Comprising a Life

The Bonsai, Travels and Haiku of Vaughn Banting

Katrina damage

Hurricane Katrina was such a devastating storm that its story can not be told just by its flood waters or its winds or its dislocated  populations or by its luting or by the disappointing showing by our polititions, so I have decided to focus on just images related to the storm and these taken two and a half weeks after Katrina hit.  They include pictures of debris along the streets and of gutted out houses as well as shots of wind damage and pictures taken at the marina. The marina pictures include images of expensive sailboats thrown out of the water and piled on one another.

The most recently posted pictures.

 

Wrong way up

What a mess

Upside down car

Topsy-turvy

Some type of truck I think

Screwed up house

Sad mess

More wreckage

Remnants of clothing

Trying to locate people

Just a foundation

Missing house

House floated onto car

House in a pile of debris

Helter-skelter

A wider view

Desolation Row

Debris piled by bridge

Debris against a tree

Comming home drunk

Pickup in debris

Car under broken house

Car on top of car

A house on a house

Blessed Mother blue

Gutted houses after the flood waters receded

During the flood and before this house was gutted, rescue teams had gone down this street in flat-boats checking in the in the five feet deep flood waters for any sign of life. A red circle wth an "X" inside it indicated no one was inside.

Rich or poor, Katrina's flood waters did not discriminate as some members of society would suggest. This is a former client's home.

Water line on a very large home

Distant view of the whole house showing all the landscaping dead

Everything dead, the only thing left a stuffed animal at the curb

This car was suberged past its roof

You can see where the water line was by looking at the red car's rear window

Bobcats and small dozers first gathered the debri into piles and then big trucks hauled it away

A tarped-over truck filled with debie

The efficient removal of one family's memories

Scoop after scoop, week after week the business of clean up continues

Stacked on the lawn a house without secrets

Piled by the curb, the tangled entrails of a gutted house

No matter how humble the dwelling, the losses were proportionate

Some poeple just couldn't take the strain and sold out at a loss

Thrown out refrigerators, spoiling food and all, wrapped with duck tape

Even toilets and hot water heaters had to be trown out

Orange circle meant checked for life

Insulation piled at the curb, still not helping with the grief

Another circle marking

Another unsalvagable refrigerator

A dead end street completly filled with debri

Senes like these go on and on all through Old Metairie and New Orleans these days

A man gutting his house

Sofas sitting on sofas

These people lost both their cars

There were an estamated 300,000 cars lost in Katrina

This SUV was submerged to over its roof in the worst part of the flooding

Another ruined car

After the dozers have left; a moon scape

Broken chair set

A damaged car parked in an open grave

Constuction services advertized

More debri removal operations

Showing the scooter I took these pictures from

Ruined mattreses out by the curb

Wind damage

 

Fallen tree a sidewalk pointing skyward

Tree on house