Reflection on New Orleans

I've been on the road for nearly four weeks and we've already covered so much ground. Traveling the country at this whirlwind pace is both incredible and disorienting, simultaneously fast and slow. I'm now in Oklahoma, a week ago I was in Tennessee and the week before that in Pennsylvania (you can check out our route here). I'm happy to report that I have been amazed by the diversity of our country and reinvigorated by what I have seen.

The purpose of this post, however, is to share my experience from New Orleans. I will preface this by saying that what I write is based on my three days in the city, talking to people and trying to see as much as possible. I certainly don't have the hard facts or the complete picture of everything going on there (who does?), but I feel compelled to share what I did learn.

Compared to our other stops on the trip so far, New Orleans was so real and raw. Almost two years after Katrina, the situation is still quite grim in many ways, but there is also an atmosphere of optimism amongst the people I met that they are reclaiming their city. I was really moved by the importance of the work that still needs to be done there.

I had the 4th of July free, so my friend Carolyn and her boyfriend Bryant took us on a tour of the city. Most visitors to New Orleans hang out in the French Quarter, which is the area of the city that took in the least amount of damage from the storm. That part of town has been mostly restored and it is again a vibrant place. Drive away from the French Quarter, however, and the picture is quite different.


Our first stop was in the ninth ward, which is right next to where one of the levies breached. I have chills as I write this, because the communities that were there are still almost entirely gone. There are huge chunks of land where all you can see is remnants of foundations, sidewalks, and driveways. There are stairways that lead to no where. Grassy undergrowth is quickly overtaking former homes. The roadways are still a disaster, and nearly impossible to drive on.

We met a woman on Tuesday who was the third person on her block to move back to her lower ninth ward neighborhood. Her family and friends, her neighbors, for decades (and populations whose history in the city goes back over centuries) have not returned. The social geography of these neighborhoods has been ripped apart. There is a shortage of jobs and money. Some have no deeds to their land and thus can't prove their ownership. Others are still paying a mortgage on a house that is destroyed. And still others rented and can't find housing or afford the new rates, which have doubled and tripled since the storm. Residents want to return, but they can't.

There was over 15 feet of standing water in parts of the city, not to mention the damage from the winds and force of water rushing from breaking levies. It is rather misleading, you can drive on the main roads of town and things look okay, but turn down a side road and you'll see the real aftermath and struggle to recover. Most neighborhoods weren't entirely obliterated like the ninth ward, but many are a patchwork of recovered homes and those that have been abandoned. You can see a beautifully restored home standing right next to one that has yet to be gutted. Most buildings still bear a large red spray painted X that tells the date from almost two years ago when a search team checked the house for survivors, and how many they found. The X's are hard to remove unless you have funding to repaint your entire house so many people have left them. The most creative solution I saw was to paint a giant heart over it.

Toxins run rampant in the city, largely from the flooding. Heavy industry, but also paint cans, cars, and other household items have contaminated the soil and water. It is probably not safe to eat anything that has grown in soil in New Orleans that has not been remediated, and most locals that I met do not recommend drinking the water. Right outside of New Orleans, the Murphy Oil Spill released over one million gallons of crude oil in to St. Bernard Parish, just one example of environmental disasters that came with the storm.

Crime is also a problem. The murder rate is still the same in the city as it was before the hurricane, though the population has been cut in half (from roughly half a million to a quarter million). There are no solid boundary lines for "good" and "bad" parts of town. With people not living in some parts of New Orleans, the sense of safety you can get from neighbors and other people being on the street is not there.

I realize that I have just painted a very negative picture of what is happening in New Orleans. There are so many issues to face. And yet, I also was more inspired and moved by this city than any other I have been to. Whether or not to rebuild New Orleans is not a question one would ask if they are from the city. New Orleans is so rich culturally and historically, and most importantly, it is home to so many people. It is where they have lived their whole lives, where their parents have lived, and their parents, and so on. There are people who have never left the city, it is all they need and the only place they want to be. In geography we often talk about the "power of place," and that concept truly applies here.

I have little knowledge of rebuilding policies or different schools of thought on how to protect the city from the next hurricane. People I met acknowledge that a storm will come again and the city still has much to do in order to be prepared. If you point out to someone that it seems crazy to live in a hurricane zone, they quip back that it is just as crazy for LA and San Francisco to be built on earthquake fault lines. No place is entirely safe from natural disasters, and the people who make their home in New Orleans certainly weren't the ones who decided where to build the city.

So what is there to do for New Orleans? Short of moving to the city to help with the relief efforts (which many people have done), I was told to share with as many people as I could what I saw. To let people know that New Orleans is still on the map, that it has not yet recovered, and that it needs help. There are so many issues that take up our consciousness as a country each day, each one equally pressing and valid, but let us not forget New Orleans.

By: Julie Curti