Monday, December 04, 2006
Gutting in New Orleans
Just finished my time in New Orleans, a group of about 30 of us have spent 4 days gutting houses that had been flooded during the two hurricanes their.Not much time for a long reflection - as I am still working all the stuff I saw through - but a fe things stick in my mind...
• walking into a house untouched since the flooding, coffee cups still on the table, food in the fridge - but the house had been under 8ft of water. We cleared out everything - and 95% was simply not worth salavaging. It was hard carrying out peoples entire family history and putting it on the garbage pile.
• One whole district, about 5 miles square, was completely overwhelmed by the water - it rose above the roof of the houses. This is the area pictures. Only 2% of the original inhabitants have been able to move in a 18 months later. It was the poorest district in New Orleans.
• Only 40% of people have returned to the city. And 60% of the houses will have to be either gutted or torn down. Imagine 5 million people moving out of London and a 600,000 houses being gutted or torn down.
It really was like a ghost town driving around, and gutting the houses was an emotional process, I could not face doing something like that to my family home...
More reflections later - am presently staying with Bowie in New York. Missing all you mooters - and obviously most especially Phillipa :-)
