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The week is almost over again. This weekend, I HAVE to move the rest of my things, and repaint my old bedroom. I am not looking forward to it, but once I am done, I won’t have to go back to my old place EVER again! Hooray! Then I can be completely in my new place.
I was thinking about Africa again today. I think that I have to go there at some point, or will dream about it for the rest of my life. But, that brings up an interesting thought, well to me anyway. Do we always need some dream to hold onto? I think this is how I have lived my life for the most part; I have only experienced a few moments actually in the moment. Most have been through hindsight or looking forward. Is this unique to me?
I remember being maybe seven or eight and realizing (I can see exactly where this happened too; on 10th Avenue in Caldwell, Idaho, in the backseat of my parents’ gold Impala) that it was so much better to look forward to going to the fair, and remembering the fair than it was to actually experience the fair. This theme repeated itself with dances, vacations, and the other moments of youth.
One exception to this that I can remember is the Republican National Convention in 1996. I can honestly say I lived every moment of this. I can remember exactly how it felt to get sunstroke in the harbor while waiting for Bob Dole’s boat to arrive. I can remember the temperature outside, and the way it felt to have Jeff’s arm around me when we were evacuated from the dorms at 2am. I can remember seeing a picture of Jeff and I asleep in a hammock in the sunshine, in the LA Times the morning after it was taken, realizing that we were a part of this huge event.
So what was different about that one event? I can’t put my finger on it–exactly. Though I do know there were differences. I was extremely excited. This was one of the first times I was ever away from home. This was the first time I had ever had slept in a bed with a guy (not that we had sex mind you). I took everything in. I hardly talked to my parents. I didn’t know anyone. And I had an amazing time. And it was crazy–something that most of the other people in the country were not experiencing for whatever reason.
Volunteering for Katrina was like this at first; eventually it got to be very routine, but in the beginning, it shared the same energy. The similarities between the two are pretty obvious. I was untethered–I entered both experience without knowing another soul. It was a BIG deal–one was a political convention that only comes along every four years, and the other, well, the greatest natural disaster our country has seen. During both experiences, I was a part of something so much bigger than myself, yet I still felt like I was a part of history; sound strange? That’s how it felt.
I also got quite a bit of attention from boys at both; something that generally doesn’t happen in my everyday life. What was it about me during those times that guys seemed to like so much? I liked me more during those times; maybe it is as simple as that?
I want to think about this and dissect it a bit more later. Something good to sleep on.
Disclaimer: I usually don’t get all wobbly-kneed around celebrities.
So, Brad Pitt wants to build 150 green homes in New Orleans’ lower ninth ward. It is in all of the papers. I knew about this, well, I think it has been a year ago now. What a fantastic opportunity to showboat my Brad Pitt story!
Anyway a year ago give or take, I was working at the swanky law firm in New Orleans. For some reason the heartless lawyers hadn’t yet stolen the windows from the IT Department; we had the best windows in the building. (Right before I left, there were plans to remodel the IT Department into partner offices and conference rooms, shoving the IT Department into cubicles. I told my boss I would quit if I lost my window. But I quit well before that.)
The IT Department was on the second floor of six, and had incredibly lofty 25′ (?) windows with gorgeous arches at the top. The building was built nearly a century ago (more?) and was once the city hall annex (morgue and all. One of the partners’ offices used to be the elevator shaft that carried bodies to the fifth and sixth floor morgue. Always liked that story). Anyway our windows, and my desk in particular looked across a narrow alley way to a famous hall where weddings, press conferences and that sort of thing are now held. It too used to be part of the city hall, and the buildings are in fact joined by “bridges” on two of the floors. Melissa and I would always stare boldly out the window into those of the hall to watch the staging of various parties, conferences and so on.
