So…I’ve been on radio silence for a few weeks. Many of you know that I was on vacation until very recently. This week…
I’m in New Orleans with 312 other crazy people partnering with Habitat for Humanity in building homes for displaced New Orleans residents.
Yesterday we took a tour of the entire region by bus. In spite of images and advance warning, I was not prepared for what I saw. Many parts of the greater New Orleans area are still in devastation. It looks like someone dropped a nuclear bomb (a few days ago.) Entire neighborhoods were flattened and haven’t been touched in three years.
Here are a few random tidbits from the bus tour:
- New Orleans Parish is 185 square miles. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 145 of them were covered with water. Lots of water. Rich and poor alike had their homes completely destroyed.
- The 1.5 million residents of the New Orleans region had less than 24 hours warning to evacuate. When many Houston residents tried to evacuate they went 12 miles in that amount of time.
- There is nothing French about the French Quarter. It was built by the Spanish. Hmm.
- Before Katrina, there were over 3,000 hospital beds in New Orleans Parish. Today there are less than 500.
- Before Katrina, the population of New Orleans was a little over 600,000. After, it’s under 300,000.
- Over 5,000 children were separated from their parents during the Katrina aftermath. The last children were not reunited until March ‘06 - nearly seven months later.
- Until 1805 you couldn’t live in New Orleans unless you were Catholic.
- 320,000,000 trees died in the storm.
- 100,000 homes flooded in the New Orleans metro area.
I’ll be posting more throughout the week…the work is fun but so are the random things I’m capturing… 
In this interview, 
August 19th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Thanks for keeping our once great city on the minds of those who have not experienced it for themselves. One tends to get quite jaded seeing the devastation on a daily basis. I would like to remind everyone that the city is still open for business and our tourist attractions are almost all open, so come on down have a great time.