Having grown up in New Orleans, my heart is saddened by the suffering and loss of life there and along the Gulf Coast. The destruction of a town that has rightfully billed itself as “America’s Most Interesting City” marks the loss of an American treasure.
When we moved to New Orleans on the eve of World War II, my father, a civil engineer with a large oil company, knew that New Orleans would one day flood. He bought us a house in Jefferson Parish on the highest land he could afford, about two feet above sea level.
I recall a relatively small hurricane sometime around 1950. We went to my father’s office on the 12th floor of a large building, where we would be secure from severe damage and above potential flooding. We stayed in the downwind side of the building as windows blew in on the windward side, watching the destruction taking place in the city. Huge billboards were sent flying and roofs were ripped off buildings.
As the eye of the hurricane passed over us there was an eerie calm. Smoke from power plants rose straight up and birds flew around.
Then the wind came back even stronger from the other direction. When the storm passed we walked out on the streets, which sparkled like diamonds from all the shattered windows.
Even though the stores were blown open and unprotected, there was no looting. Debris littered the streets, but we were able to pick our way home where downed trees were the only visible damage. We were unaware that the Lake Pontchartrain levee had been breached. Soon the flood waters were within a few blocks of our house. My father’s wisdom in buying on “high ground” was vindicated.
Even though we had some of the world’s largest pumps, it took weeks to get them running and the water pumped out. Soon the water developed an unbearable odor from sewage and dead animals. We all had to get typhoid shots. A friend, who spent nights in his flooded home to guard it, said that when he could no longer stand the smell he would sweep the old water out of the house and let fresh flow in but, he said, it didn’t really help.
My wife, Mary Alice, who was raised on a farm 30 miles north of Gulfport, Miss., another area devastated by Katrina, remembers the night a hurricane destroyed their family barn. The barn, like the house, was built of hand-hewn logs prior to the Civil War, and had withstood many previous storms. She recalls sleepless nights with howling wind and crashing trees each time a hurricane came through.
While we have heard from some friends and relatives who were in the path of Katrina, we still do not know the fate of many others.
If the eye of the storm had been a little farther west, the storm surge that hit Gulfport would have entered Lake Pontchartrain and floodwater in New Orleans would have been 10 to 20 feet higher, right at the peak of the storm. The loss of life would have been thousands higher and damage even more severe. Being on “high ground” would not have protected our old house or any other house in New Orleans.
That storm scenario, in which the eye of a major hurricane like Katrina strikes New Orleans straight on, is the storm my father always feared and the one that is still in store for the Big Easy.
Tom Standard and his wife, Mary, retired to Maine six years ago and live in Sumner. They are both freelance writers for the Sun Journal.
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