Oak St. -- A Stranger Few Days Than Usual

I've heard from about four different people that Uptown is basically fine--physically. When Be bugged out on Wed. night or Thursday, Snake's was intact, Jacques-imo's was okay, Tulane was fine, and so was the Maple Leaf. The problem was that the people at the Leaf were holed up with shotguns as a gang of local thugs tried to beat the owner of the Tru-Value next to Jacques-imo's to death with a crowbar.

The owner of the hardware store, an old guy who once followed me around the aisles with a suspicious eye, had driven to his store over dry but somewhat littered Riverbend streets to see how it had fared in the storm.

When he got there, the young dudes from the neighborhood were clearing its inventory out. He told them he'd give them whatever they needed--nails, hammers, wood, etc--but asked them not to ruin his livelihood. That's when one of whacked him in the head with a crowbar. Seeing this from down the block, the owner of the Maple Leaf went over with a shotgun and scared off the looters. Reportedly, it looked like they were fixing to kill the store owner. He was okay, and returned shortly thereafter to pile as much of his inventory into a pickup truck. He then drove off down Oak St. with a few buddies in the back--guns drawn.

Meanwhile, a dramatically less murderous (and I reckon drunker) contingent of remaining locals went shopping at the Rite Aid on Oak and Carrolton. With a forklift:

One resident, who shall remain nameless, said that the store wasn't ransacked as much as shopped-at-without-paying-for-it. Once the door was open, these locals just helped themselves to modest basketfuls of necessary staples: in our friend's case, this was 2 things of Rollos, maybe a toothbrush....all I remember of the list was the Rollos. He said people were just walking up and down the aisles as on any other day, then walking out with their stuff instead of going to the counter first.

Even on Wednesday, some of those on Oak St. saw no particular reason to leave. The houses were standing and in good shape. There was no electricity, but there were candles. There was plenty of water and beer, and food was availible, if not through strictly legal means. There was even pool volleyball until the groundwater started to rise in certain places by later in the week. However, the battle between almost-normal and almost-Mogadishu resolved in favor of the latter.

The stories started to come in about what was happening across the city. Then the thugs started coming by. Cop cars would drive by the gangs, take one look, and keep going. By late Wednesday and Thursday, the same people who had been contentedly playing pool volleyball in a ghost town started walking down the street to Rite-Aid carrying guns.

It's a shame: a bunch of the people remaining around Oak St. felt that they probably could have been pretty helpful around the neighborhood were it not for the pickup trucks full of kids going around armed to the teeth, looking for people and things to violate. They recognized the kids. They're the neighbors from down the street, the same ones we would buy $25 bikes from (and who would steal them). In the end, things got hairy pretty fast, and a few Oak St. people hopped in a car and got the fuck out of town, having more or less written off all their possessions.

Pics of Uptown...

Found some pics of Uptown, New Orleans on www.wwltv.com. I think they were taken post-storm, but pre-flood. Not sure tho.

1. Robert's Bar/Fro-stop area. If Papa John's survived and Robert's is toast, I will eat my own poo. The good news is that the glass at the Fro-Stop is intact, so maybe the damage over there isn't total. The irony is that I feel sad that the Fro-Stop sign is down even though there was a time when, if some of us could have knocked it over ourselves, we probably would have. And it would have been, um, hilarious. $5 says George Lennox is still passed out on the Robert's pool table from last Saturday night. [Large]


2. Somewhere on Freret...again, probably pre-flood...looks familiar. [Large]

3. Somewhere on Colliseum... [Large]

How New Orleans Can Bounce Back

A lot of people familiar with the city wonder how it can bounce back, given the devastation. Not that I know shit, but I think it will. Here are some things I think might happen:

Once the city is drained, the wreckage blocking the infrastructure will be cleared. Eventually the water, sewage, and electricity will be repaired. At that point you’ll have several hundred thousand (or more) displaced people.

Volunteers will help clean up the bulk of the non-infrastructure-blocking wreckage, i.e., wrecked houses and buildings, and downed trees.

At this point, the property market in New Orleans will be in a tailspin.

Some people will not come back. But many will--their friends, families, and histories are in New Orleans. Many of those that do come back (of all income levels) will essentially be put on welfare by the government. They will be issued food stamps, a stipend, and probably given a certain amount of repair resources with which to fix their homes. Charity will play a big role.

Many locals whose jobs are gone will find work helping homeowners and businesses rebuild, whether rebuilding networks, or nailing shingles.

Tourists will not come back at first, so the employment situation overall will be dire, but there will be some jobs, and these will "seed" the local economy.

