There is too much news. I'll be writing forever if I try to tell it all in the detail it deserves. The Mediation in The Matter... is unresolved and not yet concluded, and I can't say it looks like its going well, but these things take odd twists and turns so we will wait. My back has been bothering me since I woke up in pain on the first Sunday in May. My baseball team is disappointing and I'm not sure I can envision a path to an enjoyable playoff season, unless either our pitching or our defense significantly improves. We attended the overflowing Buckhead funeral of an old friend who died in a tragic automobile accident and it made me remember the hope I had for a life in the community into which I married, the one in which she spent her life, and it made me really feel how distant that life has become for me. One of The Youngest's best friends who is also one of my players is also close buddies with the rookie who took us all for a great ride when he damn near won the Indy 500 yesterday.
Mostly though, this Memorial Day, as we honor those whose lives were lost in serving this country, I have some stuff I need to say about New Orleans, because here we are arrived at this special place in the calendar, still standing, or at least sort of. It's hard to believe that it was at the very end of the season on which we are embarking that IT happened, the last weekend of last August, the beginning of the school year that was interrupted as it began, and has just ended. They dispersed and some moved back. The Universities, in an act of sheer bravery, took it upon themselves to open and students, in a collective act of faith, returned. There was Mardi Gras and Jazzfest. There was an election, then another. The next Big Important Date on the calendar is June 1st, the start of Hurricane Season, which also happens to herald the humid summer, still and stiflingly hot.
Saturday, the body of another victim was discovered by firefighters in a bathtub in the remains of a home in Mid-City, according to yesterday's Times-Picayune. The article says:
Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals this month raised the state's death toll from Katrina by 281, to a total of 1,577, after more reports of out-of-state deaths came in. Several states have yet to file reports of possible Katrina deaths. More than 80 percent of the missing are from Orleans Parish, and 66 percent are African-American.
The article goes on to say:
FEMA this month announced that its roster of people missing from the 2005 hurricane season had fallen to fewer than 300, down from an original 12,000.
"Now, eight months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it's likely that many of the lost will not be found," FEMA said in a May 18 statement. "Some may have been swept away forever in the floodwaters, and some may not want to be found."
It took me a while to find it, but in the May 4th issue there was a long article that clearly described the method in which the 17th Street Canal floodwall failed. The article suggests that there is concern about the stability of the western floodwall, the side that held during Katrina, explaining simply that the east side failed first, but speculating that the west side might have been compromised. The article quotes Bob Bea, one of the UC Berkeley engineers participating in the recently released study:
Bea cautions East Jefferson residents against taking too much comfort in the fact that the west wall didn't breach, and he warned anyone who could be affected by breaks in any of three outfall canals, including those at the London Avenue and Orleans Avenue canals, to keep pressing government to provide permanent solutions.
"By no means should the people there breathe a sigh of relief because of the floodgates," he said. "As good an idea as that was in the short term, the gates are only a temporary solution. Because if we get more than four or five feet of (additional) water in the 17th Street Canal from any source as it exists now, it could rupture anywhere on either side. And the rupture points would correlate with those low shear strength soils under the levee -- that buried swamp."
To complete my depressive rant, please, please I must beg you all to read the Atlanta Journal and Constitution's riveting twenty-two part story detailing the intense and heroic human drama that unfolded at and between Tulane and Charity Hospitals during the hurricane and the flood that followed, Through Hell and High Water. There are photos, all twenty-two chapters available in print and audio, podcasting, maps, a video preview and reprints available. It is a wonderful interactive presentation of an important piece. In Chapter Seventeen, it details part of the helicopter evacuation of critically ill Charity patients on Thursday night after Katrina's Monday morning landfall, from the rooftop of Tulane Hospital's parking deck, from the point of view of Charity Hospital's Granville Morse:
Although it was dark, the young resident got his first glimpse of Katrina’s devastation that night as the helicopter headed for Louis Armstrong International Airport. Like others at Charity, his isolation had kept him from knowing the scope of the disaster. He cried as they flew over the city.
He could see tiny lights below — the flashlights of people still trapped on rooftops, waving for help.
If we are to truly honor those who have fought and died for the principles that made this country great, then this we must never forget.
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Addendum: Please visit the NOLA bloggers in my gutter. Editor B has a powerful short video of his neighborhood 9 months post-Katrina, and there are few people writing more insighfully about what's really going on down there than the voices you will hear at The Wetbank Guide, or at Tim's Nameless Blog, or Dangle's place, Flood and Loathing, Maitri's or People Get Ready. It may only be a little something, but if each of us takes some time to listen to the voices that are coming out of New Orleans, it can make a difference.
Oops, I forgot to say... Peace, out, ya'll.
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