers (USACE), Environmental Restoration(ER), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in spite of the day being a Sunday. We walked into the parish government office and the thing that struck me was boxes and boxes of food and water lying around. Food isn’t going to be a problem for us, I thought. A few clueless displaced residents walked in and out looking for answers. Some yelled and some cried. Some spoke to us thinking we could help. All we could do was listen, and say, ‘We understand.’ Did we really?
The parish president looked completely stressed out as he was giving announcements to his citizens in the radio to remain calm and help was on its way. He assured them that the temporary housing would be in place in two weeks. I guess that’ll be us doing that. I’m glad he is doing all the promising.We got our act together pretty soon. Roger was elected by us to lead the Strike Team in Plaquemines Parish. We started our work by scouting around for sites where we could place trailers. Some of the land would be donated by property owners and some would be leased by the government. We located a bunch of potential sites that day and at the same time got familiar with the parish we would be working in for a month or more.
Plaquemines Parish is a narrow strip of land south of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi river. From here, it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi, the largest river in the US, runs through the middle of this peninsula. The parish is divided by the river into the east bank and the west bank. The west bank has got more residents and businesses. The main industry is deep-sea fishing, geese- hunting, oil rigs and citrus plantations. Belle Chasse is in the north and Venice is in the south, 100 miles apart. Low income people lived in the south. Both these cities are in the west bank. Most of this parish used to be bayous or marshy mangroves that were converted to land by pumping out all the water and constructing levees to protect the waters from flooding. Levees are embankments or dykes 15-20 feet high made of nothing but soil. There are levees that are built all along Mississippi river and there are levees are the built along the Gulf of Mexico to create a bathtub like effect. When you drive from north to south on Highway 23 (the only road in this Parish), you are flanked by levees on both sides.
Plaquemines Parish was the first to be hit by Katrina and the last to see any kind of help. The people are quite bitter here though no cases of shooting were reported (St Bernards parish and New Orleans Ninth Ward saw a lot of crime). The population we are dealing with is 30,000 out of which more than half the people lost their homes due to the hurricane. The death toll was not much because everyone was evacuated. It was almost a month after the hurricane and this area felt like a war zone. Miles south of Belle Chasse, I heard it just got worse.
Belle Chasse was still not fully functional even though the damage was not pronounced. The houses belonged to the upper class and the ground elevation was higher. The roofs were torn apart and there was flooding in most parts. Trees were snapped in half or uprooted from the ground. Most of the houses were not livable, even if it looked great from outside. Mold and stale food in the fridges plagued every house. Refrigerators and furniture were sealed with tape and thrown outside for the garbage truck to pick up. The whole house had to be emptied... every possession thrown out. On a normal day, I can imagine this place to be actually pretty with its colonial style houses, like the one of Mr.Smith. He is a rich retired army colonel who lost almost all his furniture and collectibles (picked up from various countries he visited). He had some crazy stories to tell regarding how they escaped from the hurricane just in time. His wife was very upset regarding their missing pet and horses, but was so gracious to offer us something to eat and drink.I had lunch at the church where Red Cross was giving out free food. Felt weird taking food away from some poor soul, but I guess we had no other choice. Had to pull out meat bits before devouring the food. Of all the options I had, being picky wasn’t one.
Late that afternoon, we were told that Roger’s help was needed badly in Jackson,Mississippi and that he’d have to leave us. So we lost our chief the first day itself. We continued to work, making sure the sites we looked at were viable options. Some of the leads we had were under water or were contaminated. Some were in the floodplain and could not be used. But we kept looking and filling forms and clicking pictures.
The only way to locate property in that place is by taking someone local along with you. No GPS will figure out what they are talking about when they say the grey house on stilts 9 miles down from the red barn. You must understand that this place is as rural as it can get and knowing an address to a location is blasphemy. Mapquest can go to hell. Everyone here knows everyone else. ‘That used to be Kelly and Jim’s house’, pointed out Andy, my local guide, to an area where I could see only the stairs that probably would have led to a cozy home a month ago. Kelly and Jim were going through an ugly divorce and were trying to divide everything in the house. Now that the flood has claimed everything, they can start from stratch- he said sagely. No more bickering as to who gets what. Katrina was like their lawyer; she took everything. ‘And do you see that house with a tree trunk coming out of the window? That used to be a restaurant I would go to eat everyday. Mr. Wilson, he had the best crawfish and jambalaya.’ My guide must be either numb to this or really brave… he didn’t even wince when he showed me what remained of his own house. Just the roof that crashed on the ground.’ I hope to get my son’s bike from this mess. He was very attached to it.’ That is all he had to say about the disastrous scene and I had no words to console him.