Key to saving New Orleans is keeping a critical mass of citizens from leaving permanently. Ironically, the crash of the property market will be essential to this. If a massive plan to defend the city from future storms is put in place, buyers will be attracted to the very low property prices, since housing is so expensive elsewhere. With enough incentives, buyers will slowly return.

As time passes and a new normalcy emerges, small businesses, including bars, small markets, gas stations, some superstores, and so on, will open and employ people.

Essentially, life in New Orleans will need to be subsidized until a market for goods and services develops on its own. In the Great Depression, the government adopted huge projects (like the Tennessee Valley Authority) to employ people. Maybe the government will come up with projects like that for New Orleans, as well. That way, people would have money in their pocket, the city would be rebuilt, and everyday life would reemerge in town.

Eventually, as long as the city’s storm defenses are upgraded, New Orleans will survive as a living city. Geographically, it is a hub of the energy and shipping industries, and a major industrial and agricultural capital. Culturally and historically, it is unique enough, and enough of that uniqueness probably survived, to draw visitors back.

The population will probably shrink in the coming years (compared to pre-Katrina), but people will go where there is an incentive (e.g. low property prices, jobs); where there are working people, there is a marketplace; where there are markets there is an economy. That, in addition to the assurances of physical storm defenses, should be enough to keep New Orleans alive in the long term.

This is all off the top of my head. If you think of anything else, please let me know!

(BTW, if the President says the US economy won't be harmed by this, I think he's full of shit. He actually can't say that the economy is toast without it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Energy prices are going to continue to be super-high, which will come right out of national consumer spending, and many companies probably will unexpectedly miss earnings for this and future quarters.)

Want to volunteer for a week?

11:46 A.M. - WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal emergency officials are looking for two-thousand Homeland Security Department workers to volunteer for hurricane relief efforts. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has told Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff a-thousand people are needed within 48 hours and two-thousand within a week.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

Uptown to Flood About Nine Feet

Uptown looks to be in big trouble tonight:

The basic deal is that efforts to plug the 17th Street levee failed (they have given up on it for now), and lake water is pouring into the city. The flooding will stop once the water level in the city equals that of the lake. The lake is 3ft above sea level, while St. Charles Ave is 6ft below sea level. According to the mayor, that means that St. Charles will be under 9ft of water before the flooding stops.

Obviously, that’s enough to really fuck up most of the homes around there. The ones built up on berms might fare better....

Other news:
Gasoline is to be rationed East of the Rockies.

The Red Cross (Disaster Services) is asking for volunteers from around the country for one- to three-week stints. Apparently you muster in your area, and then head down to the scene. They also need money.

View from Above

The live feed from New Orleans local WWL-TV is giving way, way better coverage than CNN and the other national channels.

Instead of hearing that jackass Wolf Blitzer bleat on about the grave Greater Meaning of the tragedy ("the damage is almost Biblical in proportion, John."), some cameraman from WWL got himself into a helicopter and toured New Orleans uninterrupted for half an hour, going from area to area and pointing out landmarks: “...and there’s the Wal-Mart on Parish Road…over to the left....there’s Chalmette High School…ahead we see I-10” etc, etc.

The footage spoke for itself. Square mile after square mile after square mile of the greater New Orleans area is shredded and underwater, a lot of of it up to the rooflines. In place after place it’s the same, whether in Metairie, Slidell, Downtown, or wherever.

All the other channels have reporters with videophones broadcasting from the tops of CBD hotels (yay, another shot of the Superdome), but what people who know or live in the city want to find out is what’s happening in the neighborhoods. That’s why the WWL footage was so key—you see all these landmarks and places and roads that you know, and sadly it’s all trashed.

Aside from the thousands of wrecked homes, the images of the ruined everyday stuff that makes up the city affected me the most. The office parks, the plants, factories, depots, storage sites, all the malls, churches, homes…. at best they’re soaked through and standing, but in many cases it looks straight out of the tsunami from last year. Even after this dries out, what are all those people going to do? They'll need every crane and dumptruck in the country, it seems.

There are parking lots with dozens of school busses overturned and half submerged, others with dozens or hundreds of shipping containers strewn around, and rail yards with all the different types of car scattered around like children’s toys. You have to wonder what’s inside a lot of those rail cars.

Maybe the worst part is that as you fly over mile after mile of flood zone, every once in a while the camera picks out a single person or family cowering on a rooftop amid this sea of destruction. When they see the helicopter, they freak out and start waving their shirts for help. They look so isolated out there, and of course there’s nobody they can call for help. No boats, no cars, no roads in sight. Nothing. The people must wonder if anybody is going to find them.

