[StBernard] Life After Katrina

[Westley Annis]

LIFE AFTER KATRINA:/ Devastation
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/14020086.htm
Herald Today
Sarasota, FL

Imagine Blake Medical Center reduced to a few Quonset-type tents on the
floor of the Manatee Convention and Civic Center.
Imagine Manatee Community College's campus reduced to empty shells of
buildings.
Imagine your neighborhood Publix operating out of a tent on a concrete slab.
That's just the beginning. Imagine everything west of 75th Street West and
north of Riverview Boulevard smashed to rubble. Everything. Heading east and
south of those streets, imagine every home made uninhabitable, roofs missing
and interiors flooded up to their eaves.
Imagine Shaw's Point, The Loop, Village Green, Palma Sola Park, Spanish
Park, Harbor Hills, Woods and Oaks, The Landings, Ballard Park, Wares Creek
- gone. Imagine Christ Episcopal Church, DeSoto Square mall, Jessie P.
Miller Elementary, Westgate shopping center - destroyed. A few downtown
buildings might still be standing, but the first floors need a major
cleanup. Imagine all of the older homes in south and east Bradenton trashed;
The Inlets, Braden River Isles and close-in East Manatee neighborhoods
standing empty. As you near Interstate 75, around Tara and Lakewood Ranch,
you see people able to stay in their homes, but most are sporting blue-tarp
roofs.
Imagine the same throughout Sarasota and Venice.
But it is almost impossible to describe the scale of destruction wrought by
Hurricane Katrina. The scope is so vast that it is almost more than the mind
can take in.
I came back from a four-day tour of the Louisiana-Mississippi Gulf coast hit
by Katrina with a new respect for hurricanes and a new appreciation for
Manatee County's luck in dodging them these last two years. The feeling of
"There, but for the grace of God, go I" was constant as tour guides
continued to reveal new dimensions of the horrors Katrina inflicted. The
tour, sponsored by the National Conference of Editorial Writers for
editorialists from around the country, provided a close-up view of the
damage that is not possible to get from press or TV coverage.
Indeed, my reaction was one that guides say is common at the end of a tour:
"I had no idea it was this bad."
Our group saw the epic disaster from 500 feet up in a Black Hawk helicopter,
from the windows of a tour bus, and from the ground in the shattered
neighborhoods throughout New Orleans and towns of coastal Mississippi. The
editorialists, especially the veterans like me with a seen-it-all attitude,
often found it difficult to put on objective facades to conduct interviews
and take notes after witnessing so much destruction and sorrow, for mile
after mile after mile. The sense of loss is overwhelming.
It is easier in the open cabin of a Black Hawk; the height offers something
of a detached view of Katrina's toll - perhaps the way high-level bomber
crews must feel as they push triggers and see blast flashes far below
without getting close enough to the obliterated neighborhoods to experience
the smell of burned flesh or hear the wails of bleeding children, innocent
victims of "collateral" damage.
At 500 feet you see specks of homes sitting at crazy angles to their
neighbors, or little drifts of debris where homes once stood, or barren
slabs that once supported the "castles" where people lived, played and
loved.
Up there you see the beached barge sprawled beside the broken levee that you
remember from TV coverage, and wonder if this was the catalyst for the
tragic flood. Over there is a pile of the puffy white sandbags you saw
helicopters dropping into the breaches in the hectic days after Aug. 29. Off
to the starboard, pile drivers with the Corps of Engineers slam tall steel
sheets into the levee to shore up stop-gap fixes of the 17th Street Canal
breach. To port, a row of pilings sits low in the water, the only remains of
a strip of night clubs.
But on the ground, scale becomes unavoidable. In New Orleans, one can drive,
at the speed limit, for 47 minutes from the shore of Lake Pontchartrain
through St. Charles, Jefferson, Orleans, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes
and never see a single habitable building. The neighborhoods slip by: Mid
City, Bayou Vista, Gentilly, Seabrook Place, Hodgetrain Park, Treme', Lake
Bullard, Chalmette, the Lower Ninth, and more. For block after block, mile
after mile stretches a ghost town of gutted homes, stores, offices,
fast-food joints, even hospitals. The worst districts like the Lower Ninth
look like a war zone, with modest frame houses pushed off their foundations
into the street or their neighbor's, debris on some rooftops proof that the
flood had completely covered the house. Some lots are swept clean of any
sign of habitation, save for a concrete slab and stairs to nowhere. Wrecked
cars still sit at crazy angles where the receding waters deposited them 10
days later.
In the upscale Lakeview neighborhood near Lake Pontchartrain, tattered
drapes flap from the shattered windows of fine brick houses, all flooded
when the London Avenue Canal breached. Some may be salvaged; here and there
one sees signs of interior gutting going on. Indeed, every street corner is
festooned with hand-lettered signs: "Sheetrock removal and hanging." "Tree
stump removal." "Gutting - $1,500 and up." "Mold-proof your home." "We buy
houses."
Downtown, Charity Hospital operates out of yellow, Quonset-hut-style tents
in the Convention Center, one of only two functioning hospitals in New
