Eighth of nine emails describing the Christmann family's Katrina story.

christmannemail8 baton.txt

Its been a little while since I gave everyone an update. Hopefully, all of the same phone numbers will continue to work - including my cell phone which is receiving calls pretty reliably now. 6 weeks ago, we had just enough stuff to fit into our car. Granted - the car was pretty full. So full that I didn't (in one of the decisions I regretted later) attempt to squeeze in the golf clubs. After all, we would be home in 3 or 4 days, right? Now, we have a house full of things. We've been back to our house several times to retrieve things (clothes and art primarily). My in-laws have been back to both of their houses and retrieved things. We've all continued to buy things that we need to keep living. So, a move this weekend is actually a problem. We've rented a trailer. We've hired people. We've got to start packing up. 6 weeks ago it took about 3 stress-filled hours to get packed and loaded and on the road. Now, it will take about 48 hours. We're only moving about 2 miles which makes it sooo much worse. If we were moving further, we'd be a little more diligent about packing carefully. As is, we'll be driving back and forth and back and forth all day with loose stuff jingling around the car. Really - anyone want to come visit Baton Rouge this weekend? We've found out in the last week that the kids' schools are both opening on November 7th. Now we're wrestling with what to do about that: go back for hte opening, wait until January, go back somewhere in between? The kids seem for the most part to enjoy school. This school is definitely a lot stricter than their schools in New Orleans are. Carrie brings a "conduct card" with her to all of her classes, and the teachers will sign it if she does something "wrong". One day (according to the words of a 3rd grader), all she did was ask the teacher whether she could sharpen her pencil..... And she got her card signed. Now, as you and I might guess - there's a little bit more to the story than that. But....I think she is adjusting to the stricter rules. Yesterday and today, her music teacher has let her bring her recorder home to practice. Her eyes lit up like light bulbs when she was telling me about it. She started playing it while I was driving home yesterday, she serenaded us during dinner last night and tonight. She's been practicing non-stop. Any of you listen to a 3rd grader playing recorder? Its *quite* a sound. So anyway, we're trying to figure out whether and when to send them back to New Orleans. So much to consider: Carrie has 2 friends from her school in her class here in Baton Rouge, both of them will be going back for the 7th (neither had flooding damage). So she's distressed that her best friends will be gone. Robert started crying the other night about how he misses all of his friends. I think both would like to be back sooner rather than later. But - I don't think there schools are going to be anywhere near normal for quite a while. Right now, in Baton Rouge, we have a pretty normal routine - and I don't want to disrupt it too many times. Grandparent's night is sometime in November, and both kids have been learning music, working on art all for that night. I think they'd actually be disappointed to miss it. I don't think we're ready to show the kids the house yet (they know its flooded, but we haven't shown them pictures yet). If we go back, we'll have to take them to the house. So we've got reasons to stay, reasons to go. Just when we were settling into a nice easy routine, we may be tossing everything back up in the air again. Fortunately, the 1 bedroom place we knew we had rented has turned into a 2 bedroom place in the same complex. And we've rented it indefinitely starting November 1st. So we have a place to go whenever we decide to move. And we may even have enough room to have guests for Mardi Gras! As for the house.... We've had a few contractors over to look at it, and generally they've given us some pretty positive feedback about fixing it up. Unfortunately, everyone is busy as hell, so its proving to be quite difficult to get quotes or time estimates from them. That would probably be another plus to actually being in New Orleans sooner - we could spend more time working with people to get the house rebuilt. Two weeks ago, 2 friends from High School (Steve and Paul) decided they had nothing better to do than to spend a weekend in New Orleans helping to rip apart a house. Generally, these guys are good at demolition. I'm not sure that I'd hire them for construction - so I won't. I've posted several pictures from our session on my website: http://dev.priorartisans.com/paul/katrina/katrina3.html Actulally - Paul took all of these pictures. I merely reprint without permission. One of the coolest parts of the demolition day was taking a tour of the 17th Street Canal Pumping Station. By now, you may be familiar with the "17th Street Canal". This is the canal about 3 blocks from our home, that breached and resulted in the flooding of the Lakeview neightborhood (including our home). This canal drains water from New Orleans into Lake Pontchatrain. But what this flood shows is that New Orleans is lower than the Lake - and