The spray paint on the outer walls of homes was still ubiquitous throughout New Orleans in April 2006. In the months that immediately follwed Katrina every home had to be gone through to search for bodies, both human and animal. Often pets were found still alive and were taken to a holding place. They started spray painting large Xs on the front of each home that had been searched, and leaving a message behind as to any bodies found, alive or dead. This is a message concerning pets found in this residence.
When the levees broke, the water did not stop rising until the city was at the same water level as Lake Pontchartrain. As you can see in this photo, whole houses floated off their foundations to be found a few feet OR a few blocks from where they had started. When the waters receded a week later, this home came to rest on a neighbors car in the middle of the street.
Piles of trash this size and MUCH larger were still to be seen throughout the devastated areas of the city. We saw the remnants of a debris pile that was literally 5 city blocks long and 2 stories tall! The amount of trash still sitting in the streets of New Orleans a full 9 months after Katrina hit was astounding!
The bottom photo dramatically illustrates what has come to be known as the thin brown line. It is the ring left from the flood water as it sat for over a week before beginning it's slow drain. You can follow this line throughout the entire city, and depending on how high up a building (or parked vehicle) the line goes, you can tell the general elevation above sea level for the particular area you are in. The lowest parts of the city, the parts that are actually BELOW sea level are the parts where you will see the line at it's highest. Such as here, where the upper line is at least 10 feet up the side of this home. This was a neighborhood of multi-million dollar homes, and when we were there, 9 months after the hurricane, it was still almost completely deserted. Some of these large homes were sitting untouched since the hurricane, their doors and windows blown out and their contents laying piled about the vacant rooms, resting exactly where the receding flood waters had dropped them so many months ago. The sight of these vacant rooms and their tousled contents was one of the most surreal and disturbing sights I have been witness to. However, as the overpowering stench of the black mold growing rampant inside the ruined homes was enough to gag a person from 20 feet away, we were spared the heartache of looking TOO closely at peoples private loss.
No comments:
Post a Comment