Andy Winslow

Week I (Sunday, June 10, 2007 – Saturday, June 16, 2007):

My first impressions of New Orleans save the airport and the humidity were very positive. Riding down the freeway to Xavier University, where DukeEngage NOLA will be staying, I tried to maintain a conversation with Dr. Schaad, our faculty advisor, and look out the window to take in New Orleans. Something had to give, and unfortunately for Dr. Schaad, my gaze out the window wasn’t moving.

I didn’t see anything that profound or unexpected, which, I guess, is an observation in itself. I had expected to see decrepit and abandoned buildings, boarded houses, and a bit of the bayou shrubbery that a Minnesotan never gets to experience. Since Xavier is right off of the freeway in a fairly urban setting, our drive didn’t expose all that much of New Orleans. It was our later trip to a restaurant on Decateur St. called Tujagues, adjacent to the famous Café Du Monde and the mighty Mississippi, which provided our first tour of some of the devastating effects of Katrina.

Perhaps the most compelling observation I made was on the facades of a number of the houses on our drive to Tujagues. I noticed a spray painted ‘X’ adjacent to a date and a separate number. Dr. Schaad informed me that the fire department came through New Orleans after the storm and flooding and knocked on the doors to make sure nobody was inside. They surveyed each of the houses, recording the date and the number of bodies found in the house. Though these visual images set a profound image in my mind, the reality is that this district, as I would find, was not the hardest hit area (click the ‘regional picture’ tab).

The restaurant gave a survey of the Creole cuisine, which was a great way to start off DukeEngage NOLA. After exploring the town Sunday with the other members of the program, we headed to work the next morning. I work with Kristin Bova for the City of New Orleans Department of Public Works. I didn’t know what to expect, given that there were probably a number of Katrina-related problems the department was dealing with and that this was my first real exposure to engineering outside of the classroom or laboratory. I walked away from the first day with a bit of an ambiguous feeling about the internship, but this was only due to some unsure feelings I had about my actual job duties. The next day, we were introduced to our supervisor; he listed a myriad of problems the Public Works Department had on its agenda, giving the impression that there was plenty for us to do.

As it turned out, the office is a great place, the people are friendly, laid back, and they rarely make it to the office before 9:00 AM. We were assigned the task of going in the field to the historic French Quarter to survey some of the street corners in effort to make the curbs ADA compliant, a project that both of us have thoroughly enjoyed thus far. Indeed, as fun as the job we are doing is in comparison to the other DukeEngage internships, part of me had hoped that the work would have more of a direct relation to Katrina and its after-effects. The Quarter, after all, is set near the River on the highest ground in New Orleans and was mainly unscathed by Katrina. My work felt a lot better when I grasped the idea that the Department of Public Works lost 70% of its manpower during the storm, a seemingly incomprehensible loss to a department that was already falling behind.

Finally, part of the group went out to the Mississippi river Saturday night and we enjoyed the sunset and a walk through the French Quarter. Our night included a stop at Café Du Monde. From my personal experience, beignets are the greatest thing known to man, but attempting to eat more than five of them in one sitting is never a good choice…

-AW