Hurricane Ida and its Aftermath

For the 4 of you who read this blog, you know that I changed jobs and moved to New Orleans, LA in mid August of 2021. I was working at Tulane University remotely and after a pretty long period I was able to sell my house and pack my things to physically get to NOLA since the job had started in January of 2021. The remote work wasn't a big deal for those first 8 months due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 which had not been abated and had actually grown worse with the Delta variant and the actions of anti-vaxxers.

I had only been in NOLA for about 8 days when the city was preparing for the impacts of Hurricane Ida. It was projected to be a big one. Partly because there was a lot of warm water in the Gulf of Mexico and this thing was feeding off of that energy. Also, these types of events have become more commonplace due to climate change. It would eventually hit land as a Category 4 storm which was dangerous. On that Friday the 27th of August, the mayor of the city issued an order that people inside of the levee system could voluntarily evacuate and those outside who were in low lying areas had a mandatory order to evacuate.

Given that I had just arrived in the city and had no idea where my apartment was in relation to the levees, I decided to cut out. I packed my gym bag with about enough clothes for 3 days and then my laptop and other work stuff. The roads were pretty choked but would be much worse in the days after. I got to a hotel room in Jackson, MS and expected to head back down once the storm had passed.

The stay was pretty uneventful and by Sunday August 29th, the hurricane was making landfall and doing damage. I watched on TV as those who had waited to leave were struggling to get out since the roads were now packed. In addition, I was really sad to see those who simply couldn't get out. It was estimated that about 40,000 or more people in New Orleans had no cars or other means of transportation. In addition, the poverty level is higher than the national average so even if they did get out they had no money to pay for hotel rooms or places to go anyway. It might have seemed like they were voluntarily staying but the truth was that they were stuck to ride it out.

The good news was that this storm didn't hit New Orleans directly. It had made landfall about 90 miles to the south and west of the city. However, hurricanes spin in a counter-clockwise direction and being on the east side of a storm means that you get whipped pretty badly by strong winds. That did happen and it caused a lot of damage. Right after the storm, the power went out for the entire city. Apparently, power comes into the city by 8 high capacity power lines and all 8 of them had failed. In fact, one of them which had survived hurricane Katrina 16 years earlier simply snapped off and fell in the Mississippi river. The entire city went dark.

One of the things people worried about was whether the levees would give away again and there would be massive flooding and loss of life like what happened during Katrina. This time the levees held. There was some flooding but not like what could have happened. The problem was the power. Without power, the pumping stations which should have pumped water into the canal systems and away from the city weren't working. Non-working pumps are never good for that city. The city is bordered by water. There is Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south. Both water systems are higher than most of the city. Thus, the only thing keeping New Orleans from turning into an island are those levees and canals. Click here and here to see some truly worrisome videos about the geography of the region and its long term prospects.

The city and region had never had such a massive power failure. It was clear that a simple patch wasn't going to do and some major structural changes would need to occur. The best solution would be to put the electric infrastructure underground. However, since most of the city is below sea level, you can't put anything underground as it will bubble up to the surface. Heck, they even bury their dead above ground. That's why the roads in New Orleans are horrid. A road put on reclaimed swamp land is going to bubble up like anything else put on swamp land. So they did and always will go for the quick fix which won't solve the problem in the long run.

The next days were pretty bad for most. I was still safe, dry and well-fed up in Jackson but worried about the others. The reports were that it would take 4 to 5 days to just access the damage and at least a month to get power back to the city. That was just a recipe for death. There was no power in the city and temperatures were in the high 90s. So now people have no access to food or water and no way to cool off in deadly heat. Since I had internet in my hotel room, I was able to do what I normally do: work. I would try to check in with my staff and get updates from the senior administrative staff at Tulane on what we'd do next.

About 3 days after the storm there was still no power but I got a message from the people who ran my apartment complex that they were going to go through the fridges of all residents and dump food. That way if the power stayed out any longer the fridges wouldn't be ruined by rotting food, which apparently happened during Katrina. The stay in the hotel was inconvenient but not horrible. It had a washing machine so I was able to wash the few clothes which I brought. They provided free breakfast but it was the most unhealthy stuff I had ever seen. I had cable TV and fresh towels. There were several grocery stores near-by so I really couldn't complain.

This went on for 2 weeks before power was eventually restored to my neighborhood. The power company was going piece by piece across the city doing the patch stuff which was silly and I would monitor their website to see when they would get to where I lived. Some parts came back really fast and others still didn't have power a month later. I packed up my few belongings and drove back to New Orleans. I had left my other car in the apartment parking lot and it was fine and running well. My drive in showed a lot of damage as roofs and trees had been blown away. There were blue tarps all over the place. My apartment complex had two parts, an old and a newer section. The old section had damage of siding ripped off and a ton of roof shingles missing. The new part seemed unaffected. I lived in the newer part. When I got into my apartment there was no visible signs of damage and things seemed just like I left them. It was interesting to see how I had just thrown things into a bag and left in a hurry. Had I known I'd be gone so long I'd definitely have packed differently and left the place in order.

Some grocery stores were opened and some gas stations had limited amounts of gas. I would see lots of big trucks bringing supplies back into the city and each day things were returning to normal as restaurants and other stores would reopen. I also saw lots of scam artists at work looking to cash in on the destruction by offering to remove trees, repair roofs, and other repairs.

What most struck me was my desire to get out of New Orleans. The hurricane had scared me really bad. When that same storm reached New York, it ended up flooding the city and killing over 70 people. This thing was a beast. I had never experienced a hurricane and realized that one was enough for me. The locals? They seemed to just shrug it off. They would brag about the number of hurricanes which they had survived and simply talked about rebuilding. This all struck me as odd. It reminded me of my time in the army when a group of guys would be tasked with digging a hole. Then another group would be tasked with filling the hole back in. I was foolish enough to ask why we were digging the hole in the first place? The answer was that if we didn't then the other guys couldn't put the dirt back in. My response was that if we didn't take the dirt out in the first place, they wouldn't have to fill it back in. That was deemed stupid talk. Telling a native of New Orleans that rebuilding a house so that another hurricane can come knock it right back down was deemed stupid talk.