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Chapter 50
Monday, August 29, 2005
K minus ten hours
The monster couldn't
maintain the incredible power it held. The pressure overnight
had risen and the winds had fallen. The change was only slight,
but it was enough for her to fall from Category 5 to Category
4. Still, at over 160 mph, the thing was strong enough to kill
a city. As the winds slowed, the forward momentum sped up. It
was 130 miles from landfall, moving at fifteen miles per hour.
Around midnight,
the first bands of rain began to fall on the Mississippi Gulf
Coast, and the tide began to rise. Meanwhile, over a hundred
miles to the west in St. Charles Parish, a young woman shot up
from her bed.
Something woke Lizzy.
She looked around
in the darkness of the bedroom she shared with Will. The clock-radio
was blinking and the ceiling fan was revving up, as if someone
had just turned it on.
Did the power
blip?
Listening, she could
hear the wind blow against the house. And there was another noise
- a low humming she had not heard before.
"Generator's
on."
"Will! Did
I wake you up?"
Hearing his denial,
Lizzy moved into his arms, suddenly a little scared. She, of
course, knew Katrina was approaching in an abstract way, but
the sounds of the wind and generator made it real. The storm
wasn't coming - it was here. Now.
Will's arms enfolded
her. "It's okay, honey. I'm right here."
Lizzy turned in
his arm and embraced him. Will slowly stroked her back, trying
to comfort her. But Lizzy needed more. Answering a primitive
call from deep inside her, she moved as close as she could to
seek out his lips with hers. Will was surprised at her urgency,
and it was a moment before he responded. But when he did, it
was in equal measure to his woman.
Skin touched skin.
Hands grasped. Legs intertwined. Kisses grew in intensity, until
neither knew where they ended and their partner began. Lightheaded
from lust and need, Lizzy found herself lying full over her fiancé.
She groaned, grinding her pelvis into his. That was all the invitation
Will needed.
He knew he should
take his time and make love to every inch of her, show her how
much he had missed her, but an almost violent hunger shook him.
In the next moment, they had switched positions, and Will slammed
his erect manhood into her. Lizzy gasped in response and wrapped
her legs around his waist. Will developed a hard and fast rhythm,
feeding off her animalistic cries. Both knew Death was just outside
the strong walls of Pemberley, and they needed to reaffirm that
they were alive in the most basic way possible.
On and on Will drove,
plunging inside of her. Lizzy, almost incoherent with her exhortations,
cried his name again and again. Once - twice - Lizzy reached
her peak and fell back, only to achieve it again.
Finally with a mighty
cry, William reached his climax and then totally collapsed onto
her. Lizzy wrapped her arms about him, pulling him as deep into
her as possible. She held onto him until she found it difficult
to breathe.
A protesting moan
was enough to alert Will to Lizzy's difficulties, but she refused
to release him when he tried to rise. Instead, they rolled over
on their sides, relieving the pressure on Lizzy's lungs.
"Are…are
you…all right, Lizzy?"
Lizzy couldn't catch
her breath at first. "Don't…don't pull away. I…I
need you."
He kissed her face
again, this time with the gentleness she was accustomed to. "That…was…intense,
wasn't it?"
She said nothing;
her only response was to slide a hand up and down his thigh.
Will tried to guess
Lizzy's feelings. "Don't worry, Elizabeth. I'm here. Nothing
will harm you. I won't let it."
He could barely
make out the small smile on her lips. "I know - as long
as you're here with me. But I need to touch you. Don't roll away,
please."
He slowly hugged
her tightly against him. "I won't. I'm here for as long
as you want." He kissed her eyelids. "Go to sleep,
now. I'll keep you safe."
"The wind ?"
"Can't touch
you," he interrupted. "Not as long as I'm here. Sleep,
love."
And so she did.
~*~*~
K minus nine
hours
Emma had visited
with Cathy for a few hours and then rested again after checking
on Abe. Around midnight while Cathy snoozed in an armchair, Emma
awoke and checked on Katrina's progress. She then returned to
Abe's ICU room and kept her vigil, closing her eyes every few
minutes.
