Magyar News, 2005. szeptember-december (16. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2005-12-01 / 4. szám
1 The home of Dr. Gergatz and Juli Bika. The vast amount of destruction is piled up on the street in front of the house. bodies of water. The inhuman work to build the canals and filling the marshes was not carried out by slaves, they were too valuable property for this, but by Irish immigrants. The Celtic cross commemorating the 40 thousand who died during the construction work can be seen at one of the canals. Do profit-hungry capitalists build in areas of land that is so vulnerable to national disasters? Not so -said my Hungarian friend - it is socialism that is to be blamed. If the Federal Government would not guarantee flood insurance for marshes, outer banks and environmentally sensitive areas, people would not build there. But since the insurance pays, the destroyed houses are being rebuilt again and again. It took a decade to reconstruct all the houses destroyed by Hurricane Andrew after it hit Florida in 1992. Hurricane Katrina destroyed 10 times as many homes as Andrew. I went to New Orleans at the request of Dr. István Gergátz, the Honorary Consul of Hungary. He left the city on August 28, a day before the storm hit the area. The order of mandatory evacuation was followed by just about all those who had cars. Unfortunately nobody thought about providing buses for the more than 100 thousand poor without transportation. They were those people we saw on the TV crowded in the Superdome or desperately waiting for help on the rooftops. Going around the city I saw the holes in the roofs where people tried to escape the rising flood, while the elderly and weak got struck in the attics. All in all about 1035 people died in New Orleans, many in the attics. Dr. Gergatz and his wife, Julianna Bika, left the city without any of their clothes or valuables, thinking - like everybody else - that they will be back in a couple of days. The roof damage and tom up trees would be replaced and life would go on. But the real problem came after the storm passed. The levees broke at three locations and took down a good part of the seawalls. Lake Pontchartrain stole back the wetlands long ago reclaimed for housing. The 17th Street break flooded the Lakeview section, a decent middle class area, where the Dr. Gergátz had a three level townhome. The water completely engulfed the first floor for over three weeks. When we got there the water was gone, but the devastation was everywhere. Mold, mildew, rotten food in the refrigerators, smell, deep mud hardened to brick in the sun, broken partitions and furniture everywhere. Upstairs, what was saved from the flood , was damaged as the roof blow away. No water, no electricity, no drain. It may take not months, but years until the broken infrastructure, and the houses, can be rebuilt - if at all. The second break at the Industrial Canal flooded the poorest part of the city, the 9th Ward. This was a racially mixed district, where in the sixties federal marshals led a tiny black girl, Ruby Bridges, to first grade school. Since than it became all black and this is where most people were stranded not having cars to evacuate. The future of this section is highly questionable. The third break at London Avenue flooded the downtown area, the Chalmette section. The Superdome area was also effected. Engineering opinion is almost unanimously point to inadequate construction of the levees and seawalls. The foundation is anchored in loose peat and this was washed out by the waves. The foundations were not deep enough to withstand the strength of the hurricane. This was known to the Corps of Engineers, that is why they were requesting monies in the federal budget every year for reinforcing the levees. But the funds were always diverted for other purposes. Now it will take more than 10 times as much to do the job. If it proves to be necessary to build new and deeper foundations, and not only to do a repair job, the reconstruction of the houses could be delayed for years. True, that over the years New Orleans has gone from the leading city of the South to a theme park of low-rollers and sinners. Still it has magnificent old houses, wide A child is sitting in front of the tomüup root of a huge tree that the storm knocked over in Arpadhon Page 4
