Les Pensées de Ed

We are now at the fourth year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and as much as some hate to bring up the topic (NOLAnotes comes to mind) I think discussion of the event helps remind people that there is still more to do in the region for a full recovery.

Loki, the creator of HumidCity, posted an audiocast today rehashing his thoughts about Katrina.

The New York Times spent nearly half of a million dollars on their Katrina story.

Personally, I’m about halfway through reading The Great Deluge. It has been an enlightening reminder of the horror and disfunction (non-function?) of humanity to fail to effectively come to the rescue of those affected by Katrina. Katrina struck my freshman year at Louisiana State University, not more than a couple of weeks into the Fall semester.I just pulled up from my archives a few of the things I had written down during my time volunteering at the PMAC (the major triage center), a Red Cross shelter, and finally at the Red Cross headquarters in Baton Rouge. (I was a terrible writer back then, it’s shameful…) I was struck reading these old posts — not only have I matured quite a bit since then, but what I kept seeing is that neighbors and other citizens were the one’s doing the most good. Granted, the Red Cross was not allowed into New Orleans, but at least in Baton Rouge we had normal people (quickly trained to be “Red Cross official”) operating shelters and lending a helping hand. We broke Red Cross policies, we dealt with a shortage of supplies and resources, but we made ends meet.

A quote from a blog post of mine after working in the PMAC triage center (Wednesday Aug 31, 2005 at 4:45pm): “I tried to be as happy as I could be when interacting with the patients, but its hard. You know in the back of your mind that most of these people no longer have homes, or if they do their houses have been severely damaged. […] We ended up with 42 beds in the Orange unit. A nurse noted she would never complain [again] about being understaffed. They had 3 nurses for 42 beds - [which] is an outrageous ratio, but [we] didn’t have much of a choice. I was also amazed that one of the nurses came in for the [midnight to 6 am] shift, and then was headed to her normal 9-5 pediatric job. Now that’s sacrifice. I’m pretty mentally worn out. This is starting to get to me. I can’t even begin to imagine what it is like for those who lived in New Orleans.”

Another aspect of Katrina that irks me, is the sole focus on New Orleans. As Loki mentioned in his audiocast, what NOLA faced was not a Hurricane, it was the “greatest man-made engineering failure” that we have ever seen. But the Hurricane struck Mississippi and other rural parts of Louisiana, as well. Katrina flattened those regions. People died. Homes reduced to slabs. An ex-girlfriend of mine complained about this same sort of “forgotten regions” when Rita his Southwest Louisiana, and very little attention was given to it. I have to place blame on the media, of course. (Is that too cliché?) It’s easier to send Anderson Cooper down to the French Quarter and give a few snippets about Bush/Blanco/Brown/Nagin failing to act quickly enough to save those people in New Orleans.

I think NOLAnotes has the right theory: “let’s move FORWARD [and] not focus on incident”. Unfortunately, it is questionable whether or not that progress will ever occur. Harry Shearer claims that Obama is taking the same course as Bush did — ignoring the issue. The Army Corps of Engineers is being crippled and is not likely to build the levee system that is truly needed in New Orleans.

Although I have never lived in New Orleans, I have lots of family still living there, and through my four years at Louisiana State University, I have met numerous friends that were raised there, or have subsequently moved down there. New Orleans and Louisiana are close to my heart. They face an uphill battle politically, socially, and economically. Louisiana seems to have a passion for electing a governor that always staunchly opposes the current President. The political system is, well, batshit insane. But the livelihood and spirit of those that live there is strong and with some help, can be organized into the change that the state needs.

Amy Liu states in her NYT op-ed piece, “President Obama’s biggest challenge is to work effectively with Louisiana officials and the next mayor of New Orleans to generate enough progress before next August to show that the city is truly reinventing itself, rather than simply returning to a suboptimal normal.”

I left Louisiana just under a month ago. It will be dearly missed, and I will return often, undoubtedly. Until then, I’ll sit in the office listening to Bonerama and wearing my Defend New Orleans tee, getting strange looks for it in Los Angeles. I know I’ll always be considered an outsider to the Louisiana culture (especially since I don’t each fish, which seems to be a general requirement), but I’ve come to love the people, the culture, and everything in between.

All photos are my own, except the Defend Nola Uprise photo by Jeff Lamb.