In her half-asleep
state, she dreamed.
She was a little
girl again, walking through City Park with Papa, hand-in-hand,
beside the lagoon, watching the swans glide over the water. A
couple in a pedal boat were floating, softly laughing at some
shared joke. A father and son were in a canoe. A touch football
game was underway in a nearby field. The sun was shining through
the canopy of the oak trees.
The two walked
along in happy companionship, swinging their hands, Emma giggling
at Papa's grin. As they came to a fork in the sidewalk, Papa
came to a stop.
"Papa, what
is it?" Emma asked.
He said nothing;
he just stared straight ahead.
Emma looked out
in the same direction. Along one path stood a teen-aged George,
just finished with the football game, the ball still in one hand.
Along the other path was Mama, waiting patiently.
"Papa?"
Abe turned to
Emma, a small smile at his lips. "Princess, why don't you
go play with George for a while?"
"Where are
you going, Papa?"
He looked at
Ruth. "I'm going to go with Mama now. I'll see you later."
He bent over and kissed the top of her head.
"Papa, why
can't I go with you?"
"Now's not
the time, Emma. You go on." At his urging, she began walking
towards George. To her surprise, she could see Irene playing
behind him. She turned again to her father, only to see he was
down the other path holding hands with her mother, both smiling.
They waved at
her, and she raised her hand to wave back…
Suddenly, everything
went to hell. She was startled awake by a sharp, beeping sound,
and a moment later, the room was filled with people. Hands from
nowhere guided her gently but firmly out of the room, one phrase
standing out from the calliope of noise:
"CODE BLUE!
GET A RESUSCITATION TEAM IN HERE - STAT!"
Emma's eyes widened
in horror as people and machines moved and wheeled all around
her motionless father. She couldn't make out their faces, but
she could tell they were working - fighting - doing everything
in their power to stave off the inevitable.
"CLEAR!"
The mechanical noise
of the defibrillator was accompanied by a jerk of Abe's body.
The team huddled about him, and then prepared to use the machine
again.
Inevitable…
She knew.
Without a doubt. The dedicated team was wasting its time. Katrina
had claimed her first victim.
Abe Weinberg was
gone.
~*~*~
K minus six hours
In 1956, the local
shipping interests in New Orleans convinced the congress to authorize
the construction of a new shipping channel, shortening the trip
for shipping to the Port of New Orleans. The project, named the
Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, started at the Intercoastal
Canal, cutting though the marshes on the northern part of St.
Bernard Parish, running 76 miles into Lake Borgne, and cutting
the transit to the port by 37 miles. Completed by the Corps of
Engineers in 1965, the MRGO was designed to be 650 feet wide
and 38 feet deep. The intention was to make the port more competitive
in the new container-style shipping industry, providing more
jobs for the people.
The route to hell
is paved with good intentions. The engineers could not have picked
a worse spot to dredge a canal. Unlike the thick, heavy clay
found in the Mississippi River basin, the route's marshy soil
was very sandy and subject to erosion. The MRGO's channel grew
to over 1,500 feet, and the depth was impossible to maintain,
even with Port spending $13 million a year for dredging. By 2005,
only one ship a day on average was using the canal. The MRGO
was a financial disaster.
The Port and the
Corps and the politicians and the people argued for years on
what to do. The shipping interests wanted to save the MRGO by
shoring up the banks of the canal with massive earth-and-concrete
levees, costing millions of dollars. The Corps originally wanted
to put storm gates at the mouth of the canal. But the environmentalists
and the citizens of St. Bernard Parish would settle for nothing
less than the closing in of the MRGO. Everyone fought, so nothing
was done.
Now, everything
was in place for a disaster forty years in the making.
The monster moved
steadily towards the mouth of the Mississippi River. Its counter-clockwise
rotation pushed a surge of water westward, right up the MRGO.
The water rose rapidly in the channel and in the Industrial Canal
where the waterway ended. By 0430 CDT, the storm gates were beginning
to leak water into Gentilly and New Orleans East.
