The storm crept up on me pretty slowly. Rain bands hit in the late evening and early morning hours but around me were pretty short lived and didn’t carry a lot of rain. Later winds were strong enough to move the house around and many things went bump in the night.

Electricity went out about 5:20 AM on Monday, somewhat later than I
expected. From 5:00 AM to around noon was the big blow. It may have dawned but I couldn’t tell from the closet in the middle room of the house where I had made a pallet of plastic sheets then couch pillows then a quilt then sheets. After the storm, I still had water service so I could shower and flush without buckets.

After about 12 hours, the water had a funny smell so I drank only pre-storm water but I showered several times a day due to the heat. I didn’t brush my teeth, yuck, after the storm because I didn’t want that water in my mouth. I also had gas service, so I could cook and boil water for drinking or cooking. I didn’t boil water due to the heat I just used water I had stored from before the storm. I had a radio and a 2-inch tv both battery powered. The tv chews up 4 double A batteries in a very short time so I watched tv only for 5 minutes at a time.

On Octavia Street, most trees were damaged including the 3 large cypress trees near the book store - they were broken in half maybe twenty feet up. Big crepe myrtles were broken in half and one very tall pine tree was blown over, root ball and all. Many lines were in the street, but whether they were power lines or cable lines I don’t know. I had dial tone on my phone but couldn’t complete any call, although people did call in.

The house had minor damage, just one pane in one window broken.
Surprisingly, the broken pane was on a side window not the front - not a
single pane on the front was broken. Slate roof tiles littered the street
and sidewalk everywhere but those were from a neighbor’s house. I saw someevidence of roof damage, small leaks inside, but didn’t investigate. My neighbor had let his hedge grow to about 30 feet tall, way too tall for the plant under any circumstances. In this circumstance, the hedge bushes were all broken about 6 feet up with the remains spread across my back yard.

On my block, three other houses were occupied, altogether 10 people. Before escaping I didn’t venture far from Octavia Street even though there was no flooding. I did walk over to Whole Foods because I heard that it was damaged dramatically. Apparently, part of the roof system was plastic foam about 8 inches thick, pieces of which were blown all over the place including in front of my house along with corrugated sheet metal that probably covered the hard foam plastic. Wind had damaged the sprinkler system inside the Whole Foods parking area and water was spraying from broken pipes at the top of the Whole Foods building.

TV
One television station was operating, WWL, although the feed was from Baton Rouge most of the time. The WWL people came back to their Rampart Street studio for several hours but left after the flooding threat became known. Several other stations were broadcasting - the search tuning on my tv would stop on 6 and 8 but there was no picture, no sound there. One channel on UHF was transmitting but carried only televangelist programs.

Radio
One radio program was broadcasting live and within a short time after the
storm, it was being broadcast on at least 5 radio stations. They wanted
parish officials to talk to the people but the telephone service was screwed
so it was mostly refugees calling in to ask about their neighborhood.
Tuesday night, other radio stations started broadcasting including audio
feeds from a tv station in Orlando that had New Orleans tv people there
covering the disaster. The Orlando tv station was broadcasting over a radio affiliate in New Orleans.

Other Parish News
On Tuesday, the sheriff and parish president of Saint Bernard drove to the
radio studio at the Dominion Tower office building next to the Dome, with
help from the National Guard. They drove because they couldn’t complete a telephone call to the studio. Thereafter, other parish officials got word to
the station including Saint Tammany parish president sending an e-mail
saying “Don’t Come Back.” Later a Saint Tammany parish employee called from Orlando to give more info because she was in touch with the parish president and relayed his comments and instructions to the radio station. Saint Tammany, Saint Bernard and Plaquemines parishes were very badly hit by the initial storm surge. In case you missed it, the storm surge took out parts of the I-10 twin spans between New Orleans East and Slidell. The Causeway was under suspicion due to storm surge but emergency vehicles were allowed to cross.

