Moving back into a home and a city you haven’t lived in for approximately six months affords little chance for blogging. Especially when it coincides with other’s similar moves, visiting with friends and neighbors, spending time with D and oh, that tiny little spectacle that occurs here early every year known as Mardi Gras.
The flood may not have reached the Sliver on the River, but its psychological and economic effects are everywhere. Last night, D and I, cranky and hungry, got in the car to grab some dinner at Copeland’s on St. Charles. We noticed a new orange mesh barrier with a No Parking sign on the parking lot across the street. That’s normally my overflow parking and I was mildly upset that it had been annexed by a mystery party. Is it the owners of the new coffee shop by my place which replaces the old Rue de la Course that was damaged and broken into during the storm? Is it the bed-and-breakfast guy across the street? Perhaps it is merely a Mardi Gras tourist deterrent. Courteous parking is rare in this neighborhood, and to lose more spots is slightly disturbing.
Anyway … on to food at Copeland’s. Copeland’s – still closed and all of the interior decoration gone. Trolley Stop – still closed. Igor’s Garlic Clove is now Igor’s Bar-B-Q Mama, a questionable change of genre with the better Voodoo BBQ right down the street. Copeland’s on Napoleon – gone. Rue de la Course on Carrollton – now open! We travelled all the way to Carrollton and Claiborne before settling on O’Henry, which was so packed that D and I simply nodded to one another and drove back to Juan’s Flying Burrito on Magazine St. All that driving just to end up close to home.
A city’s slow change, with one or two cherished businesses folding in a while, is inevitable. This lurch is a little too much to take at once. However, that’s how we get used to new realities.
Lesson #1: Don’t tour the city when bordering on hypoglycemia.
Lesson #2: With fewer of them in the greater New Orleans area, leave for the restaurants of your choice at least one hour before you normally get hungry.
The problem is not just fewer restaurants but a diminished workforce all over the city. Almost every place is hiring and the waitstaff is overworked. During dinner with a friend who works security at a major music venue in the French Quarter, he casually informed me that retail and security positions are empty, because of evacuation and the fact that these positions aren’t paid as well or get raises like servers or bartenders. Last week, every security person but him quit en masse and he was left there all by himself during a big show. One can only imagine how much post-show work my friend had and the stress that goes with it. He believes, though, and stays on.
Lesson #3: Tip your servers well. Don’t be like me who spazzed on my math last night, and would have left a mere 10% tip had D not glared at me and set me right.
Lesson #4: Leave the show after the first or second encore. The longer you stay, the harder it is on security and the cleaning people, who get home much later than you do. Such is the way of the new New Orleans.
The new New Orleans. Is it here to stay? I urge you to read this Popular Mechanics article – Debunking Katrina Myths and its simple lessons of science and common sense.
MYTH: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”–New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, press conference, Aug. 28, 2005
REALITY: Though many accounts portray Katrina as a storm of unprecedented magnitude, it was in fact a large, but otherwise typical, hurricane … its barometric pressure was 902 millibars (mb), the sixth lowest ever recorded, but higher than Wilma (882mb) and Rita (897mb), the storms that followed it … south of New Orleans, the surge topped out at 30 ft.; in New Orleans the surge was 25 ft.–enough to overtop some of the city’s floodwalls.
NEXT TIME: … the Atlantic is in a cycle of heightened hurricane activity due to higher sea-surface temperatures and other factors. The cycle could last 40 years, during which time the United States can expect to be hit by dozens of Katrina-size storms. Policymakers–and coastal residents–need to start seeing hurricanes as routine weather events, not once-in-a-lifetime anomalies.
People coming back, Mardi Gras, Jazzfest and resurrecting homes and businesses are superb but not enough – we need better levees and a strong awareness that Katrina and its aftermath is not a one-time event. Through all of this, New Orleanians are out and about supporting this city by living, working, walking, shopping, partying, and being in it, its heart and soul. They believe in New Orleans. Being here and believing is not the end, however. It is complacence. Being here and believing enough to loudly demand better flood protection, education and coordination is the path to our future.
Being here also involves catching throws from my friends. D and I are off to breakfast and the Krewe of King Arthur parade early this afternoon, starring Sherry, John, Sadie, Louise, Michael, Katie, Pam, Charlie, Sally and many others. For those of you heading to St. Bernard Parish instead, the Knights of Nemesis roll at the same time.
