Buras, LA: Final Thoughts

Here is a little more background on Buras, LA and some final thoughts about what I witnessed, heard about, and think it all means. Wikipedia has the following information on the town, I can't vouch for the accuracy of the article, but it includes Census data, and the figures sound about right:

Buras-Triumph is a census-designated place (CDP) in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 3,358 at the 2000 census. On the peninsula, Buras has been located higher, with Triumph located southeast of Buras.

Buras-Triumph has become famous as the location where, on August 29, 2005, at 6:10 AM CDT, the eye of Hurricane Katrina, by far the costliest natural disaster (and one of the deadliest) ever to strike the United States, made its strongest landfall. However, the storm surge and high winds began on the previous day, August 28, 2005. During those 2 days, the area was obliterated as a result.

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Buras, along with its neighboring communities, sits at about 17 feet below sea level. It is flanked on either side by levees that keep the Gulf of Mexico (west) and Mississippi River (east) at bay. Because of this location, it is always going to be prone to storms and the possibility of flooding. It's a temperate climate, and I'm told that fruit orchards were quite prevalent there before Katrina. Residents were able to feed themselves off what they grew on the land and caught from the sea.

The region's economy was based on entrepeneurial fishermen and big oil (we passed the compounds of both Halliburton and Chevron on our drive to Venice on Friday). We were told that residents could buy Oyster leases for $2 an acre from the State, but that the leases needed to be maintained in order to remain in force. With the destruction of boats and homes, many of the lease-holders have either lost or sold their stakes because they don't have the wherewithal to continue to cultivate the area. Oil rigs are supplanting oyster boats, and the entrepeneurial fishing culture that defined the area is being lost as a result.

The governmnet is organized on a Parish-wide level, the equivalent of the county government system here in Illinois. I don't know if there is a more local body that governs Buras, but it doesn't appear so. Because the Upper Parish escaped the scale of devastation wrought in the south, and its population was not displaced to the same degree, it has a much stronger voice on the Parish council. Because of this, relief funding and services are not being distributed in an equal manner, at least in the eyes of the locals in Buras. There is also resentment toward New Orleans as it has a much higher public profile, and residents believe it's getting the vast majority of the State funding.

I don't know what the infrastructure was like in Buras before Katrina, but I'm told they had the services that the community needed. That is certainly not the case now, as residents have to drive an hour away for groceries and medical care. There is a clinic nearby, but a resident said it is poorly staffed and she didn't trust it to administer something as simple as a flu shot. A few small businesses have re-opened and it's possible to buy a few things there. Emergency Communities (EC) also runs a distribution center that supplies locals with canned goods and other essentials, but that's dependent on weekly charitable deliveries that won't last forever.

There is also a great need for mental health services in the area. Residents are definitely feeling the pressure associated with the vast destruction that took place and the work involved with trying to rebuild lives. EC tries to provide a space to relieve some of the stress, but I don't think many take advantage. The ability to meet at EC over a meal and talk to each other and the volunteers helps. There's a great need to communicate to the outside world what happened in Buras, and the more chances locals have to converse the more healing will take place. I think we as humans can best make sense of the world through story-telling and shared experience, and that's one thing that the EC complex does offer residents, especially as sympathetic and curious volunteers from across the country pass through it.

I get the sense that the people of Buras prided themselves on their self-sufficiency and independent lifestyles. They were able to find a niche for themselves in this part of the world, and they thrived in it quite nicely. That independence proved a double edged sword in the face of such a disaster, as there was no infrastructure to deal with the crises they faced after the storm and no social safety net to provide for their needs when thrown into a situation where they could no longer rely on personal strength alone.

The federal and local governments have certainly not stepped into the breach. One consistent complaint among all the residents we talked to was the ineptness and inadequacy of the support they've received from all the official agencies. With the lack of aid as well as the insufficient insurance reimbursements, residents find themselves in a Catch 22 -- they need to go back to work in order to get the money to rebuild, but when they return to work they don't have sufficient time to devote to the reconstruction. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that FEMA is threatening to take away the trailers that provide temporary shelter during the gutting and renovation.

What next? Some will question the wisdom of rebuilding in that part of the world, where another storm could undo any reconstruction. Many of the displaced residents themselves won't want to return to Buras, having started new, possibly more secure lives elsewhere. From what we were told, only about 10% have returned to rebuild so far. There's no question in my mind that the residents deserve our support as they recover from this disaster and try to begin anew. I do think that there are lessons to be learned and changes that will need to be made to prepare for and prevent future loss of life and property. There's no way to foresee and prevent a future disaster, but there are ways to mitigate the affects of a storm.

