Nothing Has Changed Since Katrina

There are the three-star hotels, the one-star ones, and the Red Cross housing centers. The first, expensive, are mostly occupied by Whites. The second and third, mostly by Blacks. On Monday, September 1st, Louisiana counted 2 million displaced persons. Here, in Lafayette, the fourth largest city in Louisiana, with 110,000 inhabitants, which, in one weekend, hosted 50,000 before the passage of hurricane Gustav, not a single hotel lowered its rates in these exceptional circumstances.

“Nothing has changed since Katrina,” says Bill Boudreaux, a 50 year-old accountant who lives in Thibodaux, 100 km from New Orleans. “This time, the governor and the municipalities took some initiative. But at moments like these, the difference between wealth and poverty appears at its most raw.” Poor or better off, all tell the same story. Some recall cyclone Andrew, in 1992. They experienced Lily, in 2002, then “the worst,” Katrina, in 2005. Everyone, this time, left “before Gustav.” Those who are encountered evoke the feeling of abandonment that gripped them three years ago and hope that the damage this time won’t reach the same level. Even if Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, predicts it to be “very serious.” And, very quickly, everyone mentions their most hated pet peeve: the insurance companies. The aftermath of Gustav will depend on them. And experience causes residents to fear the worst.

“During Katrina, our roof blew off,” recalls Joseph Milton, a 50 year-old delivery driver in Franklin, on the Gulf of Mexico. “The insurance company claimed that my roofing was not adapted for violent winds. The house was uninhabitable; I had to buy a mobile home.” He tells of having lost at least 30,000 dollars. He had eventually managed to find a new home, and now, once again, he leaves everything behind. “I’m praying,” he continues, because his little house is much less solid than the one he already lost once.

Displaced to Texas in 2005, 65 year-old Eunice Amedee, a retired teacher from New Orleans, came back to find her home devastated. With her savings and the “almost nothing” provided by the insurance, she trusted in an entrepreneur to rehabilitate it. “On the phone, he told me that the work was moving forward. Staying with a cousin, far away from the city, without any means of transportation, I couldn’t check. In reality, he wasn’t doing anything.” One bully among others who profited from the gullibility of the disaster victims. He took from her “almost 100,000 dollars,” she says, “and a lifetime of work.” She’s paying out of her pocket for the low-end hotel where she’s found refuge. Like Mr. Boudreaux, who, more fortunate, has better housing. But his insurance policy “doesn’t cover this sort of exceptional expenditure, unless I left after my house was destroyed.” He adds: “If I have to stay for five nights, I’ll have to pay 1000 dollars; that’s not nothing.” Dwayne Toups, a 42 year-old cook, was thinking of staying in the village where he lives, Abbeville. Then fear took over him. It was noon when he arrived in Lafayette, among the very last. In a dead city. The airport closed since Sunday, like every other one in the state. Interrupted road transports. Joey Durel, the mayor, had decreed an afternoon curfew on Tuesday morning. A laudable intention, but a superfluous move: nobody was venturing out anymore onto the streets clogged with debris and foliage since the previous day. On the local FM station, a large distribution chain advertised its “special offers: stock up for three days, four if you can.” But, here, stores, gas stations, restaurants, none had opened.

After a morning of waiting, sky touching earth, a fine and constant rain, the hurricane arrived with a declining power—at “only” 145 km/h—but in a whirlwind that was slow-moving, so more dangerous. It reached its height around 4 PM, cutting off the city’s electricity at times, and television access indefinitively. By evening, it was clearly dropping in intensity, but public officials, fearing numerous days of strong precipitation, insisted that the displaced wait before returning home.

Bill Boudreaux will wait. He took his computer with him: he writes on the side. His third novel will come out in two months. It’s called “The Madman of New Orleans.” It’s going to be about the petty criminality that took hold of the city three years ago, and about psychiatric patients wandering aimlessly. “The treatment of the disinherited, the dehumanized, that’s how we judge a society,” he says. This time, these images of desolation didn’t submerge TV screens. The displaced admit that public officials “prepared.”

Clarence Ray Nagin, Democratic mayor of New Orleans, even accelerated the panic by announcing “the mother of all hurricanes.” The governor, Bobby Jindal, multiplied the number of interventions on the ground and media depots. He called upon the White House to draw from strategic petroleum reserves to guarantee his state’s oil supply. The arrival of the Republican candidate, John McCain, was appreciated. “Katrina haunts American elected officials,” explains Mr. Boudreaux. “No one wants to be accused of negligence again.” Amid the displaced, there remains a sense of injustice mixed with fatalism. Brandon Kays, 23 years old and unemployed, lost his “little house” three years ago. “It’s a curse. Bush lives in the next state over [Texas], why does this kind of thing never happen to him?” Joseph Milton: “These disasters are happening too often now.” He sees them as an effect of global warming. “The seasons are all mixed up. It’s hotter and hotter in Louisiana, the rains are stronger, and the winds, too. And before long, nobody’s going to be able to do anything about it.”