Leaving New Orleans
Leaving New Orleans on 10 East, we start to see the rows and rows of the houses that haven’t been restored yet. Some collapsed, many more with search and rescue spray paint still on them. Office parks, freeway exits, big-box stores with trees growing in the empty parking lots. A man at the gas station asks about the trailer, whether it’s just for storage or if we sleep in there. He’s surprised there’s a pop-up kitchen in the back. When I tell him that it is “cozy” he responds “We know all about cozy, we’re living in a FEMA trailer.”
It took a while to realize the extent of the destruction when I didn’t know what I was looking for. Ironton, and a lot of the way down there, was full of mobile homes–you have to know that this wasn’t a mobile-home park 4 years ago. Lots of new McMansions between highway 23 and the Mississippi river levee, too. And they generally look like the houses everywhere else. I don’t understand why someone would build something anywhere in hurricane country that doesn’t have blast shutters, stilts, etc. Whenever there’s a hurricane it seems you always hear the local on the news report saying his preparation is “going down to The Home Depot and getting some plywood to nail over the windows”. Maybe I’m missing some clever features and the local architects and people who hire them are way ahead of me?
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