As of this Monday, my friend is back in her home in New Orleans after over a month on the run. Her home survived, though it did get the mandantory spray painted government symbols on their newly painted front door (why not on the plywood over the windows she wondered), and they did have to replace their refrigerator which sat idle with the electiricity off for weeks (did you know they are not actually airtight, flies & bugs can get inside, yuck). But it was not a good refrigerator anyway and was leaking on my last visit. They have elecricity and air conditioning, and running water but it is still not drinkable (she says it smells like dirt). Her cats don't understand why they can't drink from the faucet or play with ice cubes, though.
The city is under a curfew of 8 pm, so they're sort of trapped in their own home. And my friends are "going out" kind of people - breakfast, lunch and dinner. Shopping and movies. At nights the city is silent, only a few neighbors have returned, the few businesses that have been able to reopen have to close early. The streetcar line runs right in front of her house but the streetcars and buses are not running. An occasional military vehicle will drive down the street, spotlighting the houses (oops, last call for the corner bar which is open).
The last time I visited was in July, a few days before Hurricane Dennis. I slept on an air mattress in their upstairs study which faced the street, and I had forgotten my Ambien and lay awake for like four hours even though I was exhausted. The lights and noise from the street never stopped. Constant cars flying by, the streetcars clanging till late in the night, tourists and college students walking in front of the house laughing and talking, music drifitng in from the businesses less than a block away...
The swamp is trying to reclaim the city. In tropical climates like New Orleans and Houston, we get trucks regularly spraying for mosquitoes, nightly in the peak of summer. But the mosquitoes are swarming, breeding like crazy from the standing water. My friend grew up in a little town just outside of New Orleans, she said it's like being in the country. Quiet and dark and still except for the buzz of the insects. This summer they built a fountain in their back courtyard and this week she bought some goldfish to eat the mosquito eggs and other critters which have been moving into the pool since they left, it seems to be helping.
Her handyman brother came in from Germany to help with her mother's house, which got about three feet of water inside of it even though she's just a few miles away, most of her mom's furniture and personal belongings were upstairs. He and her husband have been over there during the day starting on the cleanup and trying to repair her mom's brand new generator (bought in anticipation of Dennis), which also got water in it. Her mom is staying in another aunt's house near the airport (where everyone seems to be judging by the traffic), with another of her brother's who has not been able to move back into his home. The water is drinkable there, she says she's having to take her baby there to bath her safely. She has two mini storage rooms she has been unable to get into (one first floor and one upstairs) because the company that runs them has not reopened yet. She knows the downstairs one was flooded, but in early August they moved a bunch of furniture they had been storing while the living room was painted back into their home, but she says there is still a lot of stuff in there.
She said the entire city looks like a child's play set that has been kicked around - a couple of houses will be fine, then the next one the roof or the second story will be torn off. Massive trees are still down all over, when I was there in July there were still some trees down from the storm just before Dennis... How are people supposed to keep up? (And how the hell do people manage to live in Florida this time of year?) I asked her where her mail was being forwarded to and she said she hadn't even gotten around to forwarding it yet. She was going to forward it to Beaumont, but then Rita chased them back into Louisiana.
Through it all, though, she says her baby is actually sleeping pretty well, now. She's going to have the most resilient child after all of this. I told her baby Arianne will think she's a gypsy from all the moving around. Hopefully they're back home for good now...