New Orleans refuses promotion to police heroes

My sister Jule and her ten year old Robby evacuated Sunday. They and her in-laws piled into the Tahoe, leaving Bucktown 3 a.m. Sunday morning. The Contraflow ran smoothly and they were in Baton Rouge in just two or three hours. They went on to Dallas to her brother in law's house. They came here and stayed with us a few days last week. I was hoping they would like this area (near Austin) enough to settle, but they also have some infrastructure in Dallas, including a better housing situation, and the grandparents.

Jule's husband David is a New Orleans police sergeant in the seventh district (Lakefront airport). Twenty-two years on the force. He stayed, of course, along with their two dogs. He initially brought the dogs to the station, but as the storm hit the station flooded and the station evacuated to the sixth floor of a nearby hospital. David brought the pups too. When power was lost there, the police assisted in manually running some pumps that were needed to keep patients alive.

A couple of days later David was able to locate a working phone and notified us he is ok. At that time, the worst of it, they had no communication with the district. Since then they've reorganized and have some order.

Eventually he managed to make his way across the city to their (dry) home in Bucktown, where he deposited the dogs along with food and water. Then, back to the seventh. Don't ask me how you get to Lakefront from Bucktown right now. There's this little thing called the 17th St. Canal in the way.

David. Stolid, good natured, lovable, dutiful. Doing his job during the worst of it, and still. Here's the kicker. Since he lives in Jefferson Parish, where he and my sister were able to afford a house a mile over the parish line 20 years ago, he has been prohibited from being promoted. He'd be a captain by now, but he has to answer to lieutenants. See, several years after David joined the force (his father and grandfather were also on the force), the city decided the way to correct decades of discriminaton in police hiring was to require new hires to reside in Orleans Parish. Since Orleans is largely black, that would correct the imbalance, they thought. They couldn't fire you if you already lived there, but they refuse to promote you. Been that way for 15 years or so.

How do you think New Orleans should say, "Thanks for hanging in with us, David"? And for all the other out-of-parish policemen who stayed during Katrina's aftermath, saving lives and preserving order?

So long, Saints

From the T-P, the unsurprising news:

In San Antonio, where New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson had been conspicuously silent about the impact of Katrina on his football team's hometown and its residents, reports surfaced that the team's management is considering pulling out of the city and relocating, perhaps permanently, to San Antonio, where Benson has a business interests and a ranch outside of the city.

First, narrow focus reaction: Fury at Benson for cutting the city when it most needs a symbol of resurgence. New Orleans, more than most cities, has a lot of identity tied up in the Saints. In an Irish Channel bar, the Saints schedule and posters are more than the decorative beer company supplied eye pollution you see for, say, the Cowboys all around Texas. In New Orleans, the Saints are part of the reason for the bar. I know you Cowboys fans think it's the same here, but it's just not.

I gave up finally on the NFL. I can hardly watch the steroid stuffed behemoths, and I let my NFL sunday ticket lapse. But if the Saints have a good year, only they can make me, 47 years old, get down in the frog position in front of the TV, screen inches from my nose.


Second, broad perspective reaction: Perhaps it's time to let them go. The Saints and the Superdome are products of the boosterish 1960s in New Orleans. The city was playing catch up with Houston and Atlanta. The city fathers were beside themselves to prove N.O. deserves to be Big League. Tried to act normal, like the rest of the vanilla country. But New Orleans, basically, is the weird kid in the class. The other kids play touch football, New Orleans wants to dance. N.O. should just stick with the Pels, I mean Zephyrs, and leave that big league fantasy to the places that suck so bad they need Big League on their resume. San Antonio, is that really you?

News of some friends

You still can't complete a cell call to anyone in area code 504, although they can call out to you. Text messaging works well. Send your friends text messages and they can call you back.

That's how I contacted Harby and Eric.

I caught Harby Friday, heading South through Tennessee with his wife Cathy and their two boys. When Katrina hit Cathy already was in Pennsylvania, escorting their girl Megan to college. Sunday, Frank and the boys drove to Baton Rouge and got the last plane to Philadelphia. Thinking Katrina to be just another hurricane, 0nly more so, Harb put out a mess of cat food on the second floor, and a lot of water, sure they would come back in a week or so and find their 20 year old cat well enough, if maybe a little shellshocked.

