Recently in Hurricane Katrina Category

good news is always welcome on Mondays:

Since March 2007 we have partnered with the New York District Council of Carpenters in leading teams of volunteers to New Orleans. Highly skilled union carpenters work side by side with NOFD firefighters and volunteers from all walks of life to complete firehouse makeovers.

(h/t Charlotte)

When they had to sell t-shirts at the starbucks on Vets to raise money for NOFD, I was well and truly depressed. This is good news.

Matt McBride wrote a great diary on dKos today, discussing his audit of demolitions since the storm.

Of the various efforts being undertaken to rebuild New Orleans, few are as vocal as activists opposing the demolition of public housing projects. Their passion is strong, and their cause just. I wrote about my problems with this movement yesterday. I'm a firm believer in the notion that you can't bring back people who live in poverty to New Orleans at this stage in the city's reconstruction. It's easy for folks who have homes, jobs, health insurance, and schools for their children to advocate a course of action that will almost certainly have no direct impact on their lives, even if that course of action worsens the quality of life for those directly impacted.

It makes more sense to restore the governmental services necessary to lift those living in poverty to a living-wage level.

Easier said than done, of course. City government is still a mess, two years post-storm. State government hasn't been much more help, with its focus on home owners (Road Home Program). The involvement of state government in New Orleans' return is going to be even worse with the election of an unsympathetic ultra-conservative as governor.

Somebody must take ownership of New Orleans, accept the situation we have here, and work with us to make it better. There are three people in a position to do something about New Orleans, assuming we can hang on until January 20, 2009. Those three people are the leading Democratic candidates for President.

Taking them in order of their current popularity, let's look at whether or not they will step up and take ownership of New Orleans.

Hillary Clinton - If you go to www.hillary.com, there's a button for "Issues" that drops down a number of choices:

• Strengthing the Middle Class


• Providing Affordable and Accessible Health Care


• Promoting Energy Independence and Fighting Global Warming


• Fulfilling Our Promises to Veterans


• Supporting Parents and Caring for Children


• Restoring America's Standing in the World


• A Champion for Women


• Comprehensive Government Reform


• Strengthening Our Democracy


• Reforming Our Immigration System


• An Innovation Agenda

Hmm...worthy topics all. Why no mention of New Orleans, or the Gulf Coast in general? Have the consultants advising Sen. Clinton told her to blow us off? After all, Mississippi and Alabama were too red for her to be bothered with pre-storm, and Louisiana is viewed as turning redder post-storm. Certainly one could argue that some of these meta-topics listed above can include support of New Orleans, but not seeing the re-building of a city destroyed by a federal flood and ignored by uncaring Republicans would be on the radar. No doubt Bill Clinton would be more concerned with the future of New Orleans. Perhaps some of you Hillary supporters can clarify this seeming lack of interest in New Orleans.

Barack Obama - Sen. Obama's got one of those neat "Issuse" buttons, too:

• Strengthening America Overseas


• Plan to End the Iraq War


• Creating a Healthcare System that Works


• Fighting Poverty


• Environment


• Energy


• Technology and Innovation for a New Generation


• Fulfilling Our Covenant with Seniors


• Improving Our Schools


• Immigration and the Border


• Protecting the Right to Vote


• Honoring Our Veterans


• Cleaning Up Washington's Culture of Corruption


• Strengthening Families and Communities


• Reconciling Faith and Politics

Nice list. Maybe if I didn't get a food of water in my house and things here were going smoothly, I'd look at this and see a candidate who could improve things. What I see from this is someone who is talking in generalities when a 300-year old city dies. Oh yeah, and those public housing residents who are about to have their apartments demolished? They're 99% African-American.

John Edwards - Sen. Edwards has an entire page of proposals to deal with New Orleans:

• Addressing the nursing shortage and supporting the proposed biomedical corridor


• Providing new resources to make the city's streets safe


• Fully funding the "Road Home"


• Putting someone in charge


• Appointing a Special Gulf Coast Inspector General


• Passing "Brownie's Law," so agencies like FEMA get the job done.

