Me and my bat

I can't take it anymore. If those tour buses stop in front of my house again I am going at the van with my bat. I called Gray line today and explained to them what they are doing to me by taking their Katrina devastation tours down my street. The lady asked where I live and said that my area has alot to offer with sights of destruction. Well %#$%@$# You Gray Line! Tomorrow I will be waiting for you. I will stand in the street when I see you and break your windshield with my bat. I do not want people taking pictures of me anymore. I am trying to survive and rebuild my life and they just don't care. All they want to do is take pictures home and show their friends us poor horrible people. Yeah, I still wear hand me downs with holes in them. Well, you would too. And no, there ain't no trees around here cause they all died. And stop taking pictures of my neighbors house. That spray painted 1 dead means alot to us here in this neighborhood and you are not paying any respect to those who died in this storm.

I'm sorry I have so much rage in me right now. I'm trying to calm down and was hoping that writting it down would help. I'm gone take a walk.

Well, the bat might not be the best idea in the long run, but I can't say I blame you. You have every right to be outraged. I'm really sorry chalmette

Why not go out there with a tin can for donations instead? I WISH ppl had come by after Hurricane Andrew!

I'm sorry for your losses, I really do understand.

I hope you don't use your bat today? Why give those ghouls even more to report home about? stand up and straight and be proud!!

i am stunned that there are tours that stop in your neighborhoods!! i can certainly understand your outrage and your hurt.

i do agree with mouse that doing something with the bat would only give them more to take photos of.....i used to live in a village in New Mexico where rafters and kayakers came to put in the river and summer was miserable for the locals. but that can't begin to compare with what you are enduring. i am so sorry that people are that insensitive.

hang in there and know that we care about you.....xoxoxo pat

I wanted to let you know what happened. First, I did not use my bat. I took my walk and ran into some of my neighbors outside talking. I told them how frustrated I was with the vans and buses. They said they were too. Saturday morning the guys wheeled some debris (from a recently gutted house) down to one of the corners and made a sort of barricade with it. Around 3pm the cops came by wanting to know why the stuff was blocking the street. We told them what has been going on and they said they would speak with the tourist companies doing these tours. We haven't seen one tour bus or van come down our street since. They are going down the street next to us now. I'm sorry I got so excited on here. Every little thing is getting to me bad. And I'm trying my hardest to not get out of control or cry my eyes out over it. By daily, life is such a struggle here. I just want to see some kind of improvement with something, anything. I'm over the loss of the material things. Minus the irreplaceable things. It's the loss of friends family and community I'm having problems with. And I'm sick and tired of hearing about the crap that happened to the city of New Orleans. When we, here in St Bernard, were 100% destroyed. I keep praying that I'll wake up and it's all been a dream.

Sky, thanks. I find it hard alot of the time to speak about what I'm going through here on this forum. I do know that everyone in time goes through major loss of something. But, like us here, you with Andrew, ya'll lost friends, family, and your entire county too. It's hard trying to adjust to a complete loss of everything I've ever known my entire life. And everyone I know here is going through the same loss. We just try to stay in touch via phone and all hope one day to live near each other again. I spend alot of time on the st bernard forum just reading what others are saying. I sometimes have input, but feel awkward talking with other st bernardians too. If you don't mind sharing. What were some of the ways you got through Andrew?

Thank ya'll for caring
chalmette

Chalmette, You are making me home sick. I kid you not, Those St. Bernard Parish women are tough. Don't want to run afoul of them. I bet the "tourists" on that bus hear some words that they couldn't find on Google. Hope all is well. Wishing you the Best. Your Friend, Cajun

Hi Cajun, How's your momma and 'dem.

