PLAY IT AGAIN
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Isidore has been downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm and the plywood on some windows on Decatur seem like a premature ejaculation. We got heavy rain today and most people took it as a "play" day, schools were closed and there was no reason to work in this "state of emergency". (I've told you before that people in New Orleans will find any excuse to party.) While they're boozing it up in the French Quarter, where there was only one torrential rain today, the people on Grand Island have been evacuated for two days. The water has certainly risen and homes are threatened or already flooded. At Lake Ponchartrain, right here in New Orleans, people are already evacuating their houses today because the floodgates on the levees were closed last night at midnight. So it's not completely a non-story. But rather than the hurricane story we expected to write, this will probably be a flood story.
I'm talking with the owner of The Spotted Cat, on Frenchmen Street this afternoon, who planned before the supposed dire news to stay open during Isidore. I hear great stories of the flooding in other parts of the Quarter -- manhole covers jumping on Chartres and Royal, water spouts on the lake, people getting soaked in the rain on their "hurricane" bar crawls -- this is the stuff of the story on-the-ground from our perspective and most of what we'll be bringing to you over the next few days.
The people boarding up their buildings, at least in Orleans parish, were most-likely watching The Weather Channel and CNN (as they've been conditioned to do) instead of the local stations, where there was very little to report other than rain, lots of rain.
I'm sure that those "news" networks are giving themselves high fives for their ratings numbers in southern Louisiana, but as far as I'm concerned they just lived up to their new mandate of being all fear, all the time. Tomorrow might prove me wrong, but I doubt it.
26 September, 2002: As too many blues song begin, "Woke up this morning". There was no horizontal rain, no raging winds, just a sky the grey of a dirty beard and the knowledge that there was no hurricane in New Orleans. Ray Nagin, the mayor, declared a curfew from 10:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. that nobody in their right mind that I knew even recognized or honored. It was great for business, though. Like the hyperbolic newscasts about this city being in a bowl and doomed to flooding and major disaster, like the pictures of other great hurricanes that The Weather Channel ran, instead of the actual boring pictures of what was going on in the Central Business District (CBD) of New Orleans, the curfew just dampened spirits and made people more afraid than they needed to be.
As George the First said: "Read my lips." NOTHING HAPPENED.
Wait, I'll correct myself. Something did happen. Lots of people were once again made more afraid by media hype than reality warranted. Buildings were boarded up for no good reason. State and city officials, pushed by the media hype, took unwarranted extreme measures in order to look "responsible" and New Orleans lost a lot of business it should have garnered during these dampened economic times. In other words, once again the Big Easy is shot in the ass. If you depend on the tourist and the hospitality industry and people are given reasons not to be here and spend their money, life sucks.
Thanks Weather Channel for nothing.
I'm wondering where the hell Isidore really is as I write this. I'll have to go out and look for him I guess.
Isidore supposedly passed through town last night, but not as the big bad. There were heavy rains and people kept talking up the water -- but this is a town that was running below its normal and needed rainfall for the year anyway. Hello. We caught up.
During the rest of this week, The World's Magazine will file stories on the results of the high winds, waves and evacuation at Lake Pontchartrain. There's a decent story there and a few nice photos. But no major disaster story. There's the story of grade children being told by teachers that lots of people die in floods during storms in New Orleans, much to the chagrin of caring parents. There's the story of people pumping bilge from their boats and roads beings closed because of flooding. Not much death and disaster to speak of, though.
From the perspective of jaded journalist like Yours Unruly, one fact does seem glaring. IF the local officials hadn't decided to close those floodgates on the levees in preparation for the storm that wasn't, Lake Pontchartrain would not, in all likelihood, risen to the level that required evacuation and there might have been as little damage there as there was here in the French Quarter. Some people might not have had to evacuate their homes at all.
Sometimes, that axiom that it's better to be safe than sorry is just a bunch of hooey, like most conventional wisdom.
I think about the Randy Newman song "Louisiana 1927" as I end this report. There was a real disaster then, a great flood. The Mississippi River rose and there was "six feet of water on the streets of Evangeline". President Coolidge came down to this cracker, coon-ass land. He wagged his head.
The only time when the rest of the country wants to think about this Godforsaken place is when they want to party like they can't at home ("Show your tits!") and when they expect us to be finally washed into the sea. Louisiana makes headlines for corruption and ignorance, since our politicians are uniformly venal and comical (Edwin Edwards, David Duke) and our educational system is always running so far behind the pack it might as well be in some other race. We got Bourbon Street in New Orleans and buildings where it's a local axiom that either somebody was killed or killed themselves. So unless Lilie or Kyle come through, you can forget about us again until Fat Tuesday.
Go on to PART II of this Special Report.
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NEW ORLEANS - 25 September, 2002: This might end up being our series on the story that wasn't. It's easy to feel that way when you're sitting in The Spotted Cat at about 5:17 p.m. listening to a sultry jazz chanteuse, the tinkle of raindrops on the sidewalk and ice cubes on glass, and hearing that Isidore is only 60 miles per hour though still headed north.
LISTEN: As I was filing this story, I received a phonecall informing me that many businesses in town are closed today because of the hurricane we're not having. I would have spent my money in those businesses today. Duh.
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