[Mb-civic] By Boat Through a Water World - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

By Boat Through a Water World

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 5 -- The bad places stink. Musty. Gassy. Spoiled and 
rotting.

It's the smell of the swamp. And New Orleans is a swamp now, transformed 
in just eight days from the funkiest of gems into a wild place, a place 
of black waters, snakes, and spooky, echoing abandonment. Fires burn 
throughout the city on the surface of oil-slicked water that reaches -- 
with its spreading algae -- up to the streetlights in some neighborhoods.

There are entire swaths of New Orleans where no one can go without a 
boat, or hip waders, or foolish courage. But a few go anyway, searching 
for stranded pets or stranded neighbors, or both. The city -- the worst 
parts, at least, the deeply flooded east -- is best approached by water.

On the choppy surface of Pontchartrain, the giant lake that poured into 
the streets with such persisting ferocity, New Orleans looks like a 
walled medieval city. The huge levees built to keep water out now keep 
water in.

Edging along the giant lake's shore and poking through myriad canals 
reveal a netherworld of destruction and vigilantism in some of the 
city's toughest-to-reach sectors. To the west, a man with a shotgun 
guarded condominiums at the shredded Orleans Marina. Farther down the 
shore, a stockbroker slogged through waist-high water, carrying a 
whimpering pit bull. Way out east, a Catholic-Buddhist-transcendentalist 
prayed at an altar and took instructions from her long-dead father.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501469.html
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