I posted three pics under daily living. I haven't gotten the videos out yet to you. I will try this week. There is one good video that my friend Brian took during the storm. At the end he is floating around in his attic and looks out through the roof and all you can see is roof tops through the water. But this man hijacked a neighbors boat late on monday and saved many people stranded on their rooftops. I have something to look forward to tomorrow. My neighbor is going to cook some couchon de lait. None of us are doing the Carnival thing cause we are trying to work on the houses. So, he figured he will cook and have us over by his trailer to eat in the evening. That means I'm gonna have to run and make groceries sometime today. I havent had couchon since before the storm. Maybe this will bring my appetitie back. I know what you mean about being homesick. I'm here and I feel homesick too.

take it easy and hop in your Chevy and take a ride to the levee. Oh, wait, forgot, the levees are gone. LOL

Your coonazz Chalmation cousin

Hi Chalmette
I cannot, in any way, imagine the loss and devastation you have/are enduring. I haven't ever experienced any type of major disaster but want you to know that I am sickened and deeply, deeply saddened to hear about what life is like for you on a daily basis. I am sorry, just so sorry. I wish I could offer more, it makes my heart ache for all of you. I just don't understand the devastation and the world. Please know many people know you are still there, trying to rebuild, trying to put fragmented lives back together.

I wish my words could give more, I'm at a loss for how to console you. I will keep remembering and I will keep praying and sending love to you all....

Well, I think it was by rote for many weeks. We lived in our front yard for 3 weeks... I happened to have a screen house from my camping stuff...and we slept there... it rained on and off the entire time...and the sleeping bags often got wet, but at least we weren't in the driven rains...

I set up a wash stand set up like at camp, and cranked up the propane grill for warm water to wash with... One neighbor, a Sergeant who stayed and didn't evacuate, had a freezer full of meat so we ate meat each meal before it rotted.

We obtained a generator after a few weeks, and by then we had been able with help of the neighbor before he shipped out, broke open the damaged garage door, so after a makeshift roof was tacked onto it, we moved from the screen house to the garage, though it was open air then, and no door to protect us yet.

We took turns pulling guard shifts... that is until the 3rd neighbor really melted down and his wife was more interested in rolling her hair than safety...they almost shot one of us in their frenzy of thinking someone was breaking into a neighboring house... they left for somewhere else after that. But it was tougher with just four of us doing the night shift to stay safe. (Martial law.)

It took a month before the National Guard found us...and all of us having military training soon realized that the Ntl Guard were carrying weapons WITHOUT AMMO!!!! We had more fire power than they... but the good thing was, no questions asked, you tell them where the bodies were, and they threw them into the back of the truck and took them off to the morgue...they'd come through nightly and do this (if needed) once in a while they'd bring ice.

Like I said, it rained everyday for weeks...so you couldn't dry anything out...and clothes that made it through the storm rotted, or rusted on the hangars. The same with the carpet, and furniture. The walls in the house reeked with mold and mildew, so they had to be torn out too...

I used my hunting sling shot, and bb pistol to kill the rats as they ran across the top of the pieces of fence still around... was a terrible problem we'd never had before.

We didn't have communications, even though I am an amateur radio operator. My battery ran down trying to break in to the conversations from ppl north of us talking about how bad they heard it was down south No internet ('92) and no phones. We did buy a cellular phone as soon as we could get out into towns north of us...

The local Elks lodge set up a soup kitchen and free store and we went there to eat lunch after a month or so I think... the Red Cross came through after the National guard found us, but the truck was empty... didn't even have coffee or cheap dog food ... some stupid stuff...guess we were the end of their path but they never NEVER returned to help. One lady brought a bag of plastic bags, so I was able to save some papers and wet photo albums but it was too late for the clothes and stuff. The Miami Herald began throwing papers to us after a while, but no one said to open them and read where the help was, we were too traumatized to realize it on our own and wondered why they thought we had time to read their paper! We were too busy surviving.

I think it took 3 months before we had water turned back on, though pressure was low... power came sooner because we had underground cables and had dried in the garage...

that's enough for now.

Thank you for your kind words. There is nothing much anyone can really do after something like this. It's just something now that we all have to fight to make it through.

Oh my! An old family friend just stopped by and gave me a photo album he was able to save from his house. I'm so happy, excited. There are pictures of all my family and friends from the 70's and 80's in here. I now have pictures from us all growing up. My mind is racing. I need to get copies of them all and give to everyone so they have them too. Oh, this is so wonderful. I can't stop crying tears of happiness. This is a dream come true. Pictures of us all. You brought me some luck Talulah. Thank you. I need to go call my parents and family and friends. Thank you so much Mr. Mac for the pictures. I'm ready to run down the street hollaring cheers of joy.

