HIGH ABOVE NEW ORLEANS — Riding 500 feet above this city in a Blackhawk helicopter the view of Katrina’s damage is astounding in its scope. A large industrial oil tank is shifted at least a dozen feet from its foundation, the victim of rapidly rushing waters on Aug. 29. Spots where homes once stood are reduced to nothing but concrete slabs; the homes formerly atop the foundations moved blocks away. Atop the residences still standing, blue tarps cover countless roofs.
Every so often this pattern of trashed homes is interrupted by a FEMA trailer, cramped housing distributed by the federal government to anxious homeowners seeking to return to their homestead. City streets that would normally bustle with traffic are still eerily empty. Everywhere is rubble.
Beyond the de-struction, one witnesses the watery mathematics of New Orleans, how it is surrounded by H2O. On one side is the Mississippi River. On the other is Lake Pontchartrain. In between sit a series of canals connecting the two. Flooding, especially in the city’s low-lying areas, is a matter of time.
From the air, the overall affect of Katrina-caused flooding is devastation. Or, as one of our guides, Louisiana National Guard Gen. Hunt Downer, put it during Wednesday’s helicopter tour, “The order of effects is just unimaginable.”
The general had his own story to tell the group of editorial writers I’m traveling with. Jackson Barracks, the Louisiana Guard’s home, is not too far from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. Over an hour-and-a-half on the Monday after Katrina blew through, Downer watched the water rise by a dozen feet outside his office, flooding the bottom floor. A clock set up high on a wall on one of the flooded military buildings is frozen at 9:39, the minute flood waters reached it.
After a lunchtime briefing, the general and his staff drove us to some of the hardest hit areas in the Lower Ninth Ward near the Industrial Canal. The picture, as could be expected, only got worse the closer we drew. All structures were touched in some way. Overturned cars, twisted scraps of metal and street signs bent into awkward shapes where just of a few of the reminders of Katrina.
“People cannot begin to imagine what it’s going to take to rebuild this city,” said Alden J. McDonald, Jr., president and CEO of the New Orleans-based Liberty Bank and Trust, during dinner on Wednesday night.
The job is more than clearing away the clutter that were once neighborhoods. Before people return, they need houses, yes, but they also require jobs, schools for their kids, places to shop and the sense of security that the levees that broke during Katrina will be strengthened. None of those things are ready — or even close to being ready — for all of the half-million residents who called this city home before Aug. 29.
Even with an additional $4 billion in reconstruction dollars pledged by President Bush on the same day we toured New Orleans by air, the region is in a bind. That’s not enough money and the priorities of the people at the top of the federal government are elsewhere. If the United States can spend $300 billion and counting on Iraq and Afghanistan, why won’t it commit the same to rebuilding New Orleans?Back in Baton Rouge following the helicopter tour, that sentiment was expressed by several high-profile state leaders.
Earlier, while boarding the Blackhawk in New Orleans to head back to Baton Rouge, it occurred to me that the political math against the folks here is just as stark as the ever-present water. Many thousands of Blackhawks are currently in Iraq, put there by politicians whose first instinct is to favor tax cuts for the wealthy and robust defense spending over city-rebuilding.
— Bob Davis
• New Orleans photo gallery