Plaquemines News
Officials from Plaquemines Parish got word in that at least half the parish
was now part of the Mississippi River or the Gulf of Mexico, depending on
how you reckoned it. The Mississippi River had been pushed over its banks and into Plaquemines and probably would never be put back.

Jefferson Parish News
Jefferson Parish seemed to be fastest to promote a recovery plan but it
sounded very basic - clear trees from major roadways, resume water service, drain the flooding, etc. The Parish president hoped that residents could come back on Labor Day Monday, but they wouldn’t want to stay without electricity, water, sewer, telephone etc. He declared marshall law for Jefferson Parish. But it was a plan. Sheriff Harry Lee was on the radio
frequently from a base on the West Bank. He received reports of a collapsed West Bank apartment building and diesel fuel in the Harvey Canal. He reported that one woman called during the storm and said she and her two children were already in the attic and the water was rising. He told the radio audience that there was nothing he could do until the winds subsided. Later, the Westwego mayor was very proud that its water service was back first, although she admitted that the water was contaminated. As far as I know east bank Jefferson water service was not back on by Wednesday morning. Kenner was badly flooded in the north by the lake but south Kenner was dry by Tuesday.

New Orleans
In New Orleans, the mayor said the first priority was saving the living,
everything else could wait. When I realized that Tuesday the temperature
hit 98 and people were trapped on their roofs (if not their attics) without
food or water, I fully agreed. When it became evident that the water was
rising not falling, the mayor sent teams out to find out where it was coming from. After the 17th Street canal breech was discovered, Jefferson Parish stopped pumping into that canal.

Because the New Orleans diesel pumps have to be manned and the water was rising, most if not all of the New Orleans pumps had to be shut down and the operators evacuated for fear of drowning. Tuesday, news reports said helicopters were going to drop 3,000 pound sand bags into the 17th Street canal breech. Later reports said the sand bags disappeared into the canal with no effect on the flow - the breech was much deeper than imagined.

Wednesday morning the mayor said he had been called by sewerage and water board employees around 4 pm Tuesday asking where were the helicopters and the sand bags for the 17th Street canal - the sand bags had never arrived - and the Mayor was told that the helicopter was diverted to rescue 1,000 people trapped in a church. The Mayor said that he was going to find out who diverted the helicopter from the most pressing problem of all.

I thought that maybe one helicopter had dropped a sand bag into the
Industrial Canal to mend the breech there and that was what was reported on. Why the Industrial Canal would be the first priority was a mystery because the area around it was already flooded pretty bad by the storm surge and the breech wasn’t contributing that much to additional flooding, so maybe my supposition doesn’t make much sense.

The Corps of Engineers said that they were considering sinking a barge or a shipping container filled with sand at the juncture of the 17th Street canal and the lake but they wanted to be sure it could be moved out of the way easily because the lake level was dropping and when it dropped enough, within 24-36 hours, water would flow out through the breech and into the lake. It was always part of a disaster plan to blow a canal levy to allow city drainage by gravity because the pumping stations would be down after a major flood. If there wouldn’t have been a breech in the 17th Street canal, they would have blown one. Latest news reports I heard was that 80% of the city was flooded.

The Escape
Through the generosity of neighbors, I escaped NO on Wednesday by way of Magazine Street to Jackson Avenue to Tchoupitoulas to the Crescent City Connection. Down highway 90 to I-310 to I-55 to Jackson then east I-20 to Birmingham. We left about 10 AM and arrived in Birmingham about 9:30. Before leaving I emptied out the refrigerator and left it open to prevent mold or whatever. I should have turned off the gas to the stove and water heater but was too rushed. Wednesday morning the water was cut off.

On the trip out, Magazine Street was a forest of downed trees through which people had blazed a path just one car wide. One downed tree was probably too big to get my arms around and had been pushed over into the street - not broken but pushed over and the root ball was fully out of the ground. Not only that but it had lifted about twenty feet of sidewalk with the root ball. At 10 AM on Wednesday, there was no water anywhere from Octavia Street to the Crescent City Connection.