So, we've got two candidates who make no mention of New Orleans and a third who actually talks about fully funding Road Home.

At least Edwards and his consultants aren't suffering from "Katrina Fatigue."

I challenege every Clinton and Obama supporter to ask those in your campaign organizations, what is your candidate's position on New Orleans?

I know where my candidate stands.

I'm also confident that things would not be as screwed up right now here if "Vice President Edwards" was running right now rather than former-Senator Edwards.

Alan at Think New Orleans documents the latest smackdown on one of the "why bother rebuilding New Orleans" crowd. I suppose it's better to increase awareness and refute these assholes, so to that extent, I'm glad Kevin, Tim, Alan and company are willing to do that.

Personally, I don't have either the time or the desire to engage the Flat Earth Society.

It's not like there's any question about rebuilding New Orleans. Those who suggest any outcome other than the city returning to its pre-storm role in the economy and culture of the country are as far out on the fringe as the folks who think they can put up a fence and keep out our little brown brothers and sisters from Mexico, or those who thought that the Eebil Coloreds would stay in Houston after they were bused away during the storm.

Still, just like the ADL engages holocaust deniers, I suppose there's merit in engaging these people.

I just don't have the patience.

That, and I'm talking to a guy who wants to donate a 50+ year old NOPSI bus to NOSRA, so we can restore it and run it in this city that shouldn't be rebuilt.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the National Guard MPs staying around the city. It's just that yesterday, I saw two MP units (four Guardsmen) having coffee at the Starbucks on Harrison Avenue in Lakeview. This morning, on my way to Gentilly, I saw MPs in City Park, and on Gentilly Blvd, between Paris Avenue and De Saix Blvd.

I've never heard St. Leo the Great parish referred to an "outlying area" before.

The good news about this announcement is that Supt. Riley says the city's getting 150 new NOPD officers.

A teen suicide incident is guaranteed to make people look up from their daily routine and take notice, and the case of Joseph Lynn, an 8th grader at John Curtis Christian School in River Ridge, LA, was no exception:

[Acting Headmaster J. T.] Curtis said the Metairie boy used a small pistol to shoot himself in the head between the girls and boys gymnasiums of the school at 10125 Jefferson Highway. Authorities did not know where Lynn got the weapon.

As is all too often the case when a young person from a relatively well-off family attempts suicide (Lynn is still alive, albeit on life support), nobody directly involved in "Big Joe's" life saw this coming:

Lynn's parents authorized the school to release his name to the public so that the public might pray for him. Curtis said neither Lynn's parents nor his teachers saw any indication that the teen was in distress. He was a B-C student who played on the eighth-grade football team and seemed happy.

Look to the storm for problems. Da Paper's article mentions some things to look for in a teen's behavior that may indicate problems, but I'd go a step further and apply some storm-sense to the process as well.

How did the teen fare the storm? If not, s/he may have lost an important support network. Houston is a long way away from New Orleans. The storm and its aftermath traumatized many an adult, so it shouldn't be a surprise that it messed up the teens as well. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, I went to way too many Masonic funerals. In January of 2006 alone, the Louisiana Relief Lodge #1 performed the Masonic Burial Ceremony at 28 funerals, which is three more than we did in all of 2005. Many elderly folks simply gave up, losing the will to live. Teens lived through the same trauma, but their bodies aren't going to simply "give up" like those of their grandparents. They're forced to live with the trauma and the depression which often accompanies it.

What happened to the teen's friends? Yeah, I know, families move away from a neighborhood all the time, and the kids who are still there cope. What you don't see is multiple families leaving simultaneously. If a teen's peer-level support network vanishes overnight, that's going to impact their behavior. Some kids don't make new friends easily, so they rely heavily on the friends they have. Snatch one or more of those friends away from a kid, and they're going to have hard time adjusting.

