Katrina Update #66Katrina Update #66March 1st marked 6 months since Katrina slammed into New Orleans. The Savannah Morning News had a great article about the condition of the city, by an author whose sister lives in New Orleans. Here is a small quote from the article:
As we drove through the partially cleared streets - periodically having to turn around because an entire house blocked our path - we did not see any repairs, or even demolition, in progress.
There was some activity over by the levee, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is making repairs before the next hurricane season. And there was some effort being made to dismantle a barge that came through the gap in the levee and crushed some houses, but otherwise the neighborhood was empty.
It was simply shocking to see how little has changed in six months.
But in a place as devastated as the Lower Ninth Ward, there's nothing an individual property owner could do until there's some clear government direction. Even for those who had adequate insurance and who want to rebuild, there's no point in trying to do anything with no utilities and with houses still in the middle of the street. New flood maps, which could forbid residential construction in some areas, are due this month.
But the Lower Ninth got the worst of it, so surely other areas are looking better?
Sadly, no.
The streets were just as deserted in much of Gentilly, a middle-class neighborhood that flooded up to about 10 feet after three levee breaches on the London Avenue and 17th Street Canals.
I took Janis down to Shell Beach on Thursday — which meant travelling over the Industrial Canal, through the Lower Ninth Ward, and through St. Bernard Parish. She was awestruck by the devastation. Debris is being hauled away by the truckload (we must have seen over 100 dump trucks), and there is still so much to be removed. The one thing we did notice is that there seemed to be a lot more work going on down in "the Parish" to rebuild the Hurricane protection levees. This is not just to protect residents in St. Bernard Parish, but also to weaken storm surge before it reaches Orlean Parish.
While there is much less a "where do we start" attitude than there was last fall, there can be no doubt that New Orleans is a long way from being healed. Recent population estimates say that there are 156,000 full-time residents of the city, with another 30,000 or so non-residents who will be living in the city for the forseeable future to help with repairs. (New Orleans had a pre-Katrina population of over 480,000.)
While Orleans Parish has shrunk in population, surrounding parishes have gotten larger. This got us to thinking — evacuation for this hurricane season could be even harder than last. It seems to me the only sensible solution is to evacuate Orleans Parish first, and then allow people from the surrounding parishes to leave. This gets the people most in harm's way out of town the quickest, instead of being stuck behind traffic getting on the highway from other parishes.
Mardi Gras is just the beginning, folks. The St. Patrick's Day Parade is always held the Saturday before St. Patrick's Day (unless, of course, St. Patrick's Day falls on a Saturday). In April we have French Quarter Festival, which is a lot like Jazz Festival, only with a more local focus (and free).
The annual St. Patrick's Day Parade was held today, and, if you are lucky, you can catch enough stuff to make a great Irish Stew (except for the meat). Yes, that's right — they actually throw carrots, potatoes, cucumbers, onions, and even cabbages from the floats!
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| Our friend (and bagpiper) Keith Davis gives Janis a hug. | Keith's piping band preceeded this float. Was that on purpose? |
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| A rider looks for a target for his cabbage. | I like her cabbages better! |
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| A rider gives someone the thumbs up for catching a cabbage as they prepare to throw another. | Cabbage caught in mid air! |
Our haul this year included 13 heads of cabbage, 6 small bags of carrots, a couple of larger carrots, an onion, a potatoe, 2 boxes of Lucky Charms cereal, a package of Raman Noodles (beef flavored), and one MRE (Meal Ready To Eat) — no kidding!
The festival season is topped off, of course, with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which is held the weekend of the first Sunday in May, and the weekend before – which means this year's festival will be Friday 4/28 thru Sunday 5/7. Here's a sampling of the line up (recommended acts are in bold, don't miss acts are in bold red):
Friday, April 28
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Saturday, April 29
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Sunday, April 30
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Friday, May 5
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Saturday, May 6
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Sunday, May 7
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- In last week's update I called attention to Kimberly "Kimbo" Williamson Butler, the inept Clerk of Criminal Courts for New Orleans, who, while on the lam because she refused to obey a court order regarding cleaning up the flooded evidence room, declared herself a mayoral candidate. This past Monday, Butler surfaced and was sentenced to 3 days in jail for contempt of court. In court Monday, Butler's attorney said the person assigned the duty of overseeing cleaning up the evidence room (who just happened to be Kimbo's predescessor as Clerk of Courts), had been a disruptive force in Butler's office. But the judge hearing the case and eight other judges taking part in the hearing were unimpressed. Here is what the judge had to say, addressing Kimbo's lawyer:
"Isn't it true that your client, because of her lack of experience and qualifications, got in well over her head, then asked for assistance," asked Judge Julien Parker, who labeled her mayoral run a publicity stunt. "And when the Supreme Court found the one person in the state knowledgeable about the evidence room, she got into a personality conflict and thumbed her nose at him, and thumbed her nose and the Supreme Court, and thumbed her nose at the Criminal District Court, and went into hiding?"
When she was released from jail on Thursday, Kimbo said the following:
"I represent every person who feels that their voice hasn't been heard, every person who has been incarcerated, right or wrongly," said Butler, dressed in the same red suit jacket and black pants she wore to court on Monday, when deputies hauled her away to jail on a contempt of court charge. "I can rank myself among many heroes: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela."
Yeah — maybe she can rank herself with those people but a few others come to my mind:
Frank Burns from |
Chrissy Snow from |
Anna Nicole Smith from… |
Rerun from What's Happening! |
If you like satire, then you will love the article about Kimbo that appeared on BayouBuzz.com.
Stay tuned for next week's thrilling episode of "Adventure's of Kimbo…"
- Speaking of Mayoral candidates, notice I only mentioned Kimbo's actual name once above (wouldn't want to help inflate her Google rating above that of Johnny Adriani, who I pontificated about last week.) OK, Johnny Adriani is now even with Kimbo in today's update. Oops… make that one ahead.
- Our government is wasting money appropriated for Katrina recovery left and right:
The above information came from a very informative article, The Battle of New Orleans, which will be published in the April edition of The American Spectator.
- If you want yet another picture of New Orleans six months after Katrina, read this article: New Orleans, a little bent but still standing proud .
- Finally, I found some absolutely fascinating stuff about how Katrina happened, with plenty of pictures and diagrams, published by Tulane University. You can find links to them here. I strongly suggest you check it out.
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