And it's unfair, because I realize many more places than New Orleans
got hit by Katrina... they just weren't as famous.
But New Orleans is the place that sticks in my mind, because I finally got to go there three years ago. We stayed in a beautiful B&B in the garden district; went on a walking tour of one of the old cemeteries which concluded in a visit to a voodoo priestess's home and temple; devoured beignets and drank sweetened coffee at Cafe du Monde; saw several JazzFest shows, including Jack Johnson and Galactic at a beautiful old theater, Charlie Hunter at a crowded and steamy warehouse district club, and Karl Dennison's Tiny Universe at the fairgrounds; ate everything from so-so sushi near the warehouse club to fried fish on Bourbon Street to wonderful French food in the Garden District; and when we were worn out with shlepping around in the heat being tourists, we took a streetcar to a park by the river and just hung out and read for a while, enjoying a (slightly cooler) breeze and watching families around us enjoy their afternoon picnics. I guess all those places are gone now or at least under a lot of water. I wish I could remember all the names.
Some links of interest...
- The Times-Picayune's ongoing newsblog on the crisis
- A great explanation of how levees fail, and what New Orleans can expect as it tries to recover, from somebody over at DailyKos
And this story makes me so angry. From Editor & Publisher:
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Like there's money to pay for this disaster now? Such short-sightedness, and so many lives lost.
Edited to add:
Of course, there's the other stuff I remember from New Orleans. We went for a walk from the B&B in our neighborhood. I remember being shocked to find that only a few blocks away, there were crumbling sidewalks and very ghetto-ey buildings, and very poor people just standing around. It was far worse than the worst areas of Oakland. We didn't feel like we should stick around.
The poorest people were the ones that got stuck in town during this hurricane, because they didn't have the money to leave. Paying $3000 for tickets to get your family to Houston was not an option for them.
