Random thoughts on the hurricane aftermath

[resqgeek]

Last night I sat in front of the television with my wife and watched the coverage from New Orleans and the Mississippi coast. I can't get over the images of New Orleans. From the aerial shots, New Orleans now reminds me of Venice, with canals, instead of roads. Unfortunately, the ground level pictures are anything but romantic Venice. I'm struggling to wrap my mind around the idea of a major city like New Orleans being uninhabitable for months (minimum), and I have to ask myself whether the city will even survive. I'm sure there will continue to be a New Orleans, but somehow I don't expect that it will ever be the same again. How many of the evacuated residents will actually return months from now? I suspect some of them may move on during the intervening months...who would blame them?

My wife spent a month in southern Florida in 1992, working with the American Red Cross relief effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. She's been looking at these images from an informed point of view. The pictures from Gulfport and Biloxi are all to familiar to her. She was in Homestead, FL, and has seen the endless blocks of matchstick lumber that used to be neighborhoods. At one point, she turned to me and said "I wish I could go down there again." Unfortunately, as much as I'd love to make that happen, I don't see anyway I'd be able to take care of the girls by myself for a month. I simply don't have that much vacation left after our recent trip down under.

Against this backdrop, our preparations for our cookout on Monday seem somewhat trivial. We have these cookouts every year on Labor Day, but somehow it feels strange to be planning a party while so many people are suffering in the aftermath of the hurricane. The party will go on, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be appropriate to somehow acknowledge the victims of the storm, but I'm not sure how to do that. The whole concept has left me feeling a bit uncomfortable.

At one point during NBC's coverage last night, they profiled a family in Biloxi. They had evacuated to Florida, but returned to inspect the damage. They found that their home was completely destroyed. Unfortunately, they developed a flat tire, ran out of gas and found themselves stranded in their car outside a drug store in Biloxi. While the news crew was filming, people started coming up to them, bringing food and drinks for the kids. One person handed them some books to read while they waited, and I found myself wondering if they were BookCrossing books (hmmm...maybe I need to change my screen name to bookgeek?). Finally, the drug store manager gave them a couple of cans of "Fix-a-Flat" and a passerby put a couple of gallons of gas into the tank, and they could head back to Florida and shelter.

Finally, some old friends of mine lived in New Orleans for a while last year, and I found their thoughts on the aftermath interesting, so I thought I'd share: http://www.mepsnbarry.com/adventures/2005/08/the-cajun-food-crisis/
I've also syndicated their blog at mepsnbarry_adv.

Comments

[yokospungeon.livejournal.com]

Against this backdrop, our preparations for our cookout on Monday seem somewhat trivial. We have these cookouts every year on Labor Day, but somehow it feels strange to be planning a party while so many people are suffering in the aftermath of the hurricane. The party will go on, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be appropriate to somehow acknowledge the victims of the storm, but I'm not sure how to do that.

MepsnBarry provide the answer to that: Serve 'Monday Beans'. They even supply the recipe.

[resqgeek]

Good point. For some reason I hadn't even thought in that direction.

[sunstamp.livejournal.com]

It's hard for all of us to wrap our heads around such devastation. I am from Slidell (near New Orleans and among the hardest hit) and I know deep inside that it's all gone. I read my friends posts and see that it's all gone yet somehow it seems surreal. I have a home in Hammond but am currently in Anchorage and I'm just thankful that Hammond was just out of reach of the flooding. Slow reports are coming in from friends and family and we all know we have to be strong. The news can make you feel pretty bad but people are strong, even when its as unbelieveable as this.