Wickham's musings from Chalke

 
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of USA on Monday, August 29th. A clock stopped at 4.51am. Effects of widespread damage and flooding will be felt for years to come. There are hundreds of photos here.



New Orleans wasn’t in the direct path but the hurricane still damaged virtually every building. It was only category one when it passed over Florida, then upgraded to category four with 145 to 160mph sustained winds as it hit the coast east of New Orleans. It destroyed the long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain which I drove over several times in 1971. Coastal towns like Biloxi have suffered worst.

There is only one useable road in and out of New Orleans. The city is generally six feet below the water level of the lake and even lower than the Mississippi river. The levees or dams which hold back the lake collapsed and water has flooded 80% of the city and the hurricane has affected 90,000 square miles around it. There is no power, fresh water or drainage. Most streets are waist deep in water but in some areas the floods are up to roof level of two storey buildings and people are breaking through roofs from their lofts and sitting on the roofs waiting for rescue. The floods are polluted with sewage, oil, chemicals and corpses. There are reports of sharks, alligators and poisonous snakes in the flooded streets. Looting, shooting and lawlessness is everywhere.

A large number of those with cars left before the storm and headed north but poorer people without cars were stranded. Many went to the Superdome and Convention Centre for shelter and have now been joined by tens of thousands more who have waded or swum there. Conditions inside are said to be dreadful – there is no electricity, water, food or sanitation. The stench is terrible in the 90 degree heat. No one has been able to wash or change filthy clothes for four days. I saw a video of a mother changing her baby’s nappies. By now I expect she has run out of clean ones. She can’t wash them. Perhaps the baby is in filthy ones or naked now and crapping over the floor or over her as she holds her baby.

People are dying of dehydration and in the hospitals patients are dying because vital equipment has no power.

Police are handing in their badges as they don’t want to shoot looters, probably because they sympathise with their plight. One has to wonder where the police and other emergency service people are sleeping and eating. Upper floors of major buildings are intact apart from windows blown out and leaking roofs but there is no power or water so these people must be under enormous stress now.

Yesterday fleets of buses started taking people out of New Orleans to places like Houston three hundred and fifty miles away to the Astrodome there. Gasoline has already increased from $2 to $3 all over the States and supplies are running out.

Some reports say that people may be able to return to their homes in December, other reports say that New Orleans may have to be abandoned for ever. Certainly major projects like rebuilding bridges will take years. First there has to be a detailed structural survey, then designs, then removal of collapsed parts and demolition of damaged bits, then a long reconstruction period. These tasks require a labour force that has been evacuated and plant and materials that are no longer available. The levees have to be rebuilt, the flood water pumped out and all infrastructure services repaired.

Where will the workers live while doing this? I lived in a construction camp in the Falkland Islands while building an airport and road there in virgin country which housed about three thousand workers and all labour, materials and plant were shipped in but the task in New Orleans and surrounding areas will require far more people than that.

The Governor has instructed a total evacuation of New Orleans. Those in shelters or motels outside New Orleans will have no income, no access to savings and will have lost their passports or other identification documents which will make it difficult for them to prove who they are to access their own savings. Bank and financial institution records will have been destroyed by the floods. Small businesses will have been totally destroyed. Employees and possibly the boss will be dead.

I think that a large number of those evacuated will have to start a new life elsewhere and New Orleans will either be abandoned or repaired as a much smaller city. Since it is below the lake and river level there is obviously a risk that flooding will occur again, especially as global warming is already raising sea levels and increasing storm levels.

Reports are all about the poor mainly black people who were stranded in the city; they say nothing about those richer people who drove out before the hurricane arrived. No doubt many are staying in motels. They will soon run out of money and exhaust their credit cards. They will have no money for gasoline or nowhere to go so they will just stay where they are. The motels will not be able to evict them and will run into financial difficulties. This will impact on the suppliers to the motels and so on. Not only will the US government have to house everyone, including those currently in safe conditions, but will have to look after them financially for some time.

