When Hurricane Katrina swept over New Orleans, the last two guests at Johnny White’s Sports Bar had to hold on tight. With the owner, Marcy Ramsey, and the barman they had to lean against the ominously shaking doors with all their strength.
The bar on Bourbon Street in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans made history because even after the flood and the collapse of the electricity supply, its guests consoled themselves through the days of chaos with lukewarm beer.
In the next 10 days, all the inhabitants and business owners can return and bring life back to this tourist area.
”We are beginning to breathe again,” said New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin.
The French Quarter with its historic facades — a pulsing microcosm full of jazz bars, piano bars, hotels, restaurants, sex clubs and galleries — might be able to return to its normal day- and nightlife since it was relatively undamaged.
But Nagin is not taking any risks. He wants to restore electricity to the historic buildings step by step to make sure that a huge fire does not destroy what Katrina left standing.
”If a fire broke out, we could lose a lot of what we love about the city,” said Nagin.
In other parts of town, such as Algiers, more than 180 000 of the city’s 500 000 population will also gradually return three weeks after the disaster.
Alice Storey will not be one of them. The 54-year-old African-American comes from a poor part of New Orleans that is still under water. The 54-year-old, her three children and five grandchildren found refuge in the Houston Astrodome in Texas, the biggest emergency shelter in the United States.
”At first, all the beds were right next to each other, but we’ve got more space now,” says Storey. Gospel music by Smokie Norful is coming out of a portable stereo and next to Storey on the metal bed there is a Bible. Both were given to her as charity.
This little family drama in such an inhospitable place will be over by the weekend. The Astrodome and another emergency shelter in the huge Houston sports complex are supposed to be empty by Saturday.
That’s when the Houston Texans American football team are playing the Pittsburgh Steelers. The remaining inhabitants of the Astrodome are to be given accommodation or to be placed in more emergency accommodation, say the authorities.
On September 4, after the huge wave of the desperate people from New Orleans arrived in Houston, the Astrodome contained at least 17 500 mostly poor, black and homeless people. On Thursday, there were only 779.
”No one has ever built an emergency shelter this size before. Building a whole city within 36 hours is not easy,” says the US military commander responsible for the shelter, Joe Leonard.
Although people like Alice Storey will not be able to return to their homes in New Orleans for weeks or months, in the French Quarter there is already a sense of a new beginning.
Evelyn and Gunter Preuss want to reopen their French Quarter luxury restaurant Broussards on October 1, and possibly even sooner. One problem is the lack of staff, Gunter says. He is less worried about customers. — Sapa-DPA