Melissa heard that Brad Pitt was in town; hell, I’m sure that most everyone knew he was in town (before he bought a house there). Anyway, he was there to announce a new project he was becoming involved in to bring homes back to the Lower Ninth Ward. Generally, I could care less about celebrities, and Brad Pitt was no different. But then something changed. As the day went on, we saw a lot of traffic, and then we heard that Brad Pitt was going to be in the building behind ours! How exciting we thought. But then, we saw someone come in and setup a makeup station. And then, nothing happened. We went about our work, and saw some guy come in, and Oh my God! it was Brad Pitt! We couldn’t really see him, and he wasn’t in there too long, but it was him.
So the press conference happened, Melissa and I went outside to stalk him, but then came back in. He came back in the room. This time he was there for awhile, pacing, he actually cared about what he was talking about it seemed. Suddenly, every legal secretary in the building was at my desk. Yelling. Screaming. Waving. It looked like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Either we made a loud enough ruckus, or he looked our general direction, I don’t know. But he came up to the window (about six feet away) and waved and flashed his movie star smile at us. It was neat, but the stodgy legal secretaries’ reactions were even better.
Eventually Brad left the room. Melissa and I again went outside to stalk him. The crowd had died down substantially; there were literally only seven or eight people waiting. And we had an idea; he was probably going to come out the side door (by our building) where no one else was. We figured out which car was waiting for him, watched it, and made our move. Suddenly Brad Pitt was right there, maybe a foot from us. My God! He was handsome! I made eye contact with him. (Maybe this is too much information, but oh well.) I don’t know why, but from my eyes, he kept moving down; he was checking me out! I know. Generally this is a skeevy guy move that happens more than I like to admit. But this was Brad Pitt. He goes home to Angelina, Angelina, Who? No, but seriously; it made my confidence soar, and my boyfriend was pretty proud too. I got checked out by Brad Pitt; doesn’t matter what he thought upon the checkout (I am sure he only thought marvelous things), it still happened.
For days after, Melissa and I couldn’t stop talking about it, literally. Everyone in the law firm wanted to know what he looked like so close. We told them. Except for the checking out part. It was so silly. Melissa and I caught up in our fantasy world… And then, Melissa had this dream about him mowing her lawn, and walking up behind him, and touching his chest, and… . Well, you get the idea.
Interestingly (to me anyway), Brad Pitt’s house was a street over and a couple of blocks toward the lake from my house on Esplanade (I think anyway). Alas, I never became best friends with Angelina. No dinner parties…
I am a computer nerd at heart. As much as I have tried to get away from it I can’t; it’s me. I love learning new things in every program imaginable, just as much as I love lying on my back wiring a network to full connectivity. When Hurricane Katrina happened, I had recently been laid-off from Hewlett Packard, and was feeling very badly about myself. But Katrina was too big; it snapped me out of my funk, and drove me to do something. As soon as I heard about what had happened, I logged onto the Internet to find out how I could help. To my surprise, I was quickly contacted by the local chapter of the American Red Cross. I explained that I didn’t have much money to donate but that I had plenty of time. I was signed up for volunteer training the very next day.
Initially I was trained to work in Sheltering and Client Casework (or some similarly named groups); almost every volunteer was being trained in these fundamental disaster relief areas, and my chapter didn’t have a technology volunteer group, so I didn’t even know it existed. When I arrived in Louisiana, it was amazing, in good and bad ways. The damage done by the storm was horrific, but the volunteer response was uplifting. Since almost every volunteer on the disaster was assigned to client casework or sheltering, there was a lot of waiting. While waiting for assignment, I noticed some people wiring a network. What was this? Other nerds? So I walked over to take a look.
This is how I was introduced to the Response Technology Group. I asked if I could help with anything, and in fact they needed several volunteers. I worked with the group for the day, and was asked to join that function by the end of the day. So began my nine months in response technology with the Red Cross. I was euphoric; I could actually help people with my nerdiness?
