Doing it

Something that annoys me is reading ill-informed articles saying nothing is getting done in New Orleans, and that the situation here is still what it was a couple months ago.

Every week, every day, more people are returning to their homes, fixing up their property, businesses are reopening, more blocks are getting services back, intersections have traffic lights back.

The Feds and FEMA are much maligned, generally with very good reason. But one major thing they are are doing that's actually helpful is paying for a big crew of debris hauling contractors. One misinformed article by someone who apparently came in to the city for part of a day reported that all the debris from Katrina is still sitting where it landed and nothing is being cleaned up. A quick look without talking to anyone might give that impression. It's a massive undertaking, but a small mountain range of debris, flooded cars, and dead appliances has already been hauled off, with vast convoys of huge trucks hauling more every day. Of course, more trash is generated daily as people haul out their damaged possessions and gut and repair their places.

Unfortunately, the debris not being used to fill in MR-GO or create new chains of barrier islands in Lower Plaquemines or Saint Bernard.

Most of what is getting done, however, is being done by New Orleanians, often in spite of absent help or oversight from insurance, FEMA, or local government.

An example from yesterday's Times-Picayune: Parents and alumni took it on themselves to fix up flood damaged Ben Franklin Highschool.
"Parents came in with 24-inch and 18-inch chainsaws [...] generators, cleaning supplies, garden sprayers, wet-dry vacuums and surgical masks. [...] With the process still in its infancy, it was crucial that volunteers "stay below the radar," Firneno said. "We didn't want to create a situation where they (school officials) were going to come and tell us we couldn't be there. We felt it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission." "

Some have suggested that the lowest lying parts of the city should not be rebuilt for residential use, or homes should be required to be jacked up, perhaps having the downstairs be garages only. While politicians debate what guidelines to give, the reality is that sorry, it's too late. People who can swing it one way or another are already rebuilding even in the most damaged and lowest lying neighborhoods.

P.O.'ed off

One of the lingering problems in Post-Katrina New Orleans is mail service.

Mail delivery has been officially back here, but everyone has their stories of how unreliable it is, and of things lost.

First class mail within the city, from and to well functioning parts of town, takes a week or so to arrive now.

No one I know has gotten magazines sent since the storm. As I mentioned, I got a copy of the first New Yorker magazine of September over a month late, and nothing else.

My mail carrier (who lost his home in New Orleans East) was one of the first to decide on his own to start delivering on his route rather than still holding things at the Post Office, as enough people were back Uptown.

What ever happened to the mail of September? 99.9% + of an entire month's worth of mail for a major city seems to have disappeared into the twilight zone. People who filled out change of address/forwarding as soon as they evacuated never got it forwarded. It wasn't waiting for people when they were told they could pick up mail at branch post offices or designated centers. A while back, people were told that all the city's mail was in a warehouse in Houston, then a story had it that when Rita threatened it was all trucked to Dallas. Now a story has it that it was all returned to the senders. But everyone can tell of mail that was never seen again on either end, and for a lot of folks that included important stuff.

The other day there was an announcement that there was a good bit of Katrina water damaged mail that has been dried out and would be delivered. Okaaay... that should only be a couple days worth of mail at most, right? Unless post office trucks were coming into town during the days after the storm and dumping mail into the flood waters?

Also, no mailboxes. Once plentiful, they took the mailboxes off the street corners, even here in high neighborhoods that never flooded. Why?

Any indication that U.S. Mail is being phased out in other parts of the country?

I recall back in the Reagan administration reading about the Federal Government contingecy plans for change of address forms and delivering mail after nuclear attack. That seemed pretty unlikely then. Now I see they can't even cope with a hurricane.

On the Air

Most of the local tv stations are back broadcasting.

Alas, among those not are the two PBS stations. On cable, the chanels are running the Louisiana Public Broadcasting feed from Baton Rouge; neither has returned to on the air.

There are reportedly plans to bring radio WWOZ back from Baton Rouge to temporary studio in our old office building in Treme; if so I don't know when that will be.

