nwasianweekly.com
Dec. 2,
2006
Photo by George Liu
Tourists
inspect this damaged house in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. The
entire neighborhood was left deserted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Is New Orleans
a good vacation spot?
By Assunta Ng
Northwest Asian Weekly
Here is my dilemma: I love to travel to Mexico, but I am not thrilled about Mexican food. Any suggestions?
How about taking a cruise from New Orleans to see Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, my husband suggested.
What really got my attention was New Orleans. My eyes beamed with excitement.
When a Seattle travel agent heard our plan, she was not amused. “Personally, I wouldn’t want to go to New Orleans,” she said.
Her advice did not deter us; it actually produced the opposite effect. I was more determined than ever to go. We were in New Orleans for three days before we boarded our cruise ship Oct. 30.
Besides witnessing the impact of Hurricane Katrina, we discovered there were other things for tourists to do in New Orleans. Fascinated by the city’s more than 300 years of history and culture involving the French, Spaniards, British, Caribbean Islands and Americans, I was glad to see the French Quarter alive. Though the historical district was clean, I couldn’t help but wonder where all the people were. There were more tourists three decades ago, when I last visited New Orleans.
That explains why the cruise offered such a great deal — $499 a person for seven days, including all meals, lodging and transportation to Central America. Our four-day trip to New York last August cost us double that amount.
Both New York and New Orleans are ground zeroes, though New Orleans is 10 times worse, as several communities were flattened to the ground and thousands more lives were ruined. As many as 200,000 New Orleans homes were damaged. More than 8,000 African American businesses were affected. Whereas each 9/11 victim’s family received millions of dollars in compensation from the federal government, the companies they worked for and private donations, many hurricane victims are still without homes or financial help from the insurance companies and the government. The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimated that as many as 50,000 to 100,000 people are still living in trailers.
We joined a bus tour in New Orleans, and Katrina-damaged sites were among the highlights. Our bus driver, Ray, said the hurricane forced many residents who had lost everything to commit or contemplate suicide. Fewer than 20 psychiatrists were in the area to counsel these depressed people, he said.
When the bus approached downtown, I wondered if New Orleans had a Chinatown and whether it was all right. I also thought about the area’s Vietnamese community, which had suffered immensely. Many people don’t know that New Orleans is home to the largest Vietnamese Catholic community outside Vietnam. One in 10 people in the Vietnamese community worked in the seafood industry before the storm. Many were shrimp fishermen who had lost their homes, boats and businesses overnight. Have they rebuilt?
Misconceptions about New Orleans
What you saw on television doesn’t tell you the whole story. In fact, the network coverage probably generated more misconceptions about New Orleans’ communities than realities!
The TV stations have focused a lot on the city’s inability to function by reporting on the many businesses and hospitals that remain closed and the people who still live in trailers. Tourists naturally think: How can I have a good time in a city that is such a mess?
I met a couple from Vancouver, B.C., who was traveling aboard our cruise. The husband said a friend called him and asked if Bourbon Street in the French Quarter was underwater. How quickly rumors fly, and how terrible that outsiders believe them!
Travelers could easily conclude that the city is infested with crime, as TV cameras replay scenes of looting in New Orleans during the hurricane and the shootings that occurred afterwards. That’s inaccurate too!
Lootings happened mostly in the inner city. Ray, the bus driver, who lives in the south end of the city, across the Mississippi River, said “nothing happened” to his house. He evacuated before the hurricane and returned when the city allowed him to. The city was shut down for three months.
Some things are true: There is a labor and housing shortage. McDonald’s is paying $9.47 an hour plus a $6,000 bonus to employees who stay on for two years. But where would they live if their homes were destroyed? One apartment’s rent used to be $300 a month; it has since jumped to $900.
Guess who has the best business in New Orleans? Not restaurants. Certainly not retail shops. It was Lowe’s parking lot that was full.
