OxfordPress.com

New Orleans pummeled by hurricane, but avoided the worst

NEW ORLEANS — About an hour after the rain finally stopped, Shronette Davis emerged from the French Quarter hotel where she had weathered Hurricane Katrina to get her first glimpse of a severely beaten city.

She walked with her 14-year-old daughter along Bourbon Street — both dressed in flip-flops and sweats from a long campout in a hotel banquet room — stopping every few feet to take in the devastation. They saw sidewalks and streets littered with signs, roof tiles and bricks from the façade of buildings.

ERIC GAY/AP Photo (enlarge photo) An SUV is seen crushed by bricks after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Monday.

Then, she offered a simple evaluation.

"It's going to take so much money to repair this stuff," said Davis, who used the stroll to prepare herself for similar — or worse — damage at her home on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

Throughout Monday afternoon, dozens of people would make the similar passage throughout the historic tourist destination, marveling both at the damage the hurricane had delivered, and the damaged it had spared.

Forecasters had said that a direct hit from the hurricane could have brought untold, catastrophic destruction, including 18 feet of water in parts of downtown.

"We're actually pretty blessed," said Tripp Frasch, who lives in an apartment on Dauphine Street, where he weathered Katrina. "If the storm had been 50 miles to the west, this would have been unthinkably bad.

"We wouldn't be standing here right now."

Fire trucks moved through the French Quarter on Monday afternoon, hauling debris out of the way, and in some cases aided by shop owners, restaurateurs or residents.

An employee at the legendary Pat O'Brien's said the courtyard at the bar, which made famous the Hurricane alcohol beverage, had received moderate damage but should be easily repaired.

At Maison Bourbon, a jazz club off St. Peter's Street, bartender Zach Tamburriano said he hopes power is restored by this weekend for the Southern Decadence festival, an event that attracts thousands of gay men from across the country.

It already has been a slow summer, he said, and the bar staff was hoping to regain lost revenue.

"Lots of our employees are out of town, and we don't know if they are going to be able to make it back," Tamburriano said.

Among people such as Davis, who had not returned to their homes, some were reluctant to brave debris-filled streets that had become creeks. Others said they already knew they couldn't make it — even if they tried.

Instead, Jeffrey and Kim Hebert stood on a sidewalk covered in broken glass along Poydras Street downtown, gazing upward at the dozens of windows that had been shattered at the Hyatt hotel.

The Heberts had sought shelter at the hotel, trying to remain calm in a conference room with other guest during storm.

"It's like a war," Kim Hebert said, looking at the sight of broken windows. "I feel like I've been in Iraq all day."

The Heberts said they had understood from news reports and a friend who is a town official that their home in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette likely was under water. They wondered if any of their belongings could be saved.

"We just don't know what we are going home to," said Kim Hebert, who recently retired from working for the Hilton Hotel chain.

To the east of the French Quarter in the 9th Ward neighborhood, where water stood several feet high along some streets and where New Orleans police were forced to siphon gas from other cars to keep generators at a hospital working, Patricia Batist had her answer.

Gone, she said. Everything.

"It's all floating," Batist said.

Batist never planned to leave her home in the lower level of a two-story rowhouse. When water started rising, she went to her upstairs neighbor's unit until the storm had moved through.

She has no insurance, she said.

"Please, help me, Lord, help me Jesus," she said.

As the day drew to a close, and as more people began packing the French Quarter, Tim Drescher snapped pictures of some of the debris from a camera draped around his neck.

"Honestly," he said, "with it being a category five, I can't say I'm that impressed with the damage I'm seeing."

And no, he says, he's not complaining.

Tony Plohetski writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: tplohetski@statesman.com