Seeing the New New Orleans

I saw the city for the first time the other day (see the other post about our apartment). I had not been back to New Orleans for a month, despite the fact that my husband had already been in (thank you, press pass), and a friend of ours bribed his way into the city the week after the storm with beer and Rice Krispy treats.

Uptown, I knew, had survived the storm relatively well. I guess I should say, exceptionally well, relative to the destruction suffered by the Lower Ninth. I had voraciously sought photos of the city online after the storm, and I thought I had a good handle on what different parts of the city looked like. My stomach, however, always tells the real story, and it was doing Olympic-sized somersaults as we drove in through Kenner on I-10. As I looked around, I thought, it doesn't seem too bad out here in Kenner/Metairie. Some building damage. Some sign damage. It wasn't until we were on Carrollton, when I saw that block that burned down...the blank traffic lights...the ghost-town that was now Uptown...that's when I started to cry a little. Damn that was hard to see. Seeing this beautiful part of town that just a few weeks ago thrived with people and smells and life and sound, and it was now so...dead, quiet, and slow...it was awful. It felt like the separation of New Orleans from its people was just as bloody as the suffering each had felt on its own.

Driving into the CBD with my friend Joyce revealed a different scene. Canal Street's neutral ground was a parking lot of emergency vehicles and utility trucks. Guys in aprons, gas masks, and hazmat suits flitted in and out of businesses, carrying out bags of god knows what. Gigantic trailers of mobile generators took up almost all the available parking space, and an enormous vat of something took up the width of the sidewalk outside the Hibernia bank head offices. The sidewalks on Canal Street were filled with Latino laborers lining up for their Salvation Army truck lunches, eating on the steps of the Sheraton. Big stinky piles of sheetrock and ceiling tile lined the street, on top of dusty sidewalks and curbs. Some media had setups on street corners, absent of reporters. Despite the bustle outside, the lobby bar at the Sheraton was totally empty. A big industrial fan whirred in the corner, pointed at the center of the room.

We were rubbernecking like bugeyed tourists at all the activity. There was also the occasional scene of destruction, like the famously photographed cars crushed under a crumbled brick wall. As we drove into the Bywater, things seemed a little less...predictable. Even though the CBD was not predictable by any stretch, at least you felt like things were kind of under someone's control (more specifically, under someone's contract). In the Bywater, the charred remains of a warehouse filled with petroleum tanks had collapsed toward the street. Streets and houses and business were all empty. Tree trimmers were few and far between. So few people were outside, and the ones that were outside were either military or contractors. Abandoned RTA buses straddled the neutral ground on some streets. On one boarded up house, someone had spray painted, "FUCK YOU GREEN GHOST." Joyce took photos, and we both started to feel increasingly "out of it." I don't know how to explain it...we had a hard time finishing sentences, and we both felt dizzy and lightheaded. I got so dizzy at point I actually passed out for just a second or two - something I have never done - and I started to be a little concerned about the air environment around us.