Christmas 2006

Ken Davis

December 25, 2006

Dear Friends,

 For the second (and hopefully the last) time I feel somewhat compelled to write a Christmas letter. First and foremost I want to sing the praises of the many thousands of volunteers who have camped out in New Orleans for a week or more and helped us rebuild our city. There is no way we could have made the progress we have without them. Also, the various tradesmen from all over who have come here and the Mexicans have been a great blessing. With them we have made great strides, but we still have a long way to go.

 There have been three different groups investigating the floodwall and levee failures. I have attended every forum open to the public in New Orleans that I have known about. I will try to keep my “Corpse” of Engineers ranting to a minimum, but there are some things that the rest of the country needs to understand.

 What happened to New Orleans was not a natural disaster, it was an engineering disaster. The “Corpse’s” own design standard calls for a floodwall or levee to be able to withstand a storm surge the height of the floodwall or levee. However, they only “designed” the 14 ft. floodwalls to handle a storm surge of 12.5 ft. The floodwalls actually failed at a storm surge of 8 to 9 ft. The original 57 ft. deep sheet pilings were 17 ft. in the final “design.”

When questioned by the “Corpse” office in Vicksburg as to the depth of the sheet pilings, the local office responded that it was their “professional opinion” that 17 foot deep sheet pilings were adequate. It is my belief (but not substantiated by any testimony in the investigation) that the depth of the sheet pilings was driven by the available budget, not by any actual competent design. (Unlike what I said in last year’s letter, it turned out that all levees were built as designed.)

Likewise, the levees that failed, flooding New Orleans East and St. Bernard parish, were not built of competent materials, i.e. clay, for a levee. They were built of the sand and muck dredged while building the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the existence of which many think allowed the storm surge to do more damage than it otherwise would have. All who live in an area “protected” by the “Corpse” of Engineers should be afraid – very afraid.

In June, the “Corpse” finally, officially admitted that they had failed in their mission to build levees to protect our city.

For those who fault us for living in a flood plain, consider that the majority of the country lives in a flood plain. And if you thought that New Orleans residents didn’t understand the flood danger, we have the highest participation in the national flood insurance program next to Miami.

Enough of that, now for the rest of the story.

This has been a year of great progress for New Orleans, yet most of us are frustrated at how slow the recovery is.

A continuing debate is how many people are back in the city. Many ways have been used to come up with estimates, but none is definitive, and some are laughable. Probably the best guess is around 220,000 to 230,000, about half of our pre-K size.

One significant problem preventing many from returning is the lack of assistance. Congress and Bush gave us about $7.5 billion to compensate homeowners and others. A program was created, the Blanco Road Home Program, to give grants of up to $150,000 to compensate homeowners for uninsured losses. To date, less than 100 have received any money while over 90,000 have applied. (Governor Blanco, I think, now regrets associating her name with it.)

Our biggest personal problem is the many “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On” moments we all have. I do not have the eloquence to describe the instant, intense feelings of sadness that come upon us without warning. They are triggered by any number of things we see every day that remind us of the devastation and how far we have to go to recover. Fortunately these feelings, for us, are brief.

We are all suffering to some extent from post traumatic stress disorder. One of Ken’s favorite stories is that earlier this spring there was a seminar given for medical professionals on stress and how to recognize it in their patients. The speaker listed many possible symptoms. She was surprised when the entire audience burst out laughing. It was explained that they themselves were all suffering from all the symptoms.

I don’t want to belabor the point, but something that told us about the life we are living was when we took friends and relatives on the “disaster tour.” More than once the tour was cut short after we were told “We have to stop. I just can’t take any more.”

Unfortunately, as you may have heard, our honeymoon with very low crime ended. There are two significant problem areas, drug dealers fighting over turf and thieves looting houses in the flooded areas.

The problem with the looting is that there are simply not enough people back in many neighborhoods. In a normal situation, there would be many eyes of residents looking out for suspicious activity. In many parts of the city, those eyes aren’t there. Fortunately, the state has sent some state police and National Guard to help patrol those areas and supplement our reduced police force.

The early part of the year we were rejoicing when FEMA trailers showed up outside flooded homes. We now rejoice when they leave since it marks another family back in its home (although many people never did get a requested/promised trailer).

Initial reports of when all traffic lights would be restored proved overly optimistic. What New Orleans needed exceeded the entire country’s manufacturing capacity for at least a year. Many municipalities have been very generous and let us get “ahead of them in line” for delivery of new traffic signals.

For some reason we cannot keep some traffic lights working. Lights at some intersections get repeatedly knocked down. (We suspect out-of-town truck drivers.) Unfortunately it seems as soon as new traffic lights are installed, they are knocked down. They appear to have given up on the corner of St. Charles and State Street where we now have permanent stop signs instead of the temporary type.

