La única pega es que está en inglés… si alguien tiene mucho interés en leerlo y no controla el inglés, que avise y busco un hueco para traducirlo…
Aquí os dejo lo que se publicó.
On August 29th 2005 at 0610 New Orleans time, Hurricane Katrina crashed onto the US Gulf Coast, whipping up winds of up to 170 mph tearing through flood defences of low-lying New Orleans and flooding 80 per cent of the city. A disaster zone almost the size of the UK was left in Katrina’s wake with 1,700 people losing their lives and nearly 80,000 homes destroyed.
The cost of the damage wreaked by Katrina has been estimated to top around $100 billion with President Bush declaring this ‘one of the worst national disasters in our nation’s history’.
The statistics of disaster. Incredible? Yes. Shocking? Maybe. Detached from normality and unhinged from emotions? Definitely. Not so for Chari Lopez, a teacher living and working in New Orleans when Katrina hit. She gives Lesley Smeardon her personal account before and after the levees broke.
What were you doing in New Orleans at the time the hurricane hit? Were you living there?
I was living in the Garden District in one of the university areas. I had been living there for two years and worked as a Spanish teacher in an elementary school at Algiers Point on the other side of the Mississippi River. On the Friday, right before Katrina hit, I was working in school as usual and had said to my old school mates: “Have a nice weekend. See you on Monday” I have never seen most of them again.
Katrina was first announced as a hurricane four days before it hit New Orleans, upgraded to a Cat 5 hurricane the day before. But when were you first aware of the potential devastation this hurricane could cause?
After living in New Orleans for two years, another hurricane was nothing new. It’s true it was Cat 5, but the year before I had been evacuated to north Louisiana and nothing happened. None of my friends were aware how big the hurricane would be. On the Saturday night, we were at a birthday party. Nobody was thinking about leaving the city, but a local friend convinced us to go. He had never left the city before for a hurricane
On the Monday morning (Aug 29th) when Katrina hit, there were reports on Nation al US TV that the levees were being breached and the city was going to flood. Were you aware of this?
Well, when I first arrived to NOLA we had some trainings at school hurricane-related, and they told us what a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane can provoque. In all the instruction they gave us, one of the possibilities was the breaking of the levees, but that was such a remote idea, that no one was aware of it. Everybody, every year at hurricane season used to talk about it, but no one really expected the worst to happen.
When the levees were breached, I was at a friend’s house in Sulphur (later on devastated by Rita) .They didn’t have TV, so we heard the news by the radio. We run in a hurry to the closer neighbour and we ask them to let us watch the news. We couldn´t believe it. I was in shock and tear. I knew what that mean. It was so hard to realise the place you live in and the city you love were being flooded.
Can you describe your experiences on the day that Katrina hit?
By the time the levees were breached, I was at a friend’s house in Sulphur (later to be devastated by Rita). They didn’t have a TV, so we heard the news by radio. We ran to our closest neighbour and asked them to let us watch the news. We couldn’t believe it– I was in tears. To see the place you live in and the city you love being flooded was hard to accept.
A couple of days after Katrina I was able to find out that my home hadn’t been flooded although two blocks away was three feet under water. But four days later my next door neighbour phoned to say they had left their house when they saw water coming through the street. They told me how heartbreaking it was when they were leaving the city to see people who had already lost their lives in the road.
How long was it before you went back to New Orleans after the hurricane? Did you feel that you were kept well informed?
It took me a month. I kept updated with what was happening through a local newspaper’s web page and through NOLA.com (New Orleans local site). I used to check daily for those looking for disappeared people and to get information about my neighbourhood. The website was giving out information as to which postal codes were able to go back into the city. The city was still under military control and to get your house you needed to show your ID.
We were able to go back to our homes after a month under certain conditions – that we brought disinfectant products and masks, got vaccinated for tetanus, took water, food and cleaning products. Most importantly we were not able to leave our homes from 8pm to 8am under the curfew.
I was lucky. I lived on a second floor and my home was fine and nobody had tried to get in. Everything was very dirty and messy, but everything was just fine. I still can’t believe it when I think of all the people who lost their lives or homes and I still had all my belongings…
What was the single thing that has stayed in your memory the most, regarding the events leading up to, and after Katrina hit?
I remember the day I got back for the first time in the city. The smell was awful, putrid. It was shocking to see boats in the middle of dry roads, but the strongest memory was the water marks on the houses as the waters lowered and the signs the military made when they registered the houses. They posted a sign in paint with the date, the group who checked the house and the number of dead people in each house. I saw too many numbers. Those people – your neighbours who used to live there now dead. It was the hardest thing. It is an experience that haschanged my life forever.
