New Orleans 'a mess'
2005-09-02 15:06
New Orleans - Shattered glass, fallen brick walls, smashed up cars and trees ripped up by their roots littered the storied French Quarter of New Orleans on Monday, after Hurricane Katrina tore through.
The intimate maze of narrow streets, quaint houses and bars, normally filled with the aroma of Creole cuisine, snatched notes of jazz and tourists from the world over, looked like a war zone.
Winds howled and rain sheeted down as tentative residents braved the elements to assess damage to buildings, usually a cacophony of music and revelry, but now boarded up and left empty to face Katrina's wrath.
They discovered a neighbourhood ravaged, but not wrecked although a massive cleanup will be needed before revellers once again flock to its bars and clubs.
On historic Bourbon Street, Christy Juan, 20 and roommate Amanda Jackson, 22, took pictures with a cellphone, in streets darkened by power cuts.
"Yes! Got another one," Christy said, as she ran up to her friend with a downed "No Parking" sign.
Pools of water and broken glass marred streets which fill with revellers for the annual Mardi Gras celebrations.
One building had partially collapsed, crushing a white car, which had its windows smashed and was filled with bricks. Colourful Mardi Gras beads ripped off the outside of buildings peppered the streets.
Scores of historic houses, with their trademark ironwork balconies, appeared to have suffered structural damage, and famed Canal Street was still like a wind tunnel on Monday afternoon, long after the storm's worst had passed.
Palm trees lay across streetcar tracks, light standards were smashed and mixed in among the branches of fallen trees.
One mini van had its doors wrenched open and almost ripped off, under still angry skies, as police stepped up patrols in order to prevent looting of deserted bars and shops.
A few minutes' walk outside the Quarter, a man in a soaked orange shirt walked the streets, bizarrely, with a bedraggled cat, standing on his shoulder.
Jackson's mother Sharon, 56, also ventured outside to check what the girls were up to, after they failed to heed her wishes to stay in a hotel.
"I don't have any say since they're over 21," she said.
Jackson's husband is a policeman who had been patrolling the streets since 15:00 on Sunday. "He says it was a mess. He didn't have time to talk. A policeman was stuck in water and they had to get him out," she said.