angledge | The Big Crazy. (Reply)

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.