The history of the waters of New Orleans

Today we embarked on a journey no one was expecting. While looking through the hotel information binder, we saw an ad for Cajun Pride Tours. It sounded interesting so we checked it out online. After looking at everything they had to offer, we decided to go on a Swamp tour with a City/Cemetery tour afterwards. Our van picked us up to take us to the swamp tour. We were excited, little did we know we were going to meet a very informative, nice, outgoing, opinionated driver/tour guide named Kathy. Within minutes she started telling us the real story behind Katrina. She even took us the “long way” to the swamp tour so we could see a little behind the scenes look at some small sections of the communities that was affected. Words can’t express the sad nature these homes are in still 2 years later!!! Kathy then proceeded to tell us her story.

Kathy’s Story: First let me say that Kathy was still very upset about the Katrina aftermath so I think some of her story may have been a little exaggerated for us to get the picture. She has been a tour guide for New Orleans for 27 years. When Katrina hit, she and her father had to get out. The National Guard made everyone move out with barely having time to grab clothes. Before heading out she got injured. Her foot was so bad she had to go to the hospital which was situated in the Lord & Taylor store! They made their way to northern Louisiana where they had family. Soon they were able to return but to what did they return to?

Little did they know, their lives would be more interrupted than you could imagine. 3 months of no power!! Grocery stores gone, banks covered in water, no working hospitals to speak of and schools ruined. Their homes: indescribable. They were told not to touch their refrigerators because they could very easily get Ebola poisoning. They were also instructed to get them out of the house as quickly as possible. Because of that hundreds of refrigerators sat in the middle of the street. Not to mention the homes, well at least hers and the ones most affected, had mold everywhere and who knows what else. So where did Kathy go? After basically threatening the White House by telling them of her handicap and her interviews with CNN, and after 9 months had passed, Kathy got a FEMA Trailer. Now just a couple months ago she was told that there are extremely high levels of formaldehyde. She was also just told that she now has to find a new place to live. Kathy started looking for a new place to rent and guess what, the prices have skyrocketed! Her old place used to be $500 a month – now a few of the same units are $1400! Residents are having a hard time buying houses because the unaffected areas raised their prices and mortgage companies don’t want to give residents in this area mortgages because of the risk. If you are lucky enough to get a mortgage, you can’t buy a house because the cost of insurance can reach up to $10,000 a year.

The moral of Kathy’s story is that 2 years later, there are sections of New Orleans that are still not searched for people. There are still around 150 people unaccounted for. Thousands among thousands of people who had to leave New Orleans will never come back. So how does a town recover?? Only time will tell!

Now on to the swamp tour!
Many of the pictures will describe the fun we had! We sat on a pontoon boat while looking around at alligators. We even got involved a little! I believe the following pictures will be self explanatory!



The swamp









Cory feeding the gator










Ramona, Bill and Kim feeding the raccoons marshmallows!













Then we all met Junior!














City/Cemetery Tour: Kathy is back for this portion as she was our tour guide. We went through several areas of New Orleans. First, the above ground cemetery. It was beautiful and strange all at once.












Next the most affected areas:










Side note: There are many houses that have X’s spray painted on them with numbers around it. The numbers of the left and right are telling the important people who went into the house. The number of the bottom is how many bodies/people they found!











Then on the Garden District where there are the oldest houses, Tulane University, and several other historic homes:











Lastly, we saw the French Quarter, Bourbon Street and Brad and Angelina’s new home (sorry Kathy went by too fast, I couldn’t get a picture-but the outside wasn’t all that impressive).











All and all we had A LOT of fun and learned more then anyone would have imagined. Now we rest in the hotel room, writing these blogs, and will be on our way to really helping people tomorrow in Mobile, Alabama! Hope you enjoyed the latest blogs of our journey! Keep up with us and log on again!