During my time with the Red Cross, I worked with amazing volunteers from all over the world who were working toward the common goal of helping people rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina. I learned so much from others, and know that I taught many people many things. Many of the volunteers coming to the disaster had never used a cell phone, let alone a computer. As part of my work with the Red Cross, I taught grandmothers in their nineties how to make functional Excel spreadsheets; I taught Americorps members how to wire networks. It was amazing.
Since my time with the Red Cross, and specifically during the last year, I have been trying to focus on what I really want out of life; what will really make me happy; which path my life should take. Through this searching I have figured out a few things: 1) I crave helping people; my world is not right unless I am giving back, helping someone. 2) I am a computer nerd; it is me, I may as well be happy with it. 3) I am good at teaching people, and really good at teaching people about technology. 4) I crave experience with other cultures; I have spent my life (aside from my two years in Louisiana) Idaho. Idaho is great, but it is small potatoes (I am funny!); there is so much more to the world. The two years that I spent in Louisiana were amazing; the culture is very different than that of Idaho. I enjoyed very much learning about and interacting with the people, taking part in cultural traditions such as Mardi Gras, and of course eating all of the wonderful Cajun and Creole foods.
Through the soul searching I have done (and I have really, really been searching for the past little bit) I think that serving in the Peace Corps is the next step in achieving my life’s goals; those that I know of anyway. I am at a crossroads in my life; the crossroads. I have finally figured out (I think anyway) the path I should take; this path began with the American Red Cross and Hurricane Katrina, and will be continued with Peace Corps service. Where will it go after that? I haven’t a clue; I only know that service with the Peace Corps is right, is home. The Peace Corps encapsulates all things that make me me; it is where I belong, where my skills work the best, where I am at peace, where I am at home.
But maybe the Peace Corps (And the Red Cross was too?) is running away from my life? I wonder this sometimes. I think the feeling comes from that American Dream ideal that is supposed to be the aim of every good American; well that just doesn’t work for me, yet the draw to it is magnetic, unconscious; we cannot escape it, or can we? I want to, I need to. I would not be happy in this life, I would be settling and selling myself short. Because of the perfunctory draw of the American Dream, anything that is not it, feels itchy, wrong; that is why I sometimes feel that I am running from my life (you know, the one with the two kids, house in the suburbs, etcetera, etcetera…). But its not; for me, for someone I love very much; it is just not it. Its a shame that I felt like I had to live that life; it is a same that anyone feels that pressure. But there are those that love this life, that would live no other. I do not look down on them, no I almost envy them. To those that are really, truly happy, I wish them well. I however, could never be happy in that life, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that I was.
Hmmm… . This is definitely not fun. I can’t write about New Orleans in an amusing, or even angry sort of way. I have sat down several times during the last few days and… nothing. Where did my writing mojo go? What happened? (Did you read Thursday’s post? Rubish!) There is so much I want to say about the place. It was such a huge part of my life. Maybe that’s the problem? I can’t sort anything out? I don’t know.
I know, I know. I just need to start writing, get the juices flowing that sort of thing. I don’t know. I have been doing plenty of other writing, just not here. In an effort to get back on the writing wagon, here is a list of some of the more defined sections (don’t know what else to call them) of writing about New Orleans that I have stored up in my brain. (Forgive me if I wander a bit!)
- My first days as a volunteer
- The general setup of the Red Cross headquarters; I think it is pretty interesting that an empty WalMart was turned into the control center for the response to Hurricane Katrina. The logistics fascinate me, and hopefully, will fascinate others.
- Relationships at the DRO — DR wife/husband (keep reading the blog and you will find out what that is!); actual relationships; cheating on one’s significant other who was safe at home while their mate was out doing good (I did not participate in this, but it seemed almost a disease on the DR; everyone was doing it).
- Some of the interesting people I met and probably never would have outside the Red Cross (Vito, etc.).
- Gossip, gossip, gossip.