Such leakage was
expected, and the engineers thought the pumps could handle the
worst of it. But downstream, along the weak levees of the MRGO,
the surge was beginning to overwhelm the sandy barriers. Now,
only the 40 Arpent Levee stood between St. Bernard Parish and
the maelstrom.
~*~*~
K minus four
hours
Buras, Louisiana,
located at 29°21'6"N by 89°30'50"W, was a sleepy
little village along LA 23 hard against the west bank of the
Mississippi River in southern Plaquemines Parish. Most of its
3,300 inhabitants earned their living from the riches of the
Gulf, be it fishing, shrimping, oysters, or oil. Its one landmark
was its tall, blue and white water tower over the middle of the
town, a sight that had welcomed boaters for decades. One had
to love Buras to live there, for it was as close to the end of
the world as one could find in the Unities States. But the people
of Buras were a hardy breed. They had lived there for generations,
and many would live nowhere else.
They weren't foolish,
however. Hurricanes were a constant threat to the village. The
people took storms seriously, and they knew the cost of living
downriver was evacuating several times a year during hurricane
season.
Therefore, there
was no one around to welcome the Category 4 monster when she
roared ashore at 0610 CDT, making her second landfall. The storm
brought more than just 140 mph. winds. Twenty-five feet of water
inundated the hamlet. Abandoned shrimp boats were flung at their
owners' houses and trailers. The highway itself was torn asunder.
Nothing could resist the monster's power, not even the beloved
water tower. It would be days before the waters would recede,
and the only evidence that Buras had ever existed was the wreckage
of that blue-and white structure, surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico.
~*~*~
A hand shook John
Buford awake.
"Captain?"
said Mack. "Sorry to wake you, sir, but I thought you should
know that the generators are on."
"Wha…"
Buford rubbed his face in an effort to awaken. "Already?
The power's out already?"
"Yes, sir."
Buford swung his
feet to the floor and sat up in his cot, trying to function on
four hours sleep. He racked his mind to remember how much fuel
there was for the Superdome generators and couldn't.
"Hand me my
kit, will you, Sergeant?"
"You're getting
up, sir?"
"Might as well.
It's gonna be a long day, anyway. No use in putting it off."
~*~*~
The water continued
to rise in the MRGO and Industrial Canal. The channel formed
a funnel, multiplying the power of the surge. The levees protecting
the vital NASA facility at Michaud were as tall and strong as
any in the area, but the same could not be said for the protection
offered along the canal and the swamps of the Bayou Sauvage National
Wildlife Refuge for New Orleans East. It was only a matter of
time before the levees were overtopped. This was an event for
which, while foreseen, the city was ill-prepared. No pumps could
handle that much water. The eastern part of the city, home to
poor and middle-class blacks, whites, and Vietnamese, was flooding.
However, what was
not foreseen was something that was happening far away, at the
Orleans/Jefferson border. The 17th Street Canal was built on
that line for a reason - to serve the pumping stations of both
parishes. The canal was not quite half-full, yet something odd
was happening.
The walls were leaning
in.
~*~*~
K minus three
hours
Ernie Washington
had lived in the Lower Ninth Ward all of his sixty-five years.
He went to school until his momma allowed him to drop out at
fourteen. He then went to work cleaning out the hotels, and he
rose through the ranks from bellhop to bell captain. Hospitality
was his profession for fifty years, and he was proud of it, until
his back finally gave out. There was a woman once, but that didn't
work out. Ernie didn't think too much about it, because it didn't
bother him to be by himself.
Now disabled on
Social Security, Medicare, and a small pension, he made his home
in a run-down rental shotgun house four blocks from the place
where he grew up. Ernie didn't have much to his name except his
dignity. The gangsters that tried to rule the street gave Mr.
Washington a wide berth for two reasons: The first, because the
old man didn't have anything to steal, and the second, the long-time
deacon of the neighborhood Baptist church would turn a brotha
in to the 5-0 so fast it would make your head spin.
