New Orleans Voodoo Wards Off 'The Big One' By Glynn Wilson NEW ORLEANS, La., July 18 — Heat and humidity rise visibly steaming from the pavement on Piety Street where voodoo priestess Sallie Ann Glassman calls out her neighbors in the Bywater district to pray once again for nature's mercy. On the third Saturday in July every year, Ms. Glassman stands in front of her shop on Piety Street, her temple, and hurls fried pork skins and rum into the air in an offering to the spirit of Ezili Danto, the black Madonna. Summertime means it's hurricane season, which holds a special significance in this city settled in a swamp by Mr. Bienville 300 years ago and largely built below sea level, protected from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain only by a series of levees. The Big Easy has so far escaped "the big one" that would put the city under water for months and kill as many as 100,000 people. It is luck, chance or voodoo? And will the luck, or the spell, hold out through the 2002 hurricane season? Or will this be the year of the big one? "I don't know," Ms. Glassman said. "I think that New Orleans is an exceptionally spiritual city, in spite of its licentiousness, and I think that has an effect." 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. The first storm of 2002 will be named Arthur. He will be followed by Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Isidore, Josephine and Lili. With all the science, money and preparation to avoid wind damage and flooding in South Louisiana, and to get the people out in time, experts agree there would be no way to avoid a disaster of epic proportions if the city suffered a direct hit from a category 4 or 5 hurricane. The population of 1 million plus would not all get out. Many would die. If the winds blow hard enough to push Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain water over the levee walls surrounding the city, the result would be a phenomenon called "filling the bowl." It is the worse case scenario and could result in the death of 25,000 to 100,000 people, easily the worst natural or manmade disaster in U.S. history. 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. As many as 100,000 people, especially the sick and those too poor to own a personal automobile, would be trapped in the polluted flood waters. Many would drown, if they escaped objects flying through the howling wind. The problem is that most of the New Orleans metropolitan area is below sea level, and the only things protecting the area are a series of levee walls, basically in the shape of a crescent bowl. Worse still, the area is in the geological process of sinking, in part due to the levee walls themselves, which prevent fresh water and the sediment it carries from flowing into the marshes to replenish them. 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. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of people would be homeless, and the economy would lie in ruins. Even worse, 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. What if another major storm hit days or even weeks later? That would be bad voodoo indeed. Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director, is one of the many public officials who would be called on in the event of a hurricane impact on the New Orleans area. "Imagine the city closed for four to six months," he said to a reporter for the Times-Picayune newspaper, which just ran a comprehensive five day series on the subject. "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. "Will houses catch on fire when they throw the power switch?" Much of the planning and talk by experts this year centers around the afternoon of Sept. 27, 1998, when Hurricane Georges swirled up the last big scary storm in the Gulf of Mexico to take aim at New Orleans. Its massive eye loomed about 100 miles southeast of the city. Its path tracked almost directly at the mouth of the Mississippi River and New Orleans. While the experts and the public watched the storm satellite images on television in anticipation and fear, Ms. Glassman stood in front of her shop, her temple, and hurled fried pork skins and rum into the air. Officials announced evacuation procedures, but Ms. Glassman stayed, and prayed. "We had just done a hurricane ceremony for Danto. 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." All the scientific modeling led experts to believe Georges could be the Big One. Around 6 p.m., for reasons only nature knows for sure, Georges turned away from New Orleans and toward the less populated and more easily evacuated Mississippi Gulf Coast, weakening in the process. Was it luck or chance? Or was it voodoo? "Danto definitely took care of us," she said. "There was no other reason on earth that we didn't get wiped out." The science confirms one thing for sure. On Sept. 28, the category 2 hurricane made landfall just east of Biloxi with sustained winds of 104 mph. A catastrophic disaster averted, New Orleans saved once again. Ms. Glassman'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. She is a voodoo mambo, or priestess, and received her initiation in Haiti. So far, the voodoo, or something, has worked. The city has never taken a direct hit from a category 4 or 5 hurricane. But at this time of year, when public officials hold conferences about the threat and the local news media raise the issues in print and on TV, it's not something she will spend a lot of time being concerned about. "I always just give it up to Danto and try not to worry about it," she said. "Worry is a pretty useless emotion. This will be the year, or it won't. It's up to her." Links: NOLA.com Hurricane Center Glynn Wilson is a free-lance journalist based in New Orleans. Joe Halm contributed research to this report. A different version of this story first appeared in the Dallas Morning News, Thursday, July 18, 2002
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