Evacuteer: Preparing New Orleans for Hurricane Season

A Painting by Linda Langhorst

Image source: Noladder.blogspot.com

I write a lot about New Orleans. I’ve only ever read about it or seen movies about it. The show Treme is one of my favorite programs on television. It’s a little strange to have such a deep love and respect for a place you’ve never been. New Orleans looms large in my imagination—the music, the culture, Mardi Gras, the French Quarter—all conspire to create this legendary, mystical realm in my mind.

Katrina’s Legacy: Green Spaces

A Home in the Lower Ninth, Covered in Overgrowth

Image source: Astudiointhewoods.org

New Orleans has been through a lot. Katrina famously demolished whole neighborhoods while residents, many of them poor, suffered. Some of the storm’s effects were immediate—massive flooding, cut-off emergency services, a lack of clean water or food—and others were longer-lasting—water-borne illness, violence born of desperation, lost insurance coverage, and unemployment (to name a few). Today parts of the city are still underwater, if metaphorically. The Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods because of the failed levees, has become a jungle… literally. As residents fled, streets were left without tending, and, in time, nature has taken over.

St. Bernard Project: Katrina Matters

SBP Volunteers Working to Paint and Rebuild a Flood-Damaged Home

Image source: Mydmai.destinationmarketing.org

In my last post I wrote about a voluntour organization that remembers—they are committed to continuing rebuilding efforts in Haiti while many other organizations have moved on. Today I’d like to focus on another sustained effort I read about in AFAR, this time on domestic soil. The St. Bernard Project works with volunteers in Louisiana, continuing the vast rebuilding effort in the extended wake of Hurricane Katrina.