Hurricane LoveI really do intend to blog out some of my experiences of the past week, but I really have been too distracted as of late to really put down all that I intend to say. I'll get to it soon, but work is hectic and summer is almost ending.
But I did put together something at the request of another friend in response to the
Spike Lee documentary on Hurrican Katrina. I haven't seen the movie, but was asked to post my perspective of New Orleans a year after the hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit, so I am posting that:
I'll preface all that I say by the statement that I can only speak from what I have personally seen. I've been down to New Orleans twice (December '05, August '06) and going back in December '06. If anyone else wants to go, let me know.
The city of New Orleans itself seems to have recovered for the most part. We visited the French quarter and it is clean and functional. There are still restaurants and shops that haven't opened yet, and I assume that's because tourism hasn't been fully restored. But people still come, and there's musicians and artists and dancing in the streets.
The lower 9th Ward is a different story, and much of it still looks like what I saw over sixmonths ago. They aren't even attempting to restore much of it and are bulldozing whole neighborhoods. The 9th Ward is probably the poorest part of New Orleans.
Our team worked in Saint Bernard Parish, which is east of New Orleans and about 50 miles west of the ocean. It's recovering but slowly. We've worked to clean/mud out houses for Caucasians, African Americans, and even Spanish Cajuns. Talking to them and then hearing from the "political and social leaders" of our country is enough to make one vomit. The people of Saint Bernard's Parish seem to have a wider and more honest view of who's to blame and have a good sense of humor about it. There's also a frustration with the insurance companies. The area is above sea level, so the insurance agencies were able to convince people to forego flood insurance. The insurance agencies are now claiming that the floods caused the damage, not the hurricane, so they won't pay to clear out and detoxify homes, just rebuilding.
Everyone there has a story about themselves or someone they know packing up and moving out 2 days early and knowing people who stayed behind, listening to the radio. One guy we talked to watched it come in on the radar and finally decided to get out of Dodge at 5:30am. He had to stop his wife from trying to pack up the whole house. This tells me that people had enough forewarning to make a personal decision on leaving or staying behind.
America currently is suffering from this disease that selects an object of scorn and attaches all sorts of blame to it. Honestly there's portions of every group that seem to be doing it whether they Christian, Atheist, Homosexual, black, Republican, Apple enthusiast, etc. It's scary in the sense that it's similar to what Hitler did to the Jews. A crass and offensive comparison, I know but I think it starts with such generalizations. In this case everything is George Bush's (or his parties) fault. The people that I have talked to in New Orleans don't necessarily see it that way. They are frustrated with FEMA (t-shirts now read: Fix Everything My Ass) and their local government (t-shirts that show Ray Nagin, Michael Brown, etc. as the new MOD Squad). Most of St. Bernard's parish survived the hurricane, it was the flood that was the problem. After the hurricane a 30 foot wave crashed over the levee's and flooded the area up to 15 feet, which drained to 8 feet and then stayed there for 2 weeks. Even if the levee's held, I don't think it would have helped much, and may have kept the water in longer.
Who's to blame for the levee's? Not sure, but the bigger problem was that the storm surge traveled up the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal which was built for commerce. Hurricane Betsy (1965) was a pretty powerful storm but the damage due to flooding was far less because the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal wasn't as wide as it is now due to erosion. Again, the devastation is a compounded problem, larger then any one man, governing body or generation.
Even so, in rebuilding there are problems on the local level. New Orleans is one of the most corrupt cities in America and little is done without the appropriate bribes. We had an issue back in December where we couldn't start work on a house until we "greased the skids" before hand. The local inspectors were dirty, it was the state and federal inspectors that we had no problems working with.
But the people themselves are coping. There's about 7,000 people living in the Parish now and 20,000 commuting each day. All of the government agencies that were helping and the majority of the charity groups have pulled out, it's pretty much just the faith-based groups that are sticking around, and the people are appreciative. We had all kinds of invitations to come sit with people, use their pool, us their shade, whatever they had available. People would drive up to the work site, and come out and thank us all for what we were doing. No racism, no prejudice, it was humanity pulling together, and it was awesome. It actually made it hard to want to come back and "plug into normal life" once more.
Part of the problem is that our brains are too small. There are people making assumptions that what happened in New Orleans is the same that happened in St. Bernard’s Parish, is the same that happened in Mississippi and is the same that happened in Alabama. That's just not the case, every parish and county seemed to have a different set of circumstances that made it difficult to establish some sort of cookie-cutter solution. Federal government could give supplies and man-power, but it would have to be the local government that made decisions and implemented any sort of evacuation or preparatory plan. Apparently Spike Lee, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others don't quite get that. Or worse, they get it but it doesn't help their agenda. That is a judgment on my part, but I still stand by my statement that our brains are too small. That's just an observation. What the world thought it saw on those days is may not be what truly happened. The news media did a horrible job covering the event and just focused on the more "sensational aspects" as a ploy to grab ratings. Often times they were unaware of what location they were actually filming and blanketed whole cities with their conclusive commentary. I've got the same problem too, I just can't fathom all that went on and no one likes to admit that there are powers that exist out there (intelligent or not) that are even beyondthe scope and abilities of what is the most powerful entity in their own existence: their country. Blaming someone make people comfortable because they have a thin facade of control.
I was just reading the description of Spike Lee's documentary. Although the words are stirring, it doesn't sound like a fair representation. To see the phrase "Lee was so intensely committed to his vision of the project..." to me paints a picture of someone who won't let the facts get in the way of a good story. I really hope it is balanced but Why is there a need to bring in celebraties who weren't there? What the city needs is not more finger pointing in a catestrophe that could not be avoided in order to progress a system agendas. What it needs is people who are committed to overcoming the events of that day, setting aside personal wishes and vendetta's against others who may think differently. And none of this should come from the government, because it is the populace who are ultimately responsible in our representative democracy. And in such a case we must examine ourselves and see if it is our hearts that are too small.
