The Authentic Eccentric

My friend Monica is a New Orleans resident. When we were finally able to reconnect after Katrina, I asked her to keep me up to date on the situation. Here is her first-hand account of their trip back into New Orleans this last weekend, pre-Rita:

We snuck back into the city this weekend (9/18/05) and successfully completed our reconnaissance mission. The first thing we noticed while driving into the city was the stench. The next was the loss of trees. About half of the oak trees are down and the other half are dead from the contaminated water. All of the grass and shrubbery are dead too. It looks as if a nuclear bomb hit the city. It was also a ghost town, which gave a creepy feeling. The only visible personnel were the National Guardsmen.

When we arrived at the house, we were pleasantly surprised to find only about 1 inch of water had been inside. Just enough to ruin the hardwood floors and area rugs. We only had a few inches of mold growing on the walls. We opened all the windows and spent the day cleaning, bleaching and pulling out carpets. There were a number of items that were damaged and unrecoverable. Everything that was on the floor, like in the closets or in a corner. But overall I think we faired pretty well. Thankfully our house sits on 4-foot piers, which saved us.

We found much more damage outside. Our huge cedar tree is snapped in half and is now resting on my office. The 6’ fence along the side yard is down in some areas and leaning heavily in others. The tall 10’ fence surrounding the pool is down. The tool shed under 2 feet of water and a disaster. The pool is filled with black sludge and I was afraid to go near it. Ugh! All the plants are dead and everything is covered with funky smelly sludge. It was sickening!

Then of course there is my office. Unfortunately my office sits on a slab on the ground. So it had 4 feet of water inside. Needless to say, everything was destroyed. Furniture and cabinets turned up side down and soaked with water. Carpets saturated and mold growing all the way up the walls and on the ceiling. We found stalactite growing downward on the ceiling fan blades. The building had been closed up and the water sat inside for several days before draining. Not to mention the heat. This made the situation much worse and the building had it’s own cloud system inside. The stench was unbearable and even with respirators we could only spend 2 minutes at a time inside the building before running outside for fresh air. Even still the air outside is not much better.

If you could imagine leaving dead fish inside a cooler for a week. Then mix it with water, oil and other unknown sludge. Simply stick your head inside that cooler and take a deep breath. That’s was it smells like in New Orleans.

Thankfully we found no dead animals near our house. In fact, the resident stray cat of the neighborhood was seen walking around. I thought surely we’d find him dead. Even though he is very aloof and never lets anyone pet him, I was thrilled to find him alive. We placed fresh water and food for him. We also saw the Animal Planet brigade placing food and water all over the New Orleans area. They set up a headquarters at Delgado College near our house. Bless those people.

After collecting whatever we could salvage, we then drove around our neighborhood before leaving. We live in Mid City and do most of our business there. Our favorite restaurants were destroyed with 5 feet of water inside; Mandina’s, Venezia’s, Angelo Brocato’s, Michaels Mid City Grill, Liuzza’s, Mediterranean Café and Katie’s. It’s so sad to see these businesses like this. You can only wonder if they will reopen someday.

As we drove out of the city, we noticed the traffic was heavy with police, rescue and FEMA personnel all leaving the area. Then we heard on the radio that the city is again under a mandatory evacuation due to Hurricane Rita. This is not what we need.

We hope to return this weekend to continue the clean up. I’ll give another update next week.

Katrina | Hurricane Aid | Orleans Parish | New Orleans