sunday afternoon tour

As I mentioned in our post about Sunday, we were offered an unforgettable tour of the Lower 9th Ward by our coordinator Nick. We had no idea what this "tour" would consist of but we were up and open for anything. Nick came to New Orleans in 2006 as part of a service group from his college in Minnesota, it was then that he fell in love with the city and felt like it was a place he needed to be. He has lived here for a little over a year and will leave for medical school in Cuba in August...a really cool guy. So we loaded up in three cars and he told us that we would follow him to three different sites.



You have never seen a person more passionate about a place, a people and a problem. Nor a person keeping a fine balance of the harsh reality of the situation and devoting his days to making it better.

We first went to the edge of the Holy Cross section of the Lower 9th on the banks of the Mississippi River. He took us to what he kept referring to as a "good levee"...ultimately the levee that held during the storm. This was one that functioned properly, but in the most eye opening and factual description he explained how the levee system is supposed to work and how the levee system failed on August 29, 2005.



It is also important to realize that when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans it was only a Category Two...barely a threat. It was at this point, our first stop on this tour, that we learned that the City of New Orleans did not suffer at the hand of a natural disaster, they are continuing to suffer at the hand of the Army Core of Engineers.

He also told of the distress and violence between an adjoining parish just over the bridge you see in the picture below. There are several accounts that many groups of African Americans, who were stranded in the Lower 9th with their houses under water, started walking miles and miles to cross the bridge in order to find any help, any humanity. They were approached by armed law enforcement telling them to go back or they would shoot them....and shots were fired and people were killed.



There has been no investigation and this is certainly nothing we heard on the news, eh?

Our second stop was along the levee that did not hold and where the popular Make It Right 9 housing has begun {organization started by Brad Pitt}. This levee did not function properly and the water that overflowed wiped out the houses a multiple mile radius.



There was a shipping barge found sitting within a group of houses and many authorities claimed that the barge came loose and busted through the levee which caused the wall to collapse. However, after investigation it was determine that the levee broke first which allowed a natural pathway of water for the barge to float on land.

Our third and final stop was at the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle. This plot of land {that is in the shape of a triangle} started as a swamp in the 1930's filled with a plethora of living plants and animals. In the mid 20th century the US Army Corps of Engineers decided to build a channel to serve as a more efficient and direct avenue of travel for ships between Lake Ponchatrain and the Gulf of Mexico. This canal was called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR.GO).



The MRGO never functioned as planned and simultaneously the wetlands were destroyed as it filled with salt water and killed all the plants and animals. It ultimately became a body of water that created incredible storm surges during Katrina and inevitably flooded the area around it.



Due to numerous engineering failures and other issues it was advised to close down the canal prior to Katrina, however it was not. The MRGO is now shut down, after the disaster, and they are going to try to pump it with fresh water in an attempt to revive the habitat.



Nick shared truths and stories that were shocking and unbelievable. His knowledge, passion and devotion to sharing the facts and not sugar coating the situation was humbling and heart wrenching. We were incredibly thankful for his enthusiasm and the time he took to give our group this unique tour.