It was safe to say
Ernie Washington was scared of nothing. He had marched with the
NAACP in the 1960s and faced the white bigots with their water
hoses and dogs and robes and burning crosses. What were gangly
punks in pants half-down their hips to him? Live and let live,
but "What's mine is mine," he always said, and on his
little corner of the world, life was hard, but it was peaceful.
Ernie had known
about the storm coming - it had been all over the TV that sat
on the table that blocked his window, the better for the rabbit
ears to pick up the local stations. He had thought about getting
out, but the word on the street was that the RTA buses were only
bringing folks to the Superdome. That didn't sit right with Ernie
Washington. He might have got on board if the bus was headed
for Baton Rouge. But to sit out the hurricane in the Dome? He
might as well be comfortable at home. Besides, there was no one
else to keep an eye on his neighbor, Miss Mable, an eighty-year-old
home-bound widow with no family, nowhere to go, and no way to
get there. So he stayed.
He hadn't got much
sleep during the night, as the wind and rain lashed the house.
Now, at a half past seven in the morning, Ernie was half-sleeping
in his easy chair, staring at his blank TV, the power having
been off since late last night. He didn't own a radio, but he
figured he could see what was going on by taking a look out the
window.
What he didn't know
was that for the last thirty minutes, the water had overtopped
the storm walls of the Industrial Canal. Water seeping into the
neighborhood was bad enough, but the structure wasn't designed
to take that kind of stress. It was only a matter of time before
there was a breech, and it finally occurred at 0730 CDT, threatening
the Upper Ninth Ward, as well as the Bywater and Treme neighborhoods.
But even this break in the levee wasn't enough to relieve the
enormous pressure of the storm surge slamming against the storm
walls. Fifteen minutes later, the water won in a spectacular
fashion as the storm walls on the eastern side disappeared under
the torrent.
Ernie, dozing in
his chair, was startled by a loud boom. He struggled to his feet
and shuffled to the window. What he saw made his mouth drop open
- a neighbor's car smashed into the house next door, pushed by
a great, grey force. The house began to shake - at first, he
believed it was from the wind but then he noticed that water
was flowing from under his front door. Looking out the window
again, he realized with horror that gray water was rushing around
the house, getting deeper every second. He jumped as he felt
water on his ankles.
A terrified Ernie
ran as fast as he could to the back room of his shotgun and climbed
on his bed. As the water in the house climbed ever higher, he
remembered the only other time he had ever disappointed his momma,
besides the day he dropped out of school. As a child he had refused
to learn to swim.
~*~*~
The catastrophic
failure on the east side of the Industrial Canal would do more
than drown the Lower Ninth Ward and flood the St. Bernard Parish
communities of Arabi and Chalmette. It would also trap the LA
National Guard troops pre-positioned at Jackson Barracks, which
straddled the border of the two parishes. While the buildings
the troops were in were hard against the river levee and therefore
on high ground, the same could not be said of the parking lots
and garages. All the high-water equipment the Guard owned would
be useless junk under eight-to-ten feet of water by 0930.
While the Lower
Ninth died, St. Bernard's agonies were just beginning. The flow
from the Industrial Canal was bad enough, but when the seven-to-nine
foot high 40 Arpent levee was overtopped, "Da Parish"
was doomed. Twenty thousand structures, almost every habitable
building in the parish, would be destroyed. The tanks of the
big local oil refinery, the pride of the local economy, would
be severely damaged, leaking crude for blocks. An entire parish,
home to over sixty thousand people, was obliterated.
Things weren't much
better in Plaquemines. While Belle Chase, in the northern tip
of the parish, seemed to escape the brunt of the catastrophe,
the same couldn't be said for the rest of the parish. For decades,
the people of Plaquemines debated moving the courthouse and parish
seat from Pointe a la Hache to Belle Chasse. A 2002 fire in the
courthouse forced a temporary move. Now, the monster might have
made it permanent. Effectively, almost all of Plaquemines south
of Belle Chasse was flooded, and much of it was wiped out, some
of the land returning to the sea.
