Back from the Big Moldy

My wife's family was recently allowed back into their old neighborhood in New Orleans after Katrina hit, and I left Friday to help them clear out their house for repair and sale. Even though I took off Monday "just in case", the whole affair stretched into this morning.

I have three quick comments after the trip.

(1) Pictures and television do not do the devastation justice. And what I saw was hardly the worst.

(2) My in-laws, who own a house there got off easy. And what does that mean? A month and a half later, the house lacks power and, although water has been restored, it is not safe to drink. Part of the roof was stripped clean of shingles by winds, allowing about a quarter of the house to suffer rain damage. Since flooding in surrounding areas had cut off all access to their neighborhood, the wet areas of the un-air-conditioned house remained wet for weeks and so became overgrown with mold. A significant amount of furniture and other dry goods had to be thrown out. Probably a third of the drywall in the house, which did not flood, has to be replaced. The house should be habitable in only a month, quite fast by New Orleans standards.

But this is nothing. About three quarters of the houses I saw suffered at least a foot of indoor water -- if you can call what flooded New Orleans "water". About half had wind damage. My wife saw a few of the hardest-hit areas. There was basically nothing left in those neighborhoods.

And one more thing about the flooding: Aside from  the damage caused by this liquid and mold, did I mention that everything touched by the flooding is now coated with putrid, tan dust?

Huge swaths of this city are simply devastated. Preservationists have made noise about saving the "vernacular architecture" (e.g., shotgun houses) of New Orleans, but it is sheer fantasy to maintain that this can be done economically. Leveling and rebuilding from the ground up would be far cheaper.

(3) Will New Orleans rebound? I doubt it will become much more than a big tourist trap after this. Lots of people already plan to stay away, lots of people think (in my opinion anyway) that they want to return but perhaps haven't fully realized what rebuilding is going to take, and some I know who are already there are playing a "wait and see" game until the strength of the recovery becomes easier to judge. Whatever happens, it's going to be a long, extremely difficult process at best.

-- CAV

PS: I've a full plate at work and some annoying problems with internet connectivity at home, so odds are that blogging will continue to be on the irregular side this week.