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News For Friends of
New Orleans Restaurants and Food
Day One After The Storm
Tuesday, August 30, 2005[/title]
Personal news, for the many (over 100) kind people who have shown their concern for us:
Our family evacuated to Atlanta Sunday, after I spent the night--midnight to six a.m.--anchoring the broadcast on WWL from my office in Abita Springs. As I passed along news of a total evacuation of New Orleans and everything fifty miles to the west and two hundred miles to the east, I decided that we would be hitting the road, too. All I had to do was convince Mary Ann, who has always regarded evacuations as overstated and unnecessary. But when I showed her the satellite imagery, she changed her mind. Hurricane Katrina filled nearly the entire Gulf of Mexico.
We left our home at around eight, sneaked in the back way (LA 36) to the I-59, and joined the tremendous stream of traffic. It was in counterflow, with both sides of the expressway headed north and east. We drove to Atlanta, where we are now with Mary Ann's niece, who has extended us limitless hospitality. I hope that anyone reading this who also had to evacuate is safe and even half as comfortable as Jennifer and Bob Donner have made us.
The radio station group I work for has taken a generous and firm stand behind its entire staff. They, like most businesses in New Orleans, will experience a lengthy interruption of profitable operation. WWL is on the air, and so are a few FMs. The management tells me that they will be in touch when they will require me to get back to work. For now, even though I brought my remote broadcast rig with me, they say that my services will not be needed. As the hurricane moved over the city, only a skeleton crew of engineers remained, and even they were told to leave when the Dominion Tower--our headquarters, right next to the Superdome--started shaking.
Then WWL had a transmitter problem. We were ready for that, and the engineers shifted the WWL program to that of my station, WSMB on 1350. For a a time, WSMB was the only radio station in New Orleans still on the air.
Today--the day after the storm passed through the city, but before the flood that would do most of the damage started showing itself--we spent the day watching CNN's coverage of the disaster. Jennifer told me, "If you'd like to make a drink, we have martini ingredients underneath the kitchen sink. We have it for my father-in-law, but he only comes here once a year, and and he was just here. . . so, just help yourself!" Indeed, here were a half-gallon of Beefeaters and a bottle of dry vermouth. I was not really a martini drinker, but I became one that night.
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[title type="h5"]Thursday, September 1.
Day Three after the storm.[/title]
I'm still sitting on the sofa drinking martinis as the news from CNN gets worse and worse. It is now clear that the levee system has failed, and that this was caused by an extremely high storm surge. That is the worst-case scenario we have been warned against for decades. It looks as if nearly all of Orleans Parish is flooded, and that the pumping stations that would ordinarily pull all this water out are themselves unusable. Only the high ground along the river is above the flood. The city is shut down to everybody. It is easy to think that this may be the end of New Orleans. I try to keep that thought out of my mind. But Mary Ann and I are talking about the possibility that this is a time to begin a radically new life. She is more amenable to that thought than I am, but even some promise in being free from the ties that bind us to our home.
Mary Ann has been talking with her sister, who lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. D.C. She invites us to come up and stay with her family. She also says that we'd better get to work on where our kids Jude and Mary Leigh will go to school. The session is just starting. We make a few calls. The world is so eager to do something for Katrina refugees that both our kids are invited to become students at great schools. Georgetown Prep--one of two Jesuit schools in Washington, DC area--is especially eager to have Jude. They set aside a dorm room for him and gather a jacket-and-tie uniform, then pay to have him flown in so he doesn't miss opening day. They promise that there will be plenty of food and water and helpful people. It was a bit over the top, but in the uncertain days, we can't do anything but accept. Jude, for his part, is eager to get this show on the road.
We have learned that our home, on the North Shore, is unscathed by the storm. We can't get in to see just yet, of course. There is no power anywhere, which also means no water--since we get our water from a well.
