News from Disaster Zone
Since I am seeing an obvious difference in what that National news shows (they show a very edited version of events here in order to form your opinions) and what our local news (www.2theadvocate.com and www.wafb.com) reports, I thought I'd update you on the real things.
First, there is more to Louisiana than New Orleans. There are parishes and communities with much more damage, more fatalities, and some are so leveled by the gulf of mexico that it looks as though the ocean will have taken over that land forever. So much for the prevention of our state eroding away. Here are some things I learned about these areas yesterday:
WBRZ showed some great pieces today, basically all they've been doing is bringing in people/survivors and listening to them, and also people from the LSU Hurricane center and some boaters who went into some of these parishes where the national news just isn't going (i guess b/c there isn't as much drama w/the people there, and it's not new orleans, but the outer suburbs). What I saw today was good and bad. Good, that in Metairie, where one of our house guests is from and where he left his cat, is dry now. Most of it anyway. Looks like they got some wind damage like we did here (Metairie is on the north end of new orleans). They also showed a few cats who looked healthy. Phew. Police were picking them up and taking them to a shelter to be fed and cared for. The news is that these people will be let back in to that area (Jefferson parish which is metairie and kenner where the airport is) 6am monday morning - not to live but to look at their damage. There have been crews working already to try to get power and water back up and to remove trees, and they finally removed trees from the major roads mostly.
The second piece was of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish. I've heardly seen footage of it yet, nobody has really, b/c the nationals aren't touching it yet. And mostly I think that's b/c it has been hit so hard it is difficult to even get in there. But these guys went in with a boat and a camera and they went down every street and showed it on the tv (it's not just a news hour, the abc station is now just news nonstop to show us all this). We have a lot of evacuees here from that area and they need to know what is going on there for peace of mind, so perhaps that is why our local news is so different, they have a different audience - people who lived there and want to know what is really going on.
Anyway, Chalmette was hit hard. First, wind damage, it looks like tornadoes ripped through the place, then water to the rooftops. The water has receded some, you can see water lines where it used to be. But... dead horses and deer on balconies and rooftops, people had written help on their roofs and nobody was in sight so the boaters didn't know if they were dead or alive in their attics... they knocked and yelled but no answer. Cars and trucks were floating on top of each other, an entire house floated off of its foundation and was in the middle of a major road. Chalmette is a small towned suburbish place of New Orleans. There is a close knit community there, so close knit that other New Orleanians call them Chalmatians and joke about inbreeding because the families are so close together, and it sucks that those people are going to have to live in new places and resetablish themselves in new communities. Same w/new orleans of course but this is a new place we're finally getting to see the damage of that it seems that national news has been ignoring. I'm sure it makes those victims feel worthy just as when a certain politician suggests we don't even rebuild one of our greatest cities and ports.
And in other news:
Benefit concert is tonight. Church today was full of new families who had no where else to go. We had one of our vicar's friends who is a priest in NY speak to us, he was there for 9/11, and also is from North Carolina on the coast originally so he had some hurricane experience. Tonight they've invited people from the shelters as well as the visiting and baton rouge police departments, and the military which is mostly texas national guard who are using the baton rouge airport as their base, and we're cooking gumbo for all of them as well. Normally after church on sunday, Pete and I usually go out for lunch w/our priest, the youth minister and children's minister and a few other church staff or people like us who are usually involved in some ministry there, so today we invited the rest of the band and the NY priest, who quietly and discreetly paid for all of us on the side w/the waitress while we weren't paying attention so that we couldn't refuse. What a nice man!
I haven't watched any local news today, just last night, so no updates from that right now, although Pete and I saw about 12 big tour buses drive police escorted going north/west on I-10 from New Orleans, but they looked empty. Perhaps they're going to our downtown civic center which is overflowing with evacuees and maybe transporting them to a more permanent shelter, who knows.
And praise for Mobil/Exxon. While most gas stations in the area have tried their best to keep gas under $3.00, it is still $2.99 in most places except for these stations. They're still at $2.54 and $2.57 and even some places in baton rouge are $2.49. They quickly run out of course as there are queues of cars waiting for hours to get gas, but they don't raise the prices when they get a new tanker full. I think that is their own way of trying to help us out. Our population has tripled and these people need any break they can get. So yay for them. The Chevron is doing the same, but not all of them, just the one near us. As a matter of fact a tanker just started to pull into the one by our house so Pete is gonna go back out ina little bit to fill up. We've tried not to get gas yet but with our truck it is inevitable. With all this driving to and from shelters and our church which is located in baton rouge, we can't avoid it. At least we're not taking a lot of containers and filling them up as well like most people. They're only making the situation worse.