Some screen captures (more later):

Overturned rail cars in New Orleans East:

Michoud Shuttle tank assembly plant:

Distribution center with wrecked trucks:

When the Levee Broke, Part 2

Seems the helicopters that were supposed to drop sandbags on the hole in the levee never showed up. This is from WWL's blog:


8:04 P.M. - Mayor Nagin: Unhappy that the helicopters slated to drop 3,000-pound bags into the levee never showed up to stop the flow of water. Too many chiefs calling shots he says.

7:59 P.M. - Mayor Nagin: Pumps at 17th street canal has failed and water will continue pouring into the city. Nine feet of water is expected on St. Charles Avenue.... Water is expected to spread throughout the east bank of Orleans and possibly Jefferson Parish.


Nine feet of water on St. Charles Ave is really bad news. It had looked like uptown was going to be spared the very worst, but that seems not to be the case now.

It's hard to believe that despite the emergency conditions they didn't manage to get sandbags to the hole in the levee. That might turn out to have been an absolutely ruinous fuck-up.

When the levee broke...

Been following the horrifying New Orleans situation on WWL's live feed. This is a screen capture of a shot of the levee that broke and has been flooding parts of the city.

Apparently the authorities are trying to plug it, and they opened up another levee that will let some of the water drain out in a marsh....

New Orleans in Trouble

Been up listening to radio reports and surfing the web for info about Hurricane Katrina.

As I used to live in New Orleans, the storm is definitely worrying. I'd been away all weekend and hadn't heard much about it until Sunday night, when I saw that they had closed the LOOP (the offshore oil terminal), abandoned several thousand oil rigs in the gulf, and were evacuating New Orleans. A lot of that infrastructure might well be destroyed.

For months everybody's been saying that the lack of excess refining and pumping capacity in the oil market left no room for a shock, but I think people generally had shocks of the terrorist/war kind in mind. However, the amount of supply shut down the Gulf is about equal to current global spare capacity. Oil is duly up 7% overnight at $70.80, NG is up 20%, and gasoline futures are going nuts, too. (Someone suggested that those who are long oil futures or royalty trusts, etc, might want to consider donating some of their profits to the reconstruction of New Orleans if needed. That's not a bad idea; the problem with betting on Pure Doom is that you benefit when things, like peoples' lives, otherwise go completely to shit.)

Anyway, there may be more problems on the horizon: there's supposedly another storm building behind Katrina, and of course all the geopolitical risk is still out there. Depending on the damage done in the next day or so, I have to wonder how much more the global economy--or at least the US economy--can take before some serious economic damage comes.

Before Katrina, Americans were spending about $250 billion more on gasoline this year than last--about $1000 per person, or perhaps a few G's per family. That money obviously now won't get spent on discretionary purchases like Xboxes, furniture, vacations, etc. Also, for families with a fairly low income and a bunch of engines (and kids) to feed and drive around, that's a significant chunk of change out of pocket--and it's probably just going to get worse. The fact that the money won't go towards purchases means businesses will suffer, which means higher unemployment, which means lower consumer spending, which means businesses will suffer, etc, etc, etc. If the gov't tried to cap gasoline prices, that would just drive them up in the long run. If they opened the strategic reserve, that wouldn't mitigate the damage much, we'd be even less secure in our energy supplies, and we'd probably have to buy it all back at higher prices. To me, being long oil is a hedge against the damage the energy situation stands to do.

Still, I can't get my mind off the New Orleans situation, that is, the place and the people who live there. It's one of the precious few truly unique cities in America, but it's below sea level and surrounded by refineries and chemical plants. I don't imagine it's easy to move chemical plants to high ground. If the damage and flooding is as bad as they say it might be, NOLA could be turned into more or less a toxic dump (it's pretty polluted as it is).

I've been in some serious storms there. One night it rained 18" or so and submerged the whole city in several feet of water. Manhole covers were popping out, electric lines were in the water where people were swimming house to house and bar to bar, and entire lots of cars were swept up and destroyed. The whole first floor of the city was submerged in scum. But it was just rain, not hurricane-force winds. Most of the people I know just got blacked-out drunk and made the best of the occasion, then cleaned up later.

But this one could be a lot worse, it seems. I hope the authorities are wrong and crying wolf, but this time, it sounds like they might not be. Check out the following excerpt from a weather advisory from the National Weather Service. There have also been predictions of the city's above-ground cemeteries being broken wide open. What a mess that would be, and a shame...

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED.

AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. MANY WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES MAY LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MANY POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.