Rebuilding is slow because New Orleans doesn’t have enough contractors and inspectors to meet the demands of the development boom. Everyone I met in New Orleans said government takes too long to respond and there’s too much bureaucracy. The government is still debating whether houses should be built three feet or higher above ground to prevent future flood damage.
The consensus among many New Orleanians is this: Rebuild on your own. Make the most of volunteer assistance as you put your home back in order. If you are a senior and do not have money or energy to rebuild, you have little choice but to let your house rot.
Who are the victims?
Everyone in New Orleans was hurt in some way. Ray came back without a
job because hardly anyone came to visit the city. He said tourists
started returning only a month ago.
Many storefronts and buildings in downtown and elsewhere are boarded up. Water stains can be found on all kinds of structures, a telling symbol of how long the water stood there, said the driver. All these abandoned buildings kept the tourists away, he said.
None of the 24 passengers on the bus said anything as we saw row after
row of gutted houses. The magnitude and scope of the devastation is beyond
imagination. The emptiness and silence in these areas haunt me even to
this day.
Can you imagine the city without music? Reports said musicians left the
city because they lost their homes. It is not just the homes they lived
in. What about the homes in which they performed?
The once-grand Orpheum Theatre, which housed the symphony, was completely
ruined. Surrounded by barbed-wire fencing, the theater lost its power
to bring musicians together. Ray said all of the orchestra’s musical
instruments were destroyed by water because they had been stored in the
basement. If you were one of these musicians, you would have been heartbroken,
for your instrument is like your other half.
Next to the theater was another sad story, The Fairmont New Orleans.
A month before the hurricane, the hotel had completed a $51 million remodeling
of its 700 rooms. It was completely destroyed by flooding and no one
seems to know what to do now.
Another bus driver, Cathy, who drove us to the swamps of New Orleans, told us the Fairmont hotel is located where Chinatown used to be. The last Chinatown building was sold years ago.
Now there is no Chinatown, she said. The Chinese have been assimilated into the area. I don’t know if that’s true, but I saw only one Chinese and one Japanese restaurant in New Orleans on our trip. I don’t know if it was because of the flooding that Chinese Americans left or it was the difficulty of doing business in a city where Creole cuisine dominates the restaurant culture.
Cathy said the only visible Asian community in New Orleans is the Vietnamese community, whose first residents came in 1975 after the fall of Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital.
The Vietnamese have done a good job of rebuilding their community because they are self-reliant, according to the Louisiana Weekly. About 12,000 Vietnamese lived in New Orleans.
Their rebuilding efforts were led by Father Vien Nguyen of Queen Mary of Vietnam Church, who negotiated with the city not to cut their water and electricity. He and the community organized a petition drive to show that the community was sincere in returning and rebuilding. And they did.
Recently, the Vietnamese community scored another victory when it forced Mayor Ray Nagin to give up dumping Katrina waste next to a neighborhood heavily populated by Vietnamese Americans.
As the bus moved towards a library, I was relieved to learn that it was open. Through the 2006 Rainbow Bookfest, which this newspaper organized, we received boxes of donated books for the New Orleans Public Library. We shipped them in May, when the libraries were still closed.
More than 1,000 librarians volunteered to help reopen New Orleans’ libraries, according to The New York Times. That is the spirit of America; time and again, Americans show their willingness to help strangers. Thousands of people from all over came to help the people of Louisiana after the hurricane.
Some argue that New Orleans should not be rebuilt because it’s below sea level. But New Orleans has such a rich heritage; you don’t just throw away a city, many believe. You don’t just give up 300 years of history and culture that no other U.S. city can lay claim to.
Disasters are nothing new to New Orleans. It was struck by two big fires in the 18th century, yellow fever and a civil war in the 19th century and, of course, hurricanes and floods in between. But each time New Orleans was shut down, it bounced back. The resilience of the Vietnamese community, which has rebuilt and survived, showed us the courage of New Orleanians.
