For just a few minutes, imagine that New Orleans is your hometown. All of your memories are there in the house you grew up in, and most of your family still lives there. You love the city with its upsides and its downsides. The beautiful old buildings, the massive, sprawling live oaks in City Park, the amazing music scene, the energy in the French Quarter – it’s all home to you.
But now, the bottom floor of your two-story house is ruined. All of your furniture rots in a heap in front of your house along with your carpet, your putrid refrigerator, your washing machine and drier and your photographs. Your house smells terrible and no matter how much you clean, you smell mold wherever you go. The insurance company representative finally arrives at your house and tells you your house must be gutted, walls and floors removed. But there are few workers in the city to help you rebuild; their waiting lists are endless, and you have nowhere else to live in the meantime.
When you leave the horror of your ruined home, you face the streets lined with endless mountains of waste that used to be valued possessions. Garbage trucks are rare miracles. You do not even get mail delivered regularly. Water marks are visible on houses: two feet, five feet, nine feet, 12 feet. The earth is literally gray because nothing could live standing in fetid water for days.
Just as the floodwaters were relentless in your house, the wind attacked the entire city with unbelievable force. The seemingly solid metal signage on buildings is evidence: Letters are gone, or are warped into twisted shapes. A billboard on the highway entering the city is bent in half and twisted, and buildings with glass windows look like checkerboards of broken windows. Blue, tarp roofs are more frequent than real roofs – a roofing company told you it would be about five years before New Orleans is completely re-roofed … but certainly not five years before the next hurricane.
Some stores are open with limited stock and limited hours. The few, brave, open restaurants have shortened hours and have only a few choices on the menu. There is not nearly enough labor in the city to staff businesses or provide the rebuilding and cleaning services that are so desperately needed.
As if the city were not nightmarish enough, there are mysterious spray-paint marks on every single house signaling a body search. It is the perfect set for a horror movie. In other neighborhoods, some homes flooded to the roof, while others were completely washed away.
This is New Orleans today. Please do not think the worst is over. Recovery is far from sight for this city that desperately needs money and people to offer any hope. Please continue to give whatever you can, whether it is time, supplies, care packages, money or simply spreading the knowledge that the people of New Orleans are still suffering deeply.
Many of us at Boston University do not have concrete summer or post-graduation plans. Consider donating a few weeks of your life to living in New Orleans, or another damaged city in the South, to help rebuild. I do not understand why our national government’s response has been so appallingly inadequate, but our faculty and students still have the ability to make a difference. There are non-profit organizations, such as churches and synagogues, that will pay your airfare if you dedicate a specific amount of time to spend in the area.