The Rude One: Fucked New Orleans, Four Years On in Purgatory

8/31/2009

Fucked New Orleans, Four Years On in Purgatory:

If you knew New Orleans before Katrina and then go visit since the storm, you know the feeling. No matter where you are in the city, it doesn't feel quite right. You don't have to be in the Lower 9th Ward, the poorest area of the city where rubble and moldy, abandoned houses still dominate the neighborhood, dotted as it is with the occasional home that's been restored. No, you can be in the untouched Garden District or the French Quarter, and there's a weight in the air, beyond the stifling humidity and the stale stench of being between a big ass lake and a big ass river. You've felt it if you're a visitor. Imagine if you're a resident. The people the Rude Pundit knows in New Orleans are unanimous in their assessment of their hometown in 2009: "It's better, but..."

...........................

The new administration has only on this anniversary begun to take notice of New Orleans (or the entire Gulf Coast). President Obama has promised to visit New Orleans, which he should have done before he went to any of the other health care town halls around the country, considering the still fucked up state of the city's hospital system. He has promised to streamline the bureaucracy that has slowed recovery. And now that a report has demonstrated that the Army Corps of Engineers wasted $430 million on worthless flood control pumps (another little fuck-you from the Bush administration's bungling of everything to do with Katrina), Obama has knocked the Corps down a peg by putting in an oversight panel that'll coordinate recovery efforts. "It's about time" doesn't even scratch the surface of the rage that ought to be there.

Remember: to acknowledge the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is not to remember the damage done by a storm. It is to remember the damage done by us to ourselves. It was decades of incompetence, fraud, and cruelty of governments and contractors that have left New Orleans, truly, no better off than it was four years ago. The place feels different because to be there is to realize that all the things you hoped would protect you and the city have failed, and that to be there, especially during hurricane season, is to understand that it could so easily happen again when it shouldn't and when it shouldn't have in the first place.

Of course it's better. Anything is better than flood and abandonment and chaos. And of course the city feels different than before. Purgatory's always better than Hell.

more:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/fucked-new-orleans-four-years-on-in.html

:kick: & Rec

I may never get a chance to go.
However I was in Fort Lauderdale for Hurricane Andrew, I went to our offices which were near Krome Avenue in SW Miami-Dade, which means I had to drive down I95 , then US1 , then various side streets off of US 1 to go around where the channel 6 (I think it was)tv stations transmission tower was across all the lanes 4 to a side.
The houses and cars and possessions all over the place, people wandering around. When I got to where I worked one of the buildings was a 1920s house which was still whole, but ompletely off its foundations and washed out into a field about 150 feet away, all of the other buildings were flattened. Seeing the rows and rows of houses down and damaged business was shocking and still stays with me.

The aftermath Andrew was cleaned up in fairly short order, there was help arriving shortly, there were folks who had problems with their insurance.
Andrew looks from here like a well run disaster.
NOLA and Katrina What A Fucking Mess.
I had relatives there a spouse died in the aftermath when Blackwater arrived, who was actually there to help get the infrastructure back in order. I have not found out what exactly Black water had to do with it, but the relative has gone into hiding, disconnect phones and moved to some place quiet I suppose since no one has heard from her since just after the funeral, another relative did tell me that she was acting very scared and very strange.

Even if my relatives death did'nt have anything to do with BlackWater WTF where they there for, we all know they are lead by that wonderful kkkreestian Eric Prince.

NOLA and her citizens have been let down. I know how it is to be too poor to own a car or escape from a storm. We were just lucky during Andrew.

The red tape here is un-fucking-believable! Most of the repairs are from outsiders or the residents themselves. However, we face unique laws and ordinances. I live outside of the FQ, so my neighborhood is in pretty good shape, though two doors down we have an abandoned residence, which is a real plague here.

(a health care town hall meeting there would have been a good idea) but starts sticking to his campaign promises to pay more attention to New Orleans and the rest of the disaster zone.