As we motored down Highway 90 on the west bank, I saw at least 200 sheriff’s cars from various Louisiana parishes rolling towards New Orleans most trailing flat boats or air boats in convoys of 6 or 8 vehicles each.
Interspersed with the sheriff’s cars were about 50 trucks for repairing
electrical lines: bucket trucks, telephone pole hole diggers and tree
chippers, again in convoys of 4 or 6 trucks. I guess that we were on
highway 90 for about 45 minutes before we were out of sight of the incoming lane and turned onto I-310. Most of the oncoming traffic was rescue and electrical repair vehicles.

The West Bank buildings near the river looked almost untouched. Every 6 blocks or so, damage was visible from the raised expressway, but some damage was to things like covers over gas station pumps or other things that weren’t designed to withstand anything stronger than sun light. By Wednesday morning, downed trees that blocked the West Bank highway 90 were trimmed back and the road was cleared.

Once we got onto I-55, we looked for signs of electricity and saw none. The Lake looked higher than anyone had ever seen it. Along I-55, we saw convoy after convoy of electrical repair trucks, probably 300 total, all going south. Some of the trucks were probably heading to places other than New Orleans proper, but Entergy was certainly able to move resources into the area. As time went on we saw buses that could have been for evacuation and deuce and a half military trucks.

When we got to Jackson, we found that a lot of the city was without
electricity. One gas station had power but had a line of probably 40 cars
waiting for gas. Most gas stations were not powered or were out of gas. We decided to go on rather than get in a gas station line that long.

We got to Meridian on the east border of Mississippi expecting to find gas,
desperate for gas since we had only about an eighth of a tank left, not
enough to get to Birmingham. We got into line at a Meridian gas station that had 16 pumps. They were out of regular but it looked reasonable to be the 60th car in line. The line moved pretty quickly so we congratulated
ourselves on passing longer lines at earlier stations along the interstate.
When we got up to about 15th in line, the station ran out of gas so we were on the road again desperately hunting gas. We stopped at the next exit and both visible stations were closed, either no power or no gas. But we turned onto a suburban road and found a station that only had 40 cars or so. After seeing cars turning into the station from the other direction and going directly to a pump, we were pretty singed. But a local cop arrived to direct the lines and push cheaters out of line and we got to about 6th in line for one line of 2 pumps; other lines fed 6 other pumps. A station employee was checking gas levels in the tanks so I ran out to see what the story was. He said they were out of regular but appeared to have plenty of the two premium grades. We got gas after a 100 minute delay altogether.

We continued on and arrived in Birmingham around 9:30 PM or so. I was
thrilled to shower in clean water and brush my teeth.

The AfterMath
With Plaquemines Parish converted into Mississippi River, river traffic will
be disrupted. Pilots steer freighters and all other ships up the 80 or so
miles from the Gulf to New Orleans. Because the river is so tricky, there
are two sets of pilots; one of the first group steers the ship through the
first 40 or so miles and then another pilot takes over for the next 40 or so
miles to New Orleans. If the ship needs to go further, another group of
pilots take over. That means that Midwest farmers who export their products will probably lose their products and imports will be disrupted for a while. The problem is that what the southernmost river pilots knew is now obsolete. Texas ports can handle some but import costs will increase because river transport is the cheapest form of transport. Of course, Texas politicians are questioning whether New Orleans should be rebuilt at all.

I’ve heard national politicians say the reason that the federal government
has done nothing is because they can’t get troops into New Orleans. On the other hand, I got out. On my way out, I saw lots of sheriff’s deputies from all over the state going into New Orleans. I also saw lots of electrical repair trucks heading for New Orleans. The governor mobilized national guard troops and they got into New Orleans. Other than several Coast Guard helicopters, the national government has done nothing but send four Navy ships from Norfolk, Virginia. Total transit time from Norfolk around Miami to the Gulf Coast is probably 5 days. When they get to the Gulf Coast, they’ll “discover” that they can’t get up the Mississippi to New Orleans and just cruise over to Mississippi and Mobile. The Mississippi Gulf Coast has suffered a major disaster, but everyone’s fate is fixed now. In Mississippi, you are either dead or alive and that’s not going to change. In New Orleans thousands are dying. With moderate assistance, they can be saved.

