How to make groceries in a pirogue

Here is a rather cryptic picture, that I felt was poignant. A flooded out hearse with the superdome in the background…I pass the superdome on my way to work everyday. It’s hard to imagine that it’s the place Chris and I had season tickets to watch the Saints.

Communications were slowly coming back, but evidence of how people needed to communicate before was evident in that messages were spraypainted on buildings, and business was conducted by cardboard signs on the side of the road.

The garage on this building reads, “Do not condemn, Call XXX_XXXX”

More examples of spraypaint and sign communication:

Pritchard Place was formerly beautiful old mansions. They burned to the ground, to add insult to injury.

Here are a few pictures of my friend Michelle’s old house, luckily she had already moved away, but I thought she’d be interested. Even a few feet of flood water means that the house at the very least will need to be gutted. These houses have mold growing over everything, floor to ceiling.

This house got the front blown off, it almost looks like a doll house now. The spray paint on the front is on all of the houses. It tells you when it was searched and by who. It also tells how many people died in the house. Most say zero, but I saw a few 1’s and 2’s.

This house’s roof was blown to the side and is resting on the neighbors roof.

Boats in strange places:

Here is an example of the growing trash barriers throughout the city as people arrived to clean up what was once their home.

I miss my city. It’s hard to believe it is October already. Chris and I have barely begun to put our lives back together. When I turned my keys in on my final day of work, I realized the only key I had left was to my car. My friend Molly was nice enough to let me keep her house key, which made me feel a little better. I don’t know what we’re doing. I just can’t wait until we have our own home again, and jobs. I hope in a year from now we can look back on this time and tell the story of how we made it through. At this point, though, we haven’t made it back to normal. It’s like a nightmare that you just can’t wake up from.