Postscript 05/09/05

Most people have now been transferred to other states, 250,000 to Texas but also to Alabama, Tennessee and many other states. Over 500,000 people are dispersed, including those who left by car. It remains to be seen whether poor black people will be welcome in southern states that have traditionally been run by whites. There are plenty of whites that still consider blacks a lower form of human life. I am not optimistic that they will mix easily especially if they are just hanging around without work. Although most blacks are no doubt honest there are some who are drug addicts or villains and will get up to mischief; there are reports that these types were raping, assaulting and stealing while in the Superdome.

The weight of floodwater will have caused the ground and therefore the buildings to sink. When the water is pumped out the ground will heave and I suspect that many buildings will have damaged foundations and will require total rebuilding. Major buildings like the tower blocks and interstate flyovers may have foundations that are deep enough to avoid damage, but not the majority of lower buildings.

Postscript 09/09/05

The mismanagement of the crisis by the US authorities is astounding. The local authorities have obviously been overwhelmed and have called for central government assistance right from the start but it has been badly managed.

First of all there was a delay when central government seemed unaware of the seriousness of the situation, then only a few thousand troops were sent in, but they weren’t enough to help evacuate hundreds of thousands of people and stop looting as well. A week later the number of troops was increased to over fifty thousand but this was when the evacuation was virtually complete so the troops were seen just walking up and down the dry streets doing nothing because they did not have the equipment to go into the deeply flooded areas to help those still trapped.

There was also a lack of will to help. I saw a video of a British TV crew who had gone on a small boat into the stinking black polluted water in the suburbs and rescued a man who had wanted to stay but eventually changed his mind. They took him to a group of soldiers on a dry area but the soldiers just ignored the scruffy, smelly old white man and turned away. The TV crew had to take him to an evacuation point themselves.

Many thousands of residents have decided to stay in their homes and refuse to be evacuated but the governor has now ordered that they be forcibly removed because of the health risk and so that the city can be clear for uninterrupted clearance and rebuilding. I have seen one man taken away in handcuffs. It is obvious that after these remnants have been removed the city will not be empty, thousands of workers will enter to remove bodies, repair services, clear up and rebuild. The residents who refused to go know very well that their homes will be raided by these incomers and that there would be people around to help if they stayed. I can understand the governor’s edict as some areas will not see a total removal of water for months, so the residents would need time-consuming and costly support, but I'm not sure that I agree with it.

It was reported today that some areas which had had electricity restored and still had gas have found that these services have been turned off to force the remaining residents out. The water is receding in many areas as pumping has started and evaporation is taking effect so some areas are dry and many were dry right from the start; people cannot understand why they are being forcibly removed. It is obviously based on administrative convenience. The reason given is that the city needs to be cleared of criminals but in my view property will be raided by the criminals if they stay or the incoming workers if the criminals are ejected so I can’t see the difference. There will never be enough troops to ensure that workers do not steal.

Bearing in mind that some areas, including central areas, have always been dry and many more now are, it seems hard on those who want to camp out in buildings that are in reasonable condition apart from a lack of services. Others are attempting to stay put in damaged timber bungalows in deeply flooded areas. What criteria are being used to delineate the boundary between the main area of New Orleans where people are being forced out and the surrounding areas where they are allowed to stay? On balance I think humanitarian principles dictate that people should be allowed to stay provided they understand that official help would not be forthcoming. TV crews and charity rescue boats will disappear soon as there is less need for them. If residents were allowed to stay they might be very isolated. They would have to rely on themselves or hope that future workers doing a repair or clean-up would find and look after them.

One would have thought that an internet database would have been set up the first day to record those alive and where they were but it seems that a central database is only now being set up. There are several charity databases which are uncoordinated. I saw a video of an official using a phone to talk to other evacuation centres to find relatives for someone – so inefficient when an internet database could be used.