Hey, this is my place. Grab a seat and relax for a bit. If you are expecting deep philosophical blather you are going to be dissappointed. You have been warned as some of the opinions discussed on this blog are the opinions of the owner and may or may not align with your own.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

New Orleans...nuff said

I had the opportunity to visit New Orleans last week. Although my last blog was spent bitching about my attempts to return home from New Orleans, there were parts of the week that landed with me. I would consider it a humbling experience for me. We all have challenges in life and things that don't go our way for one reason or another, after my travels in the city my problems and challenges don't seem as significant.

It has been well over a year and almost half the original population of New Orleans has not returned. Many of the businesses, restaurants for example, don't open until 4 or 5 in the afternoon due to the lack of workforce. Large areas of the city, particularly the 9th ward still do not have power. I found that amazing that this type of thing would happen in the United States...it's more third world to me. While traveling through parts of the 9th ward you see houses still standing abandoned with all the markings on the fronts of them. People crawled through the roofs of those houses to escape the surging waters, people were trapped in the attics of these houses, people died in these houses. The waterlines still show on the houses showing how high the water actually rose. When seeing the coverage on the TV it does not do justice to seeing it first hand. I can't imagine what those people went through, nor would I ever want to experience half of what those folks had to endure.

A fellow co-worker and I were traveling between locations via the free ways, at one point he pointed over to a insignificant looking part of an over pass and mentioned that that was the part of the overpass where those people were gunned down by police that caused all that controversy. Just a normal looking over pass...people died there. All along the embankment you could see the waterlines here as well, everything was under water.

People are still living in the FEMA trailers waiting for the government money to come so they can get started with rebuilding their homes.

What amazed me was the spirit of the people that either stayed, or had returned. Many of the people that work for my company lost loved ones, lost their homes, yet they still have a positive outlook. Many of them told me they would never leave no matter what was thrown their way. This city was there home and they would not leave...plain and simple. Amazing.

Anyway...there is no way I could do justice to what I saw in words...I know I ain't that good of a writer. We don't hear much about the people of New Orleans anymore, they are still there trying to get through each day by putting the pieces back together. Good people.

1 comment:

Jason said...

I'm torn every time I think of NO, now. I want to go there, but the there I'm thinking of might not be there. I'd like to help, but I'm not to far from where they are myself.

Hard to believe that kind of shit can happen in a first-world country.

Good thing we're spending billions bombing Iraqis and their WMD.

Grrr.