Sharon & Rick's in New Orleans

Our friends who live in New Orleans sent these pix yesterday. Sharon is the head librarian at Univ. of New Orleans. Rick is a computer guy w/ the N. O. city utility co. We met them in Mempho when Sharon was over the CBC library and Rick was at Fed Ex. They taught us to dance Zydeco and became friends. Saw Rick last here in Daphne in March for the Zydeco weekend. Anyway, I hope Rick can somehow open those CD cases and salvage some of his extensive collection of CDs (right side,bottom photo). The disks should be ok. Click the photo to see details. Can you believe the amount of work involved here??????????????

I am putting a copy of his letter here too.

All,
Our next-door neighbor is a doctor and he got into the city on Saturday to look at his house. He said the main roads are passable, but the side streets are not.

So, Sharon and I decided to sneak into New Oleans Sunday morning at 7:00 am to check on the condition of her car parked in the Macy's Shopping Center Parking garage, then check on the house. Sunday mornig in the downtown area there was almost no traffic at all - except for police and military and a lots of civilian clean-up crews. Downtown streets were clean and mountains of garbage were being trucked away from the superdome. None of the cars in the Macy's garage were damaged and the garage was being guarded by the US Army. We had feared that the cars in the garage were all vandalized or stolen. Sharon had to go back to New Orleans today to the campus, so she got a ride and afterward she picked up her car

Driving up Canal Street was strange -- the further away from the downtown area the more debris and damange was evident, trees and limbs down everywhere, all the grass was dead and brown, many trees were brown, boats abandonded on the street. Canal Street was dry and passable up to the cemetaries. We had to drive up past City Park to get to our house. City Park is in shambles.

The little business district near our house on Harrison Avenue is destroyed and terrible looking. Most streets in the Lakeview neighborhood were impassbale due to tress down. Luckily, our next-door neighbor told us how take a cleared route to get to our house.

No green anywhere, a few birds though not many, the smell was quite unpleasant but not terrible or intolerable. Everthing is covered in dried brown and grey muck. Our back yard was in bad shape, downed tree limbs and lots of muck. The doors of the house were very difficult to open, and even more difficult to shut again due to water saturation (so having some kind of contingency is necessary to get the doors closed again, like a pry bar and big hammer). Inside the house, the second-level was just fine, no damage. But the first-level was another story -- complete loss. All the furniture was toppled over and had floated to different parts of the house. All wood furniture and cabinets we falling apart to the touch. Wet black muck everywhere, foul moldy smell, mold climbing up the walls. Everything below the waterline is unsalvageable. The refrigerator had floated up and tipped over, spilling its contents and was resting horizontally up on top to the kitchen counter tops.

We started cleaning for a few hours, seperating garbage from insured items, removing some water and mud from the floor, packing up some clothes, art work, and electrnics from the second-level. Our first-level floor is mostly tile floor, so cleaning up is going to be much easier than carpeted areas like our dining room. There is still a 6 pm curfew, so we packed up the car with stuff and left town. We'll try to go back again once Hurricane Rita passes by. What a mess. Here are a few pictures.

Our best, Rick and Sharon