St. Bernard Highway is the old route from New Orleans to Chalmette. We were barely past Elysian Fields when it became readily apparent that this part of town had suffered far more than just a little wind and water damage. For miles we drove through an area that could best be described as a bleak scene from an end-of-the-world movie. There were no living creatures in sight, either human or animal. On both sides of the empty street were ruined shells of houses and businesses, and abandoned vehicles, all coated with layers of mud that made them appear as metallic corpses rendered lifeless on or about the same time. There was no vegetation, and this lack of greenery seemed to drain all color from the empty houses, leaving them painted with only the gray pallor of death. To say that Marilyn and I were stunned is at best a simplistic description of the shock and horror we both felt.

There were signs up on both sides of the street advertising cut-rate gutting and trash hauling. There was no sign of FEMA, or any activity indicating a plan in place to cure the massive problem. What if a home owner did gut and repair his own house? Where would that leave him amid a sea of destruction? Why would restaurants, store and shop owners return to this devastation? I had no answer.

All that was left of Arabi was hundreds of empty houses once filled with living, breathing beings. The town was now totally devoid of life. When I worked in the City many years ago, I had a simple apartment in Arabi, across from a Catholic Convent where its resident nuns lived cloistered and alone their entire lives, spending their existence praying for humanity. I wondered what had happened to them, and where they were now were. I suppose, wherever they are, they are wondering why their prayers failed.

Chalmette, if at all possible, seemed even more devastated than Arabi. This is perhaps because it is flatter and you can see farther. As far as Marilyn and I could see, there was only destruction. The house of my ex-wife's parents lay at the corner of Montesquieu and Casa Calvo. For the life of me, I couldn't find a landmark, and we drove up and down endless, destroyed streets looking for the intersection. What we found was a city once submerged for a week or more beneath a sea of moving water. I felt like a visitor observing the exhumed remains of Pompei, centuries after its volcanic destruction.

Near the Chalmette Battlefield, we began seeing activity and signs of human life. Some of the houses were occupied and there were even some workers busily clearing buildings of rubble. We stopped at a lone convenience store to use the restroom and learned that the sewer system still wasn't functioning. We were directed to a long row of porta-potties. When Marilyn open the door to one of these structures, she recoiled in disgust and quickly returned to the car. The porta-potties had remained, perhaps for months, un-emptied and the air was filled with the odor, nay, the stench of governmental neglect.  http://www.ericwilder.com