How much time is a teen spending on-line? This is going to seem counter-intuitive, because we usually associate being on Teh Internetz a lot with the social misfits. In the case of a kid who's lost friends to storm-related relocation, they should be communicating with them. In the immediate weeks following the storm, my then 17-year old was regularly buried into the display of his mobile phone, texting his friends. He knew when his school was re-opening before I did as a result. If a teen has close friends they're not keeping up with, that's a red flag.

What's the school like now? No school in metro New Orleans is the same as it was before the storm. Even the well-established schools, like John Curtis, or the various Catholic schools in the area, are down in terms of enrollment. Many received anywhere from slight to severe damage. Public schools in New Orleans are radically different post-storm, being run by charter organizations, if they re-opened at all. Kids develop expectations about school, from their parents, older siblings, and friends. Those expectations were very much shot down on 29-Aug-2005. Athletic programs that were historically strong pre-storm have lost students. So have bands, clubs, and other groups. The composition of faculties has changed as well, as families of teachers have been forced to re-locate.

Now, take all the classic teen angst, girl/boyfriend troubles, parental conflict, sibling rivalry, and pile it on top of the storm issues. Mix it all together in a state like Louisiana where anybody over the age of ten can get their hands on a pistol, and, well, you get the idea.

We've seen in military vets that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is something that doesn't go away overnight. Parents of children who survived the storm have their work cut out for them in terms of monitoring their kids' behavior.

That question is up there with the three made famous by Marcelle Bienvenu:

Who's Your Mama?
Are You Catholic?
Can You Make a Roux?

Those three are what a New Orleans mother will ask a girl who wants to date her son, but the son will simply ask, "where did you go to school?"

Earlier this year, I was sitting in the bar of a restaurant in suburban Atlanta. (I often eat at the bar in restaurants when I'm traveling, since it's easy to get seated as a single.) The bartender, asked me where I was from, and I said New Orleans. A guy down the bar chimes in, "Yeah? Me too," and a New Orleans conversation ensued.

After a couple of minutes, the guy asks me, "So, where did you go to school?" Now, he's got an Auburn University ring on his hand, but I know he's not interested in the fact that I went to the University of New Orleans. He wants to know where I went to high school, of course, because that's what really matters to a New Orleanian. Where your education took you after high school just isn't as important to us.

There are a couple of reasons where you went to high school is significant to New Orleanians. First it's a throwback to a time when not everyone went to university. While many of the "greatest generation" took advantage of GI Bill benefits, a lot of vets returning from WWII ddin't continue their education. For them, high school was it, and those guys are still proud of their Warren Easton, Jesuit, Francis T. Nicholls, and St. Aloysius class rings. They worked hard throughout their lives to make sure their sons and daughters could go to college, of course, and many of the boomers are just as proud of their schools as their dads were.

The other big reason why high school is more important here is because there are so many of them. In cities and towns where public education dominates, everyone goes to the same high school. New Orleans has a 150 year tradition of Catholic education in addition to the public school system. Catholic schools were founded by the various orders of priests and nuns who came to America to preach the gospel. The Spanish brought the Jesuits with them, the French brought the Redemptorist Fathers, Ursuline nuns and the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. The Holy Cross Fathers came through New Orleans on their way up to South Bend, Indiana, and founded their school in the Ninth Ward. The School Sisters of Notre Dame attracted young Irish women who educated the boys and girls of the Irish Channel for generations at St. Alphonsus.

Neighborhood and ethnicity played a significant part in where kids went to school as well. There's a paragraph on the website of the Academy of the Sacred Heart that's telling:

In the late 19th century, the French Quarter was in decline. Most importantly, the established French, Catholic families from the Quarter and Esplanade Ridge, whose daughters were the mainstay of the student body, were moving across town into what was the American sector. In addition, second generation English and Irish families, who were already uptown, were seeking for their daughters a school that provided the same type of education that the religious had been providing downtown.