I have a story my mom told me about three of the evacuees who stayed the storm at a New Orleans hospital b/c their babies were in the NICU there. When they came to evacuate the babies, they only took the babies to make sure they got all of them and left the staff and mothers and other people there, so they had to find their own ways out. So these three mothers, a doctor and a nurse waded through the knee deep waters trying to get to West New Orleans where one of them had a sister who was a doctor at another hospital there (West Bank fared much better and wasn't as flooded, most of the damage was only done by looters who looted and set fires to places afterwards which of course could only burn to the ground since fire trucks couldn't get in). One of the mothers had a family-owned home in the garden district (very near the french quarter) on St. Charles Avenue so they tried to get there first. Of course they didn't want to be followed or attacked so whenever someone asked where they were going, all they'd say was "we're trying to catch a ride to Baton Rouge".
Some men, possibly police or military, picked them up in an air boat and took them to St. Charles, however it was still 11 blocks away from this house and night had begun to fall. Of course you've heard of the violence that happens there at night, especially now when there is no protection around, so they tried to be as quiet as possible and tried their best not to use their flashlights. The water has all sorts of chemicals in it, and they said it just burned and itched at their skin. Finally, they made it to the house and as quietly as possible broke in and spend the night there so that they could walk the rest of the way to the west bank in daylight at least. I think there may have been some food and bottled water there as well, I'm not sure. They had a generator but were too scared to use it b/c the noise might attract looters.
The next day they walked, I don't know how many miles, through the water towards the west bank. Finally two ladies and some children drove by in a Suburban, it looked like they had stolen it but these folks didn't care. They stopped to talk them b/c they needed a cell phone but the hospital group had just dropped the one cell phone they had in the nasty water and couldn't find it. They offered them a ride to the west bank, but once they got on the bridge, the police/military wouldn't let them drive over it. They had to abandon the vehicle and walk. Somehow they made it to the mall on that end, which had been looted and set on fire, and got in contact w/the sister/doctor at the other hospital there. She came by, gave them her car and said she had to return to the hospital, so just take the car to baton rouge. They had no idea how to get to baton rouge from there so they found a police officer and asked him, who gave them directions and repeated over and over "do NOT stop for ANYONE". They did as he said and made it into baton rouge where they went to Woman's hospital where my mom works and where the three babies were. This was the first time one of the ladies had even seen her husband and other daughter since before the storm hit when they evacuated and she stayed behind at the hospital. The hospital let them shower and gave them scrubs to wear and fed them, and now they're fine.
My mom comes home from the hospital with all sorts of stories like this. One of the women in that group had just had a C section 10 days earlier. Can you imagine all that walking in that horrible water after that? She said a lot of people are winding up at the hospital after going through some sort of similar escape and just need a shower and clothes after being in that water. They're filthy, stinky, and sickly.
First, there is more to Louisiana than New Orleans. There are parishes and communities with much more damage, more fatalities, and some are so leveled by the gulf of mexico that it looks as though the ocean will have taken over that land forever. So much for the prevention of our state eroding away. Here are some things I learned about these areas yesterday:
WBRZ showed some great pieces today, basically all they've been doing is bringing in people/survivors and listening to them, and also people from the LSU Hurricane center and some boaters who went into some of these parishes where the national news just isn't going (i guess b/c there isn't as much drama w/the people there, and it's not new orleans, but the outer suburbs). What I saw today was good and bad. Good, that in Metairie, where one of our house guests is from and where he left his cat, is dry now. Most of it anyway. Looks like they got some wind damage like we did here (Metairie is on the north end of new orleans). They also showed a few cats who looked healthy. Phew. Police were picking them up and taking them to a shelter to be fed and cared for. The news is that these people will be let back in to that area (Jefferson parish which is metairie and kenner where the airport is) 6am monday morning - not to live but to look at their damage. There have been crews working already to try to get power and water back up and to remove trees, and they finally removed trees from the major roads mostly.
The second piece was of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish. I've heardly seen footage of it yet, nobody has really, b/c the nationals aren't touching it yet. And mostly I think that's b/c it has been hit so hard it is difficult to even get in there. But these guys went in with a boat and a camera and they went down every street and showed it on the tv (it's not just a news hour, the abc station is now just news nonstop to show us all this). We have a lot of evacuees here from that area and they need to know what is going on there for peace of mind, so perhaps that is why our local news is so different, they have a different audience - people who lived there and want to know what is really going on.
Anyway, Chalmette was hit hard. First, wind damage, it looks like tornadoes ripped through the place, then water to the rooftops. The water has receded some, you can see water lines where it used to be. But... dead horses and deer on balconies and rooftops, people had written help on their roofs and nobody was in sight so the boaters didn't know if they were dead or alive in their attics... they knocked and yelled but no answer. Cars and trucks were floating on top of each other, an entire house floated off of its foundation and was in the middle of a major road. Chalmette is a small towned suburbish place of New Orleans. There is a close knit community there, so close knit that other New Orleanians call them Chalmatians and joke about inbreeding because the families are so close together, and it sucks that those people are going to have to live in new places and resetablish themselves in new communities. Same w/new orleans of course but this is a new place we're finally getting to see the damage of that it seems that national news has been ignoring. I'm sure it makes those victims feel worthy just as when a certain politician suggests we don't even rebuild one of our greatest cities and ports.
