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

[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.