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By Susan Krinsky, JD
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I was asked recently to write something about how Hurricane Katrina affected Tulane and New Orleans, and I jumped at the chance. Do you know how things can happen in your life that permeate every thought, every aspect of your being, every level of your existence? That's what has happened here. As I write this, it is almost 12 months since tens of thousands of New Orleans residents began their evacuation. And I wonder, still, is there anything that hasn't been affected?
A day doesn't go by that there isn't some commentary related to the Katrina/Rita aftermath on NPR or CNN or in the New York Times. Here in New Orleans, when we encounter someone for the first time since last August, we don't say hello or how are you, we say "How did you do?"
And everyone knows that is the cue to say, "I had 5 feet or water, but we're re-building," or "I lost my house, but we're managing okay," or "We were really lucky--just needed a new roof." Sometimes I think I can be objective, because my family and I were so fortunate. We did not lose any family members or close friends, and the physical damage to our house was, all things considered, minimal.
Today, I can go about my daily routine—from home to work to grocery store to Audubon Park, and so on—and I can almost believe that nothing happened, until I’m stopped dead in my tracks by any number of reminders—like the ubiquitous waterlines or the FEMA trailers or the evidence of gutted homes. You see, I live in the "aisle of denial", also known as the "sliver by the river"—lately, I've heard the term "high-grounder" used to refer to those of us who were fortunate enough to live within a few blocks of the Mississippi River.
Let me tell you quickly about the geography of New Orleans. Think of a somewhat-irregularly-shaped bowl. The edge of the bowl is made up of the Mississippi River to the south, some not-very-high ridges of land on the west, Lake Pontchartrain on the north, and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (to oversimplify—a lot of swamp-land) to the east. So maybe it's really a sort-of one-sided bowl. It turns out that the highest ground is toward the south, along the river. Imagine, now, that this "bowl" fills up with water—I mean, really fills up, so quickly that the world-class pump systems couldn't pump the water back into the lake even if the electricity hadn't gone out.
You've probably read descriptions of what happened in New Orleans, and you've probably seen photographs or videos. If you haven't, I urge you—I beg you—to go to www.cleanno.org , and click on "MUST SEE VIDEO of Devastated New Orleans" in the upper right-hand corner. You won't ever forget this.
I'm not going to talk about the politics or the failures of every level of government or the hell that broke loose. But I do want to give you a flavor of what it was like to think you were leaving home for two or three days, just to be prudent, out of an abundance of caution, even though you really thought your husband was overreacting by insisting that you drive to Monroe, and to find out 36 hours later that you couldn't go back. Maybe for a few months, maybe not ever.
About that husband, who in order to ensure that he would be in Chicago to teach the finance portion of PIM I on Tuesday, caught one of the last planes out of New Orleans on Sunday. He then spent Monday watching CNN and wondering what was left, grateful that he had convinced his wife to drive north.
A day later, the decision was made to continue driving north, to Chicago, and there ACPE and its members and course attendees stepped up to the plate. We had, of course, left home with just a few days’ worth of medications. The Illinois-licensed attendees brought prescription pads and helped us get through what might otherwise have been a very uncomfortable situation.
The sudden loss of everything--home, work, community--was the most traumatic and pervasive emotion many of us will ever experience. It is as though the ground on which you are standing has suddenly turned to Jello, or maybe has disappeared altogether. And you don't know what to do--do you try to figure out where to go and where to live?
Or do you devote your energy to your college-age child who lives in Boston and is the only member of the family who has all of her belongings and knows where she is going to be living, but has fallen apart because of what has happened to the city where she grew up? Or do you try to figure out what to do about your 10th grader who, oh I almost forgot, is supposed to go to school?
Do you devote energy to trying to learn whether the floodwaters or the looters or the fires have reached your neighborhood? Or do you figure out what to do about 1,000 law students who are—well, actually you don't really know where they are. Or where any of your colleagues or faculty or staff are either. And did I mention that there's no way to reach anyone, because the cell phone towers were toppled and cell phones don't work, and the e-mail system no longer works either?
So what did we do? Virtually immediately, we got to work—on survival and restoring operations and ensuring that there would be a future. We started recruiting a new class. Some of us were tasked with the university's recovery. Some of us were tasked with making sure we would have applicants who might become enrolled students. The storm hit on August 29th. By the next week, right after Labor Day, we were at recruiting events, hoping we were telling the truth when we explained that Tulane had not been hit too hard.
In fact, Tulane and Loyola could likely have re-opened just 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina had there not been the little problem of an unreliable water supply and sewage system—the first-order amenities. The universities have generators, so power was not a problem. On-campus housing wasn't really a problem. But finding housing for faculty and staff who lost homes, having a reliable food supply, having K-12 schools for faculty and staff children—all the second-order amenities as we came to call them—that was the sticking point.
As a result, the decision was made to close for the semester, and devote close to 24/7 for over four months to making sure we could re-open with a robust academic program and social life in January—and simultaneously make sure we would have new students starting the following August.