We drove further south to Port Sulphur, where I remained grim and speechless as my guide pointed out certain salient features of previous landscape. A golf course, a school, a marina. Many a times he himself couldn’t recognize the place and would pause to think. We drove through a landscape that I can never erase from my memory. From patches of color in the north, this place became one uniform shade of dirty brown. Houses on top of cars. Cars on top of trees or floating in murky water. Trees fallen on electric lines. Dead cows on roofs. There were houses on middle of the road that had just floated away and we had to drive around it. Debri and snakes everywhere. A Shell gas station completely devastated. The ‘S’ from ‘SHELL’ had been knocked off and that aptly described this place. I take that back; I think hell would look better. The stench, if I can even put it in words, was empowering... collection of blown out sewer lines, dead carcasses, maggots, stale food, oil slicks. Mosquitoes swarmed this area. We had fighter jets constantly spray mosquito repellents. The only problem with that being, it killed the bees and stopped pollination. Most of the vegetation was dead and decomposed due to the area being under 12 feet of saline water. Every possession was plastered with inches of filthy soil.. clothes, vessels, furniture etc. The houses were marked with the number of dead that were found. It was an eerie sight and highly eye opening. When someone says, these guys have lost everything… they mean it.
Every now and then, like a rainbow behind the stormy clouds, you would find a personal belonging intact…whether it was the photo of two friends or a kid’s toy or a bag that was hanging from a tree with its zipper pulled tight. Or like this church that was the only standing structure for miles and miles. Or like this house in which everything was topsy-turvy except a spice rack in the kitchen with the spice bottles standing untouched as if to say- there is still hope.
En route to Belle Chasse, we noticed that the hurricane damage got worse as we headed east from Thibodaux. The first time I saw a broken window, I whipped up my camera and took 5 shots of it. I was later to find that broken windows of standing structures got rare as we got closer to the eye of the hurricane. Rubbles instead of homes became more common. The scene just got grimmer. Those photos of broken windows were nothing compared to what lay ahead of me in the days to come. Here and there, we’d see businesses completely rummaged and looted. Dollar store, Lazyboy furniture store, even Burger King was not spared. Such times you don’t wonder about the integrity of such people as much as you do about their sanity. Running out of a store with a sofa tucked under your arm when most of the town is flooded comes in close contention to hijackers shooting the pilot before the landing.
There was a huge queue (at least 4 blocks long) to get into Walmart at 5 am and get supplies. Walmart employees were letting in people in small batches to control the crowd. They had armed personnel to assist them incase pandemonium broke. If you are lucky, you could be done with shopping for milk and bread in 8 hours (if the supplies last). Traffic lights were shattered, so most of the times at the intersections, we had to make an quick judgment and drive on hoping no one would slam us from the sides.
I-90 East took us over a bridge where we caught sight of New Orleans downtown with the superdome dominating the skyline on the left. It was stripped off its white roof. The tall neighboring buildings stood intact. On closer observation, the windows were all shattered and parts of the structure damaged. As I look at the city that prided itself to be the biggest party locale in the world, I couldn’t help the shiver from running down my spine. Not a soul in sight; the town was dead. ‘You should have come here before Katrina,’ said Matt. I don’t know if I could take it if I had.We crossed the Intercostal canal and we entered Belle Chase. There was a sign that said- Katrina has done her worst, now let us do our best.
We arrived at the Belle Chasse EOC (Emergency Operations Center) by 8 am. The two hour drive was going to kill us for sure. The EOC was swarming with the military (National Guard), Red Cross, Salvation Army, Army Corp of Engineers (USACE), Environmental Restoration(ER), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in spite of the day being a Sunday. We walked into the parish government office and the thing that struck me was boxes and boxes of food and water lying around. Food isn’t going to be a problem for us, I thought. A few clueless displaced residents walked in and out looking for answers. Some yelled and some cried. Some spoke to us thinking we could help. All we could do was listen, and say, ‘We understand.’ Did we really?
The parish president looked completely stressed out as he was giving announcements to his citizens in the radio to remain calm and help was on its way. He assured them that the temporary housing would be in place in two weeks. I guess that’ll be us doing that. I’m glad he is doing all the promising.We got our act together pretty soon. Roger was elected by us to lead the Strike Team in Plaquemines Parish. We started our work by scouting around for sites where we could place trailers. Some of the land would be donated by property owners and some would be leased by the government. We located a bunch of potential sites that day and at the same time got familiar with the parish we would be working in for a month or more.
Plaquemines Parish is a narrow strip of land south of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi river. From here, it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi, the largest river in the US, runs through the middle of this peninsula. The parish is divided by the river into the east bank and the west bank. The west bank has got more residents and businesses. The main industry is deep-sea fishing, geese- hunting, oil rigs and citrus plantations. Belle Chasse is in the north and Venice is in the south, 100 miles apart. Low income people lived in the south. Both these cities are in the west bank. Most of this parish used to be bayous or marshy mangroves that were converted to land by pumping out all the water and constructing levees to protect the waters from flooding. Levees are embankments or dykes 15-20 feet high made of nothing but soil. There are levees that are built all along Mississippi river and there are levees are the built along the Gulf of Mexico to create a bathtub like effect. When you drive from north to south on Highway 23 (the only road in this Parish), you are flanked by levees on both sides.