And in other news:
Benefit concert is tonight. Church today was full of new families who had no where else to go. We had one of our vicar's friends who is a priest in NY speak to us, he was there for 9/11, and also is from North Carolina on the coast originally so he had some hurricane experience. Tonight they've invited people from the shelters as well as the visiting and baton rouge police departments, and the military which is mostly texas national guard who are using the baton rouge airport as their base, and we're cooking gumbo for all of them as well. Normally after church on sunday, Pete and I usually go out for lunch w/our priest, the youth minister and children's minister and a few other church staff or people like us who are usually involved in some ministry there, so today we invited the rest of the band and the NY priest, who quietly and discreetly paid for all of us on the side w/the waitress while we weren't paying attention so that we couldn't refuse. What a nice man!
I haven't watched any local news today, just last night, so no updates from that right now, although Pete and I saw about 12 big tour buses drive police escorted going north/west on I-10 from New Orleans, but they looked empty. Perhaps they're going to our downtown civic center which is overflowing with evacuees and maybe transporting them to a more permanent shelter, who knows.
And praise for Mobil/Exxon. While most gas stations in the area have tried their best to keep gas under $3.00, it is still $2.99 in most places except for these stations. They're still at $2.54 and $2.57 and even some places in baton rouge are $2.49. They quickly run out of course as there are queues of cars waiting for hours to get gas, but they don't raise the prices when they get a new tanker full. I think that is their own way of trying to help us out. Our population has tripled and these people need any break they can get. So yay for them. The Chevron is doing the same, but not all of them, just the one near us. As a matter of fact a tanker just started to pull into the one by our house so Pete is gonna go back out ina little bit to fill up. We've tried not to get gas yet but with our truck it is inevitable. With all this driving to and from shelters and our church which is located in baton rouge, we can't avoid it. At least we're not taking a lot of containers and filling them up as well like most people. They're only making the situation worse.
I have a story my mom told me about three of the evacuees who stayed the storm at a New Orleans hospital b/c their babies were in the NICU there. When they came to evacuate the babies, they only took the babies to make sure they got all of them and left the staff and mothers and other people there, so they had to find their own ways out. So these three mothers, a doctor and a nurse waded through the knee deep waters trying to get to West New Orleans where one of them had a sister who was a doctor at another hospital there (West Bank fared much better and wasn't as flooded, most of the damage was only done by looters who looted and set fires to places afterwards which of course could only burn to the ground since fire trucks couldn't get in). One of the mothers had a family-owned home in the garden district (very near the french quarter) on St. Charles Avenue so they tried to get there first. Of course they didn't want to be followed or attacked so whenever someone asked where they were going, all they'd say was "we're trying to catch a ride to Baton Rouge".
Some men, possibly police or military, picked them up in an air boat and took them to St. Charles, however it was still 11 blocks away from this house and night had begun to fall. Of course you've heard of the violence that happens there at night, especially now when there is no protection around, so they tried to be as quiet as possible and tried their best not to use their flashlights. The water has all sorts of chemicals in it, and they said it just burned and itched at their skin. Finally, they made it to the house and as quietly as possible broke in and spend the night there so that they could walk the rest of the way to the west bank in daylight at least. I think there may have been some food and bottled water there as well, I'm not sure. They had a generator but were too scared to use it b/c the noise might attract looters.
The next day they walked, I don't know how many miles, through the water towards the west bank. Finally two ladies and some children drove by in a Suburban, it looked like they had stolen it but these folks didn't care. They stopped to talk them b/c they needed a cell phone but the hospital group had just dropped the one cell phone they had in the nasty water and couldn't find it. They offered them a ride to the west bank, but once they got on the bridge, the police/military wouldn't let them drive over it. They had to abandon the vehicle and walk. Somehow they made it to the mall on that end, which had been looted and set on fire, and got in contact w/the sister/doctor at the other hospital there. She came by, gave them her car and said she had to return to the hospital, so just take the car to baton rouge. They had no idea how to get to baton rouge from there so they found a police officer and asked him, who gave them directions and repeated over and over "do NOT stop for ANYONE". They did as he said and made it into baton rouge where they went to Woman's hospital where my mom works and where the three babies were. This was the first time one of the ladies had even seen her husband and other daughter since before the storm hit when they evacuated and she stayed behind at the hospital. The hospital let them shower and gave them scrubs to wear and fed them, and now they're fine.
My mom comes home from the hospital with all sorts of stories like this. One of the women in that group had just had a C section 10 days earlier. Can you imagine all that walking in that horrible water after that? She said a lot of people are winding up at the hospital after going through some sort of similar escape and just need a shower and clothes after being in that water. They're filthy, stinky, and sickly.
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