[StBernard] Today's Excellent NY Times New Orleans Article by Biguenet

[Westley Annis]

	This article is worth reading.  It was sent to me by a member of the
Gentilly After Katrina email group.   The first part of the email is a bio
of the author.  His article from the NY Times follows. 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	About 'Back to New Orleans' 
	John Biguenet is the first in a series of guest columnists to be
featured on TimesSelect. Mr. Biguenet fled the city before the storm and is
now returning. For the month of October, he will be writing an account of
his efforts to reclaim and restore his house and rebuild his life there. 
	Skip to next paragraph
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/biguenet-bio.html#secondParagraph>  
	
<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/30/opinion/28bigu.184.jpg>   
	John Biguenet. 
	Guest Columnist Biography: John Biguenet 
	John Biguenet is a native of New Orleans, where his family has lived
since the 18th century. His most recent books include "The Torturer's
Apprentice,"
<http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?is
bn=0060007451>  a collection of short stories, and "Oyster,"
<http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?is
bn=0060514477>  a novel. His work for the theater has been presented in
Germany, Austria and the United States. He has served two terms as president
of the American Literary Translators Association and is currently the Robert
Hunter Distinguished Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. 
	On Aug. 28, the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Mr.
Biguenet-, a survivor of Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and all those since, left
New Orleans. It was the first time he left the city to escape a storm. While
he sought shelter, first in Dallas and then in New Jersey, his house and
cars back in New Orleans steeped in the flood waters for weeks. In his
postings for TimesSelect, he recounts his exile and return. 
	 
	http://biguenet.page.nytimes.com/
<http://biguenet.page.nytimes.com/> 
	 
	Aug. 20, 2006

	You're Probably Wrong

	Most of what you think you know about what happened in New Orleans a
year ago is probably wrong. People distinguish between a pre-Katrina and a
post-Katrina city, for example. But such a distinction suggests New Orleans
was the victim of a natural disaster. It wasn't.
	Hurricane Katrina ravaged Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes in
Louisiana and most of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but it spared New Orleans
the brunt of its force. Veering east over the Louisiana-Mississippi state
line, the storm lashed the city with only its weak side. Hours after the
hurricane had passed, the Web site of my neighborhood property owners'
association posted a report relayed by cell phone from a man who had ridden
out the storm in his house, one street away from mine. He assured those of
us who had left that, except for a few fallen tree limbs, there was no major
damage.
	
<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/21/opinion/House4012.jpg> 
	
	By the next morning, floodwater was pouring into the city from
breaches in defective levees, inundating 80 percent of New Orleans. When the
water finally found its level, in some places more than 10 feet deep, an
area seven times the size of Manhattan had been destroyed. By the end of
that first week, roughly 1,300 New Orleanians had drowned or died of
dehydration and exposure. Katrina wasn't what killed all those people and
devastated a celebrated city; it was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As
the Corps itself admits in its own draft final report
<http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20060601_ARMYCORPS_SUMM.pdf>
on the disaster, "foundation failures occurred prior to water levels
reaching the design levels of protection, causing breaching and subsequent
massive flooding and extensive losses." 
	You may also think that poor, black New Orleanians constituted the
majority of victims killed by the Corps' incompetence. In fact, white and
black, rich and poor, New Orleanians shared equally in the suffering and
death. The last published tally I saw showed that whites and blacks died in
roughly the same proportion. If that is accurate, given that the population
of the city in the last census was only 28-percent white, white New
Orleanians died in proportionately higher numbers.
	Another misconception that has persisted is the notion that many who
died in the Lower Ninth Ward were stranded there because they had no means
of transportation with which to evacuate. In fact, one of the most striking
features I noted when I first toured the staggering devastation of that
neighborhood after the flooding was how many cars and trucks had been
submerged there. From the obituaries the Times-Picayune has published over
the last year, it is clear that many New Orleanians who died had chosen to
stay because, having survived previous hurricanes, they believed the Corps
of Engineers' assurances that the levees could protect them against a
Category 3 hurricane. Though some people who died did not have
transportation, many had cars and trucks available to them. 
	As survivors gathered in the Superdome and the Convention Center
waiting for days for the Bush administration to send federal assistance to
the area, the media offered sensationalized accounts of chaotic conditions
there, with murders and rapes reportedly widespread. In fact, only one
violent death, a suicide, was ever confirmed to have occurred in those
facilities during that terrible first week after the levees collapsed.
According to those who were there, despite utterly wretched circumstances -
thousands of people with no working toilets, in excruciating heat - people
comported themselves with patience, with generosity toward those with even
less, and with as much dignity as they could manage.
	
<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/21/opinion/Corps4012.jpg> 
	After the flooding, New Orleanians were roundly criticized by
Congressional leaders for choosing to live in an area below sea level. In
fact, only parts of New Orleans are below sea level. My house, for example,
is a foot above sea level, and it still received four feet of floodwater. We
were hardly as foolish as Americans living in earthquake zones like San
Francisco and Anchorage are. After all, we had assurances from the Corps of
Engineers that we would be safe in a hurricane of Katrina's strength. If we
were foolish, it was in believing our government.
	So there's a great deal about what happened in New Orleans that is
widely misunderstood. On the other hand, what you think you know about FEMA
is probably right. A few months ago at a neighborhood property owners
association meeting, called to discuss the future of our area, a doctor who
lives near me described how he had used his small fishing boat to rescue
those stranded during the flooding. One evening, he found a group of people
huddled on a rooftop, and he started ferrying them to dry ground. On the way
back for a second load, he passed a boat with men wearing FEMA T-shirts. He
shouted for them to follow him to pick up the remaining family members. The
men refused, explaining that it was after 5 p.m. and they weren't authorized
for overtime.