New Orleans

[willstrickland]

Just returned from a month of hurricane relief duty in the Big Easy. It gave a deeper meaning to the Thanksgiving holiday. I can't really convey how dire the situation remains down there. While there is a tremendous amount of work being done every day, the truth is that it will be a very long time before anything is even close to "normal" in the crescent city. And it is truly one of our great unique American cities. Sorry about the pic dimensions, I can't edit them from here.

 

[EWolfe]

Will, you're a good man.

[MisterMo]

Good on ya. That photo is both amazing and sad, reminiscent of pictures taken in 1945.

 

What is the body of water in the upper left corner?

[sk]

Will,

 

for those of us who can not be there helping, thank you for doing what you can.

 

YOu RULE!!

[OlympicMtnBoy]

I know what you mean, I was working there October 11th-November 12th. It was just a little crazy. A lot of great peope trying hard, and a lot of shit going on. I'd say that city won't be the same, but some things down there aren't going to change either. Thanks for helping out too.

[JayB]

That photo looks like it was taken along the I-10 (I think that's the highway) beachfront in the greater Gulfport/Biloxi area - or somewhere along the Gulf Coast anyway. Seems like from what I've read the buildings in N.O. are intact, but muddy and mold-ridden - rather than physically destroyed.

[fear_and_greed]

Ever wonder why that group of SAR guys from Vancouver pulled outta there so quickly? A friend of mine spoke to one of them and was told it was because they ran into some rednecks in Zodiacs, armed with semi-automatics, "coon huntin".

[willstrickland]

The photo is in New Orleans proper, somewhere on the north end of town around the industrial canal levy, not far south of Lake Ponchatrain. The Lakeview neighborhood, which is a few miles west of this picture looks about the same.

 

Downtown and the Quarter didn't have too much damage (although many high rises were missing lots of glass), I was staying basically next door to the Convention Center, which had been completely cleaned up and transformed into a temporary medical facility.

 

Thanks for heaing down OlyMtnboy. Yes, lots of people working hard, but it seems like there is a serious lack of leadership at the top levels, IMO. Our specific mission was very narrowly defined (temporary roofing) and ran well enough all things considered.

 

All the contractors we were dealing with were living in travel trailers in parking lots of malls, stadiums, etc and many construction workers were living in backpacking tents under the interstates, in parking lots, anywhere they could find really.

 

Jay, yes most buildings in NO suffered mainly wind (and associated fallen trees) and water damage, rather than knock-down destruction like Biloxi/Gulfport. Especially in the western burbs like Kenner, the west bank (Gretna/Algiers etc). However, there are plenty of neighborhoods in NO proper that look like the photo above... Lakeview, the lower 9th, parts of the Garden district are pretty well destroyed.

 

There were lots of bizarre scenes...80ft fishing trawlers in the middle of the highway, barge on top of a school bus, boats impaled on top of wrought iron fences miles from any waterbody, highway on-ramp and overpass completely missing, houses that had floated half way down their block and crashed through the walls of other houses, tons of stray animals, cars that had floated around and come to rest piled on top of each other at weird angles, and a million horrendously stinking refrigerators lining the streets.