Tulane and Loyola are in very good shape physically. The other New Orleans universities were less fortunate. Dillard University's campus was under water, and Tulane's administration made the decision to partner with Dillard to make sure it would be able to open in January. Dillard's students lived in the Hilton Hotel downtown, and they attended classes in office buildings, at the Hilton, and on the Tulane campus.
Xavier University's campus was under water, and Xavier made the decision to open as soon as it could and continue classes through the summer. The University of New Orleans's campus and Southern University of New Orleans's campus were under water, and both made the decision to open when they could, often relying on distance learning courses.
Interestingly, some businesses are suffering, and others are doing more business than they ever could have imagined. The scarce resource in New Orleans is labor (well, also sheetrock, but sometimes I think we would trade the sheetrock for waiters and waitresses and construction workers and retail workers). Burger King and Wendy's are offering $6,000 signing bonuses to employees who stay for a year.
The new minimum wage in New Orleans (never a bastion of liberal thinking) is $10 per hour. Many of our favorite restaurants have re-opened, and new ones are popping up all over—often with limited hours and limited days and paper plates—but it's the food New Orleans is known for. Any construction-related business is booming (along with the previously unknown, but now all-too-familiar, mold remediators). Close behind are landscapers and retailers of major appliances.
You may have read, or heard, that our judicial system was at a virtual stand-still. In almost every case, the federal courts operated out of other cities. But our state and local courts could not and did not. Civil courts are back up and running. In the criminal justice system, the overwhelming problems associated with a flooded courthouse and evidence room were compounded by a rather extraordinary interpersonal conflict between the clerk of criminal court and, it seemed, every public official in the city. We were simultaneously horrified and breathless with anticipation about what could possibly happen next.
Yet the system is getting back on its uncertain feet. My own analysis is that the prosecution of pre-Katrina criminal cases may be permanently undermined, but new prosecutions going forward are in better shape. On the defense side, however, the public defender system—never particularly robust—was virtually gutted due to the disappearance of funding. Tulane’s criminal defense clinic, Loyola’s clinical program, and volunteers from law schools and other organizations across the country are beginning to work on critical solutions.
A day does not go by that we don’t hear from law firms in New Orleans that they need to hire more lawyers immediately. Law firms in New Orleans are swamped, and the word on the street is that they expect to be swamped for the next ten years with the wide variety of insurance and other issues that emerged after the almost unbelievable series of events that took place here and all across the Gulf Coast.
New Orleans has become a place where the largely failed public school system (and I feel that I can say that, because my children have attended public school since 1990) has the potential to become a world-class public school system. Whatever you think about charter schools—and I don't believe they are necessarily a solution on a long-term basis—we are for the first time looking at public schools that are offering families viable and positive and exciting choices.
New Orleans has become a place where you can make a difference just by showing up. Thousands and thousands of volunteers have come here to help. I am moved on a daily basis by the out-pouring of support of all kinds. But more importantly, young people are moving here. They are coming, and they are staying, and they are getting involved in the physical rebuilding and the re-creation of every single kind of system.
The Student Hurricane Network, co-founded by Tulane and other law students, is keeping hundreds of law students from throughout the country busy working on an extraordinary array of legal issues. Public schools are swamped with applications from bright and committed young people who want to teach.
Our law school applicant pool has been transformed virtually overnight. From a critical mass of prospective students who wanted to come here because, well, because it's New Orleans, it's laid-back, there are distractions, it will be fun to live there for three years and then go back to the real world—now I am looking at an applicant pool of the most committed and interested people I could imagine. These are individuals who want to live here because they want to make a difference. They want to be a part of the re-building and renewal of an extraordinary American city. They see potential, and they want to participate.
Certainly, there are days when I wonder if things will ever be "normal" again, whatever normal was. I wonder whether they will ever get the trash picked up, whether the abandoned and flooded cars will be removed, whether a critical mass of people who lived in St. Bernard Parish, and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and Lakeview, will be able to create vibrant neighborhoods again. Whether the empty store-fronts will be filled, whether our city, state, and federal governments will ever get it together.
But we've seen progress—and this will show you how you get to appreciate the little things. The post office has not only started delivering first-class mail (for many months, the way we got mail was to go to the post office and stand in line—a good opportunity to get to know our neighbors), but it has even started delivering periodicals. No catalogues yet (a blessing, perhaps), but The New Yorker arrives each week now.
Traffic lights—they're back. We in New Orleans had gotten really good at 4-way stops—and I'll tell you, when the power goes out, we know what to do. Trash pick-up sometimes takes place on the same day of the week for two or three weeks in a row. I haven't seen a duct-taped refrigerator out on a curb in weeks now. The supermarkets aren't at 24 hours yet, but every few weeks they add another hour to closing time.
The music is back and better than ever. And so is the food. And along with those things is a new and deeper appreciation of life and of all the things New Orleans means to so many people.
Susan Krinsky, JD, is an associate dean and lecturer at Tulane University Law School. She is married to ACPE Faculty Member Hugh Long, MBA, JD, PhD. She can be reached at skrinsky@tulane.edu