The situation reiterated one particular point in my mind -- the need for strong, involved, interconnected and interdependent communities. As much as we as a society like to promote the idea of extreme individualism, self-reliance, and a Do-It-Yourself ethos, it is a paradigm that only works under ideal circumstances. The reality is that we will always experience crises on a personal and communal level, and the only way to survive them is by having a strong safety net that provides support for the worst off among us during the worst of times. It's the reason humans formed societies to begin with -- realizing that the best way to ensure individual survival is through cooperation and collaboration with others who have the same goals.

We are all our sisters' and brothers' keepers. It's a lesson taught by the sacred texts of most religions, but one that's been lost in the simplistic, moralistic preaching into which modern faith has devolved.

Lessons learned in Louisiana

A couple days and 1,000 miles removed from the situation in Southern Louisiana, I'm still trying to figure out the lessons to be learned from the experience. Buras was a community that prided itself on its self reliance, and in many ways I think that's made the recovery all the more difficult. There is no way to rebuild and recover from such a tragedy without a strong social network to support the efforts.

As far as I can determine, there was no real community leadership in Buras before the storm (especially in government), so there's been a tremendous void post-Katrina. Emergency Communities and some active and dedicated local residents are now filling that vacuum, and I have no doubt that they'll get the job done to the best of their abilities.

It's an object lesson to the rest of us, and we need to recognize the importance of planning, peparedness, prevention and a strong social safety net. Creating a disaster plan is a tremendously complex and difficult task, and even the best one can't prepare us for every eventuality. That said, the work has to be done.

What truly scares me is the fact that we're already being forced to deal with tremendous cuts to social services locally due to budget problems in Cook County. The gutting of these services will further hamper us in any attempts to prepare for the possibility of an emergency situation.

The human capital of many caring individuals, such as those I met in Buras, will see us through some problems, but without real leadership and community these efforts will be disorganized, inefficient and unproductive.

Life in Buras, LA -- Day 5 (Farewell)

Friday was our last day volunteering in Buras with Emergency Communities, and the quiet final farewell was made with mixed emotions. I was definitely satisfied that we'd done all we could to help for the 5 days we were in Buras, but it passed by so fast that I couldn't help but feel it still wasn't enough. I was happy to go home to the simple comforts of a bed and flush toilet, but sad that I was leaving behind a community still in great need.

We met some wonderful folks during our stay, and I hope that we can stay in touch with them and the community so that we can keep tabs on the recovery and support it in some way going forward. I don't think it will be the last time I see Buras, and I'll carry the hope that I'll be pleasantly surprised the next time I do.

Here's a short recap of our final day there:

After helping to unload the weekly shipment of supplies, we gave a hand with the serving of breakfast and post-meal cleanup. My friends Hari and Neal pose from the serving line below. Hari drove down with Terry and I after hearing about the trip at the Red Line in Rogers Park a few weeks ago (I'd say that it was a chance encounter, but Terry says there are no coincidences). We met Neal at EC, and worked long and hard with him in the kitchen discovering along the way a kindred spirit.




Terry and I then headed down to the bottom of the peninsula to see the Venice Marina. The following pictures are all from that little excursion. Venice lies about 15 miles south of Buras and is the point furthest south in Louisiana (as the sign indicates), where the Mississippi meets the Gulf. It's been rebuilt and is proudly proclaimed as the "fishing capitol of the world". There's one reminder of the storm, an SUV floating in the water, but otherwise it's a beautiful little spot of Nature at the bottom of the country and shows the promise of the area's recovery.

Life in Buras, LA -- Day 4 (Photo Essay)

I'll let the pictures do the talking for this post. These pictures were taken in the area immediately around the former YMCA complex that forms the base of Emergency Communities. You can get a sense of the devastation down here just from these few shots. The tent is where I'm sleeping at night, it's in what used to be a gym -- one of the basketball hoops is still operational and I've put it to good use.

Life in Buras, LA -- Day 3

I had two very interesting conversations with residents today. I also made my first trip "off-site" and got a chance to tutor some local children.

The first discussion was with a woman who talked about the problems people are having with government and the insurance companies. She personally had to "reject" two trailers that FEMA tried to send her, because she quite evidently didn't need them -- she was already living in one. That kind of bungling shouldn't be too surprising considering FEMA's ineptness immediately after the storm hit.

She also described the problems with money getting to the "lower parish," in the south of the peninsula where Buras is located. Most of the relief funds have been spent in the "upper" part of Plaquemines Parish closer to New Orleans. She characterized it as a result of the local government's bias toward the upper parish, which is better off both in the financial sense and as in not suffering the same scale of damage as the lower parish, where Katrina first made landfall.

As far as the insurance companies, they managed to wiggle out of proper payments to residents by claiming that the damage was caused by whatever wasn't covered in the policies -- wind or water.

