Gone

Those of you who pay close attention to this blog (and if you do, please look in the yellow pages under Mental Health Professionals for some help) know that Donna and I lived in New Orleans for a while in the middle 80s. Once I left the Navy we choose New Orleans for a couple of reasons, one of which was because she grew up there we would both be eligible for in state tuition while we attended college on the GI Bill. The other reason was that Donna’s dad had recently passed away and her youngest brother was still a teenager, so we felt if we moved back in with mom and brother it might be a stabling influence on young Scott.

When Donna’s family moved to New Orleans in the 60’s they bought a 4 bedroom, 1-1/2 bath split level home in the Lakeview section of town. It was near Lake Ponchatrain, you couldn’t actually see the lake unless you could climb to the very top of the two massive live oaks that shaded the house, but it was also only a short bus ride to downtown.

We stuck around long enough to see Scott graduate high school, but the economy had turned sour and jobs grew scarce, so Donna and I moved up to NJ. Not long after that, Donna’s younger sister convinced mom and Scott to sell the house and move out to Seattle with her.

Below are a couple of small images showing the northern section of New Orleans before and after Katrina. The before came from Google Maps and the little pointer shows where we lived. The second is from part of a larger high resolution satellite image from Digital Globe. You can download both before and after images from their page by clicking on the Hurricane Katrina Imagery link in the upper left. They are approximately 4000 x 4500 pixels and are 3 or 4 megabytes in size.

Before:

After:

The dark greenish blue shows the areas that are underwater. One of the levees that broke, the 17th Street Canal one, is on the left of the image where the light turns to dark. The actual breach point is about parallel with the marker and is less than a mile from the house. Most assuredly Donna’s childhood home is a total loss.