[Mb-civic] Our Hell in High Water - James Nolan - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Our Hell in High Water

By James Nolan
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page B01

BATON ROUGE

The real nightmare began last Wednesday morning, when the city cut off 
the water supply two days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New 
Orleans. Until then, I hadn't regretted the decision not to evacuate my 
second-story French Quarter apartment, even when the electricity flicked 
off in the middle of the storm, plunging the city into darkness and 
ending most outside communication.

I still had hope.

I'm not particularly brave, but I am a fifth-generation New Orleans 
native raised in a culture that knows how to deal with hurricanes. As a 
matter of fact, the first light I ever saw streamed from a generator at 
Hôtel Dieu, the hospital the Daughters of Charity had founded in the 
19th century. I was born there during the unnamed hurricane that wiped 
out New Orleans in September 1947, and was rowed home to the Faubourg 
Tremé along a flooded Canal Street. So as clouds darkened on Sunday 
afternoon, generations of storm folklore -- sheer instinct by now -- 
sprang into action. I filled the bathtub with water, cut the wick on the 
hurricane lamp, froze water in plastic jugs to keep the refrigerator 
cool, secured the dilapidated wooden shutters on the front gallery, 
stocked up on batteries, food and bottled drinking water, and got out 
the portable radio and the plug-in white Princess phone. Then I opened a 
bottle of wine. By the time my friends José and Claudia arrived to 
weather the storm with me, I'd cooked a three-course meal, which we 
topped off with a bottle of Spanish cognac.

"Here's to Katrina," we toasted, "the Russian spy," even as the TV 
broadcast its unrelenting instructions to evacuate, evacuate, evacuate.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/02/AR2005090202677.html?nav=hcmodule
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