as all of you remember from your science classes, water doesn't flow uphill. So we build these massive pumping stations that lift the water up, so it can flow down to the Lake. The 17th Street Pumping Station is allegedly the largest water pumping station in the world. Steve, Paul and I went for a walk after ripping out the kitchen cabinets (if you look at the pictures, notice how wet the sheetrock still was - this was 3 or 4 weeks after the flood and it was all still drenched), and we went to see the pumping station, since its only 3 blocks from our house. As we were looking out over the canal, a worker at the plant shouts in a gruff voice "Hey, are you Tourists?" He seemed to be upset, so I tried to politely say "No, I live right around the corner." As I prepare to soothe or run, he shoults "Oh, want to come have a tour?" So we go in. Now, if your an engineer you might truly appreciate these pictures and what we saw. I'm not, but still - this station was pretty cool. As soon as we walk in, Randy (the talkative 30 year pumping station vet who the gruff guy called over to take us around) points to this yellow "Caution" tape about 3 feet away and says something like "Don't touch those, those are the high voltage lines." Later, we learn that means they might be like 30,000 Volts. I guess that's a lot. My friend Steve, who works in refineries and other big factories said something like "Really, with that much voltage in wires lying on the floor, we *probably* shouldn't be there." But Randy shows us the pumps - 17 of them. 14 of them were built in 1901. 3 were added within the last 5 years. This is 4 weeks after the flood. The 14 from 1901 were all still out of commission, the 3 new ones were working. Why? The engines for the new ones were about 2 feet higher than the others. And the pumping station flooded, ruining the engines. Look at the pictures: each of these 17 engines is roughly 10 feet tall. They are *huge*. Each one is connected to a pipe that was at least 10 feet in diameter which it pumped water through. That's a lot o' water. And you can see the water level that day (about average) and see how far below the pumping station it is - that's how much water came in to the city. Yikes... Now - what the doomsday prophets have said about New Orleans really came to pass with the pumping stations. The pumps flooded and failed. They were built in 1901. They run on 25 cycle electricity (which means nothing to me), but today's standard is 60 cycle (again, it means nothing - I'm reminded of Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom "220, 221, whatever it takes") Basically, no one makes these things anymore, and you can't just plug them into an outlet. They need their own power grid. There is one picture of a huge metal thing-a-ma-jig that the engine turns to pump the water. It broke from the sheer weight of the water that it was trying to move. No one makes these thingies either. So the New Orleans pumping stations are on their own to build or contract for these unique replacements. And its going to take a long time to get them made. So, here's where the doomsday prophets were wrong. The city is dry. Because of the work fixing levees, bringing in emergency pumps, the few remaining pumps that did work, and the amazing lack of rain, the pumps were able to get the city dry within 4 weeks. The doomsday guys predicted months. And as bad as much of this is, it has fallen short of many of the doomsday predictions (Thank God). The city is dry. The water was far less toxic than people feared - one quote was something like "Its really about 1 years worth of normal rainfall and runoff". OK, that's a lot in the span of a day. But its not the true "toxic sludge" that would contaminate the city for years. Many fewer died than predictions (even before the Mayor's guesstimate of 10,000). 1000 people is still a lot, but its a lot less than we all feared. As bad as hurricanes are, I thank God that my natural disaster gave us time to prepare for it. My heart goes out to the victims of the earthquake in Pakistan. If you can, consider digging into your pockets one more time to help those people through the Red Cross. Our street was filled with people who were busy ripping apart their houses to let everything dry. Everyone we spoke to except our 80 year old next door neighbors are planning on rebuilding. Bless their hearts, but the McDermotts say they don't have it in them to rebuild at this point in their lives. Mind you - this 80 year old couple is very active; she was on an african safari with her grandson this summer. But, as I'm discovering as we try to get started, this is not going to be easy. There are not enough workers, contractors, materials, whatever, in the city of New Orleans. But - it sure looks like our street is coming back. With us on it - where else am I gonna go? Oh, and one more good thing: Our front door finally closes! Only took 6 weeks to dry out. I don't think the back door will ever be quite the same, though.

Citation Information:

Paul Christmann, "Eighth of nine emails describing the Christmann family's Katrina story.." Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, Object #39 (November 16 2005, 10:36 am)<http://www.hurricanearchive.org/object/39>