- Brushes with fame and celebrities as part of the Red Cross
This is a small representation of the things I want to include here, and hell, they aren’t even as defined as I thought they would be. I have the before I went to Louisiana, and the first couple of days clearly recorded as I like, but cannot seem to move past that point. I have a scribble here and a scratch there about my time there, but I cannot seem to put together another cohesive piece that could be loosely referred to as an essay. That’s going to make it really hard when I try and sell my idea to a publisher!
I do have one piece I have been working on (it requires research) regarding New Orleans and Detroit. As we all have heard by now, Detroit was named the most dangerous city in the country. How can this be? Have the researchers even set foot in (or heard of for that matter) New Orleans’ crime rate? Anyway, it should be an interesting piece once I finish it.
So for now, I will stay stuck. I want to, need to, write about Louisiana, but can’t. Hopefully the writing gods will be kind to me soon.
One of the most striking things I remember from my early days in New Orleans was all of the debris. My eyes couldn’t get a break. There were flooded-out cars everywhere; driveways, under overpasses, parking lots, the neutral ground, and along the city streets; anywhere people could ditch them in their haste to leave the city. Depending on the part of the city I was in, the cars had waterlines (almost all of them had multiple flood lines, as the water receded over a few days) in various spots. Some of the cars only flooded a couple of inches, while some flooded completely. As months went by, the cars rusted, insurance adjusters looked at them, and people stole every part that could possibly bring in a dime off of the heaps. It was much longer than a year before the wrecks were towed from the public places like under the city’s overpasses. Depressing. (I searched and searched to find an image to link to here, but couldn’t find any that did the scene justice. I should have taken more pictures, or at least have been more careful of those that I took. At the time though, I didn’t think that an underpass littered with decaying cars needed to be photographed.)
Trees and plants in general were another thing that littered the city. Countless trees fell, or rather blew, over (City Park lost more than a thousand from its thirteen acres; and that is just one park). Everyone’s landscaping was completely ruined, and remember this is the South; very wet, and very green; plants grow everywhere! In the area north of the lake (I think it was north, I am still thrown by my loss of directional sense there; I am quite good at it normally) countless pine trees were damaged, to an extent that they weren’t even suitable for saw dust or mulch (? I too thought this was odd. Isn’t “damaged” just about the only way to get sawdust or mulch?).
As time went on, and people began to return to their homes, a new batch of debris came about; household goods. Everything found in a house made it to the curb, neutral ground or some other similar place. For months piles of mattresses, clothing, furniture, mirrors, dishes-everything was seen everywhere in the city. I don’t know what was okay to save and what wasn’t. I guess once the mold got in… After people cleared their soggy homes of contents, gutting began. People would rip out flooring (unless it was original heart of pine, or something similar), wood, drywall, plaster, everything, up to a certain point in the house. I thought this was so strange, but people would only gut their homes up a bit beyond the high water mark. This doesn’t seem okay. Even if the majority of my home was above the water, I would be skeptical about saving any of it. That water was gross. And if you are going to cut out eight feet of plaster, etc., why not just go the whole distance?
So what happened to all of this debris? Well, for a long time, it just sat there. I remember driving from New Orleans proper into Metairie via City Park a few months after the storm. I couldn’t believe the piles of debris. There is an opening between the cities in this area and it was literally covered fifty feet high in trash. One website noted the amount of debris immediately following the storm at the size of “200 football fields, piled 50 feet high.” And this doesn’t even count the debris coming from rebuilding in the following months. I know that several firms were hired to pick up the debris, but I don’t know where it eventually went to rest. I do know that there were several illegal dumping operations uncovered in New Orleans East. Sad.
Night Two of Red Cross Training; over two years ago now:
On the second night of Red Cross training, we all took the same seats as the evening before, and continued the awkward conversations from the evening before waiting for the class to begin. The big difference this time was that most of us had prepared for the stifling hot room as we hadn’t the night before. This preparation included shorts and bottles of water. The instructors began the class by telling us that the national Red Cross office had specifically asked that our training be switched to Family Services training rather than the Shelter Simulation we were scheduled to take. I don’t know how the class really felt about this; I think that most people were kind of confused as to everything going on, and not really feeling as if they had learned anything; at least this is how I felt, maybe I shouldn’t speak for the group? The instructors seemed to be kind of sad that they weren’t going to get to put on a Shelter Simulation; after all, they kept referring to this as the “fun part of the training.”
