Hurricane Katrina: March 2008 Archives

Fitzgerald's Restaurant at West End

Tomorrow is Good Friday in the Christian world. Many companies in New Orleans still take the day off, acknowledging the still-large Catholic majority in the workforce. Good Friday is still considered to be a day of "fasting and abstinence," where adult Catholics fast by eating only one meal while also abstaining from eating meat. In some parts of the world, abstaining from meat is truly a sacrifice, but for a city located in between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, a Friday evening in Lent means going out for seafood. For many families, the place to go was out to the corner of the city where the New Basin Canal meets the lake, West End. Of the restaurants out at West End, one of the most popular was Fitzgerald's. Fitzgerald's was located right over the water at West End for most of the 20th century. In 1998, Hurricane Georges sent waves crashing into the restaurants along the lakefront at West End, wiping out several restaurants along the lake, including Fitzgerald's. The insurance companies paid up, because the damage clearly was caused by wind rather than flooding, but many businesses at West End found it impossible to find underwriters after Georges. As a result, many of the classic restaurants in the area never re-opened. At the time, locals bemoned the loss of these fine eateries and nightclubs, but it was generally understood that building on the Lakefront was a huge risk. We're now two and a half years after the storm, and insurance is still an issue for way too many New Orleanians. It's estimated that there are still over 7,000 FEMA trailers in use in Orleans Parish as residents fight with the Louisiana Recovery Authority (the state agency overseeing the "Road Home" program), as well as home insurance carriers like State Farm and Allstate. The insurance companies always try to play the game of "it's not our problem" when claims are filed. Wind damage is covered by homeowner's insurance; flood is not. Many folks file claims against both of their policies. While the federally-backed National Flood Insurance program has settled most of their claims, the private insurers have dragged their feet to the point where numerous class-action lawsuits have been filed. Several of those lawsuits have made it as far as the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where Republican judges have backed State Farm like the dutiful conservatives they are. Without this insurance money, New Orleanians will continue to be stuck living in the poisonous FEMA trailers on their front lawns. This is why New Orleans wants and needs a Democrat as President. It's also why, for the most part, many of us really don't care which of the two Dem candidates wins the nominee. The short list of nominees for both the 5th Circuit and the Supremes for both candidates are likely to be quite similar. They're also more likely to be sympathetic to the legal battles that will be fought by New Orleanians for the next decade. For us, it's not about Obama vs. Clinton. It's about making sure McCain doesn't win.

The New Basin Canal Monument, located in the neutral ground between West End Blvd. and Pontchartrain Blvd. in Lakeview, between Fillmore Ave. and Robt. E. Lee Blvd. This Celtic cross commemorates the work and sacrifices of the Irish laborers who built the canal. Here's the inscription:



The New Basin Canal was constructed in the 1830s to provide an additional water access to the city from the north. Prior to this time, boats on Lake Pontchartrain could approach the city via Bayou St. John and the Carondelet Canal, which terminated in a turning basin located, appropriately enough, on Basin Street in Faubourg Treme. The new canal terminated with a turning basin located near Rampart St. and Howard Ave., on the Uptown side of Canal St.

While this monument isn't in a cemetery, it is a memorial to the many men who gave their lives in the construction of the canal. In the 1830s, the path between Faubourg Ste. Marie and West End was nothing but mosquito-infested swamp. Hundreds of the laborers who worked on the Canal contracted yellow fever and died. The Irish were employed to build the canal because they were cheap labor. Slaves were expensive, and slave owners were not going to risk their investments on such a project. Better to let the Irish do it.

Many of those Irishmen are buried in St. Patrick's Cemetery at the head of Canal Street, two blocks away from the Canal they built.

Legislation was passed authorizing the closure of the New Basin Canal was passed in 1938, but World War II delayed the actual work, and the canal was filled in after the war. The Pontchartrain Expressway was constructed over the filled-in canal, running from Veterans Blvd. and West End Blvd. into town, eventually linking with the Crescent City Connection bridge when it was constructed in the late 1950s.

After the storm, the neutral ground between West End and Pontchartrain was used as a dumping area for the debris accumulated from the houses of Lakeview and Gentilly that were victims of the Federal Flood as they were gutted.  FEMA trash-hauling contractors would pick up the moldy drywall and other debris from in front of houses and dump it in the wide neutral ground.  By December of 2005, the hills of debris at this location, just a block from the monument above, reached heights well over 30 feet, and spanned several blocks.

OK, they didn't come here.  It's not hard to review the materials, background, statements of displaced public housing residents, etc.  Look at the conclusion from the report:

Kothari and McDougall's statement made the case that public housing plans in New Orleans amount to a violation of international human rights law. They say "the inability of former residents of public housing to return to the homes they occupied prior to Hurricane Katrina would in practice amount to an eviction for those who returned or wish to return." In telephone interviews, they later called for a one-for-one replacement of any public housing units that are demolished.

Honestly, does one need to sit on the stoop of a project apartment and have lunch to be able to draw that conclusion? (Even if the food is better on the stoop.)

Of course, the UN doesn't advertise in Da Paper, so this article is not surprising.