Nov 11, 2005. The g-cipher team arrives in New Orleans after driving all night.
There are mounds of smelly trash everywhere.

First stop: Miss Jane's in the 9th ward. There is electricity here, and hot running water.

Strangely the living situation here is better than my own in Austin. ;-)

Mama D's electrical room.

No power here since the flooding. They have been making do with whatever they can get. The 12V system runs the refrigerator and lighting in the basement during the day and is charged up with a gasoline powered generator at night.

This house got about 5 feet of water. All drywall, paneling, and carpet and tile has to be removed so that the entire house can dry out. Once that happens the house is bleached and limed and may then be ready for habitation.

We were getting this ready as a boarding house for returning residents to sleep in while they clean out their houses. This would not be necessary if FEMA had provided the trailers it promised.

Black mold.

Various pictures taken while driving from Mama D's to the Rainbow Kitchen for lunch.

This is the Rainbow Family / Milwaukee Food Not Bombs Community Kitchen, serving people three hot meals a day, every day.

They have been hassled by the cops and almost shut down, but the courts allowed them to stay open due to a massive show of support from the community.

Partying on the French Quarter after a hard day's work.

I spent the night in the SPAZ bus parked in the 9th ward near the Common Ground Relief Kitchen. This was probably the most memorable part of the trip. The pictures are long term exposures of the full moon looking up from a street light pole. Even though there are houses all around, everything is completely, totally quiet in this post-apocalyptic city.

SPAZ bus and misc destruction.

After Katrina, the houses were searched door to door and spray painted with codes.

From what I found out, this is what the markings mean:

9-6:  Date searched
Tx1:  Group that searched the house (texas state troopers?)
NE:   Area this house was part of
0:    Number of dead found in the house

Sometimes they are marked with SPCA: 1 cat found, or 1 dog found, etc indicating how many pets were left behind or found their way home after the water receded.

More pictures of the Rainbow Kitchen. The food here was not only completely free, but really good!

After Helping to fight an illegal eviction in the rain, we stop at a bar nearby for a bit of R&R. More info on illegal evictions.