The Lower Ninth Ward is best described by photos. If words must suffice, I quote Susie, who said, “It doesn’t look like America.” I hesitate to say it looks like a third world country. Having traveled all over the world, mostly in less developed countries, I have never seen anywhere as bad as the Lower 9th. Every single house has been destroyed…without exception. This is a huge neighborhood…it would be like all of SE Portland wiped out.
The damage is much more shocking than a Hurricane or Tornado, which would destroy everything…in this case, the flood water left most of the structures standing. Nothing is exactly intact, but most of the structures are still there, even if the supporting timber has rotted, the drywall is gone, and the windows are destroyed. It is similar to Pompey. Just as Mt. Vesuvius preserved the city in the same ash that destroyed it, the waters from Lake Pontchartrain eradicated the community, but left life on clear display. Evidence of life before Hurricane Katrina is strewn about on streets and sidewalks that are still not used. Fences were screens in the torrential flood—clothes, papers, and furniture are still laced into the fences. There are school supplies, record collections, and rusty toasters strewn about. An overturned sedan rusts in the middle of the street.
Life during the Hurricane and ensuing flood is chronicled by the spray painted diagrams left by search parties. Designated are the various dates the houses were searched, as well as the number of cadavers trapped inside. The earliest date I noticed was 9/10. Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29th. Searchers made what notes they could with the paint. “Dead Dog” in white paint, now fading. A homeowner is rebuilding his brick house, and has painted “Thank you Katrina” in the same florescent orange paint that the searchers used to mark the body of one of the Holloman family, one block away. I am not sure what the intended meaning of the “Thank you” is, only that it may as well have been written in blood.
Almost no one is rebuilding…perhaps one in 50 houses, if I had to estimate. None of the surviving residents have anything left to rebuild. One and a half years after Katrina (and Rita), the Lower 9th Ward is deserted. In our hours of wandering, I saw one resident…a lonely black skinned figure, far off in the distance with a bag of groceries. I have no idea how far this person has to walk to find an open store, or if they live in their original home, a rebuild, or if they are squatting in one of the less dangerous structures, among the relics of families washed away when the levees broke.
Suzie took most of these photos while I drove for 2-3 hours through the 9th Ward of New Orleans.