Many of you may have wondered where we were since much of our mail was “returned to sender unable to deliver as addressed.” The post office had a complete melt down when it came to mail in our area. By early February we started receiving mail with deliveries about twice a week. Many businesses, for example American Express and Entergy, subscribe to address updates from the US Postal Service. The post office decided we didn’t live in our home and repeatedly included us in their change-of-address updates. We almost had our power and gas disconnected since Entergy sent the bill and the disconnect notice to our September 2005, Zachary address. It took until June to finally get the mail situation straightened out. We now get regular mail service, and it is pretty reliable. Beginning last June we started being able to get magazines delivered again, but fortunately few catalog mailers have found us.

For part of the spring we had a New Orleans Fire Department arson investigator living with us. She is very nice and had many interesting stories. For a while, there were several homes going up every weekend due to arson. For months there was the frequent smell of burning building in the air. People without adequate flood insurance would come in town over the weekend and torch their homes so they would be covered by homeowners insurance.

At one point the Sewerage and Water Board was pumping three times the water than was “consumed” (meaning used by a metered consumer) so bad were the leaks in our water lines. Now I think they are down to only twice as much. Our water pressure has improved from a trickle at times to the point that most of the time it now approaches normal.

Almost everything that people want to visit in New Orleans is open for business. Almost all of our really great restaurants are open again. We personally have been doing our best to help rebuild New Orleans one restaurant meal at a time. (It’s a tough and dirty job, but somebody has to do it!!) We were there for Brigtsen’s opening night last December 29^th (our personal favorite). Since Antoine’s opened the same day, we were there the next night. Galatoire’s opened on January 1^st and we were there. Commander’s Palace opened while we were out of town, but we were there the next night. We have dined out more this past year than any other and had many fabulous meals. I should have kept a dining diary. Perhaps then I would understand why I still have my “Katrina pounds.”

Stores are still open with reduced hours and are adapting to the “new” New Orleans. The Walgreens that claims “open 24 hours” on its permanent marquee has a big banner saying “now open 8 am to 10 pm.” A former Taco Bell has a new permanent sign saying “New Orleans Seafood and Poboys” with a banner out front saying “Now Open, Serving Chinese Food.” Such is the dichotomy of our daily existence.

We are very big on rating restaurants here, the restaurant reviewers have now started rating the mobile taco stands that have shown up outside of every Home Depot and Lowe’s in the metropolitan area. That’s where the day-laborers gather.

A significant accomplishment is that we have held several elections. Many here thought that holding a mayoral election last spring was both impossible and unfair to residents who had not returned. (We were not in that group.) It was an unusual contest that started with over a dozen candidates.

We have a very archaic elections process here with many small precincts. (Voting used to be largely in people’s garages or “basements” so most voters could walk to the polls.) All these precincts need elections commissioners - at least three. About 80% of those who served as elections commissioners were not back, and for us to have elections a large number of new commissioners were required. I answered the call. While it is not a job I would have wanted, it is not as bad as I thought it would be.

We have had a tremendous increase in grassroots citizen involvement. While we succeeded in voting to merge our levee boards and to reduce our assessors from seven to one, our Jefferson Parish neighbors voted overwhelmingly for our current crooked congressman (Bill Jefferson – his nickname is “Dollar Bill”) so he was re-elected. Also our mayor, who was great pre-K, was re-elected in spite of his post-K meltdown.

The city has embraced the fleur-de-lis as the symbol of our city’s will to recover, and there are fleur-de-lis everywhere. Anything with a fleur-de-lis on it sells like hot cakes.

And “our boys” have been doing wonderfully and have been a real morale boost to the city  – how about ‘dem Saints!!! The first home game in the Dome was nothing less than a magical atmosphere with a dream ending.

We recently celebrated the return of streetcars to St. Charles Avenue, although they run only from Canal to Lee Circle. I was unable to attend the ceremonies due to unexpected work obligations, but Ken did, and somehow managed to wangle a ride on the “back up” car right behind the one filled with all the dignitaries and media.

One of our great hopes for good to come from this disaster is for us to get a working school system. Currently our incompetent school board is only running 5 schools, down from over 100. Many others are being run by the state, and more than that are being run as charter schools. Many applications have been submitted to open even more charter schools next year.

We had a fabulous Mardi Gras. With few tourists, it was mostly a celebration by New Orleanians happy to be back home. For the first time in many years we dressed up - as boxes of Godiva Chocolates. In case you missed it, our mayor said in an infamous speech that New Orleans was a “chocolate city.” Well, if we are going to be chocolate, we’re going to be really good chocolate.

Our Jazz Fest was wonderful and I managed to score “on the rail” space for Jimmy Buffet. He has a new CD out. One tune, his bow to Katrina, makes it to the top of our “play list” about every fifth song (somehow by magic). “If a hurricane doesn’t leave you dead, it will make you strong…According to my watch the time is now, the past is dead and gone... Don’t try to explain it, just bow your head. Breath In, Breathe Out, Move On.”

So this Christmas we are doing our best to “Breath In, Breathe Out, Move On.” Ken (Davis) joins me in wishing you a Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for the New Year.

Lisa Eldredge