Big Queasy: New Orleans braces itself for 'the big one'

A city, hurricane season and a million people below sea level

07/18/2002

By GLYNN WILSON / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

NEW ORLEANS – Heat and humidity rise visibly steaming from the pavement on Piety Street where voodoo priestess Sallie Ann Glassman practices her craft.

Later this month, Ms. Glassman will stand in front of her shop, her temple, and hurl fried pork skins and rum into the air in an offering to the spirit of Ezili Danto, the black Madonna, to ward off hurricanes.

Something certainly has kept "the big one" away from New Orleans for at least the 300 or so years since it has been here. But each year, local officials worry that the Big Easy's luck might be running out.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts nine to 13 named storms during the 2002 hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Six to eight of those are expected to reach hurricane strength, and two or three could be major storms with winds of 111 mph or more. Records show that 95 percent of the large storms come after July 31.

Despite all the science, the money and the preparation spent to avoid wind damage and flooding in South Louisiana and to evacuate its residents, experts agree that there would be no way to avoid a disaster of epic proportions if New Orleans suffered a direct hit from a category 4 or 5 hurricane (winds 131 mph or higher, storm surge 13 feet above normal or higher). The area's population of 1 million-plus would not all get out. Many would die.

The problem is that most of the New Orleans metropolitan area is below sea level, and the only things protecting the area from the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain are a series of levees.

Worse still, the area is in the geological process of sinking, in part due to the levees themselves, which prevent fresh river water and the sediment it carries from flowing into the marshes to replenish them.

If the winds blow hard enough to push Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain water over the levee walls, the result would be a phenomenon locals call "filling the bowl."

Picture a bowl in a tub of water. Picture the bowl sinking until the water level in the tub rises over the edge. Imagine 1 million people in the bowl, thousands trapped in a massive traffic jam stretching toward Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

The worst disaster

It is the worst-case scenario and could result in the deaths of at least 25,000 people, easily the worst natural or manmade disaster in U.S. history. As many as 100,000 people, especially the sick and those too poor to own an automobile, would be trapped in the floodwaters. Many would drown, if they escaped objects flying through the howling wind.

In the aftermath, tens of thousands of people would be homeless, and the local economy would lie in ruins.

In the event of the big one, even the Red Cross has decided not to set up shelters south of Interstate 10, part of which is also below sea level. It's just too dangerous.

And, if the water ever finds its way over the walls there is no way for it to get back out, short of blowing up the levee walls or excavating large openings, which would cause problems, too. That would compound problems if another major storm hit days or even weeks later.

"Imagine the city closed for four to six months," Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness director, told the Times-Picayune newspaper recently.

"We'll have to re-evaluate all our sanitary systems," he said, including water and sewer, along with two-thirds of all public buildings for structural damage from wind and water.

Restoring power would be another major problem, he said. The first storm of 2002 will be named Arthur. It will be followed by Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Isidore, Josephine and Lili.

Whether one of those will be the "big one," not even Ms. Glassman can guess.

'Exceptionally spiritual'

"I don't know," she said. "I think that New Orleans is an exceptionally spiritual city, in spite of its licentiousness, and I think that has an effect."

She's lived in New Orleans for 25 years and owned a voodoo shop called Island of Salvation Botanica in the Bywater District for seven years. Ms. Glassman leads the ceremony every year on the third Saturday in July to divert hurricanes.

Her biggest alleged success came the afternoon of Sept. 27, 1998, when Hurricane Georges swirled up from the Gulf of Mexico. Its massive eye loomed about 100 miles southeast of New Orleans and the hurricane was pointed almost directly at the mouth of the Mississippi River and the city.

As officials announced evacuation procedures, Ms. Glassman prayed in front of her shop.

"The hurricane was right at the mouth of the Mississippi River, with an 18-foot surge wall, and we were supposed to be under 15-feet of water," Ms. Glassman said.

"Then it suddenly made a right turn."

Around 6 p.m., for reasons only nature knows for sure, Georges turned away toward the less populated and more easily evacuated Mississippi Gulf Coast.

"Danto definitely took care of us," she said. "There was no other reason on earth that we didn't get wiped out."

Glynn Wilson is a free-lance writer based in New Orleans.