hurricane

I spent most of this past week in New Orleans on court business. Amanda was able to accompany me, and while we had a great time, it was with sadness that we observed the continuing impact of Hurricane Katrina on the city. In the next few posts, I’ll write about our trip. First up: the state of the Central Business District and the French Quarter.

Our courthouse is located near the intersection of Magazine and Poydras, and near Canal street and within easy walking distance of the French Quarter. The Central Business District was fortunate in that it didn’t suffer significant flooding. Nonetheless, the buildings there still suffered wind, water, and fire damage. Broken windows are still pretty common even in some of the high rises, as are piles of debris around the more damaged buildings. I even saw a few discarded refridgerators still laying on the sidewalk. A few buildings are damaged much more severely, essentially gutted. Despite the damage, many business are open, and there is active construction throughout the district, with dumpsters full of debris lining Poydras and Canal.

We stayed in the Windsor Court near the courthouse—which, incidentally, had some beautiful roses in the lobby–and the hotel was directly across the street from the burning building I wrote about in the aftermath of Katrina. It turns out that the building that burned was not in fact the Hotel de L’Eau Vive, but rather the building directly adjacent to the hotel, which housed a Subway restaurant and several condos.

On our last night in the city, we walked down into the French Quarter and by Jackson Square. The Cathedral looks like it’s in good shape, but a number of stores and restaurants in the Quarter are still closed. The most conspicuous difference around Jackson Square, however, was the absence of street performers. Normally home to mimes, musicians, palm readers, balloon artists, living statues, and other performers, the streets were mostly empty, with only a few tourists and residents about. As in the CBD, there is active construction and repair in the Quarter.

We learned after we arrived that we were staying in the same hotel as Denzel Washington, who is currently in New Orleans filming Deja Vu.  We heard a rumor that Denzel was in the hotel gym every morning at five o’clock, but my co-clerk reports that he never showed up.  We didn’t get to see Denzel, but they were filming near Jackson Square when we walked by.  Aside from some bright staging lights and a helicopter repeatedly buzzing the Cathedral, we didn’t see much.

We also didn’t drive into the harder hit areas of town, including the Ninth Ward.  As you’ve no doubt seen on the news, many of those areas, particularly north and east of the CBD, suffered tremendous damage.  Most of those areas have not been repopulated, and the latest estimates suggest that less than 100,000 people are sleeping in New Orleans each night, down from a population before the storm of over a half million.  The activity in the CBD gives me some hope, but there’s a long road ahead for New Orleans.

Rita started lashing us pretty hard around 8:00 PM last night, and we stayed up until about 11:00 PM watching the news. We were awoken at about 2:30 AM by the wind and rain, and watched another hour of news as the eyewall started to pass through Lake Charles. We awoke at about 8:30 AM to more wind and rain, and discovered that we had no power. Needless to say, it was starting to get hot and humid, and the wind and rain were severe enough that we were worried about breaking windows. Everything held, though, and power came back on at about 10:30 AM. However, we had no cable, and so no internet. Our cable came back at about 6:00 PM, a half-hour ago. The rain subsided several hours ago, and the wind is starting to die down now, as well.

Radar at 6:40 PM.

Rita is slowly approaching landfall, and now appears to be headed for the coast between the Sabine Pass and Cameron, Louisiana. We still have power here, and are experiencing moderate wind and rain.

It’s now about 4:45 PM, and the wind has begun to increase. We can now hear the wind pretty consistently inside the building.

Here are some weather resources for keeping up to date on Rita:

* The “National Hurricane Center”:http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ is the official source for weather information.
* The “Boat U.S. Hurricane Center”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/tracking.asp has several maps, including a “current satellite map”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/hurricane_satellite2.asp, the “current forecasted path”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/hurricane_forecast2.asp, and—something I haven’t seen elsewhere—a “current wind field map”:http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/hurricane_field2.asp.
* Another “current satellite”:http://www.stormtrack.org/special/ picture of Rita.
* More information from “KLFY”:http://www.klfy.com/, a Lafayette TV station, “KPLC”:http://www.kplctv.com/, a Lake Charles TV station, and “KHOU”:http://www.khou.com/, a Houston TV station..

Water Pooling at 2:00 PM

The rain has not yet started in earnest, and we already have pooling water behind our apartment. It doesn’t look like drainage is too good back there, and I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Radar at 1:25 PM.

The wind and rain have started to pick up here, and we expect the winds to hit tropical storm strength around 6:00 this evening. We are on the east side of the eye this time around, and so we expect more severe weather than during Katrina. The predicted landfall is still very close to the Texas-Louisiana border, and so we expect Lake Charles to bear the brunt of the storm, much like the Biloxi area bore the brunt of Katrina.

As I’m sure you know, Hurricane Rita is now bearing down on the Gulf Coast, likely to make landfall somewhere near Houston late Friday night. Yet again, we will be on the edge of the hurricane. Nearby Calcasieu Parish has issued a mandatory evacuation order, and if Rita turns any further east, we may decide to evacuate as well. The “current forecast map”:http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200518.html puts Rita fairly close to us, and as we are on the east side of the storm this time, I expect we will have significantly more wind and rain than during Katrina. More to come.