So you’re probably asking yourself what exactly Family Services does within the Red Cross. I was wondering the same thing. Well, you know those Red Cross debit/credit cards that are in the news? Well we were trained on Wednesday how to fill out all of the appropriate paperwork, determine the amount each client (the Red Cross calls all of the people it helps clients, which I think is a nice touch), and activate the cards for each recipient.
This seems like a lot of power to give people who have been trained for barely four hours but we are actually just form-filler-out monkeys. The amount of money that the people receive is not just decided willy-nilly by some retired teacher or a college student volunteering for the disaster. There is a formula that differs for each disaster and each location that determines how much money the client receives. For example, there are three adults in the household, and all of them have lost their clothes. The chart says that for each adult, the Red Cross will provide $130. So for the three adults this is $390. And so on, and so on…
I remember those being the actual amounts we were told during training. However, I remember that during Katrina some clients received $3000+ on their debit cards. Though this was not my responsibility during the disaster (despite my training) I had several people tell me this.
Red Cross volunteers were also issued the same debit cards (though they were imprinted with Disaster Staff or something similar) to use as a stipend. An amount was placed on the cards every three weeks, or once if you only lasted your initial deployment, to help pay for all of life’s necessities: food, gas, toiletries. We were supposed to use the remainder of our balance during our trip home and then destroy the card once we were safe at home. I kept mine. It is still in my wallet. It makes me remember my time in Louisiana.
This may not really seem like a lot of money for new clothes, but the Red Cross only attends to immediate needs (those that need to be met within fifteen days). For all other needs, the Red Cross refers people to different agencies such as the Mennonites and the Salvation Army. It is actually pretty interesting.
On top of our official positions as pencil pushing drones, we are supposed to be a part of the grieving process for the clients. From what the trainers told us, many of the people within the shelters are still in shock. Because of this they are not thinking about things like getting new clothes. We are supposed to be kind of bringing them back to reality by asking questions to help them begin to move on. Some of the questions are things like “What are your plans for a home in the future?” This is going to be awfully rough on the people, and the volunteers I have a feeling.
Additionally we are supposed to be on the look out for people who need some mental help. We are often the people who catch this, the instructors told us.
So we learned how to fill out forms etc, now what? At the end of class, we had to go through a short five question verbal pseudo interview. The questions were basically the same as those we answered the first evening of class. After answering we were handed little Red Cross cards for our wallets listing the courses we had completed. As of Wednesday evening I am certified by the Red Cross in:
- Sheltering
- Mass Care: An Overview
- Introduction to Disaster Services
- Family Services: Providing Emergency Assistance
Even though I attended all of the training I still am unprepared to do any of these things. I am sure that this is natural and that most of the people in the class feel like this, but it is still a little overwhelming to know that I am certified to help people in the hardest time of their lives. I guess that that is something you really cant be prepared for. I think most of it has to be learned when you get to the area you are helping in.
While I was working on the disaster, I was also certified in several other things. I can’t find my cards at the moment, but know that I went through all of the supervisor training, and am now qualified to be a supervisor, despite having acted as one for the last six months of my deployment, an ECRV class, and extensive RTT training in Austin, Texas where I learned how to work in every aspect of Response Technology including setting up a satellite for Internet service, wiring a network, deploying a server, customer service, CAC, and basically every other thing you could possibly think of doing technology wise on a disaster.
Now this is what is supposed to happen next:
- The Red Cross calls within twenty-four hours of your leaving, informing you of your location, what you need to bring, etc.
- You go to the Red Cross and pick up a packet with an airline ticket and a fifty-dollar Red Cross credit card.
- You board the plane and fly to your location.
- You train at your job in your destination for a day or so with someone who is currently doing the job.
- You work your three weeks, either sleeping in a hotel or the shelter, depending on resources.
- You come home.
Now all I have to do is wait.
The following is an entry from my for-the-time-being-defunct Bemusings in Boise blog. It is dated roughly two weeks following Hurricane Katrina.
So the plus side of not being able to find a job is being able to leave town at a moment’s notice for weeks at a time. This is exactly what I am doing in the next week or so with the Red Cross. I have never volunteered with the Red Cross before, nor have I been to the part of the country affected by Hurricane Katrina. This is going to be quite an adventure for me.
I wrote an email to the Red Cross explaining that I wanted to do something for those affected by the hurricane but that I did not have the money to contribute to disaster aid financially. I wrote that I was more than willing to go to the region and volunteer in that way. To my surprise, someone form my local Red cross called me the very next morning and asked me questions about my willingness to volunteer. The questions included:
“Can you make a commitment of three weeks?” pretty mild,
“Do you feel comfortable sleeping in an open-air dormitory?” and the ever popular,
“Do you have any open wounds?”
After several more questions, the volunteer on the other end of the phone told me that they were at that moment (this was the tenth of September or so) compiling a list of people interested in volunteering. e told me that I would probably hear from them in the next couple of weeks. He asked if I had any questions, but I told him I couldn’t think of any right then; he told me that is how everyone felt, no one knew exactly what was going to happen and when with the disaster or the response.
To my surprise a nice lady from the Red Cross called on Friday morning. I was not home when she called, but she left a message with my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend, asking me to call as soon as I got in. After returning from a lovely afternoon at Art in the Park, I returned her call. The lady asked if I could attend pre-deployment training on Tuesday and Wednesday evening. Wow! This was moving much faster than I had anticipated. It was very exciting.
I have to admit that I have been in kind of a rut, getting quite depressed about not being able to find a job. This is exactly what I need; a way to get over myself while helping others who really need it.
I will keep you posted as to the contents of the upcoming training sessions.
(It is interesting for me to read this over two years later; hopefully it is for you too. I think it is really interesting that I felt that I was depressed because I wasn’t able to find a job. I am sure that that is part of it, but I now know that there is a lot more to it than that, the largest part of which was my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend; he made me feel horrible, and I didn’t even realize it as it was happening. I had lost myself. I had no idea who I was. Louisiana helped me.)
Immediately before I went to Louisiana:
We were at an end. It had been coming for a very long time. It had already come in April, when I smashed your guitar and you wrote all of those horrible songs about me. But we were saying goodbye. I was trying very had not to; I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t even like you any longer. I had been with you for so long that I just didn’t know what else to do. We had been camping for what was it, four, five days? Labor Day Weekend 2005. Throughout Idaho. Remember when we stopped at the Ranger Station along Highway 21 to pickup an Auto Tour Tape, only to find out that the tape player in the Goldsmobile was broken? I was so worried about returning that damn tape to the ranger station in Boise. Did I ever return it? The fallout shelter left over from another life at the Shoshone Ice Caves. Camping at Craters of the Moon. Taking pictures at the nuclear submarine forever run aground in the middle of the city park in Arco, a town ever-decaying from its heyday in the atomic age. The rows and rows of taxidermied animals at that strange man’s “museum”. A necklace made of dino-poo, or so the purveyor Bob assured us. A completely dead trip.
We didn’t watch TV or listen to the news on the radio the entire time we were gone, strange for both of us. The only things of concern were your attempt to break free from me, and my resistance to your escape. We had absolutely no idea that Katrina had happened. No idea that hundreds of people were drowning. No idea that in the wake of the mass evacuation tens of thousands of pets were being left behind to die. No idea that fairy tale courtyards and dank projects were drowning alike. No idea.
