Flood Line and other Inscriptions of a Storm – The Urgency to Rebuild

Our trajectory through the vastness of the devastated New Orleans by car followed a line – blurry, brown, wide, thin yet so evident as if a drawn line on the elevation of the city, every neighborhood, every house, business, structure seemed to bear this mark… a line, at times bold at times fading, at times gone. The line traversed the city on this horizontal plane as continuous yet sometimes dashed – dashed as it began to intermittently, seldom disappear behind new paint or pressure washing.

Nonetheless, it was always there present as we traversed the city, there marking and reminding us of the outstanding height of the flood of Hurricane Katrina which submerged the city more than a year ago. The height of the line also dropped and raised as we moved from neighborhood to neighborhood revealing to us visually and dramatically the topography of a city recently under water. Its height on each neighborhood shifted up and down - the height of a person, the height of a house. This section line which dissected the city horizontally marked belongings submerged, gone – washed away, disintegrated, molded.


Other marks also populated the surfaces of the city – ranging from rescuer notes on facades of houses to the markings of residents’ outcries and messages. The rescuer notes indicated the date and group which surveyed the house after the storm as well as if any bodies were found. As a kind of postscript other messages where added which indicated if a dead dog or other pet possibly was found in or more often under the house. The outcries of the residents ranged from informational to informational yet sarcastic like “my cat are fed, don’t rescue them” to FEMA critiques, to “house for sale”. The shells which bear this text, this line and other scars of the storm – dislodged sliding, torqued roofs, broken windows… disembodied structures, encased objects are former dwellings… empty, open, moldy, stripped.

White, barren, trailers at times occupied the in-between lots or front yards of these homes as temporary living structures for the out rooted families – FEMA trailers, yet many of these also stood empty. Without the infrastructure to provide life - sitting unhooked, without electricity or plumbing… months and months after their arrival.

There was a kind of abstraction to all of this devastation. The magnitude of a city overtaken by these markings of the catastrophe of the hurricane which took place more than a year ago became repetitive and numbing. So much we saw that at times a perception of normality began to overcome our experience as we moved through the city.

However, we had the opportunity to meet several residents who while devastated were still with spirit and hope to rebuild. Talking to them gave us a glimpse into the reality of this line which submerged the city. Diane who was smiling and somewhat upbeat earlier during our first meeting became quiet and subdued upon entering her house – now moldy, abandoned… empty, without walls, without objects. Later at her mother’s house, Mrs. Tilton, destroyed and now overcome by nature, she told us “we grew up here”.

We discovered that the intermittent line – the fading line is really still there. Some of her friends Diane told us, superficially cleaned off the line – took off the mold with chorine and moved back in. Seeing the exposed structure of Diane’s house impregnated with green, brown, black fussy matter made us wonder how those families could possibly breathe and live in such environment.

On the attic a few objects were evident yet Diane told me that the few things she had been able to lift and store up high were later stolen by another phase of the storm – looting. Mrs. Tilton spoke of her chandelier having been cut out of the ceiling by intruders who walked into their exposed home.

Another mark inscribed the topography of New Orleans. It caught Mrs. Tilton attention while we were talking - truck marks in the backyard of her property. The latest physical lost – minimal to all rest that has been lost, families, friends, neighbors, life’s belongings - the clean up being performed by the city took whatever they found floating about. In this case the clean up involved some belongings found spilling out of Mrs. Tilton broken and exposed storage space behind her house.

The vastness of what we saw, empty and scarred and the conversations that we had with some of the residents of Hollygrove Earl, Diane, Harvey, and Mrs. Tilton as well as other community members who are so eager to rebuild left me (us) with a feeling of urgency to move so much more quickly. It is not just one house but thousands which need to be raised quickly to get neighbors, communities back home.