Noted in our local paper is that LA is taking levee management from the parishes. Do you think this step will work? Or are is the graft just being channeled in a different direction?
Enjoy the revelry, dine well, keep aiming for the best, regards to D, and “avoir toute la chance”!
Yaaaaaaaaay for going home!
So glad to hear you are home again…
On the topic of food, I’m now craving Trolley Stop and Juan’s Flying Burrito.
Blair, I agree with centralization in this case. Any change that increases the involvement of scientists and engineers in the oversight process is good. High-level graft is more visible, too.
Hi Maitre,
I disagree pretty strongly with a lot of things in the Popular Mechanics article. I’m not going to say that Katrina was a “once in a lifetime event” but it was unique in American history. The windspeeds at landfall weren’t the main problem, it was massive size of the storm and the 175 mph winds 12 hours or so before landfall that created the massive surge, which was easily the largest surge ever to hit the US. Rita and Wilma had lower pressure, but they were also much smaller storms. So though I agree that anyone who lives on the Coast should assume that hurricanes will hit at some point, that doesn’t mean that monsters storms like Katrina are going to be “routine.” If they do become routine, then it likely become necessary to relocate many major cities (New Orleans, Houston, Tampa, Miami, etc). None of those cities could survive storms like Katrina if they hit “routinely.”
Maitri, please promise not to beat me for spelling your name wrong. If you do choose to beat me, let me know in advance so I can make some specific requests.
Michael, send special requests to email box, please.
That said, I have read in many different scientific journals and magazines that the Atlantic is in this heightened cycle due to a shift from normal water temperatures, and no one disagrees. In addition, the PM article agrees with you in that Katrina was unique due to its size:
Two factors made Katrina so devastating. Its radius (the distance from the center of the storm to the point of its maximum winds, usually at the inner eye wall) was 30 miles–three times wider than Camille’s. In addition, Katrina approached over the Gulf of Mexico’s shallow northern shelf, generating a more powerful storm surge–the water pushed ashore by hurricanes–than systems that move across deeper waters. In Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, the surge topped out at 30 ft.; in New Orleans the surge was 25 ft.–enough to overtop some of the city’s floodwalls.
Two questions: What causes these large-diameter hurricanes? What’s to stop another Katrina (chances of such a hurricane or greater increased in high-activity seasons) from generating a powerful storm surge again?
The odds of “another storm surge –> levee breach –> flood” are only going up, not down, in my opinion. To that end, we need stronger levee protection.
Bottom line: Would you put good money on no similar hurricanes and the rest of the levee system staying unbreached next season, the season after that and so on?
Houston is so complacent about this and they have no idea what they’re in for. Katrina was to them what Ivan was to us. Evacuating there is almost impossible. But, most of their city is above sea level and not below, not to mention their mastery of urban sprawl. “Portions of Houston are flooded? Let’s annex southeastern Austin and southern Dallas!”
I’m definitely not arguing that we don’t need better hurricane protection, because we obviously do. And no, there is nothing to stop another Katrina from forming, but there has been nothing to stop it from happening in the past, and in our recorded history no storm really approached it. I also understand that a storm a lot smaller than Katrina that hit us in the right way could do the same or more damage than Katrina did. What I didn’t like about the article was the bit you included above about how the US will be hit by “dozens” of Katrina-like storms, and that Katrina-like storms should be seen as “routine.” That’s not how I interpret the science regarding the heightened cycle of activity. Last year was easily the worst year for Atlantic hurricanes, but the predictions are not that last year will become the new “normal.” If it does, we’re all in a whole lot of trouble, because there is not a city on or near the Gulf or Atlantic Coast that wouldn’t be decimated by a dead-on hit by one Katrina, much less “dozens” of them. Maybe not flooded for weeks like New Orleans, but pretty f*cked up none-the-less. A few links:
http://tbo.com/hurricane2005/worstcase/
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/05/hurricane/index.html
The early predictions for next year are for 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes. Average is about 10 names storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes, so the forecast is definitely for an active year. But last year we had 27 named storms, 15 hurricanes, and 7 major ones, including three of strongest ever recorded. So the scientists are not saying that the 2005 season was typical even during this period of heightened activity.
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts/2005/dec2005/
So are we at risk for another massive hurricane strike? Yes. Do we (and Houston and Tampa and…) need better protection and planning? Definitely. Was there anything at all “typical” or “routine” about Katrina? No. Are the scientists saying that the US will definitely be hit by “dozens” of Katrina-like storms? No.