Once we were home, I reached through the window next to the door to move the chair holding the door shut. You had broken the door a few months back, and now it would not close on its own. Out of habit developed from the months of being unemployed, I flipped on Oprah. What was happening? Rather than an interview with Matt Damon or a Book Club episode, I was smacked in the chest by images of Nate, Oprah’s trusty decorating guru (why him?) talking to crying, dirty people, trying to say goodbye to their pets as they boarded busses(?) out of New Orleans. What the hell was going on? I sat down unable to move myself away from the TV. The front door was open and the trunk sat half emptied into the street. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the images I was seeing thrust before me in 27″ portions. You walked in the door and I made you sit down and watch.
The disaster may as well been on some remote Pacific island, for the fleeting mention it received.
Oprah was dressed in what I can only remember as some sort of combat gear, sans makeup, unpretty like a real person, hair frizzy as it should be for that part of the country, flanked by Mayor Nagin, a man, who at that moment like most Americans, I did not know. The Superdome. I did not closely follow professional sports, and upon seeing the images of the Superdome, I assumed that the building was being used as a shelter because it was no longer being used as a venue. It was implausible to me that the building looked this way because residents had been sheltered within for a few days during the storm; it looked like this was a long-abandoned building that had simply served the purpose of providing a large, mostly dry space in which people could take refuge. I could not believe that the filth and damage to the building were caused by those taking shelter there. And later, all of the stories of horror about the place.
How the hell were these images true? And how had I missed all of this over the weekend? How was this happening in America? We were the good guys who were always rescuing the poor people stuck in similar situations have a globe away. We had spent most of the time in the car, and granted we weren’t listening to NPR, or an AM news channel, but I would think that something like this would have made it onto a special report on even Tejano station coming from the desert of Idaho. Maybe it was covered, and I somehow missed it. I am still not sure.
How were people trapped in a city? It didn’t make any sense to me. I grew up in Idaho, a land of big, open spaces. You can literally see for miles in any direction without a thing disrupting your view. With my limited geographical experience, it seemed impossible to me that people could live in a place that they couldn’t get out of. I wonder how many people shared this point of view when the disaster was unfolding? (Should I add a reference at this point, noting the geography of the city, and the very few ways to make it out?)
I had to do something. Never in my life have I been compelled to action as I was after seeing the images on Oprah. I didn’t know what I could do. I didn’t have any money, but since I had been laid-off, I had plenty of time. What could I do? I needed information, and the new channels seemed to be doing so only begrudgingly. The computer he gave me for my birthday had been repossessed, so I didn’t have access to the Internet. I had to get online. I hadn’t seen my parents since the week before when we had gotten into a fight, a real screaming and yelling match, rare for our family, and wanted to make up; plus, I needed to get online so that I could get some information about how I could help. I drove the hour to my parents’ house to search for something I could do, some way that I could help. I remembered seeing something about the Americorps on Oprah, I think. Maybe it was the first President Bush and President Clinton talking about them? I don’t really remember; it is all kind of mashed up in my head. The first place I went was the Americorps website. It didn’t look like it was something that I would qualify to join. So somewhere I got the idea to go to the Red Cross website.
I went to the main Red Cross website, and learned that I to volunteer I needed to contact my local chapter. Local chapter? I had no idea how to do this, but found a link on the main website. I clicked on it, and then found my way to the American Red Cross of Greater Idaho website. Here, I got a number to call. When I called, I was sent to voicemail. I left a message saying that I didn’t have much money, but I did have a lot of time and was really interested in helping the people affected by the hurricane. I really didn’t think that I would hear back from them.
