More Pictures

Here are a few photos of Lakeview, the New Orleans neighborhood in which we lived before we moved into our house in Metairie. Lakeview is a wonderful neighborhood with charming small houses and bumpy roads. It was immediately adjacent to the famed levee break, and took the brunt of Lake Pontchartrain's swell onto formerly dry land.
We always considered Harrison Avenue to be the main street of Lakeview. It was hit very badly. An unknown female saint stands in the neutral ground (that's what New Orleanians call an island) parking area in front of St. Dominic's Catholic Church. What New Orleans lacks in traffic signals, it makes up for in makeshift signs.


Roughly across Harrison Avenue from St. Dominic's, the sign at the Rite Aid Pharmacy urges us to "Live Well." The trees in the parking lot seems to have had some difficulty doing so, having been under eight feet of standing water.

Continuing east on Harrison Avenue, on the same side of the street as Rite Aid, one comes to the Coral Reef Pet Shop and the Sneaker Shop. These storefronts were utterly devastated.

This street could be any street in Lakeview. The houses, for the most part, look okay from the outside, except for the waterline at shoulder level (most easily seen on the house at the far left.) Below eye level, the vegetation is all brown from submersion. Inside, every home is destroyed and uninhabitable. Several of our dearest friends lost their homes to a sea of toxic sludge that buckled their flooring, brought down their ceilings, and saturated their walls with filth and mold. One such friend tells me that everyone is holding off on trying to restore their homes because they are so far gone that there is a significant likehood that the neighborhood will be bulldozed. All they can to is to salvage an item here or there. From my own perspective, all I can add is that no human being should be forced to wait, day after day, week after week, wondering about the fate of his or her house. How can you heal, when you cannot even imagine where your home is?

The Lakeview townhouse where we used to live, had always been prone to flooding in its front yard (but never inside). It was still disturbing to see it and its neighbors spray-painted by rescuers who had checked it for bodies and survivors.

This condo a few doors down had always been particularly striking, and I fondly remember trick-or-treating there with Katie, and admiring the freestanding pond they had placed in their fenced-in front yard. Now the condo looks like the Third World backdrop from a "Save the Children" commercial.

Imagine coming home to see your backyard so exposed. It is like a nightmare about going out in public, but forgetting to put on your pants.

This last photo, taken back in Metairie, has a particular poignancy when viewed after the destruction of Lakeview.