The Big Crazy.

[angledge]

Writing to you from Harahan, LA, just outside of NOLA. My hunch last week was right - I have been deployed to just outside New Orleans - I am working in St. John the Baptist Parish (in Louisiana, parish = county; it's a legislative designation, not a Catholic one). My hotel is right in New Orleans - in fact, I can see the infamous Convention Center from my window. It's a very strange place to be - most of the city does not have electricity (although our hotel does). There is a citywide curfew from 8 PM to 6 AM, although it gets ignored in the French Quarter. There are armed guards at the door of our hotel. The streets are littered with rubble & vegetative debris. Many traffic signals & signs are out of order, so driving in the city streets can be hair-raising (my first night here, I ended up going the wrong way down a one-way street - how fast can YOU do a three-point turn??). The water at our hotel is not drinkable, although we've been told it's OK for showering (the environmental scientist in me is a bit doubtful but the alternative is not showering, so I just wash quickly & try not to think about it). Cell phone coverage is spotty but generally available. The city stinks of garbage, but strangely, I haven't spotted a single rat. Maybe they flee sinking cities as well as ships.

I only arrived at this field office yesterday, & so far it's been a slow start. FEMA is a giant bureaucracy, & because of that, it tends to move .... well, ponderously. Hopefully I will have some work to do soon so I can start feeling like I'm helping this area to get on the road to recovery.

I'm trying to find a PCUSA church in the area but (at least around my hotel) they've all been abandoned. I'll keep looking. This Sunday, I might go to Mass (!!!) at St. Louis Cathedral - that's the only church I've heard of in NOLA that's open.

I've done a bit of driving around the area. This landscape is incredibly alien to me. It is completely & utterly flat. The only topographical relief is anthropogenic - either levees or roads. There is standing water everywhere - I'm not sure if that's unusual or not. Almost all construction practices have been modified to accommodate the water - cemetaries are full of above-ground tombs (groundwater is too shallow to dig graves); all state roads are required to be built seven feet above grade (to prevent flooding); levies & associated pumping stations are giant edifices....

... & despite all this, the river & the ocean are devouring the land. One parish located south of NOLA has lost half its land mass. Driving around & seeing the standing water everywhere, I realized that it's not gonna be California that falls into the sea first.

Edit: interdictor posted a photo of a burned van a while back. This is ~5 blocks from my hotel.

Comments

[thepikey.livejournal.com]

Well, you could get a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a WHOLE MESS of cotton balls to bathe with. Then you'd not only be clean, you'd be sterile!

(This is me pretending that I'm trying to be helpful...)

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Owie! It stings!

You are joking, but when I get out of the shower I clean the one open cut I have on my hand with Purell hand sanitizer & I gargle with mouthwash. Just in case. The water does not smell good.

[thepikey.livejournal.com]

Umm... ick?

I suppose you could also go the Burner route and lean heavily on baby wipes. Hope things start smelling better in Nawleans.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

I went to Wal-Mart (HATE) to look for the giant-sized body wipes, but strangely enough they were sold out.

[thepikey.livejournal.com]

I... wonder... why... they'd... run... out...?
*brows furrow in concentration*

[d4b.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, my memory is of Slidell, not New Orleans, but the water smelled bad there way before any of this hit.

Would you be able to boil a few gallons of water for showering? Obviously not the most comfortable approach, but it does work. I'd even got it to the point where I would be able to mix boiling-hot water into my jug of cold (and then shake!) for the right resulting bathing temperature. (At someone's suggestion, I used gallon jugs of the type in which milk or water are sold.)

Alternatively, there's iodine. I think the formula was three drops per liter and then wait 20 minutes, and then you can drink (and presumably bathe in) it, but I'd double check before trusting that.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that the bureaucratic juggernaut of FEMA will start doing something soon. Unfortunate that it starts slowly, but that's the way of lumbering organizations. Truly.

Take care of yourself, buddy. And thank God at least one of us is doing something good for humanity. ;-)

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Unfortunate that it starts slowly, but that's the way of lumbering organizations. Truly.

I guess you'd know, wouldn't you? Can you please send me some patience so I don't kill someone out of boredom while waiting for things to get moving?

[jacesan.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're finally getting around to doing what you were sent to do. It sounds surreal. I hope you get used to the smell.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Oh noes, the smell is me! I couldn't take the nasty shower anymore!

[jacesan.livejournal.com]

Well you know how dogs roll around in garbage to disguise their scent? If everything smells, you won't stand out.

The things we take for granted in our developed(?) society...

[d4b.livejournal.com]

Maybe they flee sinking cities as well as ships.

Not sure if you meant this to be serious or not, but somehow the sentence brought a smile to my face.

anthropogenic

Wheee! A new word for me! :-)

...despite all this, the river & the ocean are devouring the land.

Actually, I think it's because of all of this. Not sure which is the best article to point you to, but the gist of it is that by impeding the natural process where the Mississippi River spread sediment deposits, especially during normal floods, man actually caused the loss of the land and ecosystems.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

...Actually, I think it's because of all of this.

You're right, the subsidence of the bayous is definitely caused by the channelization of the Mississippi. But what I meant is that even the protected areas - the areas behind the levees - are going down.

[d4b.livejournal.com]

I realize it's not PC to say this, but why not just rebuild NOLA a bit more inland? You'd think this was a pretty big wake-up call. Do they really think $X billion will prevent more storm loss?

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Two reasons this will never, ever happen:

1) People are emotionally attached to this place, these buildings, these streets - things that cannot be uprooted & moved. Think about how you would feel if someone decided that Philadelphia was unsafe in its present location - surely no one would mind if we moved a bit inland - say, to Harrisburg?

2) There are enormous investments in NOLA that cannot be moved - refineries, port facilities, railroad lines, interstates, etc. Moving a city involves much more than relocating the people - all of the industry & infrastructure would also have to move. I can't even begin to conceive of the costs that would be involved.

[funkyplaid.livejournal.com]

All they have to do is move the French Quarter bars. The rest of the city will follow shortly.

Glad to hear you're safe and situated, Ang. We miss you tons and love hearing updates when you get the time.

LOVE TO YOU.