It was therefore no surprise that the religious sought refuge from their deteriorating urban environment and turned their attention upriver. Demographically, the nuns and the city were moving in the same direction.

Hmmm...the "decline" mentioned here was that Italian immigrants were moving into Da Quarters and Da Ninth so fast that the "established" folks bailed out for Uptown. I'm sure the families who sent their boys to St. Aloysius and their daughters to Holy Angels would consider it a surprise that they weren't considered "religious" by the uptown folk.

Not everyone sent their kids to catlick school, of course. Warren Easton on Canal Street, Nicholls on St. Claude, John McDonough on Esplanade, and McDonough #35 on Pauger Street in Treme are just some of the Orleans Parish schools attended by the greatest generation. Others popped up in the 1950s and 1960s as the city grew. Integration changed the public school landscape dramatically, though. White families whose kids had always attended public school were now focusing their efforts on opening Catholic elementary schools in the various church parishes. White flight was happening so fast that parish governments couldn't keep up, so the archdiocese filled in the gap. Prior to the storm, the church administered over 70 elementary schools in a four-parish area. By the 1980s, public schools in the city proper had a student population of 98% black, 2% white, this in a city that was 60% black, 40% white.

At face value, one might accuse the Catholic church of facilitating de facto segregation by running mostly-white private schools literally around the corner in some instances from mostly-black public schools, but the black community of New Orleans also has a strong tradition of sending their kids to catlick school. The Josephite Fathers have educated young black men at St. Augustine High School in Gentilly since 1951. St. Mary's Academy, for black girls, dates back to 1878. Xavier University Prep, founded by St. Katharine Drexel for black girls, opened its doors in 1915. St. Mary's Academy's campus on Chef Menteur Highway, as well as St. Aug's in Gentilly, were heavily damaged by the storm. Those two schools and Xavier Prep banded together to form the MAX School at the (relatively) undamaged XUP campus uptown. The boys have since moved back to Gentilly and SMA has re-opened in the old St. James Major school facility on Gentilly Road near Franklin Avenue.

All this about the public and catlick schools, and I haven't even gotten into the other private schools, such as Isidore Newman School uptown (primarily Jewish), St. Martin's Episcopal, and Metairie Park Country Day, both out in the burbs. There are two dozen or so other high schools I haven't even mentioned, and all this in a metro area of 1.2 million (pre-storm).

The various orders of priests and nuns still maintain ownership and control of their respective high schools. The catholic elementary schools are nominally administered by the archdiocese, but each parish has its own school board which makes specific policy and handles personnel matters. The private schools, of course, are administered by their own boards of directors. All this community involvement has been an important factor in the acceptance of charter schools in the wake of the storm. The storm has given the city the opportunity to fix the dismal failure that had become our public schools, and community leaders, parents, and others are stepping up to serve on the boards of charter schools to get public education moving once again.

So, with all these schools, it's no wonder that everyone wants to know where you went to high school.

Oh, and by the way, the guy in the bar? He went to De La Salle High School, uptown, and I went to Brother Martin High School, in Gentilly. That worked out just fine as far as I'm concerned, since he didn't go to Jesuit. :-)

...criticizing anyone in the country who gets federal assistance to rebuild their town:

KSFO's Rodgers accused Katrina victims of "sniveling," "whining," riding "gravy train"

Summary: On his radio program, Lee Rodgers said of Hurricane Katrina refugees, "[T]he people who have been freeloading for two years are whining because the gravy train is slowing down," adding, "At what point after a disaster and personal hardship are people expected to start taking care of themselves again? Is one hurricane supposed to be a permanent lifelong ticket on a bleeping gravy train? Come on!"

Someone needs to remind these assholes that the rest of the country paid to rebuild San Francisco.

Twice.

