Hurricanes are Not the Bosses of Us

We fell in love with New Orleans 20 years ago, and were getting ready to come back here when Katrina nuked it. Rumors of post-apocalyptic gangs roving the streets under marshal law, and piles of burning garbage in the streets being gnawed by wild dogs like something out of Blade Runner, persisted in the media even three years afterward. We gritted our teeth on Leap Year Day 2008, and determined to visit the ravaged city no matter how heartbreaking a scene we would find.

At 60 miles out of the city, we saw snapped off trees still dotting the highway median. Coming in over Lake Pontchartrain, we paralleled the new bridge under construction. In New Orleans East, the abandoned Six Flags stood as a ready backdrop for some horror movie with evil clowns. As we approached through metro peripheral neighborhoods, greater remnants of destruction began to flash by - defunct grocery stores and boarded, shell-bombed apartment complexes went on for several miles. Then we crossed the I-10 bridge over the lower 9th ward.

We stayed in a newly renovated hotel on Canal St. – we could see the sunrise over the Mississippi River, and look down on a semi-gutted housing project. Under I-10 in the median bisecting Claiborne St. were multiple tent cities of homeless. Driving through Mid-City, municipal buildings and schools all appeared empty. In the City Park area little trailers stood outside several homes on every block, the spray painted X’s of the search and rescue teams faded but still visible on their clapboards. But everything seemed under construction.

As out-of-towners we were fascinated with the local Katrina experience, mostly out of desperation to uncover if it had destroyed the city’s special culture forever. But when we talked to the people of New Orleans, they would tend to mention it, if at all, as a point in a timeline where some stuff happened before and some after. If you pressed them, everyone had a terrible story about “the storm” as they called it, but they would eventually turn the conversation back to the present day with some affirmative statement borne out of the city’s indomitable spirit. It affected the city deeply, and there are some who still live like it was just yesterday, but most have taken it for what it was, come to grips with it, and are moving forward.

And that’s my point. We can report New Orleans is alive and well and welcomes you back anytime. We found that the people of New Orleans aren’t still crying – they’re still smiling and laughing with their traditional jazz funeral response to adversity. Their world-wise sense of humor has not only helped them survive, with it has survived what is, in fact, New Orleans itself.

(New Orleans is rapidly rebuilding - see A Walk to the French Quarter)