- Don't tour the cemeteries because people get attacked there
- Watch out for deserted neighborhoods because gangs attack unescorted cars
- Watch out for potholes
- Watch out for joy-riders stopping suddenly in front of your car so they can collect insurance
Outwardly, some parts of the city, mostly the old section, appear whole. You don't notice any problems in Jackson Square for example. Metairie Cemetery, which got 6 feet of water like other places, still had some tomb damage but otherwise looked normal. (I didn't see signs of any bodies popping up but for all I know there might have been some. There were rumors that this happened but they seem to be mostly unfounded.)
The poorer sections of New Orleans are toast and I didn't see much interest in rebuilding them as they were. Realistically, many of the houses still have to be bulldozed and it's unlikely that the houses that replace them will be geared for the same income levels.
I got lost in the city on my first night. I had lots and lots of maps but there are way too few street signs in the city -- I was told that was thanks to both Katrina and theft.
I didn't want to stay downtown so I went to a Motel 6 at exit 245 on I-10, about 10 miles from the French Quarter. I got there at night and it was dark all around so I thought it was an rural area or something. The clerk said, no, there were houses all around. They were dark because they still don't have all of the utilities in the area and most of the houses aren't livable yet. A woman at Metairie said she'd never have stayed in that area because the houses that survived tended to attract squatters and they sometimes attack people. It's also near the Six Flags amusement park which has been closed since the hurricane.
I didn't hear anyone blaming Bush for this particular disaster which was almost a relief. The clerk blamed the corrupt city and state government, saying money to prepare for this had been available for years but it had been wasted on other pet projects. He also praised FEMA for getting so many trailers down there so quickly. He said, however, that people were used to being on the dole from this and the places that weren't being fixed up never would be because people expected the government to take care of everything for them.
The Metairie person said all city governments were corrupt so New Orleans' corruption didn't bother her much. She said they had received a FEMA trailer, used it, and had called several times to get it taken away. I guess FEMA doesn't want to look like it's reducing aid so they never picked it up. She said she was okay with that because her house was on the Mardi Gras parade route and they'd be having a lot of house guests then -- she liked the fact that they'd be dirtying up the trailer bathroom instead of her house. So FEMA is subsidizing Mardi Gras parties....
The first night, I stopped at McDonald's for a bite. (Yeah, well, I'm not a huge food person and figured my traditional visit to Cafe Du Monde in the morning would take care of my local flavor needs.) They had a big sign up about how they had just reopened, 15 months after the flood. This is big news for this area because every job is precious when so many stores are closed. Inside, they had a sign asking customers to be patient because the staff was brand new. I found out that the computer monitors at McDonald's show you how long the customer has been waiting since they placed their orders. This is measured in seconds. Every order on the screen (including mine) had numbers above 600 -- 10 minute delays. Almost no one was actually eating -- we were all waiting for food.
The next morning, I stopped at the same place for caffeine only to be told the lobby was closed. Well, when was it going to reopen? We don't know. We had a break-in last night. Huh? Sure enough, there was a janitor removing pieces of glass. So a business reopens and it's immediately vandalized. This doesn't bode well for the neighborhood. Even more unnerving is that it's a 24-hour drive-through McDonald's so someone broke in while they were open.
After doing their drive-thru (and getting the wrong order of course), I drove around the neighborhood some. About one-third of the houses had some sort of activity going on. The apartments and almost all of the business centers were deserted though. There were lots of signs for fencers -- try to protect whatever you have left. This was a middle class neighborhood from what I could tell. There was a house with a "for sale as is" sign (which meant you had to demolish it and start over) and the amount requested was $80,000.
I drove up one deserted street and saw a half of a tire sticking up on end in the middle of the road. Who would do that? As I got closer, I found that it was actually a whole tire, stuck in a huge pot-hole. The Metairie person said that the roads are constantly buckling here because they're so close to the water line.
All in all, I didn't see much hope for New Orleans, at least for the next ten years. There's way too much work to be done. Personally, I'm not convinced that the entire city should be rebuilt -- it's too bad there's no national debate on what to do in New Orleans. Dumping money into it without having a long-term strategy sounds pretty gutless to me.
I spent about 36 hours in New Orleans. That was enough for me for now!
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