Oh, and this is part of a series I'm making about the situation just over 2 months after I've been back.

Can't find the magazine on Magazine Street

Doc Brite made an excellent post about Katrina & inaccurate media coverage here -- but on one of the points that seemed wrong the National Geographic actually had it right: A day after the storm, waters were indeed flowing out of the Lower 9th Ward into the Industrial Canal, in that the water level at that time was higher on the inland side of the busted levee. (My best guess as to why would be that water from MRGO was still flowing into the Lower 9th via Chalmette & Arabi, but the Industrial Canal level had already started to go down with the level of Lake Pontchartrain.)

I havn't yet had a chance to see that issue, but I've seen photos of the phenomenon like this one:
FEMA photo from the air via Wikimedia

I also remember seeing helicopter shots of that on tv at the time -- though the network newscasters misidentified the location as being the 17th Street Canal breach, which was pretty much at the other end of town.

Yes, refrigerators in trees. Cars supported by chain link fences. And flood waters flowing from the city into a nearby body of water. Sometimes one's mind's first reaction says, "That can't be right", but with Katrina, that's how it is.

Do any of my out-of-town readers happen to have a copy of the National Geographic Katrina issue, or would be able to easily get one, and might be willing to send me one at a reasonable price?

Race and demographics

Another myth about Post-Katrina New Orleans I've heard from national media is that there are now no Black people here or hardly any.

I live and spend the most time in the Uptown portion of the city, a large chunk of the city developed in the 19th century that is probably as ethnically and economically diverse as anywhere in the Metro area. It's still that way around here.

Most of the time the bigest differences noticiable in the population is just the general absence of lots of people. Something like 3 out of 4 of the Pre-Katrina population isn't back yet. Along areas like Magazine Street, this isn't so noticiable, as both it's an area that's a couple steps ahead of much of the city in recovery due to less damage, and because so many people from other parts of town are there to patronize the businesses. There are crowds, lines, and traffic jams. However elsewhere the diminished population can be very noticiable.

The shift I've most noticed is the large number of Latino workers in town. New Orleans has long had a fair sized Hispanic population (Honduran, Mexican, Cuban, and other nations around the Gulf/Carribean predominating), but I've been hearing much more Spanish spoken lately.

I've heard some local commentators suggest that Post-Katrina New Orleans is likely to switch from 60% to 40% African-American. Remains to be seen.

The one place since I've been back that just seemed overwhelmingly white was Sunday evening in Marigny, catching the Jazz Vipers at Cafe Brasil; it seemed like about 4 African-Americans in a crowd of about 200. I don't know if that was a difference in the neighborhood, or something to do with the demographics of appeal of the band.

A related media myth is protraying the African American population of New Orleans as if it were almost all desperately poor underclass. Despite being in the "deep south", New Orleans has long a significiant African American population who were educated, who were professional, and who were home owners.

The good sized area of the city from Gentilly Ridge to Lake Pontchartrain, lowland within the city limits, was mostly undeveloped swamp at the start of the 20th century. After World War II, it was drained and filled with subdivisisions of homes representing the Post-War American Middle Class Dream. This was the height of Louisiana's Jim Crow era, and unlike the long mixed 19th century portions of the city, there were seperate "white" and "colored" subdivisions built. NPR had an excellent story on one such development the other day, Return to New Orleans: Pontchartrain Park, described as like growing up in a "Negro Leave It To Beaver" world.

I've heard out of town commentators say ignorant things about how no one should want to rebuild a ghetto. Most of the area flooded was no damn ghetto.

( ramble about a random photo )

Trade offs

One detail of life being different: paper plates and plastic or styrofoam cup at most restaurants.

Most places can't get people to work as dishwashers even at twice the pre-Katrina wages. Unskilled labor can make much better money in demolition and construction.

I miss draft beer in real glass, but one aspect of the cheap labor shortage that makes me smile: Uptown Wal-Mart, which the company finally built after much local objections, is still closed and they announced it won't be reopened any time soon, as they can't find people willing to work there. Meanwhile the locally owned stores along Magazine Street are jumping.