Summary: Life After Hurricane Katrina

Screams punctured his sleep like a nail through the skull. Ben fumbled through darkness as his fingers snapped the light switch up and down. He knew the Historic French Market Inn was old and some of the wiring dated back to the 1920s, when Decatur Street was a rough neighborhood teeming with sailors, prostitutes and shady dealings. But the lights were dead. More screaming from the streets, but Ben couldn’t tell if it was someone in trouble or clamoring for beads from atop a French Quarter balcony. He collapsed back onto the bed as the room spun in circles. He’d sat up too quickly and puked the rye whiskey from the night’s Sazeracs. As he wiped the sweat from his forehead, Ben felt the humidity creep from the swamp and engulf the timeworn hotel room. He looked out the window and into the brick courtyard, where ivy …show more content…
The surge had overpowered the sophisticated pumps, upgraded after Hurricane Katrina paralyzed them more than two decades before. The United States government funded most of the NOAA Hurricane Barrier project in order to protect the lowlying coastal areas. Since the barrier failed, New Orleans relied on a crumbling, decayed system. Levees that held the water off in the early part of the twenty-first century were no longer tall enough to compensate for rising sea levels. As the surge lifted the stone sarcophagi in the elevated graves of St. Louis Cemetery, it became harder to distinguish between the elegant dress of those long-since buried and the newest victims of another New Orleans catastrophe. Ben stepped over corpses as he ran down Decatur towards Canal Street. While six inches of water stood in the lobby of the French Market Inn, he was now running through twelve on the street. The pumps may have delayed the initial storm surge before succumbing to the water’s overwhelming force, but now that they were no longer operating, Ben knew what to