Sensationalized news reports, heartbreaking soundbites of devastated lives, and scattered heroic tales of the Gulf Coast clean-up are all that we’re given to understand the catastrophic implications of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
These storylines make it nearly impossible to understand the situation on the Gulf Coast, but it is still important for each of us to pursue the larger story. We owe it to ourselves, our nation and our fellow citizens who have turned to us in their time of need.
Making the right choices in Louisiana and Mississippi depends on our collective national effort. As American citizens, we are responsible for carefully weighing the economic, social, cultural and human costs in the choices the nation makes, and then letting our representatives know.
This historic chapter in American life is ultimately about how we answer three essential questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? And how must we come together as a nation when fellow citizens are in need?
This national tragedy is not the first, and it will not be the last. How we handle the aftermath of this crisis will determine how others – perhaps in our own city – will be cared for next.
On Nov. 10, nearly 650 citizens gathered in New Orleans’ French Quarter to offer hope for the future of their devastated communities. Their objective was development of a set of guidelines to be used as a framework for rebuilding Louisiana.
I was a facilitator at the three-day Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference, and as such was introduced to many realities rarely heard in the news, and to the insightful stories of Louisiana architects, planners, engineers, preservationists, business owners, federal agencies, civic groups, religious organizations, public officials and citizens.
The report issued after the conference starkly sums up the situation:
“The human and physical devastation in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region is dire. The passage of time does not lessen the calamity, but only deepens the suffering, the misery and the destruction.
“This extraordinary American disaster requires an extraordinary American response. The urgent need for a massive national commitment to the rebuilding and recovery of hurricane-ravaged areas … must be underscored with bold and deliberate action.
“There is an urgent need for a clear, specific commitment on the part of the federal government to devote the resources necessary to protect the south Louisiana region from future hurricanes, flooding and coastal erosion – and to do so without delay.”
New Orleans is a national treasure. Founded in 1718, “La Nouvelle Orleans” was ruled by France, then Spain, for nearly 100 years. New Orleans has more than 40,000 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, many of which are architectural treasures.
The Louisiana Purchase became real when the Crescent City was turned over the U.S. in 1803. Many of the tens of thousands of live oak trees that line city boulevards date back to before the Civil War.
It’s known as the birthplace of jazz, as well as Creole and Cajun cuisine. But today, the city of New Orleans is all but dead. While a few small pockets of the city are struggling to sustain life, less than 15 percent of New Orleans’ population has returned. About 100,000 homes are still without power, and tens of thousands of others do not yet have drinkable water or working toilets. There are few safe, inhabitable places to live in a metro area once filled with more than 1.2 million people. In Louisiana, the damage from Katrina’s aftermath is 12 times worse than any other recent storm, with more than 283,000 units of the state’s housing stock destroyed.
Water destroyed New Orleans, not the hurricane. Katrina’s fury left broken windows, splintered trees and downed power lines. The city, situated in a sub- sea level bowl, was destroyed by the water from Lake Pontchartrain that streamed through dozens of breaks, fissures and collapsed walls along the 41 miles of canals that normally control water levels. In only a few hours, as much as 90 percent of the area was immersed in up to 13 feet of water – a full day after the hurricane had departed.
New Orleans’ safety and the effectiveness of its levees are inseparable from the health of coastal wetlands. If Louisiana’s marshlands had been healthy, New Orleans would be intact today. Over the years, due to shipping, oil drilling, dredging of the Mississippi River for industrial purposes and natural erosion, the Gulf Coast’s wetlands and barrier islands eroded at an alarming rate. The loss of this critical environmental protection from storm surges may now be so severe that it could be beyond repair.
New Orleans’ levee system was in serious disrepair before Katrina. Experts now agree that budget cuts at the federal level and malfeasance by Corps of Engineers’ subcontractors contributed greatly to the levee system’s failure. Local, state and federal officials responsible for building and maintaining the city’s levees and canals for a Category 3 hurricane are complicit in this tragedy.
As has been reported on PBS and elsewhere, New Orleans’ canals actually were struck by a Level 1 storm surge yet still failed due to inferior construction and poor upkeep. The Senate released a report on Nov. 17 showing that many canal walls were only supported by eight-foot pilings driven into a weak foundation.
Today, without guarantees that the levee system will be rebuilt to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, private investors and developers are unwilling to gamble on the region, leaving the city in limbo and quiet despair.
Recovery will depend on a complex web of interconnected actions. Every proposed step will have to be supported and sustained by others. For instance, without housing for employees, businesses cannot open. Without a business infrastructure and customers, there can be no tax base. Without a tax base, the city and state will remain bankrupt, preventing the rebuilding and restoration of housing and businesses. This spiral leaves little hope for the future of the region.
To this point, 81,000 businesses have been “stilled,” with most projected to remain permanently closed. In Louisiana, job loss is expected to be greater than 200,000 in 2006, out of an original job base of 630,000. As of mid-November, while more than 14,000 low-interest loan applications had been submitted to the Small Business Administration, 800 had been turned down, 248 approved, and only 18 had been funded.
As an irreplaceable part of America’s story, New Orleans’ deep history and uniqueness cannot be ignored. The weary faces of people I met at the conference expressed a tragic sense of abandonment by their fellow Americans.
As our nation quickly moves on to other priorities, it is easy to forget that these people are commuting three hours each way into the city from temporary homes in outlying areas like Baton Rouge and Lafayette while struggling to salvage their businesses, battle with insurance companies, and deal with the unknowns of rebuilding their future lives and work.
This is a tragedy that has affected everyone in the region regardless of gender, race, education or income, and our lack of attention and concern about the future of their lives and beloved city leaves them with an foreboding sense of invisibility. Abandoned and depressed in their tearful struggle to survive, and without leaders who can speak with one voice, their futures are grim without our support.
Please take a moment to call your congressional representatives and ask them to accelerate funding for the recovery of the coastal wetlands and construction of a Level 5 levee system for the city of New Orleans. And while you’re at it, remind them that we, as Americans, should leave no one behind.
Cynthia Kemper is a business strategist, market development and media-relations specialist, and principal of Denver-based Marketekture.
