Ashton Daigle

6-7-06

Douglas Brinkley:

So, today is inauguration day today for our buddy Ray Nagin. I wonder if you’ll be there in the audience at the Convention Center booing, or better yet, throwing Hieneken bottles at him. Somebody certainly should be. Or maybe one of those little kegs they make. I understand those things pack a pretty good wallop.
On second thought, though, a Chocolate Soldier bottle might be even more fitting.
Can you imagine Ray picking glass shards out of that pretty bald head of
his with a pear of tweezers right there in the middle of the press conference?

Talk about a Kodak moment, a virtual wet dream for Anderson Cooper and all the folks at CNN and Fox News who have been shaking their fingers at us “dumb Louisianians” and muttering “I told you so” since August 29, 2006.
Fuck it. I’ve got enough recovery issues of my own to deal with here on the
north shore. Cleco had a hurricane preparedness workshop yesterday.
I also climbed up to the roof of the EOC here in Covington (which actually used to be the old courthouse) yesterday with an engineer from WWL Radio. I’d never been up there before. The view was pretty damned impressive.
Unfortunately, I was wearing sandals, (Wednesday is casual half-day around here at the paper), so the climb up was pretty damned treacherous. I was able to get some good pictures, though, so it was worthwhile.
He, the WWL guy, was installing an antenna. Apparently, WWL Radio is installing satellite links inside the EOC’s in Orleans, Jefferson and St. Tammany.
Amidst all those little nuisances during Katrina, like bodies floating dead in the streets and people being rescued from their rooftops, the government folks say communications was a real problem and they’ll be damned if they will let that happen again.
So, the top of the EOC here is a veritable fortress of satellite disks, antennae (?). They even have a fleet of civilian HAM radio operators waiting in the wings, who will hole up here at the EOC if or when the going gets rough.
Never mind the obvious questions, like what happens when lightning strikes that big dish there or when 155 mph sustained winds rip that little aluminum tower down and send it through the window of some grandmother’s house six blocks away.
These things are simply too fucking ugly to ponder. And the fragile egg-shell minds of Katrina victims are not equip to deal with them. But not mine, Douglas. My mind is sharp as a tack. Conventional thought is out the window.
And I traded my khaki pants, plain white dress shirts and cheap Van Heusen ties (standard reporter “uniform” for lack of better word for more fitting apparel - tiger stripe camo fatigue pants; my well-worn red Sketchers t-shirt (a free souvenir from the Houston Galleria mall to all “evacuees from Louisiana” for purchases over 50 bucks); and ther black Sketcher sandals I bought to acquire said free t-shirt above; and my CNN cap; which has gotten me into more places where I didn’t really belong than I’m really comfortable fucking admitting.
I drink energy drinks now; lots of them; and I carry a Rambo knife, billy club, smoke flares; a large Bowie Knife and boxes of MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) in the trunk of my Saturn. The vibes here are ugly. Sleazy, out-of-state contractors are not to be trusted; I’d gut one rather than trust one. Fuses are short; traffic has been at a standstill for a year now; and the addition of a new Hispanic workforce into the southeast Louisiana equation is questionable and barely tolerated at best.
But I digress.
No. The WWL guy didn’t want to hear questions like this. That’s nay-saying, and in these troubled times, where everybody is already teetering somewhere between dread and full-blown panic, that sort of outlook isn’t going to be tolerated.
He said the tower would be anchored. The sheer stupidity of some people, Douglas. Would it be the same way the casinos in Biloxi were anchored right before they
were blown and floated right across the damned highway?
I think people have to really scout out the damage zone, visit, or at least drive through each area where Katrina hit, to really grasp the full magnitude of the thing. I think that’s a big problem. Not just for Senators and Representatives in Congress who are hesitant to doll out money to Nagin-Wood aka Chocolate City. Even people here in the parish don’t have a clue; one hand really doesn’t know, or care, what the other hand is doing.
For all the talk of united fronts and coming together, I’ve never seen such
a discordant, unintelligent and inefficient bunch of people and government bodies in my entire life. There are a lot of weird dynamics at work here in St. Tammany Parish - stupidity mostly, but still a factor nonetheless; but also greed - and lots of it. We’re just one big, dysfunctional family here Douglas. But since I’m from here, I can say these things.
My guess is that people will be telling Katrina stories for many years to come. For as much media coverage as we have seen, I don’t even think the surface has been scratched yet. There are so many people stories out there. There are so many ramifications and issues. And now, this new season is upon us.
Don’t let any of them kid you. I hate to be the harbinger of doom, death and destruction, but we are nowhere near ready for another storm, not even a Cat. 1. A Cat. 1, at this point, is going to feel like a Cat. 3, because all the coastal speed bumps are gone.
Here, on the north shore, they’re still dragging ass trying to get waterways cleared out and leaners and hangers down. Our road infrastructure in St. Tammany is for shit. Half of U.S. 190, near Covington, is in the midst of a widening project, which doesn’t look anywhere near completion, and which will create a major clusterfuck. On the east end of the parish, nothing has been done in terms of any sort of flood protection.
In fact, the shoring up of levees on the south shore, provided they were to hold under a Katrina-like storm, will probably mean more, and possibly worse flooding for east St. Tammany.
Think about it, Douglas. You don’t have to be an engineer or a rocket scientist to know that if the levees on the south are more solid, the water not going into the city has to be diverted in some direction. The path of least resistance is through the Chef Pass, Rigolets and coastal areas of Slidell, all the way even to Lacombe, Mandeville and Madisonville.
Well, I imagine I’ve rambled enough for one morning. It’s good to hear you may be doing an updated version of “Deluge” which might include more St. Tammany material.
Like I said before, I know there are tons of stories that have not been told yet, a lot of things that either I didn’t have time for because of higher recovery priorities or that my publisher killed because they were “Slidell” stories. See, I told you about these Covington people. It’s almost enough to make a person wish a tsunami strike on them. In fact, one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever heard out of my publisher’s mouth was when the Times Picayune first identified the small handful of people who died in St. Tammany.
(A side note - our official death count in St. Tammany was seven, maybe eight. One death has been disputed as to whether it was actually hurricane-related or not. I’ve heard, though, that the death toll was actually much higher here. I even had a deputy as much as tell me that there are probably lots of people flung into bayous, woods or other areas that will probably just never be found because they are in areas that are essentially inaccessible. It could be urban legend, but maybe not.)
My publisher tells me, “We’re not worried about them, they’re just Slidell people.” That utterly floored me. I almost quit on the spot. I wanted to scream at her “Hello, I’m from Slidell you stupid bitch.”
It’s that overall general attitude that is going to end up being disastrous if it prevails during a time of emergency. Anyway, I’d be happy to act as point man for you when you begin to gather St. Tammany information. Just let me know.

Sincerely,

Ashton Daigle