Paul and friend Alex (a PhD student in my cohort, whose great kids I’ve talked about in this blog) spent yesterday working through his house in Lakeview. Lakeview is a beautiful family neighborhood in the north of the city boarding on Lake Pontchartrain. It was a top contender in our home search, ruled out only because I was so enamored with the Audubon Park area that I stubbornly refused to look outside of it. Lakeview was badly flooded by the breech of the 17th street levee, the levee that divides Orleans and Jefferish Parish on the north west side of town.
As described by Paul, the destruction in the neighborhood is beyond words. Roughly 7 feet of water engulfed Alex’s house, filling the first story. Although the second story was spared the damage of rising water, they found the front door open and the dry rooms looted. They said that the looting looked methodical, obviously took time, and had every indication of being from a relief worker or other officer; heavy boot prints fill the house where all drawers were searched, a hall safe broken open, and every small valuable carried out in a basket stolen from the front room.
They have taken hundreds of pictures, although Paul reports that they absolutely cannot do the reality justice. When combined with the smells, the heat, and the sounds, the totality of the destruction can only be realized. Little things remind you of what occurred: Alex’s house once had a back porch. It is gone, no indication of where it went, how it left their back yard, or where it now resides. A two-story staircase sits on his back fence, no idea from where it came. The piles of debris more than one can take in. They work slowly, hearing the noises of trucks, beeping of alarms, and buzzing of insects.
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