Reply #6: I was just there last weekend. There is some life, but the devestation [View All]

[jobycom]

is awesome, and it's even worse in Mississippi.

In New Orleans, the Ninth and Lower Ninth Wards are wastelands of empty houses and piles of debris. There are no lights at night, few cars, very few residents. It's one of the most chilling effects I've ever experienced, being there after dark. It was every bit as powerful as seeing Ground Zero in NY, but it goes on and on and on, and leaves a sense of hopelessness and anger that I didn't feel in New York (then again, I grew up near New Orleans, so it was more personal).

On the other hand, there is tourism and business in the French Quarters and in uptown streets near the river, like Magazine Street. And across the 17th Street Canal in Metarie everything seems normal. If you get down there, drive down Veteran's Highway across the 17th Street Canal bridge. On the Metarie side, where the levees held, you can eat and dine and see kids playing in their yards. Just across the bridge there is a city of empty houses, piles of debris, and no electricity. Traffic lights are out, traffic is gone--you go from a city to a ghost town in thirty yards.

And the worst part is, you can see it doesn't have to be. Many of the houses flooded by the slow rising water of the 17th Street break can be salvaged, and even many in the Ninth Ward could be saved (oak and cypress survive floods well, which is why so many old houses were built of those woods). There should be constant construction, and booming industry as people rebuild. But the state and city are bankrupt, the feds won't deliver on their promises or responsibilities, and the insurance companies are shutting their coffers.

As an example of what I mean, I visited the houses that my mother and father greww up in. My father lived on Forshey Street, near Carrolton and I-110 (or 10, I get confused). The house is now in a predominately black district. You could see the waterline where the water reached about three feet above the floor. The houses are livable, and many seemed to be lived in, and there were only a few piles of debris. But there is no work being done on them. My mother's house never flooded. She lived on Magazine Street in a small hardware store that is now a grocery. The street was open and busy.

The town doesn't have to die. It's not even on life support. But it is not receiving the attention it needs to fully recover, and I have to agree that it is because the city is Democrat, and black. Bush knows what he's doing.

Now, cross the Pearl River into Mississippi, where FEMA is trying to pull out because they claim all of the debris has been removed and they are not needed. The cities of Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Pass Christian are flat gone. People are living in tents in Waveland (where I lived until I was four), but they aren't even trying to live in Pass Christian (where I went to high school for a couple of years, and where many of my friends lived, and still live). The town is a pile of rubble. Back off the beach there are streets where you can't even tell where the houses were. There is just debris washed into huge piles, like driftwood at the tideline. Boards, bricks, trees, kids' bikes and toys, clothes, mud, appliances, and no telling what else are just piled up like a landfill, and even the roads aren't passable. FEMA has no intention of finishing their job.

Bush is hated in these areas, btw. People spit and curse when his name is mentioned, even some of his former supporters. He visited the area nine times after the hurricane and made promise after promise, and has not kept one of them. He won't visit again. His Secret Service wouldn't allow it.

Anyway, just my observations.