What the city really needs is a sense of normalcy. If only more travelers could appreciate this unique multicultural community and more residents came home to fight the aftermath of Katrina.
Our trip was filled with abundant sunshine. What a contrast when we flew back to Seattle, where the weather was cold and wet. As soon as I turned on the electric fireplace, I felt warm and relaxed in the comfort of my home. I was reminded of the New Orleanians, especially those who are still “homeless.” We are very blessed here.
8 reasons you should visit New Orleans
* No other state has a history like Louisiana. The French sold Louisiana to the United States for $15 million in 1803. Before it was sold, the French king gave it to his cousin, the king of Spain, for fear that the British might take it away if France lost the war to Britain. The tour guide said the Americans took out a loan from a bank in England to finance the purchase. How ironic!
Since New Orleans is close to the Caribbean, the influence of island cultures can be found in its cooking, music, people and communities.
* New Orleans is the home of jazz, which began at the turn of the 20th century. Almost every lounge in the French Quarter has a live band. Many street musicians perform on the streets at night. If you like music, this is the place for you.
* All city tours include visits to Katrina-devastated areas. Although it was sad to witness the effects of the hurricane, we wanted to see for ourselves what it was really like. Don’t just believe everything you read or see on television.
* New Orleans has a remarkable history in entertainment and literature. Tour books will tell you that many movies have been filmed in New Orleans. Our tour guide pointed out the Burger King restaurant where Halle Berry worked in her Oscar-winning performance in “Monster’s Ball.” Many famous writers have lived in New Orleans, including Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and, currently, Ann Rice.
* Not all the neighborhoods were flooded during Katrina. Beautiful, historical plantation homes on the banks of the Mississippi River and in the Garden District are popular tourist destinations.
* Other points of interest include New Orleans’ scenic wetlands and the fun Mardi Gras World, a factory that makes floats for Disney and Macy’s parades and other parts of the world.
* New Orleans is not the only place where you can set sail for Central America. You can depart from Los Angeles, Texas and Florida too. But the opportunity to support New Orleans appealed to me as well as to the other passengers who sailed with us. Out of curiosity, they came to see the devastation, but they also knew their money would help the city rebuild.
* The food was delicious, from breakfast to dinner. Creole cooking is
a combination of French and Caribbean techniques. During our three days
there, we dined at many wonderful New Orleans restaurants. We knew no
one in the city, nor did we follow any guidebooks. If the menu looked
good, we just walked in.
Lessons learned from Katrina
* Make a list of things you absolutely need in emergencies. It could include money, identification, jewelry, family photos and your laptop computer.
* Create an evacuation plan for your home.
* Help others exit. Several good Samaritans used their cars and trucks to help strangers get to the New Orleans Convention Center. Carpools help prevent traffic jams.
* TV and radio stations need to help direct traffic. One New Orleans resident who used the back roads instead of freeways said he got out of the city fine.
* New Orleans now talks about implementing a new emergency evacuation plan in which cars can travel all the freeways in only one direction. That means you cannot go back and forth; you can only leave the city.
* If you are trapped inside your home without electricity and water, have enough emergency supplies, including food and water, to last at least three days.
* Do not stuff your refrigerator with food if there’s no electricity. Stock up on canned goods instead. When New Orleans shut down for months, the food in everyone’s refrigerators went bad and they became hazardous waste. The city told residents who returned not to open their fridges; they had to be discarded completely. More than 100,000 refrigerators ended up in dumping grounds.
* When New Orleans residents were told to evacuate, they weren’t asked to leave the day of the hurricane or the day before. They were told to leave up to a week in advance to prevent traffic congestion.
* In the case of New Orleans, it was not Hurricane Katrina but floods
that caused the most damage, as seen in the recent flooding in Washington
state. If you live close to the water, there is always a chance of flooding
and landslides. Get ready for the next emergency by developing an evacuation
plan.
Assunta Ng can be reached at assunta@nwasianweekly.com.
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