The Field of Dreams - Andy Winslow

Surrounding the unexpected meeting with Mr. C Ray Nagin, my job duties have taken a sharp turn. I bid my farewell to the leisurely French Quarter curb analysis to welcome a more important and less exciting windshield assessment project for FEMA. In teams of two, interns, city employees, contracted employees, and anyone else with two eyes and an arm or two take a drive out into “the field.” Similar to other “fields”, our “field” is the site at which our project is carried out, but the difference is this “field” spans the entire city of New Orleans, including each of thirteen separate planning districts. It is a massive project requiring the work of nearly everyone mentioned above and then some.

Conceptualization of the scope of disaster that New Orleans is faced with in repairing its roadways remains a feat even the city is still working on. In some cases, it is difficult to fathom attributing the destruction of the roadways just to floodwater. In many of these cases, the reality is that the damage came from multiple sources besides the flooding itself. First, a fair percentage of the minor roadways throughout New Orleans were in need of serious repair prior to Katrina. Second, the debris trucks and heavy equipment from the Army Corps of Engineers that served such an important role in the cleanup efforts of the city placed unrealistically heavy loads on the roads, sidewalks, and curbs. Unfortunately for New Orleans and much of southern Louisiana, and especially pronounced in the areas that used to be wetlands, the soil is soft and rich with sediment. The manifestation of heavy loading atop regions of poor soil, quite predictably, is widespread subsidence.

In the absence of the aforementioned hardships, this road assessment project would be made infinitely easier. Besides the inconsistencies in documenting the same problem across the teams of largely untrained and inexperienced inspectors, the real problem lies is the delineation and categorization of specific types of damage in a severely damaged segment of road. Some of the roads are so bad that documenting the short stretches with no visible problems is easier than pointing out the individual problems themselves.

On a more anecdotal note, when we converse with locals and let them know the type of work we are doing for the city, many of them are quick to point out the terrible state of their respective road or sidewalk before Katrina. Since FEMA’s responsibility is not to repair the problems that existed before the hurricane and flooding, an added importance comes with filtering out the preexisting roadway problems and deciding what damage is a direct result of floodwater or debris truck-induced subsidence. The irony behind the situation, we later joke, is that this friendly neighbor is revealing the very information that would prevent FEMA from considering repairs, in a sense “blowing the cover” for the entire block!

Although the monotony of the job is something I have come to dislike, working on the streets of New Orleans provides me the type of experience I sought when I joined DukeEngage. Aside from getting out to see firsthand the really hard and devastating effects of the storm, I have taken an interest in talking to the locals and piecing together certain themes they profess regarding the many failures of Katrina. These themes span from the (mis)engineering behind the levees, to the policy decisions by city officials, to FEMA, and even to themselves. Whatever it is, everyone around here has a certain opinion or strong feeling about how post-Katrina New Orleans was handled, which really spells out how disorganized it was. Although it is my personal belief that the root of the problem can be traced back to the engineering of the levees, I have learned over the first few weeks philosophies that suggest the problem spanned far beyond the levee breach. Rather than finding a scapegoat and pointing fingers, it is my personal philosophy that the best way to approach a solution the problem is to go out and get your hands dirty in “the field,” as large as it may be.