Mostly Grim News From New Orleans
I spoke with PW last night. She’s currently in New Orleans preparing what’s left of her personal possessions for the trip to England. She said that she has about six changes of clothes at this point and from her descriptions, it sounds like everything she rescued can fit into four suitcases, carefully packed to not be more than 50lbs each.
She said that New Orleans is very much a cash-based economy at the moment. There aren’t a lot of working phone lines for those credit card machines. Plus, she also verified that most stores as well as post offices and government offices are only open a few hours a day. Apparently it’s a big deal that the Wal-Mart is now open until 8pm.
Not that it really matters since she’s going ahead and moving to England, but she received a letter from her employer telling her that everyone had been laid off since none of the 5 stores are currently in a condition to open.
However, she verified that everyone seems to be hiring. (One friend even emailed me that Burger King has signing bonuses of $2K to $6K if you sign on for a year.)
She had a run in with the Jefferson Parrish Police Monday. She had bought her truck the week before Hurricane Katrina hit, so it still only has a temporary licence tag, which has expired. She talked to the DMV last week and they told her that the paperwork had been caught in the flooding and it had been sent elsewhere to be sorted, etc. They told her that she should call back this week and that if she got pulled over, she should explain this to the police and have them call the DMV.
A police officer pulled her over on Monday, hauled her out of the truck, made her put her hands on the hood and everything and refused to call the DMV. He told her that she couldn’t drive the truck with the expired temp tag, ripped up the tag, and fortunately left. She drove over to the auto dealership where she bought the truck and they fortunately gave her a new temp tag.
Since she’s leaving in less than 2 weeks anyway, she’ll probably just sell the truck back to the dealership. The license probably still won’t be there.
Really, it’s quite ridiculous that the police officer wasn’t just a tad more understanding. She had paperwork in the vehicle to back up her story. Of course, with other stories I’m hearing, she’s lucky she’s not on a chain gang somewhere.
My friend who told me about Burger King also verified that the stories about the “prisoner camps” and chain gangs is quite true. He basically said that you shouldn’t go into New Orleans alone and you shouldn’t go in after dark at all.
Oh, and PW said that Metairie and the area of New Orleans she’d been to have a horrible stench. People are using the neutral grounds (that’s a median for the rest of you) as trash dumps. There’s garbage everywhere and with no mosquito control spraying regularly, it’s gotten nasty even in the areas that didn’t flood.
They still haven’t been able to find the landlord who’s business and home phones ring unanswered and who has not been to the building at all — when most landlords are actively trying to get tenants to move their stuff out so bulldozing and reconstruction can begin quickly. PW thinks he might be one of the bodies.
tags: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
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