New Orleans’ mayor has begged for federal assistance and has gotten nothing. The governor has convinced sheriffs from all over the state to send help and they did. The governor has mobilized national guard troops that are not in Iraq and they have responded. Where is the federal government, on vacation ?

How Property Tax Influenced Development

Before the Civil War New Orleans was the second largest city in the United States by population, over 100,000. Only New York was bigger. At that time, the federal government was funded by import & export duties and the states and local governments were funded by property taxes.

As a populous city, New Orleans was sensitive to property taxes, based on property value. To make the job of the assessors easier, the assessors adopted a rule that said that property taxes were proportional to the front footage of the lot, that is, the length of the lot along its street. The depth of lots was pretty consistent because the streets were pretty consistently laid out. That rule was relatively accurate because land, not the building, was the valuable thing.

To minimize property tax, lots were narrow but deep. As a result of that, houses were similarly narrow but deep. Compare that concept with more modern development patterns - the ranch style house, wide but only one or two rooms deep. The New Orleans house of that time became known as a shotgun house because it was said that you could stand in the front door and shoot a shotgun all the way through to the rear wall without hitting anything within. Hallways were avoided because they took up valuable room width inside the house.

The shotgun double became popular then. A shotgun double was two residences under one roof and the building was two rooms wide, instead of the shotgun’s single room width. The double has two front doors and the two residences share a common set of center chimneys. Each room had a fireplace for heat. This style saved the narrow alleys between each house that lead to the back yard.

Citizens of New Orleans complained that their neighbor with a two story house paid the same property tax as that paid by the owner of a one story house. The assessors changed their rule to one that determined property taxes under a formula: the front footage times the number of stories the house had.

As a result of that rule change, the camel back house was born. A camel back house has a hump at the back; it was two stories tall in the back but only one story in the front. The assessors made a new rule that determined how far back the hump began before the house was determined to be a two story house.

Nevertheless, the property owners complained that the much grander camel back down the street paid the same tax as the single story house. In exasperation, the assessors made an entirely new rule: the tax would be based on the number of rooms within the house.

To the extent that anyone considered it previously, closets became totally unrealistic. A closet was counted as a room because a closet is an enclosed space with a door. So instead of closets, home owners used furniture to store clothes - the chiffarobe was born.

So, the New Orleans house is narrow and deep. It has no closets or hallways but every room has a fire place. City water and sewerage was added later so all the rooms that require this are at the back of the house at the site of the back porch.

There are five scenarios to choose from:

1 - The physical universe has been around forever and, after enough time, all unlikely events will have happened.

2 - The physical universe was created by God and He gave it the bare minimum rules. He has not affected the universe since creation because He wanted to see what would happen. He is well pleased with the result, including human explanation of cause and effect. He thinks humans have continued to look for the truth and that humans may find it someday. He wonders how confused the general public will be by the misuse of the archeological finds still hidden in the *censored*.

3 - The physical universe was created by God and He has been actively engaged in managing it. He put the iridium at the K-T boundary and then made sure there was enough iridium in the comets. He is terrifically amused that humans believe that evolution continues and wonders if now is a good time to create the “evolutionary” successor to humans.

4 - The physical universe was created by God yesterday. Everything you recall is a history that He placed in your head.

5 - You and I are figments of God's imagination.

Take your pick but try not to be self righteous about it.

If we're going down that old Church & State road, I'll suggest a one year sentence for those who don't volunteer at least 1 hour per day, calculated monthly, including projects conducted by their own church.

Dems say the government must provide quality education to all because they deserve it. Repubs say parents should be paid to manage their kids education. I think the government must provide a quality education to all because we all will be better off with an educated citizenry.