January, 2006

This week we arrived safely home to clean, inexpensive, healthy, environmentally-aware New Jersey. How good it felt to eat fresh collards from our garden -- and the next day a fresh stir-fry! New Orleans cuisine is based on fat. You can avoid deep fries if you try hard, but the grilled fish is dowsed in butter, and veggies tend to be covered with cream sauce. It tasted fine, but nagged the conscience.

My five days in New Orleans were much better than I feared because of a new ordinance, implemented two days before we arrived, that prohibits smoking in restaurants. Smoking is, however, omni-present on streets, and the loudness makes Montclair seem startlingly quiet. Shortly after we arrived, we bought a half gallon of milk for $5.44 -- including a 9% tax!!! When we arrived home, Fred bought a WHOLE gallon for $3.69 at Whole Foods. A few inches of bath water at the Doubletree Hotel was so black one could barely see the drain at the bottom of the tub.

The math conference was as wonderful as usual, and I'm glad I went.
One highlight was a talk "Katrina: Nature's Wrath or Human Greed?" by Dr. Paul Kemp, a local oceanographer with a specialty on coastal restoration who works with the LSU School of Coast and the Environment. He helped run the 240-machine computer model of nearby weather that correctly predicted before the storm what would happen. Later he was part of a team of scientists and engineers commissioned by the State of Louisiana to carry out a forensic investigation of floodwall failures during Katrina.

He observed that "those responsible were constantly under pressure to minimze the risk and not publicize it." His group's conclusion was that although Katrina was a major storm, "The damage was due to engineering errors." The levees were weak at the bottom, and with water falling hard on their base would give way entirely. Since New Orleans is on an island connected to the mainland, evacuation must be over causeways that have dangerous high winds during a storm. The accuracy of their computer model saved a lot of lives by giving early warning. He emphaszed the challenge of getting the information to the people disseminating information shortly before they disseminate it. He observed that although most Katrina damage in Mississippi was from winds, in Louisiana, 10,000 of the 13,000 structures destroyed were destroyed by flooding.

Two days after his talk we toured New Orleans and its suburbs with him. We saw block after block of empty, pretty middle class houses as we left New Orleans. Almost all are only one story high and occupied less land space than most houses in Montclair. As we entered the suburbs, we saw mile after mile of such abandoned houses. A few had a trailer parked in the driveway or front yard, apparently by families rebuilding. However, they are living a lonely (and dangerous) life because almost all of their neighbors' homes are empty. They have no windows, so we could look in.

The Ninth War had lower class one-story homes, but they are gone. There are small brick one-foot cubic posts that used to support houses, but now grass grows where houses used to be. Most blocks also contain a huge pile of debris -- 16 months after Katrina! Dr. Kemp told us that an occasional body is still found as they remove the debris. The Ninth Ward was hit by a huge gush of water when a levee broke, sweeping away houses and drowning 300 people. "They couldn't climb onto their roofs because there were no houses left."

He knows one woman in her 70s who survived by clinging to a tree-top for four or five hours. (Trees survived remarkably well compared to human-made structures.) Nearby the national guard unit had boats chained to their mourings. Scuba divers cut the chains, and the boats were used to rescue thousands of people on trees and rooftops. He says that only 41% of the New Orleans residents have returned, but I believe NPR's report yesterday that nobody knows. I do know that there are MANY abandoned houses, including most of the faculty and student residences of the University New Orleans, which is a shadow of what it was two years ago.

We climbed many levees last Sunday. It isn't a difficult task; they are roughly as high as a room. In the early afternoon I was warm in a tee-shirt. Later, but before dark, I was glad I had brought along my winter coat. Dr. Kemp said the older levees, built by the state, had survived better than the newer ones, built by the feds. In the 1960's the federal government said it would take over the building of levees. In general, they weren't as sturdy as the older state-built ones, especially where sand was used near the bottom of the levee. It would wash away in the assault of water, and the entire levee would collapse. We saw many reconstructed levees, some with metal structures on top of the earth. Pilings have made some levees stronger.

Dr. Kemp considers most damage and deaths unnecessary and due to faulty engineering and other planning. As much money has been spent on levees since Katrina as in all history before. The city is much safer now than two years ago, but the New Orleans area has lost a million acres to the sea since 1840, so the future is ominous. Still, the harbor is one of the busiest in the world, so abandoning the city altogether is impractical.

Because he was part of a team that documented the engineering errors that caused so much destruction, it "doesn't surprise" him that he is no longer welcome in New Orleans. When I told him I admired his courage, he responded, "Fifteen hundred people died!" He has landed a job with the National Audubon Society.

I have many mixed feelings about New Orleans. As we waited to enter the security line for our flight home, a deadpan young man before us was hugged by various weeping people, including, apparently, both his parents. I felt tears trickling down my own face.

Our country faces even more serious problems than Katrina, but the lack of vision, realism, and courage of leaders seems to be a common theme. Perhaps I am unfair. Maybe it is, as Paul Kemp observed, tht they are "constantly under great pressure to minimize the risk and not publicize it," pressures that apply both to Iraq and climate change.

Pat Kenschaft