I went home. You were asleep on the couch. I told you what I had done. I asked if you would call too. You didn’t want to, claiming that it would take away from time recording your album. I took it as you not wanting to spend time with me, and am still certain that that is what it was. How on earth did I pretend that everything was okay between us? You wouldn’t even sleep in our bed with me, and when you went out at night to play in the bars, I was definitely not welcome. After I had convinced you to move back in, you had a friend stop by one night, and told me that I was only welcome (in my own house, where I was the only one paying the bills!) if I stayed in the bedroom out of view the entire time. For some reason, I did it. I even listened as you said some terrible things about me. Why did I let this happen to me? Why did I think I deserved to be used like this? I still don’t know, but fight almost every day to remember the way I felt so that I will never let myself be treated that way again. You made me feel very bad about myself for a really long time. I don’t think I will forgive you.
Even though I didn’t want to, I knew that leaving was the thing that I needed to do. I needed to get away from my life, completely.
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So, what gives me the right to say this about New Orleans? I was there. I was one of the rescue workers that put my life on hold at home, to help others in a tragedy that I initially met with confusion and grief. Now the grief has subsided, but the confusion is even stronger.
My primary confusion was purely geographic; I simply couldn’t understand how people couldn’t get out of the city in the first place. I grew up in Idaho, a land of sprawling fields and open range. In fact, you can see the ski resort fifty miles away from the east side of my parents’ house. I thought it was like this everywhere. Sure, I have been other places, quite different from Idaho; Minneapolis, San Diego, Las Vegas; but they all are nothing like Louisiana, or the South in general. Louisiana is wooded, green, and wet; wet being key. New Orleans practically floats atop a very thin layer of earth spread across a wet underbelly of Lake Pontchartrain, Mississippi River, or the Gulf of Mexico, depending on where you are. There are canals, and bayous, and lakes everywhere. The ground is always wet. The air is always wet. It isn’t just humid, it is as if you are breathing a slightly drier version of water rather than wet air.
Because of the incredibly wet atmosphere, it takes a lot of work to build a road. Have you ever tried building a road on a foundation that continues to shift as you construct your byway? Think of it like trying to bridge a pool of quicksand with supports not long enough to ever reach anything solid. Hard to do, to say the least. Proof of this is the small number of byways weaving in and out of the city. Basically you have I-10, East and West (remember the pictures of all of the people stranded on them?), and Highway 90 crossing the Mississippi into the western suburbs. There are a few surface roads and highways (River Road to name one) leading out of the city.
Prior to August 29, 2005, there were approximately 485,000, with 1.4 million people living in the metro area. When there are really three roads leading out of the city, and two of them are in directions that you don’t want to take (I-10 East, and Highway 90) that is an enormous number of people to cram onto a two lane road. Eventually contraflow was instituted, and both sides of I-10 were running west, but still, that is too many people.
The thing that really confused me was the fact that people needed to be on a road to escape a disaster. Here, if there isn’t a road, there is at least relatively flat ground that you could drive, walk, crawl, something on, to get out of the way of a coming monstrosity. That is simply not the case in New Orleans.
Once I-310 branches off of 10, the interstate heads directly across Lake Ponchartrain. Bridges. The freeway travels across them for miles. Unbelievable. To get out of the city, you have to cross a giant body of water across a bridge (two when contraflow is enacted), that are narrow and slow on their best days.
Sure, if people had been organized, if someone told them what to do, if they planned ahead, something, a staggered evacualtion could probably have taken place. But this didn’t happen. Why? I am certain that part of the blame should go to the people in charge, those who are supposed to take care of the citizens of the city. The other portion, the larger portion, lies with the citizens themselves. Why didn’t they plan? Why didn’t they act? I know, I know; there were plenty of times in the past when they had evacuated and hadn’t needed to, or they survived Camille, so why shouldn’t they fair well in Katrina? Well, the simple answer is, they just didn’t. Katrina was too big, people weren’t prepared. That is all there is to it.
So this is why people couldn’t get away; pure and simply geography, infrastructure and lack of planning. The city was never designed to accommodate a massive exodus of people in a whole lot of hurry.
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New Orleans has been on my mind. It should be; I lived there for nearly two years. The two years directly following Hurricane Katrina. I have much to tell about my time there. So, I created a blog.
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