The story of the storm is not without tales of heroism, but it's not the stuff of Grand Drama, like the stories of heroic firefighters and policemen on 9-11. Rather than a few city blocks of disaster surrounded by an otherwise undamaged city, a movie about New Orleans would come out looking more like "Resident Evil" or "Mad Max" than "World Trade Center" or "Backdraft."

Still, there were heros, and for my money, the stories that most make me proud to be a New Orleanian are those told by health care workers. The most dramatic and intense episode of "ER" or "Grey's Anatomy" pales in comparison to the experiences of the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff that rode out the storm. Unfortunately, many of those medical professionals are some of the most traumatized folks who survived the storm. Yes, it was that bad for them.

When a storm hits the area, hospitals go into emergency mode like other essential service providers. There's usually not a lot that classic EMS units can do, because those huge trucks they drive often cannot navigate fallen debris and street flooding. EMTs gather at hospitals and shelters, where they do what they can for those who have evacuated. Doctors and nurses stay at work with their patients. This in particular is a double-whammy for them. They're under incredible stress at work, and they're not there to assist with the evacuation of their families.

Usually all this passes rapidly, though. Riding out a storm in a strong building like a hospital is certainly safer than a single-family home, and caring for patients keeps the staff busy. After the storm blows over, those who weren't called into work can return and relieve those at work.

But that's not what happened this time, of course. The rising floodwaters from the breached levees created numerous problems for hospitals. The flooding blocked any attempts to re-supply the hospitals. While hospitals all have generators to mainatin electric power if the grid shuts down, those generators only have fuel for a limited period of time. With no way to get new diesel or gasoline in, patients who needed electricity for life support equipment would have to come out.

Coming out was a problem in most cases, though. Within 24 hours after the storm, neighborhoods around hospitals turned into war zones of looting and violence. Hospitals are sources of drugs and equipment that is attractive to thieves. Police officers and private security guards did a good job of securing the facilities, but this was a terrible atmosphere for moving patients.

Then there were the patients who simply could not be moved, those who, if transported, were more likely to die than if they stayed in place. The stories of doctors and nurses debating euthanizing patients at Memorial Medical Center on Napoleon Avenue (formerly Baptist Hospital) have received extensive media attention. One doctor and three nurses were arrested by the Louisiana Attorney General's office, but the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office refused the charges. The details of the case and the chilling effect the arrests have had on recruiting medical personnel to work in the metro area are a story for another day.

The storm impacted health care facilities other than hospitals, of course. Numerous residents of the area's nursing homes died while being transported out of harm's way, while others died in the flooding because they were not evacuated. The most notorious incident of this sort was in St. Bernard Parish, at St. Rita's Nursing Home in Chalmette. Thirty-two residents of that facility died, drowned by rising floodwaters. The owners decided not to evacuate, and cited numerous reasons for not doing so in their manslaughter trial. That trial ended last week in acquittals for Sal and Mabel Mangano. The case had generated such notoriety that the trial was moved over a hundred miles away, to St. Francisville.

Once the living were evacuated and the bodies removed, the city has been left to try to re-build its healthcare infrastructure. Behind hospitality and the port, healthcare was the third-largest employer in New Orleans, and those jobs paid a lot better overall than hotel and restaurant positions. The driving force behind the local healthcare industry was Charity Hospital.

Built in 1936 under Huey P. Long's administration, "Big Charity" has been where the poor and uninsured went when they got sick. It was also the city's Level 1 Trauma Center. Even folks with the best of health insurance coverage would want to go to Charity for trauma treatment. Charity was only one facility in New Orleans' medical district, though. There was also University Hospital (affiliated with the LSU School of Medicine), a Veterans Administration facility, and Tulane University Medical Center. The floodwaters severely damaged all four hospitals. Tulane, privately owned and managed, has re-built. University Hospital is struggling to come back to life, and the VA has announced that it will build a new facility in New Orleans.

Big Charity, however, is dead. Dead and boarded up.