Meanwhile, the choice
to concentrate telephone switching equipment in Orleans and Slidell
was proving unwise. Power failed for the equipment on the South
Shore, while floodwaters soon inundated the concrete structure
in Slidell. Backup equipment elsewhere couldn't take the additional
traffic, and like a house of cards, telephone service started
going out, not only in the affected areas, but all over southern
Louisiana and Mississippi. Without power and switching equipment,
cellular systems couldn't operate, either.
A communications
blackout fell over the central Gulf States.
~*~*~
The monster, forty
miles southeast of the city over Breton Sound moving northwards
at fifteen miles per hour, was damaged by its short trip over
the Mississippi River Delta. The internal pressure rose another
ten millibars. This meant the winds dropped to 127 mph, but it
wasn't all good news.
The low pressure
in the eye of the storm had sucked up billions of gallons of
seawater. As the pressure dropped, the eye of the storm expanded
like an ice skater extending her arms to slow her spin. Hurricane
force winds now extended one hundred miles from the eye, and
the surge spread out, too. This was no compact hurricane like
Camille. This was now a gargantuan creature set on laying waste
to everything before it.
~*~*~
K minus two hours
Things were not
going well in the mayor's headquarters at the Hyatt. The generators
were providing power, but laptops and the phones, both land-based
and cellular, were useless. Internet was down, as was television.
And the satellite phones were proving to be unreliable. The mayor
and his staff were blind and deaf.
Of course, it was
a mistake not to be at the Emergency Center at City Hall, Ellie
Elliot thought, but there was no use worrying about it now. With
hurricane winds blowing outside, nobody was going to try to travel
the half-block to the city's center of government. Besides, they
had radio contact with the police chief and the head of Emergency
Preparedness. And someone brought a hand-cranked transistor radio,
which was tuned to WWL-AM 870. So, they weren't completely out
of touch.
Ellie glanced at
the windows overlooking the Superdome. The winds and rain, coming
out of the north, were lashing this side of the building full
on. The noise was frightening, but she made herself ignore it.
The Hyatt was built soon after the Superdome was originally constructed,
but surely it could stand up to what nature was dishing out.
It had before.
Ellie tried once
again to call Baton Rouge on a satellite phone. Suddenly, there
was an great explosion of noise. Glass and rain were flying everywhere.
It was as if a bomb had gone off. Ellie screamed as the storm
blew out the windows of the room. She found herself on the carpeted
floor, gray rain and clouds where a window once stood.
A staffer struggled
with the door as Ellie moved towards a woman curled up in terror.
Grasping her ankle, she began to pull the woman towards the door.
The unorthodox manner of getting the woman's attention worked,
and the two of them crawled to the now-opened door.
Ellie eventually
made it to the corridor between the rooms and the atrium. It
was crowed with other staffers and the remaining guests of the
hotel, many in shock, and she came to realize that windows were
failing all over the place. Feeling wetness, Ellie touched her
face, only to see blood on her fingers.
"Oh, my god!"
screamed the woman she had helped. "You're covered in blood!
Help! Help!"
Nausea gripped her
as shock set in. The police guard was there in a moment, and
it was quickly determined that Ellie had been cut by flying glass.
A first aid kit was broken out, and he dabbed antibacterial ointment
onto her injuries before handing her a towel. Peeking out, Ellie
could see other people had been cut up. The injured and uninjured
alike were wandering the halls, unsure what to do.
The government of
the City of New Orleans had been completely knocked out.
~*~*~
It was strange trying
to keep up with the hurricane coverage at Pemberley. The local
cable gave up the ghost during the night, and the Direct TV dish
only showed national coverage. So Lizzy and Will watched the
TV with the sound off as a radio on the coffee table was tuned
in to the Big 870.
Over in Baton Rouge,
the cable was working, but without electricity, it was useless.
The same could be said for Chackbay.
In Lafayette and
Lake Charles, things were more normal, if one could say watching
a major storm come ashore live on television was normal. The
Breauxes, old and new, were glued to the coverage, as were Emma
and Cathy in Lake Charles. In Emma's case, her fears for her
father shifted to fears for her husband.
