Louisiana on my mind

[ellarien]

It's no good. I haven't posted anything to speak of about Katrina and New Orleans, because I haven't anything helpful to add, but I can't stand it any longer. So here are my personal, and not at all useful, reactions.



I don't know anyone in the Gulf area, but ... we were there, not all that long ago. In May I was blogging cheerfully from the very Convention Center that turned into a place of terror and misery only three months later; being able to picture the place, remembering the way they used to post security in the restrooms, presumably to exclude the street people, didn't make it any easier to listen to the horrific reports coming out of there. What I hadn't realized, until we all got a crash course in New Orleans topography, was that where we were, in Canal Street on the edge of the French Quarter and at the Convention Center on the river bank, was actually the high ground. We were never sure whether the palm trees in Canal Street, their fronds neatly tied up for travel, were coming or going, but suspected it might have something to do with the previous season's near-miss hurricane.

I was a little comforted to hear, early on, that the aquarium had survived; it seems frivolous to grieve for the fish, but they were innocent and beautiful. One of my birthday gifts to my mother this year was a little box with a photograph (not my own) of a jellyfish on the lid, from the gift shop there. It was early September when I gave it her, and we didn't discuss where it came from.

As for what happened in the aftermath of the storm -- it was horrible, sickening, shameful and tragic.

And now it's happening again, and New Orleans is under threat again. It's hard to comprehend.

I feel a little happier that some lessons seem to have been learned, that maybe Rita will be handled better. I feel sorry for the evacuees who ended up in Houston and even Galveston, who now face being moved yet again.

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I can't now find it, but there is somewhere a photo album by a (Nicaraguan?) resident in NO who took photos and wrote a diary about the hurricane and the first few days afterward, before hotwiring an SUV and driving to Texas. (I describe the details I can remember in the hope that someone will recognise the photo diary and post the URL). He showed the palms on Canal Street blown over and remarked that they'd just been put in, so the tied-up ones you saw were those, coming.

It looks like Rita will land between Corpus Christi and Galveston and leave New Orleans in peace this time. I saw a reporter stand on the Galveston sea front and recognised in the background a store I went in to in 1997, which is a strange feeling (I've never been to New Orleans, so I didn't get the shock of recognition that you and others have had)

Last year I was in Boston for the Worldcon, watching on the hotel TV the parade of Atlantic storms being talked about as so unusually fierce and in such numbers. Just one season later it's so much worse. What will happen in 2006?

[ellarien]

This morning, the outlook for Lousiana has turned grimmer again, by the sound of things, though it hasn't improved for Galveston either, and New Orleans is in no shape to handle even a heavy rainstorm.