The lack of a level 1 trauma center, as well as a refuge for those who are uninsured, is hobbling the city's overall recovery efforts. Without Charity to handle indigent and uninsured patients, emergency rooms around the city have been all the more crowded. University Hospital's emergency room has re-opened, so the temporary trauma center that began life in the Convention Center, then moved to the New Orleans Centre shopping mall can close. But staffing these facilities is still a huge problem. Many physicians were forced to leave the city for the suburbs to re-open their practices and make a living. Now established in Metairie, the West Bank, or the north shore, thsoe professionals are reluctant to return to work in the city.

It all comes back to Charity Hospital. The mission and philosophy of Big Charity is straight out of the populist style of Huey Long and FDR, and that philosophy isn't all that prevalent in the healthcare industry these days. New Orleans needs a major medical facility to service the uninsured and under insured folks living here, but how to accomplish that will be debated and argued for years. The catch is that we don't have years; like many of the issues surrounding the city's recovery, it needs to be fixed now.

The collapse of the healthcare industry in New Orleans is yet another example of where Kanye West was right about the disrespectful piece of crap who lives in the White House.

It can't be stressed any stronger that the devastation of metro New Orleans from the storm was not a natural disaster. We certainly expect a certain amount of damage when natural phenomonon like a hurricane strikes a city, but we've believed for decades that the city was prepared for just about anything nature could throw our way. The collapse of the floodwalls on the drainage canals in New Orleans was not natural, but the result of the ineptitude of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Had the true state of those floodwalls been known, alarms would have been sounded in town halls, council chambers and legislative bodies from Grand Isle to Washington, DC.

But the Corps lied to us all.

But for all the dishonor that the US Army Corps of Engineers has brought upon itself, the flooding in Jefferson Parish can't be hung around their necks. The responsibility for the billions of dollars of flood damage there lies squarely on the shoulders of Aaron F. Broussard, Parish President.

Some background for those of you unfamiliar with local government in metro New Orleans. As you know, we don't have counties. We've hung on to the old French concept of "parish" rather than "county." There are 64 parishes in Louisiana, with three, Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Bernard, comprising what has traditionally been considered the metro area. (That definition has expanded in recent decades to include parishes up the river and on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.) The municipality of New Orleans comprises the whole of Orleans Parish. St. Bernard Parish is downriver from the city, and Jefferson Parish is upriver and to the west of the city.

Jefferson Parish is an odd duck as a governmental entity. Usually a county will be composed of one or more cities, towns, and villages. Each of those sets up local government, and the county manages the unincorporated areas. Jefferson Parish contains several cities (Kenner, Harahan, Gretna, Westwego, Jean Lafitte, and Grand Isle), but most of the parish that is on the east bank of the Mississippi River is part of Metairie, which is unincorporated. If Metairie was a city, it would be the third largest in the state, behind New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But it's unincorporated, so its administration falls to the Parish President and the 7-person Parish Council. Parish tax revenues from Metairie are so great that the cities all defer to the parish in many areas. Most importantly, emergency services and flood control are managed at the parish level.

When the storm threatened the Gulf Coast, emergency management for Jefferson was led by the elected Parish President, Mr. Broussard. I'd been wondering about Mr. Broussard's mental state for some time at that point, because in May of 2005, I asked a friend of mine who does business with Broussard to ask him if he'd be willing to assist me in a book project I was developing at the time. He declined, saying he was assisting another author on a similar project. Problem is, the author he mentioned had been dead for at least ten years.

By Sunday, 28-Aug-05, it was clear that Broussard had lost it. In a call-in session on WWL-Radio (870AM), he stated that he felt there would be massive deaths in the metro area. Broussard requested on the air that FEMA bring ten thousand body bags to New Orleans because we'd need them. (Tolkien enthusiasts will appreciate it when I describe his tone and statements as being similar to Denethor II in "Return of the King.")

I was listening to this interview while driving on I-12, going west, before turning north on I-55, thinking, this man shouldn't be in charge of his backyard, much less the parish, then put the thought from my mind as we made our way to Shreveport.

