Back To The Front? Part I

At the bar on Monday night, I had a conversation with a guy who was telling me about authentic local food joints, and now I wanted to try one out to fill up my gut before I headed in to New Orleans. He said he liked a place called “Zomoras,” although I'm not sure about the name because he was pretty drunk. He said that it had two cartoony, fiberglass alligators out front, and I had actually noticed them on my drive South from NOLA on Monday night. It sounded good, so I was keeping an eye out for it when I was driving up through that general area. I finally saw the alligators and slowed to turn in to the lot. As I pulled up, though, I realized that the place was closed and the local fire department was using the parking lot to distribute food and water to locals who'd lost their utilities to the hurricane. I was starving, so I continued on, looking for someplace else to eat. It looked like everything was closed until I came across a crappy roadhouse where the sign advertised food and the doors were open.

I walked in and saw nothing but two older ladies sitting at the bar. The lights were out, but there was a gigantic fan rattling away, so they had some sort of power. I leaned in and asked if they were open, to which the skinny one (Madonna) replied, “Sure! We've got a generator working the ice maker and the beer is cold in the cooler there on the floor.” Normally that would have been just fine with me, but since I was looking to hook up with a military unit to travel with through New Orleans (and didn't want to smell like booze), I declined. I asked if they were serving food and the fat one (Enid) sounded off with, “Well, the kitchen's got no power, but I made jambalaya at home earlier and brought it in.” Sounds good to me. That's basically what I came here for anyway: local cuisine. As I ate, we got to discussing the current situation, and like several of the Louisiana, um, -ers, I've met here, they asked me for my perspective as an outsider on the current situation, and how it could have possibly happened as it did. I'll discuss my perspective on the whole situation in a later post, as it changes somewhat just about daily as I learn new things and see how things are or aren't progressing. This time I said something about how, regardless of blame to be placed in the coming weeks and months, I definitely didn't think that anything was improved by the Mayor's leadership breakdown, and his subsequent crying to the media and pointing fingers at everyone else. Madonna replied in an exasperated voice, “That's because he's a nigger! That's what they do!”

Riiiiight...

I changed the subject.

I finished my meal, thanked them, and continued up the 90. I was listening to the local NOLA talk radio station, which was, and will be for some time, broadcasting from Baton Rouge, wedged in to the same studio as the Baton Rouge talk station. Like most people in New Orleans, just about all the show hosts had lost friends, homes, or had their lives generally shaken up. They did a really impressive job of keeping it together, and many of their broadcasts were a combination of commentary on the situation, announcements of some of the drastic changes made to government, services, and infrastructure to accommodate the current reality, as well as acting as a people-finding service. They took callers who couldn't find friends or relatives and let them say where they were last known to be, what they looked like, and allowed them to give their phone numbers over the air in case anyone knew of there whereabouts. They also encouraged employers looking for workers to call in and announce job offerings in the various areas where NOLA residents had been evacuated. I think that the most important aspect of the majority of these broadcasts was that they let callers vent their anger, sorrow, and frustration at the state of things and then calmly explained to them how drastic changes were going to have to be made by everyone, including those not immediately affected by the damage. In stark contrast to the vultures in the national media, who encourage sales by printing huge pictures of tragedy on their front page and by publishing every conceivable rant and conjecture, the local radio talk stations tried to calm everyone down, encouraging patience and reasonable actions. I think that they did a fantastic job of this and deserve much credit for generally not resorting to the absolute bullshit spewed by the MSM which angered me so much that I drove for three days just to get down here in the first place.

A man called up the station and said he was trapped in an independent living apartment building with 20 or so other old people. He claimed that they had been given food and water, but had not been evacuated, and most (including him) could not walk down the stairs. The building had 8 stories and the elevator was broken. He said that he was diabetic and had run out of insulin, not to mention that he was supposed to receive a heart catheter a week ago, but hadn't because of the disaster. The radio host let him give out the address to the building, which I wrote down as I drove in case I ran into any emergency officials to whom I could hand it over and tell them the situation.

As the 90 approaches NOLA, it splits into East and West offshoots at a town called Bridge City (Gumbo Capital of Louisiana, according to the sign). The Eastern branch, which eventually turns North, is called the West Bank Expressway. This is all a little confusing to an outsider like me. A couple of miles East of the split the expressway rises up from a surface street with stoplights to a raised highway that curves North and then West toward New Orleans. Along the 90, I saw evidence of hurricane damage (and perhaps looting), but I had yet to see any signs of flooding.



The old man trapped in the building had said that it was located right off this road, however, and as I drove by I actually saw the apartment name he had given on the air in big letters on the side of a medium-sized brick building. I dropped down off the elevated highway and whipped a U-turn, making my way through surface streets back over to that area. I'm figuring that I'm going to have to climb the stairs and start hauling geriatrics down myself. They're all little, dessicated-looking, and light-weight, right?

I pulled up to the building and there was already a Red Cross ambulance there, with several people standing around out front. Besides an R/C staffer, there were also a few ladies in bright yellow t-shirts that said, "Scientology Emergency Volunteer" on the front. I walked up and started to tell them what I had heard of the situation and let's-get-going-and-haul-some-old-folks-down-and...

A short, pudgy, middle-aged Scientologist cut me off, angrily saying that these people had, in fact, run out of medication and that some of them were suffering more dementia than normal because of this. She said that emergency crew docs had refused to give out more medication, because the condition wasn't life-threatening, and they didn't know the full prescription history, each individual's health conditions, and so on. I was a bit taken aback by her immediate lashing out, but I explained to her the call I had heard on the radio. She retorted that some of the people had, "gotten hold of phones" and were "calling all over the place causing trouble." She continued to act like I was being some kind of unreasonable asshole. Writing her off as useless, I turned around to the Red Cross guy that was driving the ambulance and explained to him about the old man's insulin need and missed heart catheter appointment. He seemed to be more reasonable and said he'd look into it, but they weren't going to take the people out yet because they had food, water, and shelter right here. I figured that he was probably better trained and more able to handle their medical situation than I was. At least I'd given him the information I had. Just as I was about to turn around and leave, an ancient woman walked out of the building and said, "Oh you're the young man that I talked to last week. I thought I recognized you." I told her that I was sorry, but that wasn't me, breaking off the conversation and returning to my car.

I got back on the expressway with a funny feeling that all those people would soon be strapped to their beds, connected to E-Meters, and forced to watch old Tom Cruise movies while their Social Security resources were drained to purchase thousands of copies of Dianetics. I hope this isn't what happened.