Not that the coverage
said a whole lot. Yes, radar and satellite images could clearly
show the slightly weaker storm march inexorably towards the Mississippi
Gulf Coast. But, besides the occasional live reports from Mobile,
Alabama, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, or the French Quarter, no
one really knew what was going on.
~*~*~
K minus one hour
The monster's storm
surge was much larger than it should have been. Twenty-five feet
of water flowed into Lake Pontchartrain, overwhelming the I-10
Bridge. Like Pensacola during Ivan, the incredible pressure of
the water pushed at the trapped air beneath the bridge sections.
They didn't have to move much. Only an inch was enough for the
surge to push the half-floating concrete sections off the supports.
The air finally escaped, and the tons of concrete sank to the
bottom of the lake.
But the surge didn't
have the same effect on the old two-lane US 11 Bridge parallel
to the damaged span. Built in an earlier time, the bridge was
considered a relic, with its unreliable drawbridge. Yet, the
span survived the onslaught without damage, leaving one thin,
precious link to the city from the east.
The water moved
in all directions. It ripped apart the old nine-mile turnaround
of the original Causeway span. By the time the surge reached
the North Shore, it was fifteen feet, easily enough to put much
of the coastal areas of St. Tammany Parish under water. Slidell's
City Hall, over four miles inland, was flooded, joining half
the city.
A ten-foot surge
of water flowed backwards into the drainage canals in Orleans
and Jefferson. At the end of the Orleans Avenue Canal, the embankment
was six feet lower than the flood wall. Water from the Lake was
streaming into City Park, endangering the Museum of Art. But
this was not the worst problem.
The surge exerted
enormous pressure onto the banks of the drainage canals. The
Corps had taken this into consideration, and while they knew
the half-levee, half-storm wall design would not hold up to an
overtopping - a fact not mentioned to local officials - the water
was still far from the top.
The strength of
the design depended on the rigidity of the walls. The small,
earthen levee wouldn't be sufficient to contain the water. The
design called for pilings of long steel sheets to be driven deep
into the ground below the levee. Like a corrugated box, as long
as the sheets remained rigid, the structure would succeed.
It came down to
money. The Corps had to design the levee using the bare minimum
amount of materials, for funding was never sufficient. Ten feet
was deemed enough, as long as the soil was the famous, rock-hard
clay Louisiana was famous for. But once again, budgetary limitation
raised its ugly head. There wasn't enough money to do the borings
into the soil called for by the original scope of the project.
So, in the usual case of "close enough for government work,"
the Corps reduced the number of borings to the bare minimum.
It was one of a series of decisions that would kill thousands.
The canals were
dug where they were because the land was low and swampy. Underneath
a portion of the land were old filled-in swamps. The reeds and
other vegetation had turned into peat moss, notorious for its
jelly-like consistency. But without the boring, the Corps didn't
know peat moss was there. Ten feet of sheet piling would prove
inadequate for the job.
One last decision
would play a role. To improve drainage, the canals were dredged.
Therefore, there was less earth between the canal sides and the
sheet pilings than were called for in the specifications.
So it was that,
at 0930 CDT on August 29, 2005, tons of water exerted enough
pressure against the bottom of the half-filled London Avenue
Canal to cause the underground sheet pilings, encased in peat
moss, to begin to move inward. Any bend in the sheeting would
compromise the internal structure of the levee. The water pushed
on both sides - Gentilly to the west and Lakeview to the east
- and one or both were in danger of failure. Finally, it was
the Gentilly side that gave way first. Without the underground
support of the sheeting, the concrete storm wall fell inwards.
The storm surge of the monster began to flow into the City of
New Orleans.
Fifteen minutes
later, the 17th Street Canal failed on the Orleans Parish side
near the 17th Street Bridge, and water poured into Lakeview.
There were only a few people in the area of the breaks, and they
had no way of reporting the disaster even if they were aware
of it.
The Crescent City
began to die - and hardly anyone knew it.
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