|
New Orleans after Katrina: Back to Stone Age
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-07 08:59
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana -- The 21st century was swept away here. The
winds and the floods and the disasters that followed took it.
Robert Fonteaine
holds his puppy, Gangster, as he watches New Orleans firefighters try to
save his house after it caught fire on the east side of the city Tuesday.
Fonteaine's house was a total loss. [AP] | Some
strange, more primitive time took its place, amid the useless computers and cars
of the modern world. Those stranded were left behind to forage for food and
water, share what little they have with neighbors, and find somewhere safe
before night falls.
"Say goodbye to the Jetsons," Aaron Broussard, president of next-door
Jefferson Parish, told residents on the all-night radio station and news
lifeline. "We're back to the Flintstones."
Life is hand-to-mouth, if it continues at all. On Rampart Street on the edge
of the French Quarter, a wooden handcart became a funeral bier. An elderly man's
dead body was left atop it, wrapped in a shroud made from a child's bedsheet and
tied with twine.
Still, many survive, emerging from their homes determined to find ways to
stay alive. A shopping cart is a wonderful tool -- mobile, lightweight, the
basket high enough to stay above the foul-smelling puddles. A woman used one to
move her family's belongings to a ramshackle sidewalk camp. Then her children
turned it into a jungle gym.
On the edge of the very poor Ninth Ward along the Intracoastal Waterway, a
man and women wade stomach-deep, pushing a rowboat to a higher, drier stretch of
grass. They scavenge for whatever might be useful -- a bucket that won't leak, a
solid piece of wood, tools.
A block or two away, where the water drops to knee-deep, to puddles, and then
to dry land, the scene recalls a movie set of a war zone. Abandoned buses line a
larger avenue, one every few blocks. A building burned to the ground smolders. A
charred car, its front doors gone, sits in an intersection.
"We've all got guns," said Katha Fields, who lives down the street. Weeks
ago, when this city was a place of tourists and jazz and jambalaya, she was a
tour guide. Now, she and her neighbors gather at dusk, weapons at hand, and keep
watch.
They're all getting a lesson in how to live without.
|
 | | | Rescue continues in New Orleans | | |  | | | Egyptian presidential election campaigns conclude | | |  | | | Bush orders more troops to secure New Orleans | | |
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