Orleans out of the nine pre-Katrina. One almost strains to hear the
whup-whup of incoming helicopters, so MASH-like does this scene seem.
Next, head east to Mississippi for a different view of Katrina's wrath.
Turning north off Interstate 10 at State Road 607, you notice the telltale
"ring around the collar" high up on the highway overpass - the water stain
left by a storm surge that locals say reached 30 feet, and this a full eight
to 10 miles from the Gulf.
Our first stop is Waveland, a town of 8,000 that has been scoured from the
face of the earth. There is nothing to see except concrete slabs and bare,
twisted tree trunks. About a mile inland where the storm surge met the
elevated bed of the CSX railroad tracks, the wave crested and retreated in
upon itself. The result: Most of the town was sucked out into the Gulf -
along with any inhabitants who had ignored evacuation warnings. Twenty-one
of Mississippi's 231 Katrina victims were from Waveland and 169 were from
the six southernmost coastal counties - many no doubt confident of their
safety because they had ridden out what locals say was Hurricane Camille's
200 mph-plus winds in 1969.
But Katrina, though "only" around 145 mph, was far bigger (200 miles across)
and much slower-moving. Indeed, in an ironic twist of Nature, one of the few
manmade things still standing in Waveland is a historic marker of
appreciation to those who helped the town recover from Camille. More of
those Quonset hut-type canvas tents serve as a makeshift market, American
Legion post and city hall. Poignantly, the latter sits on the site of
Waveland's quaint City Hall, whose only remnant is a stairway that ends in
thin air and a partially demolished mural depicting the city's main drag,
once a proud landmark.
Heading east along the coastal Highway 90, shards of rubble poke out of the
gentle surf. At low tide, "it is scary what you see out there," said a
long-time resident, whose 91-year-old home with a 20-foot elevation took on
5 feet of water. On the landward side of the highway, only bare concrete
marks what was Waveland's prime waterfront, an occasional piling or stoop
offering the only other proof that a home once stood there.
Continuing east, the landscape has a startling resemblance to the photos of
Hiroshima after the atomic bomb that ended World War II. Some buildings in
the downtown areas of Pass Christian and Gulfport several blocks from the
Gulf survived the flood with varying degrees of damage. But along the shore
it is utter devastation. Residents tell of the stately mansions that lined
this highway for miles; today there are but traces of a few.
Indeed, the drive to Biloxi on U.S. 90 - after jogging back to I-10 because
the Bay St. Louis bridge was destroyed - reveals utter destruction for 70
miles. Long Beach is much like Waveland, with concrete slabs the most
prominent feature besides tents that serve as City Hall and headquarters for
recovery teams. Farther along the road a lone concrete structure stands out
as a survivor; it is the vault of a vanished bank.
In Gulfport, the state's second-largest city, crumbling walls mark the ruins
of the library, the First Presbyterian, First Baptist and Episcopal
churches, all apparently once imposing structures. Nearby is the Veterans
Hospital, a 200-acre campus of handsome brick buildings, all vacant. Here is
the Grand Casino, a 14-story hotel/casino, curtains flapping from vacant
rooms, one of many casino casualties on a Mississippi coast that depended on
gambling as its economic engine.
Of 11 casinos in Harrison County (Biloxi), just three have reopened. Remains
of two casino "barges" - hulking, four-story structures atop floating
platforms the size of a football field to satisfy the state law that
permitted gambling on vessels - can be seen on the landward side of U.S. 90
where Katrina pushed them ashore like bathtub toys.
Farther up, the Treasure Bay Casino, a faux pirate ship sits stranded in a
tidal flat. Its smashed ribs and decking make it look like a genuine
scuttled galleon.
Viewing the destruction for so many hours takes an emotional toll on us. On
Pratt Drive, directly below the Industrial Canal breach, you look at homes
smashed as if by bombs. Gaping holes where front doors and windows once
stood offer glimpses of breakfast bars, kitchens, light fixtures, bedrooms.
In the back yards, bits of the life that once pulsated in this middle-class
neighborhood lie in filth and dried mud: lawn chairs, swing sets, lawn
mowers, bird feeders, pools full of green water, children's toys. They seem
suspended in time, and you can't help wondering about the ruined lives of
those who once called this home. And this is but a tiny slice of the roughly
300,000 refugees of New Orleans and 70,000 in Mississippi who suffered
similar fates. As guides repeatedly reminded, in a span of a few hours
hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, their possessions and
their jobs. They also lost their entire support system: school, church,
grocery store, civic club, bar, restaurant and all communication with the
outside world.
Putting all of that into our own context here in Florida, imagining a
comparable impact on the Gulf Coast and on our own lives, provides a whole
new urgency to plans for evacuation, flood insurance, building standards,
storm surge - and appreciation for the courage of so many of Katrina's
victims.
MONDAY: The levees failed, and a city slowly drowned.
LIFE AFTER KATRINA:
Stories and photos by David Klement