Now the family is headed to Houston. But Harb intends to rescue the cat. He plans to pick up his car in Baton Rouge and drive on in to N.O. and get the cat. Two days ago I thought that idea was cracked, but now I think it can happen. I've looked at the aerials of their neighborhood on Google Earth, and it's not dry, but it's close to some dry areas, so you can get to it if you have some waders, and a car can probably make it al the way . I haven't actually heard anyone say the authorities have set up road blocks, but even if, Harb works for the power company and can probably get past using his card.

If you have to get into the city, but are blocked, my guess is that the one sure way in is the river. Not River Road. The river. Get a small motorboat and putt down the river from Norco or somewhere. Take out near your neighborhood. Walk three miles. Get the cat. Walk back. Putt upriver again to your car.

Eric has a different story. He and his family translated to Lafayette and their lives are unbroken. Their River Ridge house is not under water though that is not to say there is no damage -- they just don't know. Nevertheless all infrastructure, particularly schools, are shut. Their schools won't open till January at earliest. So Eric is working out of his company's Lafayette office and a colleague there offered them a house. They enrolled the kids in school there for the semester at least. It's almost like they haven't skipped a beat.

New Orleans: America's Pompeii

An overextended, decaying empire under attack by barbarians. A natural disaster extinguishing thousands of lives in one of its principal cities. Up next: The empire adopts an upstart religion and meanders for several hundred years?

A little background is in order

I've lived in Travis County, Texas for 22 years, but I'm a native New Orleanian, grew up there, and moved here from there in my twenties. My sister and her 10 year old evacuated and are staying with us here on the hill. Her husband is a NOPD sergeant. Their station in N.O. East was an early flooder and they moved to the sixth floor of a hospital out there. He contacted my sister yesterday and is ok, but is with a group of police fending for themselves, disconnected from any command. He made it to the West Bank and from there could make a call. He's hanging in there, not coming here.

This scenario has been on the radar of planners for decades. When I was a kid, we stayed during Hurricane Betsy ("only" cat 3) and I well remember Mayor Schiro on our B&W TV drawing evac routes out of town. Just last year, during the Hurricane Ivan scare, I watched a WGNO (NO TV station) production on the web describing both luridly and rationally all the possiblities we are seeing unfolding. This scenario is very well studied.

A certain very large percentage of people, presented with arguments like that, still are going to make the bet that since it hasn't happened before, it won't happen next time, and until Monday they were batting 1000. My mother, who lives in Florida now, spoke with two of our family friends before Katrina struck, now in their late 70s and quite sane, who did not leave. I am very concerned for them.

The authorities fully knew this scenario. The authorities in New Orleans are, frankly, incompetent. The authorities at the state level too, are incompetent. Lousiana is not Texas. When they prepared the Astrodome for evacuees, they laid cots out neatly on the floor of the stadium. Did you see the interior shots of the Superdome? They put everybody in the uncomfortable, upright stadium seats. The flat field, where you could lie down and get rest, was clear. When the power (air conditioning) goes off you get a lot of uncomfortable, pissed off people. This is a failure of planning. So much else reflects the failure of planning.

I'm not talking about engineering. The engineering sucked as a consequence of funding shortages. I'm only talking about disaster planning. The disaster planning failed, right? That's inarguable.

As a last resort, the incompetent states like Louisiana rely on the federal government. Same as we rely on the federal govt. when our state administrators don't see, say, voting rights, as a fundamental right. The feds are the ones who can manage a disaster of this magnitude. But they are absent. Clearly there is nobody on the ground from outside the state except CNN reporters.

Hastert to City: Die

From the excellent Times-Picayune running feed (they call it a blog, but it's a bit more than that):

House Speaker Dennis Hastert says it "doesn't make sense" for the federal government to pay for rebuilding New Orleans.

And the Waterbury, CT Republican-American says "...if the people of New Orleans and other low-lying areas insist on living in harm's way, they ought to accept responsibility for what happens to them and their property."

Uh huh. And if people choose to live in Hastert's Illinois or in Connecticut, far away from supplies of oil and natural gas, they ought to accept responsibility for that choice too.

The whole country is about to go through an energy squeeze thanks to this disruption. Do people expect the energy to be produced here without humans and their families living here? Or shipments of bananas or precious BMW's to be accepted in ports operated by people living in Illinois?

How do you guys feel about Houston? Should the residents of Houston move right now to Illinois, Dennis? I mean if Katrina had hit Houston directly, the calamity would be tenfold that of New Orleans.