My uncle in Houma, in the swamp southwest of New Orleans, where the N.O. Times-Picayune has relocated, was very hard to reach. When you try to call Louisiana these past few days, you just get "All circuits are busy now." He had evacuated to Lake Charles but arrived back yesterday. I finally reached him, and before I was cut off, he said they don't have any electricity (and it's 90 degrees) and can't make cell phone or long distance calls, so he hasn't been able to reach his kids. There was a lot of water damage, but there's drinking water, and the roads west are open. The roads east and to New Orleans are closed and martial law is in effect. The Houma airport is now the only airport with fuel between Mobile and Lake Charles or even Houston.
My uncle believes that the New Orleans disaster is due to incompetence and corrupt officials. Jefferson Parish, the suburban parish for New Orleans (Louisiana is the only state that uses parishes as divisions, rather than counties), has no natural drainage at all. Water would have to flow uphill to leave. New Orleans is surrounded by water-- you have to go over bridges from almost every direction. Even the interstate runs for many miles over swamp. The New Orleans and Jefferson Parish pumps were designed badly, so that they could not work if the electricity went out or if covered by water-- i.e., if they were ever needed. He said the engineers had been warning the officials about those pumps for years.
Everyone in the area has always known that this kind of hurricane would happen sooner or later, but more than 100,000 people still didn't leave when told--partly from unbelievable, illiterate ignorance (the city's public schools are probably the worst in the whole country), but mostly because of poverty and lack of public transportation. Most people in New Orleans wanted to go, but a lot of the poorest people saw no realistic way to leave. Now many of them are going on foot out of the drowned city in the steamy heat.
The fact is that 80% of the black population of New Orleans, a majority of the city, is desperately poor. The subtropical climate allows people to live with essentially third-world conditions and still survive. It's the only city in America where you see so many cars on the side of the road broken down. There is very little trust or communication between the huge poor black majority, which has never had a break since the days of slavery, and the whites. The whites think the blacks in public office are corrupt, at least until the current mayor, who seems to have everyone's respect; the blacks think it's a joke for the whites to talk about corruption when they've had everything their way for centuries. I believe that a couple of years ago the new mayor fired every single employee of the driver's license bureau in the city-- they were ALL on the take. In a lot of ways New Orleans is not really an American city at all.
My uncle thinks it is a distinct possibility that New Orleans will be permanently evacuated. It is geographically so vulnerable, and the long-latent threat hidden by the city's charm and history is now horribly concrete to everyone. It's just so hard to believe the city is gone. But it's just as hard to believe it will ever recover. The houses will be underwater for so long that they will rot. The floodwaters are toxic with all the filth of the Mississippi River, which drains half the U.S. (everyone who can afford it drinks bottled water). And it could happen again next year. Who would move back?
All those beautiful, lush buildings, courtyards, gardens, fountains under water. Maybe the whole surreal lovely city, "the land of dreamy dreams," abandoned forever and its quirky, poetic population scattered, to be swallowed by mainstream television America.
It makes me wonder about other places I love that are too close to the water, starting with Venice. Venice, like New Orleans, is constantly threatened by flooding and incompetence, but people always said, well, the worst will happen some day, but probably not in my time. Après moi, le déluge. But now the déluge has happened to one of my favorite places in the world. I feel desperately sad about it.
Comments