I lived in mid city New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city in 2005. My girlfriend and I lived in a second story apartment, so our losses were minimal compared to most of our neighbors. I lost everything that was stored on the first floor and in the yard-all of my power tools, including a table saw, a chop saw, and a compressor, all of my beach and camping stuff, and my boat. I also lost my job as an independent-contractor, doing loss control inspections for insurance companies. My territory consisted of four parishes- Jefferson, Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines-the four hardest hit by the storm. Loss control inspections are done pre-loss so as to limit potential losses; they are basically safety oriented and they help educate business owners to see where problems might arise. After the storm, everything everywhere was in a state of post-loss.
So I contacted my landlord, who I knew owned over forty rental properties and offered to help him rebuild because I had experience in construction. At the age of fifty, I went back to doing hard work and subsequently endured my second and third back surgeries and a MRSA infection which landed me on disability. My story doesn’t even come close to registering as one of the saddest of Katrina. A great number of people lost everything that they had worked their whole life to gain; they lost family members and suffered injuries far greater than mine.
But one aspect of Katrina-fueled losses went largely unrecognized by the general public and certainly the mainstream media. It was the death of so many older people who just couldn’t bear the displacement. Most of these deaths came a year or more after Katrina, so they weren’t counted as deaths caused by the storm, although they most certainly had been. It may be something about New Orleanians in particular because so many of us are so fond of our hometown that the prospect of living anywhere else is incomprehensible. The heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes, the bad infrastructure, and the crooked politicians all take a backseat to the fact that everyone who lives here eats like a king and that single fact seems to reduce stress levels in the general population. Happiness is pretty easy to come by in New Orleans and I think it’s traceable to the food supply in south Louisiana. But that is not the point.
I came to learn something about old people that I think is a far more generalizable concept- at the end of their lives they want familiar surroundings. They’re comfortable in their routines and they want to live out their days in the same way that they entered their dotage. They want to sleep in their same bed, drink the same coffee from the same cup at the same kitchen table and bicker with the same spouse. Uprooting old people can absolutely destroy their will to live.
My own 84 year old father fell upon arrival at the Houston airport and suffered a ruptured disc in his back. (My sister lived in Dickinson at the time and had the resources and good sense to maintain an open ticket for our parents in case of a necessary evacuation.) He underwent surgery in Texas and was forced to stay there throughout his recovery and hated every minute of it. He was in constant pain and it was hard on everyone to look at. And to listen to. (My sister’s house was loaded with our extended family.) He didn’t complain about the pain as much as the fact that he just wanted to go home.
We returned to New Orleans and lived there in the alternate universe of a post Katrina city. As time wore on, I heard more and more stories of friends and neighbors who would lose a parent, an aunt, an uncle, or a grandparent to the same sad fate. They all died of broken hearts because they couldn’t get back to the homes that they loved. We were living a tragedy that seemed to have no end.
Watching Hurricane Harvey flood south Texas has stirred feelings that I would rather let die. These are the people that gave many of us shelter when Katrina struck our city. This storm will affect a much larger population than Katrina did and will probably cause more property damage. Rebuilding as quickly as possible is the only option, especially for the old folks. Young people have the strength to rebuild but old people don’t.
That leads to another issue that bears mentioning: New Orleans wouldn’t have been able to come back as it did without immigrant labor. The Latin labor force was absolutely critical at every turn and we would still be digging out if not for them. These people came from horrendous situations in their home countries, full of hope that they could earn the right to live in America. They did the dirtiest and hardest work with smiles on their faces. I am fortunate to count some of them as friends and neighbors. Without the help of the immigrant community, I am afraid that the rebuilding of south Texas will take decades and will cost tremendously more than is necessary. Part of that cost will be in the loss of many more old people.
As far as I’m concerned, the Latin American immigrant population deserves more than a chance at citizenship. They deserve a memorial in the heart of New Orleans and I know just the place to put up a statue.