Renewing New Orleans
Daphne Hayes, MSII

Ask any New Orleanian and they’ll tell you, there’s not too much one can do to silence the sounds of the Crescent City.  In fact, they’d probably go on to say that it would take something like a natural disaster to turn New Orleans into a ghost town.  Well, in one fateful day, the unthinkable happened: the jubilant, carefree sounds of the city disappeared to be instead replaced with the eerie, deafening howls of 165 miles per hour winds swirling off the Gulf of Mexico, and panicked screams for rescue from impending death.  New Orleans literally drowned underneath the cold ocean surge that swelled over the city that day. And now it is clear that whatever measures are undertaken to restore the Big Easy to its former greatness, nothing can remedy the despair that has overrun it.

For a second, I want you to imagine that you are watching the news and the anchorman tells you an earthquake is coming tomorrow.  He goes on to say that it will be no less than a 7.0, and will probably destroy just about every building in Los Angeles.  You need to pick up anything you can hold in your hands and get out now.  What would that feel like?  This is what happened only days earlier in New Orleans, except the threat didn’t come from the earth moving around you. Rather, it came from ominous 200 mile per hour winds, and an estimated \twenty-five foot storm surge.  Imagine the suffering that would come with knowing that at the very least, you survived the storm to then be trapped in your home in water between ten and fifteen feet deep.  You’re waiting to be rescued from this watery hell while your neighbors and friends’ lifeless bodies float face down in the water just yards away.  In order to escape death from hunger and dehydration, you plunge into this toxic soup in hopes of finding a loaf of bread, or a couple of bottles of water rumored to be down the street in a flooded storefront.  Every day of waiting leaves you with more frustration and feelings of abandonment than the day before.  You watch countless state and federal helicopters fly by each day without even a signal of hope.  You watch news helicopter after news helicopter hover overhead capturing images of your plight, but not offering any assistance.  Disease is spreading, and people are dying around you.  They are simply covered with sheets for days until coroners arrive to retrieve their bodies.  How does that feel?

To say the least, this is what happened to the people of New Orleans and the surrounding areas.  There was enormous loss of life in both the literal and symbolic sense.  People died in their own homes, frantically trying to outrun the rapidly rising water.  Those who survived the floods escaped with their lives but lost their livelihood, their homes, their families, everything that made life worth living.

When I was first asked to write about the Hurricane from the perspective of a New Orleanian, I was unsure as to how to discuss what happened in an objective, observational manner.  I decided I couldn’t do that.  I can’t be objective when my situation is anything but.  The way in which this hurricane affected me is similar to the way a lot of people who have ever lived or currently live in the city have been touched. I am ever thankful that I was able to leave New Orleans long before this disaster happened.  Though I will never be able to fully understand what happened that day or in the days that followed , I was personally affected by this tragedy. I, and others like me, am not immune to the heartache and anguish that envelops the city that we once called home.  The hurricane hit Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi on August 29, 2005 in the early morning hours.  While this horrible hurricane was slamming the gulf shores of the Southern United States, all the rest of us could do was watch in horror.  My personal agony began only hours prior to the landfall of the hurricane when I came to realize that this was not “just another hurricane. ”  This was, in fact, the big one that New Orleans had long feared since its establishment.  I, like other New Orleanians, had gotten word of the storm about a week earlier.  And I, like other New Orleanians, jumped to the familiar conclusion that it would blow over just like all the others that perpetually threaten the region.  Many people won’t understand that assumption.  However, I experienced two hurricanes during my 4-year tenure as a Xavier student.  What always began as ominous, potentially life-altering forces always ended up as relatively harmless tropical depressions that brought a couple inches of rain and a little hard wind; never much to worry about.  Most residents of New Orleans made that exact assumption this time around.  We all turned out to be horribly wrong, and didn’t realize it until just hours before the storm hit.  I sat helpless here in Los Angeles, anxiously trying to contact my family and friends in the city, and was unsuccessful in most attempts.  All of the people that I managed to contact before the storm had already evacuated—others hadn’t.  I was unable to contact some of those people until two weeks ago.  There are still others I haven’t contacted.  It’s a feeling of powerlessness and desperation that I hope to never experience again.  Not only was I worried sick about the people of the city, I was horrified by the images of my alma mater rapidly disappearing underneath the flood waters.  Juan’s Flying Burrito, the best Mexican food in the city, is gone.  Twiropa, the Funky Butt, and Tipitina’s, all New Orleans jazz staples are gone.  The locally popular, but lesser known Magazine Street lies under five feet of water.  St. Charles Avenue, globally known for its streetcar line and astonishingly beautiful homes is permanently scarred.  Roads and highways that I traveled every day were destroyed; my former apartment has vanished under fifteen feet of water.  For these reasons, one can understand why this article would be anything but observational.  It is, indeed, very personal.

What can we learn from this national tragedy?  The lessons go beyond how best to control soaring gas prices, how to better predict and prepare for hurricanes, and how to rebuild an entire city.  We should learn that, in the future, every measure should be undertaken in order to escape this kind of human suffering and misery.  People should not be forced to live like refugees in their own country.  They should not be herded from place to place like cattle, while disease and pestilence break out around them.

As I write this, I keep imagining myself in the middle of this chaos, and asking myself what if I still lived in New Orleans.  I can’t even imagine how I would have reacted to such terror.  That kind of reflection makes me respect and admire the people of the Gulf region, not only for their courage, but also for their resolve to live. New Orleans may forever be structurally and economically altered, but one thing will never change.  Regardless of how many hurricanes ravage the city, the spirit of New Orleans is immortal.  It’s legacy of jazz, amazing cuisine, riverboat beauty, and blissful levity will never die, at least in the hearts of people like me, the effectual sons and daughters of the Big Easy.