You know Chalmette, thank you, thank you soo much.

I think you've gifted me with the perception to never take anything for granted. It takes so much sometimes for me to really "feel" and "care" for people. But I swear, your post (and sky's) touched me so deeply I ached for you. I truly asked whatever higher presence resides in the universe to give something, anything of goodness to all of you who've suffered/are suffering.

But you know what? It was I that got a gift as well.

So, thank you Chalmette for reminding me that there can still be goodness in this world even after tragedy. That one person can find a photo album and share this much joy to another. it is so beautiful......so I'll keep you in my heart, and truly thank you.....

Thank you for sharing that with me. I agree it was very scary after the storm. We too had Marshall Law down here. When the surge came in, it came up fast. Up to 12 feet in many parts of the parish. The water gradually did receed, but we had to wait till the tide went back out and the water had to be pumped out by generators. All of our pumping stations were destroyed. It took over three weeks for the flood waters to go down. It was thursday after the storm when outsiders finally made it into the parish. The only way in is by bridge or boat. It was about 30 Canadians from a search and rescue team out of Vancouver. For two weeks it was local residents and the Canadian rescue team who saved people. Where I live in the parish, we had a huge oil spill from a refinery. In all of that floodwater we also had 1 million gallons of oil, benzene and the works. We weren't allowed back into the parish until Sept. 22nd and that ended up being cancelled because of Hurricane Rita. We flooded again after that storm and had to wait another week to come back and see our homes. The National Guard did make it down here to the parish, but it was almost two weeks after the storm. We had to gut our houses from top to bottom. Shovel a foot of wet marsh mud out the entire house.Then Murphy Oil came in and cleaned the inside and outside of the house for oil. We did three rounds of mold remediation on the inside. Then let the house sit air tight with humidifiers for one month. We opened it back up and started rebuilding. It took us five months to clean out the house. On Feb 13th, 2006, we started the rebuilding process. Today, we still don't have street lights or street signs. You have to make your own. Land line phones and cable tv won't be back to this area until around October later this year. You can get satellite tv now. Most areas have electricity and gas. Some still waiting. The hospital we had is not coming back, it's been demolished. We do have a health clinic in a trailer. Slowly we do have businesses coming back. But if you have shopping to do, you need to travel to the westbank or the northshore for that. Driving down the highway these days your starting to see improvements. But when you drive into the neighoborhoods it is horrible. Many streets don't have a thing done to them since the storm. The local government predicts that it will be at least 10 years before the parish resembles what it even looked like in the 60's.

Yes, I think 10 years is a conservative estimate. Homestead is still rebuilding, now 15 years later. Of course, it will never be the same because they closed the most important Air Force base around: HAFB and that was a $300 million economy booster per year.

My friend in Homestead has a cousin who went through your storm in LA. His water mark was 20'... 16' in the house. She would give me details of what all you all were going through. She didn't suffer quite the devastation I did, and weathered the storm in the local bank which wasn't destroyed....so maybe that is why she is "o k" with the stuff, idk. Of course, she didn't have PTSD prior to the storm here, nor after, like me

To add insult to injury, my dad died from the stress of it all. Here, 5 families lost their homes...in times past my dad was always the one we could go to for help.. .this time he also had nothing.... he developed a brain tumor in the beginning of 94 and died 5 weeks later.

It's amazing how, now that I live in the county north of there, so many of us moved here. Well, 80,000 residences holding an average of 3 families each were affected.... we all had to go somewhere. But now, once someone is triggered by something in the paper, or on tv...and vocalizes it, it's amazing how the rest of us, all strangers, will begin to add to the story...and we are all there, on that Monday morning, once again.

Sky, I'm sorry that you lost your father because of Andrew. I know what you mean. I lost many in the storm and because of it.

I wouldn't even wish this torture on my worst enemy.

(((hugs)))) Wishing you safety and a good recovery.

(((( All on this thread ))))