Salvaging Nick and Nadia's home in New Orleans
My sister Nadia, her husband Nick, her son Michael, my brother and I went into New Orleans to salvage what could be recovered from their home in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans two months after hurricane Katrina struck the city. We spent 4 days sifting thru the contents of the house, washing what could be cleaned (china, glasses), removing clothes and other belongings from the upper bedrooms where the water didn't reach and documenting the damage.
Driving into the city, we saw some military vehicles and some wind damage on structures, but nothing overwhelming until we crossed the 17th street shipping canal from west to east. Suddenly, devestation was everywhere. Trees down, traffic lights down, power lines down, abandoned flooded cars and debris everywhere.
Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, I wasn't focused on my camera at the time and didn't realize I had it set in the wrong mode.
You can see the yellow stain from the high water mark on these homes:
It's hard to see, but that is the traffic light leaning over onto a pile of debris. There were no traffic lights, or any power at all in Lakeview.
Here are pictures from Nadia and Nick's street:
The neighbor's front yard
Across the street
Symbols on the door of the house across the street - thankfully no ne died here
My truck is parked in front of Nadia's flooded Honda Odessey - I think the red X means the vehicle was checked for bodies. We didn't bother to try to open it.
The big pine tree across the street was snapped in half.
Nadia and Nick's house behind my truck
Cleanup crew working on the block, this team was from Kentucky, they were really great, worked hard, did whatever they could to help us and were understanding and considerate. That's Nadia in the Haz Mat suite with no hard hat.
You can see the watermarks on the house, and the high watermark marked in orange paint:
Interior, the floor had buckled, so it was difficult to open the door. The furniture was strewn about the floor, there was an overpowering smell of mold and rot. We used a generator and fans to try to air things out and dry the interior as best we could.
Living room and sun parlor.
Dining room
That's the china cabinet laying face down. It was waterlogged, we couldn't lift it so we broke out the back to get at the dishes inside.
Main floor master bedroom. This room was flooded above the ceiling which was drywhall, the drywall fell to the floor making a white mud everywhere. The closet organizer, made of particle board, dissolved into a pile of sawdust muck, close and mud. We dug around in the mess and salvaged jewelry and a coin collection.
The garage, which had been converted into a study, was totally flooded and all the furniture stacked against the doors which open in, so we had to break in via a side window. There was nothing salvage here.
The back of the house:
Boats were strewn everywhere in the neighborhood:
It's hard to see, but here is the cause of flooding in Lakeview - a stretch of the seawall along the 17th street shipping canal which failed. One rumor is that pilings required to reinforce the base of the wall were not installed allowing the water to wash the soil out from under this section of wall causing it to fail. That is rumor, unsubstantiated.
There were lots of military around the city
Driving back out of the neighborhood, there were lots of signs of the cleanup process moving along. The streets were starting to get cleaned of rubish:
A huge pile of rubish was built in two days (it wasn't there when we first got there) to be shipped out of the city:
