re: Craziest/Shadiest/Scariest thing you saw in Katrina Aftermath

There was a homeless tent camp set up across from City Hall in New Orleans a few months after the storm. Two homeless guys passed me, and I heard one tell the other, "The drainage canal was 14' deep, but the sheet piles for the flood wall only went 10 feet into the ground. I'm not an engineer, and even I know that won't work." Homeless guys in New Orleans were smarter than the ACOE!

I put more than my fair share of fridges at the street. Always thought it was funny when people threw up after the juice poured on their feet when it tipped up.

I cleaned out a bunch of different houses that were flooded. After the first three days of doing, the sinus infection feelings subsided, and I got used to the smell.

I was in the dirty Dell when the guard was still pushing trees out of the roads. Couldn't get into my mom's hood, but I had to go to her friend's house in Indian Village to get important paperwork. There weren't too many trees in the road, I cut enough to make it through, and I had to put it in 4lo to drive through the mud. Behind my truck, the rear end scraped a clean path in the mud. Looked like someone ran a dozer over it.

Got to where too many trees were in the road for me to cut, and walked the rest of the way. The mud further in was like 3ft deep. When I got to her house, I couldn't open the door because of the mud, so I had to break a window to get in and get the papers.

That was the same hood with the Benz stuck on a branch 25ft up an oak tree.

I thought my mom's house off of Military Rd just got regular floodwater in it. Turns out, it was seawater. We had salt water flowing through the house. The metal appliances were corroding and rusting withing two weeks.

Also had a tornado rip right through the property. It went maybe 30 yards from the house, and even twisted three pine trees around each other like a rope. Other than a tiny pine tree on the chimney (and 6ft of water), the house was perfectly fine. Kinda makes me wish I would've been there to experience it

I've got two that happened in central Arkansas at my families cabin rental business.

During the storm a group of young people arrived and rented our largest place. They had a shite ton of luggage which we figured was just because of the evacuation. After two days one of them asked if they could use my garage to work on his car before they headed out. After they left the apartment was covered with weed debris and bits of vacuum bags.

A truck pulling a boat with a flat trailer tire pulled into my drive. The coonass driver said I could have whats in the boat if he could leave it parked at my place for a while. I glanced in the boat and it was filled to the brim with top shelf booze. The boat stayed at my house for 8 months.

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How many cops deserted?

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Those that deserted where better than the ones I encountered riding around in an Escalade truck full of loot

I was at LSU after Katrina. Some of the things I remember:

Military vehicles all over south Louisiana, including helicopters overhead going back and forth to the Mississippi coast and New Orleans.

Population of Baton Rouge doubling overnight as people bunked with friends/relatives or stayed in hotels. Everything was crowded. There wasn't an escape from that.

Massive increase in airline traffic at BTR.

Many grocery stores and gas stations in Baton Rouge being out of food/gas by noon almost every day for a while.

College Drive Wal Mart fencing off part of their parking lot and using it as storage for extra inventory. That place was bursting at the seams with customers even at 2AM.

Car dealers in Baton Rouge and Lafayette running out of new cars to sell after the storm.

Triage unit at PMAC and shelter at River Center.

Increase in crime with a lot of very desperate people all over the place.

Insane amount of traffic at all hours of the day, long lines everywhere you went. It seemed like there was gridlock all over the place, made worse by a lot of trees down, power outages (that seemed to last for weeks) and cleanup occurring.

All apartment, retail, and office space being leased up very quickly in Baton Rouge, creating a spike in real estate prices.

Constant presence of national media all over the region.

Seeing the damage in New Orleans for the first time - especially around Jackson Barracks- was pretty crazy.

A short time later, Houston residents took Hurricane Rita very seriously - so many more evacuated into Baton Rouge. There was traffic jambs on I-10 west of town so bad that people were running out of gas and abandoning their cars. Many of those people had evacuated to Houston from New Orleans for Katrina.





Despite all of that, I think the overwhelming majority of people were patient, understanding, empathetic, and cooperative under those circumstances. The people of my Louisiana made me proud despite the media focusing only on the negative.

I hope that it doesn't happen again, but if it does, I think Baton Rouge and Lafayette are more capable of hosting evacuees than before.

Decomp.

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Remember the couple who wouldn't leave the Quarter and became somewhat celebrities for a day or two? He ended up cooking her in a pot and then did a high dive off the Wyndham on canal

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Holy shite, I read a whack arse article about this “Haunted House” in the Quarter that was very debated. Many people didn’t think it should be open because it was the site of a murder scene and many of the items from the scene were still displayed and items left as they were.
The guy was Vet with PTSD , alcoholism and drug abuse if I remember correctly?
Can’t be that many guys that killed their girlfriend then took a leap in the Quarter soon after Katrina

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r, "The drainage canal was 14' deep, but the sheet piles for the flood wall only went 10 feet into the ground

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The sheet piles were capped by concrete. I don't remember how deep they went into the ground but I remember wondering who thought that was an acceptable design?
I laid out portions of the new wall in the lower ninth ward. I don't think it's going anywhere.

Probably one of the strangest things for me was a conversation I had with our national sales manager. He had been traveling and not really paying attention to news. He lived in Ohio. New Orleans was part of my sales territory. A couple of days after the storm my boss in Houston asked me write up a general synopsis of the impact Katrina would have on business. The National guy got it and responded that it was over stated and that our accounts still need product and he wanted to talk to me. I called him and he started in on me. After about a minute, I interrupted him a gently said “ Sir, the businesses are gone”. Dead silence. Then he said he would get back to me. Sure enough, he called back, apologized and began calling me every week asking what he could do to help. I appreciated him for doing that but a man in his position should have been more aware of what was going on.