Plaquemines Parish was the first to be hit by Katrina and the last to see any kind of help. The people are quite bitter here though no cases of shooting were reported (St Bernards parish and New Orleans Ninth Ward saw a lot of crime). The population we are dealing with is 30,000 out of which more than half the people lost their homes due to the hurricane. The death toll was not much because everyone was evacuated. It was almost a month after the hurricane and this area felt like a war zone. Miles south of Belle Chasse, I heard it just got worse.
Belle Chasse was still not fully functional even though the damage was not pronounced. The houses belonged to the upper class and the ground elevation was higher. The roofs were torn apart and there was flooding in most parts. Trees were snapped in half or uprooted from the ground. Most of the houses were not livable, even if it looked great from outside. Mold and stale food in the fridges plagued every house. Refrigerators and furniture were sealed with tape and thrown outside for the garbage truck to pick up. The whole house had to be emptied... every possession thrown out. On a normal day, I can imagine this place to be actually pretty with its colonial style houses, like the one of Mr.Smith. He is a rich retired army colonel who lost almost all his furniture and collectibles (picked up from various countries he visited). He had some crazy stories to tell regarding how they escaped from the hurricane just in time. His wife was very upset regarding their missing pet and horses, but was so gracious to offer us something to eat and drink.I had lunch at the church where Red Cross was giving out free food. Felt weird taking food away from some poor soul, but I guess we had no other choice. Had to pull out meat bits before devouring the food. Of all the options I had, being picky wasn’t one.
Late that afternoon, we were told that Roger’s help was needed badly in Jackson,Mississippi and that he’d have to leave us. So we lost our chief the first day itself. We continued to work, making sure the sites we looked at were viable options. Some of the leads we had were under water or were contaminated. Some were in the floodplain and could not be used. But we kept looking and filling forms and clicking pictures.
The only way to locate property in that place is by taking someone local along with you. No GPS will figure out what they are talking about when they say the grey house on stilts 9 miles down from the red barn. You must understand that this place is as rural as it can get and knowing an address to a location is blasphemy. Mapquest can go to hell. Everyone here knows everyone else. ‘That used to be Kelly and Jim’s house’, pointed out Andy, my local guide, to an area where I could see only the stairs that probably would have led to a cozy home a month ago. Kelly and Jim were going through an ugly divorce and were trying to divide everything in the house. Now that the flood has claimed everything, they can start from stratch- he said sagely. No more bickering as to who gets what. Katrina was like their lawyer; she took everything. ‘And do you see that house with a tree trunk coming out of the window? That used to be a restaurant I would go to eat everyday. Mr. Wilson, he had the best crawfish and jambalaya.’ My guide must be either numb to this or really brave… he didn’t even wince when he showed me what remained of his own house. Just the roof that crashed on the ground.’ I hope to get my son’s bike from this mess. He was very attached to it.’ That is all he had to say about the disastrous scene and I had no words to console him.
We drove further south to Port Sulphur, where I remained grim and speechless as my guide pointed out certain salient features of previous landscape. A golf course, a school, a marina. Many a times he himself couldn’t recognize the place and would pause to think. We drove through a landscape that I can never erase from my memory. From patches of color in the north, this place became one uniform shade of dirty brown. Houses on top of cars. Cars on top of trees or floating in murky water. Trees fallen on electric lines. Dead cows on roofs. There were houses on middle of the road that had just floated away and we had to drive around it. Debri and snakes everywhere. A Shell gas station completely devastated. The ‘S’ from ‘SHELL’ had been knocked off and that aptly described this place. I take that back; I think hell would look better. The stench, if I can even put it in words, was empowering... collection of blown out sewer lines, dead carcasses, maggots, stale food, oil slicks. Mosquitoes swarmed this area. We had fighter jets constantly spray mosquito repellents. The only problem with that being, it killed the bees and stopped pollination. Most of the vegetation was dead and decomposed due to the area being under 12 feet of saline water. Every possession was plastered with inches of filthy soil.. clothes, vessels, furniture etc. The houses were marked with the number of dead that were found. It was an eerie sight and highly eye opening. When someone says, these guys have lost everything… they mean it.
Every now and then, like a rainbow behind the stormy clouds, you would find a personal belonging intact…whether it was the photo of two friends or a kid’s toy or a bag that was hanging from a tree with its zipper pulled tight. Or like this church that was the only standing structure for miles and miles. Or like this house in which everything was topsy-turvy except a spice rack in the kitchen with the spice bottles standing untouched as if to say- there is still hope.
3 comments:
HEY wolfie! Of course I remember you..you r the dumbo who called me Archana Puran Singh! grr.. anyway, how come you stopped blogging and are calling yourself someone? Good to see you..how is shaadi-shuda life?
you are right, Iam still in the process of finishing up with this writing. how do i let you know if you dont even check your mail saale?
Beyond the laugh riots, some serious stuff.
Nice to know you made a difference.
thanks ?!
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