Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

Everywhere you go in New Orleans today, other than the French Quarter and the neighborhoods on higher ground, you will see houses like these. And this one is lucky to still be standing. Look closely and you'll see the spraypainted tags from DEA and animal rescuers indicating when they were there, and what they found.


Matt and I just got back from my favorite city in the U.S. Our job takes us to many great cities. San Fran, NYC, San Deigo, LA, Chicago, Denver, Boulder, Austin and more. We also grew up in Boston, live near Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, and once lived in Dallas. Matt has lived in Honolulu as well as New Orleans. I regret never having lived in the Big Easy, it feels more like home to me than home did (and that's saying a lot). Now I'm not sure if anyone who really called it home can ever call it that again.

The scope of the destruction is mind-boggling. Even these few pictures can't convey what the eyes see when you drive up and down streets, block after block, for miles within the city and beyond. Hundreds to thousands of houses smashed, soaked, gutted, burned, with mold creeping up walls like cancer. Furniture, photos, toys, stuffed animals, mattresses, an endless sea of appliances. Cars, grey with flood water residue, are upside down in yards or buried under what was once a building. Boats in the street, the ground caked with a cracked layer of mud like you were walking on a dry lakebed.

And it's quiet. Dead quiet. After staring dumb and mute at all of this it starts to sink in that there aren't any people. It's the biggest graveyard in America, and even the ghosts have gone.

They say only 10% of the previous population is still in or has returned to New Orleans.

This house, like too many houses, had the roof hacked away by the occupants inside who had to climb to the top to escape the floodwaters.

Notice the floodlines here. These lines were everywhere...on abandoned cars and even the embankments on the sides of the I10.

















Boats tossed from their trailers...


















Boats tossed from the water...we saw so many gorgeous yachts and sailboats sunk deep with nothing but the tips of their masts sticking out. Cranes were lifting these boats out.
















Sign reads on abandoned Super 10 store: "Warning trespassers are considered looters and are shot dead!"
















Imagine the force it takes to throw an old Uhaul truck up like this.














Floodlines were everywhere, including the abandoned cars and trucks lining the streets. Some New Orleanians attempted to park their vehicles on the higher ground of the medians but to no avail. Hundreds of drowned cars were put under highways or used as barriers to the Ninth Ward to get them out of the way.























More destruction. This used to be a house.













This is only a fraction of the size of this empty lot or park the city used to dump all the debris they've been collecting. This heap contains the posessions of thousands of families and businesses. There are other lots like this with literal mountains of debris.
















Clean-up man, or could be a previous owner. These houses are very dangerous to go into, they are loaded with mold.

These photos were taken by Matt Ludlow on his Canon 20D.

Remember (and Renew) New Orleans.