POST KATRINA UPDATE FROM NEW ORLEANS

Life after Katrina, what an experience!  Contrary to what the City of New Orleans is putting out in the press, most of the city’s residential areas were devastated.  The French Quarter, a good portion of uptown and the central business district however are basically OK. i.e., wind damage but not flooded.  So OK for tourists but you just can’t hardly find a place to live in New Orleans.   The suburbs, while heavily damaged, fared much better.

Before the hurricane we took much off of our boat in New Orleans and put it in our condo across the street for safekeeping as our condo was on the 4^th floor.   The really important stuff like computers went in the car and we headed to Baton Rouge, LA where we did just fine.

As Murphy would have it, the condo was totaled BUT the boat did just fine.   Our boat was apx. 1,000 feet from the big pile up everyone saw on TV.  We spent 3 days salvaging our clothes and important papers out of the condo by way of flat boat we ferried between the condo and the boat.  

Very strange situation here, New Orleans was under 7 feet of water while the marina was dry due to good levees around the marina.  The concrete wall levee served as security to keep out land based looters.

We did not go without air conditioning because of the generator but when we started getting low on water, we moved the boat to Madisonville, LA where we were hit with effects from Hurricane Rita.  We stayed aboard for this one and received more effects than I had counted on, but again had no damage.  And again no power or water but that was out for just a few days.  The Orleans Marina (where we are docked) in New Orleans was without power and water for about a month.  The municipal “city” marina lost 90% of its vessels and will not be back for quite some time.   South Shore harbor was completely wiped out.  

Our post office was also totaled and forwarded first class mail has been sporadic.

Lee & Margaret