Hurricane Katrina: The Lite Version

Ten Year Anniversary. Visits from Commanders-in-Chief Present and Past.

Across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, we experienced a lite version of Katrina. We were with a few neighbors in the library of a Catholic High School a few blocks away. The then mayor was upstairs in the language lab with her Spanish teacher husband.

We were there for two (three?) days. The plumbing went out after the first day.

Several members of our group walked through streets filled with downed trees and downed wires to report back on the condition of everyone's houses. The whole area smelled like gas for a few days. No power, no phone service, and even after the streets were cleared, no gas.

Within a few days, the Red Cross came with food. We lent our neighbor, who owned a generator, a window ac unit, and he let us sit in an air-conditioned space for an hour or two a day.

The second pic is the during, the view from the library; the rest are afters. The elegant woman in the orange windbreaker is our neighbor, Ha, now 95. She still looks like  a model on all occasions. The car with the doll is the work of our wealthy neighbors. And that's our house! Luckily, it is an old house, very strong, so the trees only made a hole and did not destroy the entire house.