As events unfolded over the next two days, there wasn't much news from Jefferson Parish. The water was not topping the lake levees and the canal floodwalls were OK, unlike the horror that was happening just a few miles east in the city. What follows here is the compilation of the reports of several freinds and acquaintances of mine who rode the storm out.

The worst of the storm was slamming the Mississippi Gulf Coast west to St. Bernard Parish. Metairie was being hit with 80-90mph winds, but nothing that our homes can't handle. Our home (near Clearview Parkway and Veterans Blvd.) lost four shingles from the roof and no broken windows.

Then the water started to rise.

We've experienced street flooding over the last 20 years in Jefferson Parish, and some particularly bad thunderstorms overwhelmed the parish's drainage system, backing water up into houses, ruining carpets and flooring, and damaging hundreds of vehicles. In the 1990s, the membership of the Parish Council, and the parish's state legislative delegation almost completely turned over because people were so angry with the lack of proper drainage. After all, if this sort of damage could happen in an afternoon thunderstorm, what about a hurricane? That reaction prompted leaders to implement a very serious drainage repair/upgrade program that was essentially complete by the turn of the century. Canals were dredged, pumping stations were repaired or replaced, and trouble spots in the system were corrected. Emergency power concerns were addressed. Next time it stormed and flash flooding was an issue, the water drained as it should.

That's why I wasn't so worried when we bailed out on Sunday. We assumed that the drainage system would kick in as soon as the brunt of the storm had passed and it was safe to operate the pumps.

What we didn't expect was that Aaron Broussard firmly believed that we were all going to die, so he sent the pump operaters three hours north of the metro area, to Washington Parish. There was nobody to turn the pumps back on when the winds died down. Friends of mine who stayed described the horror of watching the water slowly rising into their homes. The flooding ranged from six inches in some areas to several feet in the areas closer to the drainage canals.

A few inches of water in your home is not a pleasant experience. You've got to sweep/push/vacuum it out. Carpets are shot, and odds are wood floors won't be in too great of a shape, either. If you're riding the experience out, at least you can get your stuff off the floor and salvage what you can.

But Aaron Broussard thought we were all going to die, and he didn't want the deaths of pump operators and other parish employees on his head, so off they went. Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputies and JPFD firefighters rode the storm out in high-rise buildings, such as East Jefferson Hospital. Those folks don't work for Broussard, and their bosses made sure their departments were staffed.

The water came up and did not go down. Power to residential and commercial structures was out over most of the parish, which is to be expected. Wind and flying debris always knock down power lines and utility poles. Since it was late August, the temperatures in the area rose close to 100F (remember, that's why the inability to re-supply the Superdome was such a problem). In Metairie, the combination of heat and standing water generated a lot of water vapour and steam. Drywall in buildings soaked up the floodwater like a sponge. The conditions were perfect for mold to start growing.

Because Mr. Broussard didn't turn the pumps back on, the water stayed in our homes. It didn't go away for several days, since roads into the parish were blocked and the pump operators and other evacuated employees could not return immediately. So, while our homes were safe from looters and weren't likely to burn down at this point, the mold started growing, and we weren't there to stop it.

If you're on top of a situation like this, you can get the water out of the house and start the process of drying out. On the Wednesday after the storm, Mr. Broussard told the media that Jefferson residents should stay away, and that we might not be allowed to return for as much as a month. That meant the mold in our homes had ample time to grow and spread. The bulk of the water had finally receded, but that left waterlogged walls and carpets, generating more water vapour and mold.

And Mr. Broussard said we couldn't return to try to fix the situation.

Still, this was nothing compared to the BushCo-engineered nightmare taking place in the city. There was nothing we could do, and I had a high school senior who needed to continue his education. We spent the rest of that week with our friends and Shreveport, and drove down to Houston the Saturday after the storm. We have friends in Houston who have kids near ours in age, and they set up ours in their kids' schools, St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton Elementary, and St. Pius X High School.

