When I heard that my cruise was departing from New Orleans, I was excited to spend a little bit of time in the infamous city. Although we barely had any time to see much of anything before the cruise, we managed to hit the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. All in all it seemed like the city had made a great recovery; some signs from the Department of Health remained, stating that restaurants were safe to eat in again, but otherwise everything seemed virtually unscathed.
It wasn’t until I met various New Orleans residents on the cruise that I realized how much Katrina is still affecting lives today. I remember when Katrina hit New Orleans and the entire nation stopped for a moment to grieve for and with those who lost everything. After a while it dissipated, as most stories do, and over a year later there’s barely any coverage of post-Katrina issues. This left me with the impression that the city was rebuilding itself, and that the Big Easy was going to be swinging again soon.
Almost every person I met on the cruise who was from New Orleans had a Katrina story, and, while they all differed, there were two common threads. The victims never thought it was going to happen to them, and the city is nowhere near recovery. One couple was on their honeymoon, and the wife told me that when she heard on the news that there was going to be a hurricane and had to evacuate, she packed three shirts and swore she was going to come back and help all the unfortunate people who lost everything. When she returned to her home months later, everything had been completely underwater and damaged beyond repair; suddenly it was she who needed the help.
Another woman, Bobbie McCulla-Schields, lived in an area that didn’t get too much water, but she still had to live in a hotel for five months after the disaster. Her sister wasn’t so lucky. She had been a school teacher, but her house and school had both been completely leveled. What’s more, she’s still living in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer, waiting for the promised governmental aid, and since the school where she taught is gone, she is now working at Home Depot. One of her greatest concerns was that an entire generation of children will be scarred by this event emotionally, but they will also be educationally stunted, as these schools have yet to reopen. What disturbed her most, however, was that when she went to visit her priest to ask him how to begin to cope with everything, he began to cry and told her that he just didn’t have an answer.
After hearing all of these stories, I realized that I had to go see the devastation for myself. Because I only had a few hours in between disembarking the cruise and catching my flight, I wasn’t able to visit the Ninth Ward. Instead I went to the Lakeview area, which is slightly more upscale than the Ninth Ward had been, but what I saw was completely horrifying. Even now there are boats on land, houses that are completely gutted with a few personal belongings scattered outside and watermarks going up to rooftops.
I met a man named Jimmy Scott who was cleaning out his house because he wanted to put it up for sale, but prospects looked grim. His wife hadn’t been to the house since Katrina, and she, like most others in the city had to be put on antidepressants to help cope with all the losses. He likened the situation to the war in Afghanistan and said he hadn’t seen any of the governmental aid or help that had been promised, and it seemed as though everyone had just forgotten about them.
When I asked what I could do to help, everyone said the same thing — to remember that they are still down there and definitely still suffering. The thing is, I think part of the obligation of remembering the victims is reminding the government what it promised the citizens of New Orleans. Most people have not seen a cent of the alleged aid that was supposed to come. The FEMA trailer in which Mrs. McCulla-Schields’ sister has lived for over a year was described as being so small that just by turning around you could go from the kitchen to the living room to the bedroom. There is simply no excuse for an American city to have living conditions worse than a Third World country.
What’s so shocking to me is that we were able to rebuild Europe after World War II in four years, yet we seem to be unable to even begin to rebuild one city in our own nation after over a year. Granted, we’re currently at war and attempting to rebuild both Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’re desperately in debt but it seems to me that we should put our own citizens first. I’ll be the first to say we should fix what we broke in the Middle East, but at the same time, I believe fervently that when our own citizens are living in such dire conditions it is they who must be the first priority, especially when the government was so clearly at fault during this disaster.
I don’t have a solution to this problem. I don’t know where the money should come from, or how it should be handled; however, after seeing the devastation that remains, I just know that something needs to be done about it. Fast.
Teresa Cambria is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science.