Related to the FEMA trailer story I talked about in an earlier post, a volunteer working with us has read that FEMA signed an 18 month contract with a trailer manufacturer and part of that agreement was that the trailers get destroyed at the end of the period to prevent glutting the market. It's something straight out of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath where food was destroyed rather than given away to the hungry, but this time it's the government taking away people's homes in order to preserve a private company's profits.

The second conversation I had was with a resident who rode out the storm by sitting in a tree for 3 days. He and his family used a boat to get 40 feet above ground and then had the water lapping at their feet as it was roiled by the ferocious winds. Unbelievably he and the 5 others he was with made it out alive -- dropping out of the branches when the water subsided some and then walking along the levee until the Coast Guard finally picked them up. His 3 dogs weren't so lucky.

It's become apparent that a lot of the residents down here really appreciate the chance to tell their stories to a sympathetic listener. That and a place where they can not just get a free meal, but sit down with the other locals and volunteers and regain a real sense of community once more. It's why they're so grateful for the work that Emergency Communities is doing out of the old YMCA here.

Besides my usual kitchen duties -- the residents have been quite pleased with the quality of the meals since Terry Feingold started doing his magic in the kitchen here (with my small help) -- I also got a chance to "tutor" some kids after school at a local elementary school. It was a pretty cool experience, even though it was just helping the teacher give some kindergarden students a little individual attention while they did their homework, read books, and colored. Two of the little girls gave me hugs, and that was a nice little payment for the day's efforts.

I took a number of photos today, and I'll get them up tomorrow when I recharge the camera's batteries. I even have one of a refrigerator stuck in a tree about 20 feet above ground.

Life in Buras, LA -- Day 2

It's been a long day working in the kitchen here (helping to prepare two meals, and cleaning up after one), but it was definitely a productive and rewarding one.

Emergency communities serves 3 meals a day to the residents here. They also operate a free laundromat, library, tool exchange, and Internet center. The volunteers (some from Americorps, others just concerned folks like us) also do work off-site helping with the gutting and rebuilding efforts.

We've talked to a few of the residents here, along with the volunteers (some who have been here several months), and there's a mixture of anger, frustration, hope and determination. Buras was mainly a fishing community and the residents here lost their homes and livelihoods. We're told that the storm surge was 35 feet high, and so the whole town, which sits below sea level, was completely immersed during Katrina. For most, all that remains of their homes is the concrete slabs of the foundations.

One resident talked of the real possibility that a unique culture, not just a community could be lost. The people of Buras knew how to live off the bayous, and that lifestyle is definitely being threatened by the slow recovery. Why has it been so slow -- that's a tough question and the answer appears to be pretty complicated. I'm still trying to figure it out based on the stories I'm hearing. Certainly, the scale of the devastation is a major factor. There's no doubt the people here are passionate about getting their community back.

Life in Buras, LA -- Day 1

We arrived in Buras this morning, and I'm still trying to get my bearings a little, so I'll keep this brief. There will be more to write later, and I'll post some pictures as well.

Even more than 18 months after Katrina hit, there's a lot of damage to be seen down here. We've heard a few stories so far, and I'm sure we'll hear more in the days to come. The basic drift of what we've heard is that the government hasn't done much to help the people here who are trying to rebuild their lives.

It's hard to sort fact from rumor at this point, but many believe that the government would like the land for other purposes (oil exploration, perhaps), so they're being less than cooperative in order to push people to sell rather than rebuild. Same story as in the 9th ward where houses are allegedly being condemned and taken via eminent domain if not gutted by a certain deadline. I'm told that as of this September, FEMA is even taking back the trailers it gave to people as temporary housing even though most just completed the gutting of their old homes and can't possibly have them in livable condition by then.

The people of Buras are extremely nice and appreciative of the help they're receiving from the Emergency Communities group I'm volunteering with. One man told me that all the help has given him new faith in humanity.

Google Maps of Katrina Damage: Back to the Future

I read with particular interest a news item that Google Maps has replaced its images of areas hit by Hurricane Katrina with earlier satellite photos taken pre-storm. In two weeks I'm heading down to volunteer with Emergency Communities in Buras, LA, where Katrina first made landfall, and all the reports I've read indicate the damaged areas still have a long way to go before recovery.

I don't know if this is some grand conspiracy, but Google is doing all concerned a disservice if they in anyway convey the misinformation that these areas are back to normal. See an excerpt from an AP story below the following, current Google satellite image of Buras. I'll be giving a full report of what I see down there in a couple weeks.

On Google map, everything's back to normal after Katrina
Satellite imagery of devastated coast as it once was fuels talk of conspiracy
By CAIN BURDEAU
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy trees.

"Come on," said an incredulous Ruston Henry, president of the economic development association in New Orleans' devastated Lower 9th Ward. "Just put in big bold this: 'Google, don't pull the wool over the world's eyes. Let the truth shine.' "

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