I could write an entire article on how wonderful the people of Houston were to us in those two weeks, and probably will at some point. Still, being in Houston wasn't a good experience for my boys, particularly my oldest. It was his senior year, dammit, and it just drowned.

He was in touch with a number of his friends via text messages and such during this period, so we quickly learned that his school, Brother Martin HIgh School in Gentilly, got some water in some of the buildings but was, overall, in good shape. The school is operated by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, who also own and operate Catholic High School in Baton Rouge. The administrations of both schools got together quickly, and decided to re-open Brother Martin at the Catholic High campus in Baton Rouge on September 19, 2005. At this point, I had no idea where my teen was going to live, or what was going to happen. We were in a hotel in Houston. On Sunday the 18th, I put my wife on a plane to Chicago (her company re-grouped in their Chicago office, returning in December to their Metairie headquarters), left my younger son (who was in 6th grade at the time) with friends in Houston, and Justin and I headed bck to Metairie.

We got back to the house via I-10 with no difficulty, and began to assess the damage. The place was a mess. The foot of water that came into the house had manifested itself as a foot and a half of mold on the walls. It was too much to simply scrub away; the walls would have to be cut out and rebuilt. The wood floor in the front of the house and the carpets in the bedrooms were all a loss. All of our major appliances in the kitchen were ruined by the water. The refrigerator, having been without power for three weeks, was close to becoming a SuperFund site. My 1998 Jeep Cherokee was still in the driveway, with two feet of mold growing up from the floor.

It was nasty. We both shook our heads and went back out to the car. We noticed five hispanic men in a truck with Texas tags loading up items from a house across the street. Providence smiled upon us at that point, as a National Guard patrol happened to come down the street just then. I waved to the SGT leading the patrol, pointed at the men across the street, and said, "They're not from this neighborhood."

Immediately I heard the sound of six M16 rifles locking and loading.

The Guardsmen ordered the looters down on the ground in the street, and the SGT asked me if I would call 911 and get the Sheriff's office to send someone over. Four years after 9/11 and there was still no integrated communications between local law enforcement and the national guard. Thanks, W! A JPSO deputy arrived in short order to sort the situation out. It turned out that the men were from the Houston area and the truck they were in was stolen from there the week before. With the situation under control, we locked up and went to Baton Rouge.

It was odd to see all my son's teachers and friends under such strange circumstances that evening. We all gave thanks that we were there and in one piece, and got to the business of getting our sons back in school. Justin had clothes and a sleeping bag with him, and began to circulate amongst his friends to see if anyone had a place where he could stay. It turned out that one of his friends lived in Meraux, in St. Bernard Parish. The family had evacuated to Baton Rouge, to stay with relatives. When they saw the impact of the storm on that part of town, they immediately went out the next day and signed a lease on a house for six months, knowing there was no way they'd get back to Meraux anytime soon. They invited Justin to stay with them, and the living room of that house was his bedroom for the next four months. Catholic High in Baton Rouge modified their school schedule, starting at 7am and ending at 2pm. The Brother Martin students, as well as boys and girls from other New Orleans schools who were now living in Baton Rouge would attend classes from 3pm to 9pm. I left him there, with the assurance I'd be back on Friday evening to pick him up so we could continue to sort things out. I then jumped back in the car and returned to Houston. I got back late that night, crashed in the hotel.

The next day, my younger son, Kevin, and I packed up and returned to Metairie. He and I began the process of ripping up carpet, throwing stuff out, and generally trying to make the house liveable. We learned that his school, St. Ann, planned to use the school facility of St. Benilde parish in Metairie, and was going to re-open in two weeks. The family of one of his close friends, who lives in a two-story home that didn't suffer much damage, offered to take him in. Kevin was back in by October.

With the main objective of making sure the boys were back in school settled, we began to re-build our home.