Mark from Louisiana

aka mark_the_spot sent this email to me:

Jack, I am writing this to you so that you can post it in your LJ and keep your multitude of readers informed of the goings on down here.


Sunday night, after we at the hotel had checked in the last person we could find a room for, an older lady called the front desk and asked me if there was some way I could come to her room and get rid of the smoke smell. We had been forced to check her into a smoking room, despite the fact that she couldn't stand the smell, simply because we had nowhere else to put her. I took a bottle of utility scent away to her room and began to spray every square inch of the carpet, the chairs, etc. While I was desmoking her room, she asked me if we were al booked up, and I replied that we were, by refugees by the storm. "Don't call us refugees, son," she said. "That's not what we are. We're homeless."

She's right.

12 feet of water in St. Bernard Parish. I saw one woman on the news who was too heavy to get onto her roof, and instead had to clamber onto the roof of her car and wait in chest deep water for her rescuers to come. It's estimated that tens of thousands drowned. People who refused to leave their homes retreated to their attics, only to be forced into hacking through their ceilings to find a way onto their roofs, to avoid being trapped and drowning. Martial law is in effect in Jefferson Parish. Anyone trying to get in will be arrested. Looters are being arrested and sent to Ft. Polk, where Governor Kathleen Blanco has said she will make sure they are punished to the full extent of her power.

Monday, the wind was powerful enough to blow open a wooden gate that had three cement blocks propping it shut. Our duck was attacked, and managed to find relative safety on the pond, but she drowned in the rain. There was enough rain here in Baton Rouge, an hour and a half north of New Orleans, to drown water foul.

Katrina is being called the worst natural disaster in American history. People are trying to compare it to 9/11; I hope y'all have the good sense not to.

Apparently, many people are unfamiliar with a levee system, so let me explain: New Orleans is a big bowl. On one side is Lake Ponchatrain, a fucking HUGE lake. On another side is the Mississippi River. And New Orleans is protected on all sides by "levees." Levees are mounds, once made of dirt, now reinforced with concrete, which effectively encircle New Orleans (in this instance; there are levees all along the Mississippi River). They are artificial walls erected so that if the water rises around the city, the levees will keep it out. Think of it as a dam that goes all the way around, or a reverse moat. The problem is, the levee has burst. Huge chunks of it are missing, and the "bowl" that New Orleans is in is filling.

Today I heard on the radio (I just got electricity and phone here in my home, and am typing this immediately to Jack before it goes out) that if the water rises anymore, then it will take six months to pump all the water out. But that doesn't mean that people can just go home (or to where their homes once were). What most people fail to realize is just how toxic the water is. Not only are there a motherload of alligators and snakes making their way into the city (and, as one news report claims, a shark) via the water, the water itself is a danger. Mosquitoes are breeding in the stagnant water like you wouldn't believe, and scientists fear an outbreak, not of West Nile, but of cholera. One report shows an overhead of an area of downtown NO, and the entire surface of the water is shimmering with gasoline. Plus natural gas, chemicals from peoples homes, and corpses, both fresh and newly released from any of the NO area graveyards.

That's all for now. I'll continue to keep you updated as I hear more.

-Mark