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Survivors’ stories
An absorbing article in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Anatomy of a Flood: 3 Deadly Waves” (not online), tells individual stories of people who underwent the catastrophic flooding in eastern New Orleans that began prior to the breaking of the Lake Ponchartrain levee. People opening their front doors and having four feet of water rushing into their living rooms; people having cars crashing into their houses; a father and son who left their flooded house in a small boat, abandoned it because they couldn’t control it in the hurricane winds, and survived by clinging to the eaves of a house; a woman who spent the night perched on the dresser in her second floor bedroom that was flooded with three feet of water; and a former New Orleans resident from across Lake Ponchartrain who came across the lake in a boat after the hurricane passed and rescued survivors.
For the people undergoing it, a flood like this is like the end of the world. One minute you’re in your house, in your familiar world, the next minute your world is overwhelmed by this massively superior force, everything is covered over, washed away, broken to pieces, and you’re struggling to survive. Email entry |