Note: given the number of people who have been asking questions about the New Orleans scene and how Salesians and Sisters are faring, here is the 'definitive' response by way of a press release from the SUE province. It's a bit longer than I'd normally include for austraLasia, but there's a danger that any attempt to edit will distort the facts! Here 'tis, then. At this stage, a ANS personnel begin to return from holidays, hopefully they will take up further reports. aLa will return to its focus on regional matters (EAO)
HURRICANE KATRINA HITS SALESIAN WORKS SEVERELY
ALL CONFRERES AND SISTERS SAFE
New Rochelle, N.Y., August 31, 2005 – As the windy remnants of Hurricane Katrina are buffeting the New York City area, bits of information about the hurricane’s devastation arrive slowly at province headquarters.
Some explanation of the geography of New Orleans will be placed at the end of the news.
The Salesians have three works in the West Bank suburbs of New Orleans: Archbishop Shaw High School in Marrero, St. Rosalie Parish in Harvey, and St. John Bosco Parish in Harvey. The Salesian Sisters administer three schools: Immaculate Conception School and Immaculata High School in Marrero and Our Lady of Prompt Succor School in Westwego. [Note to translators: that is not “Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”] All six of these are archdiocesan institutions.
The sisters left the area either Saturday or early Sunday, well ahead of Katrina’s arrival on Monday morning. The community from Marrero apparently went all the way to Shreveport in the northwest corner of Louisiana, some 300 miles from New Orleans. The community from Westwego took shelter with the family of one of the sisters in Baton Rouge, the state capital, 75 miles upriver.
The families of 2 Salesians from the area evacuated safely in advance of the hurricane’s arrival.
The 11 Salesians chose to stay behind despite the urging of Fr. James Heuser, the provincial, that they leave. The 7 confreres of Abp. Shaw HS and the 2 from St. John Bosco Parish holed up Sunday night on the second floor of the school’s new academic building, which shook greatly at the storm’s height and lost several windows.
The 2 parish priests of St. Rosalie stayed on the second floor of one of the parish school buildings, along with 9 parishioners.
All 11 Salesians came through the storm on Monday unharmed, as also did Fr. Thomas Gwozdz, who teaches at St. Benedict Seminary in Covington and remained there, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The archbishop of New Orleans also took refuge at the seminary.
Katrina made landfall around 6:00 a.m. local time on Monday, August 29, well down in the Mississippi River delta, south and a little east of New Orleans. She tracked to the east of the city and struck her hardest direct blow along the Gulf coast of the state of Mississippi. New Orleans suffered a great deal of wind damage and flooding in the lowest lying parts of the city.
South and east of the city, St. Bernard Parish (in Louisiana, counties are called “parishes,” evidence of the state’s French colonial heritage] suffered very severe flooding, with an estimated 40,000 homes underwater. The president of Plaquemines Parish, which includes the entire delta of the Mississippi, reports that as much as half of the delta no longer exists.
At Abp. Shaw HS, one wall of the multistory gymnasium was at least partly blown out. (Editor’s note: This may mean the glass walls that surround the ground-floor foyer, and not the concrete walls of the upper level.) The roof was blown off the chapel building; many windows in various buildings were blown out; and gutters and building trim were torn off in many places.
At St. John Bosco Parish, church windows were blown out, roofs destroyed on the school building and parish hall, and part of the rectory roof collapsed.
At St. Rosalie Parish, the cafeteria-auditorium building and one school building lost roofs, and the front door of the church was blown off.
Obviously there will have been great interior damage from wind and rain in whatever buildings lost their roofs and windows. How much flooding of ground floors the heavy rain and wind caused, and the consequent damage, remains to be ascertained.
No information is available about the sisters’ 3 schools.
Likewise, very little information was available about the students, parishioners, and families of our schools and parishes. Some, at least, are known to have evacuated before Katrina arrived.
Late Monday one of the levees keeping the waters of Lake Pontchartrain out of New Orleans breached, and by Tuesday that breach had become some 300 feet long and as much as 26 feet deep. A second levee also gave way, leading to devastating flooding of 80% of the city. The governor ordered all civilian persons evacuated, including patients from ten city hospitals and the inmates of the Orleans Parish jail. The city government removed to Baton Rouge, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper set up in Houma, 60 miles west. The news media on Tuesday and Wednesday have given extensive coverage to this story. (The Times-Picayune Web site is www.nola.com]
The governor of Louisiana has established martial law in Orleans, Plaquemines, and Jefferson Parishes. Orleans Parish comprises the city of New Orleans. The Salesian institutions are in Jefferson Parish.
The flooding in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish’s East Bank does not directly affect the West Bank, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. The West Bank was described in one radio news report as wind-damaged but “basically dry.”
Nevertheless, the entire New Orleans area is without electrical power and potable water; telephone communications are spotty, at best; gasoline and other fuels are scarce; food will soon be scarce, as well.
Therefore on Monday, the 30th, 5 of the confreres left Marrero and Harvey to make their way to the nearest Salesian house, in Birmingham, Alabama, some 340 miles northeast of New Orleans. By Tuesday 4 more had departed for Baton Rouge, including Fr. James McKenna, the director. St. Rosalie’s 2 priests, Fr. Jonathan Parks and Fr. James Curran, remained behind.
Fr. James Heuser, provincial of the New Rochelle Province, has established the Hurricane Katrina Salesian Solidarity Fund to collect donations for the inevitable rebuilding of the school and parishes. He has appealed to the rest of the province and our students, parishioners, club members, and families to be generous. Possibly the very first donor was Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, who presented Fr. Jim with a $10,000 check on Tuesday while Fr. Jim was in St. Petersburg for the dedication of a new school building.
Donations to the Hurricane Katrina Salesian Solidarity Fund may be sent to
Bro. Tom Dion, SDB
Provincial Treasurer’s Office
P.O. Box 639
New Rochelle, NY 10802-0639
[payable to Salesian Society—Hurricane Fund]
Fr. Heuser also appeals to the entire Salesian Family for prayers for suffering members of our Family in the New Orleans area.
Some Geography
New Orleans, founded in 1718 by the French, lies about 100 miles upriver—or used to—from the Gulf of Mexico. But 600-square-mile Lake Pontchartrain immediately north of the city and somewhat smaller Lake Borgne to the east are really arms of the Gulf. The site was a natural intersection of Indian trading paths between the river, the lakes, and the Gulf. Most of the site is below sea level, an average of about 6 feet below; it is often described as a bowl. Thus when the levees were breached, it was not only storm surge that poured into the city, but the normal lake waters as well.
Some of the higher ground in the city is occupied by the famous French Quarter (Le Vieux Carré), the oldest part of the city and site of St. Louis Cathedral and the Ursuline Convent (1748), focus of the city’s night life and Carnival season (Mardi Gras), and the birthplace of jazz.
Because of a bend in the Mississippi River, most of New Orleans actually lies north of the river, between its protective levee and the Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borge levees. Several canals with their levees also cross the city, mostly to help with drainage. The Algiers section of the city is across the river on what is called the West Bank because, as one continues either up- or downriver, it actually is the west side of the river. The major bridge crossing (a branch of US Hwy 90) links Algiers and downtown New Orleans.
West of the city on the East Bank and south of it on the other side of the Mississippi is Jefferson Parish, named after the U.S. President who purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803. The parish stretches from Lake Pontchartrain across the river and south to the bayous, Barataria Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico. The lower reaches of the parish had a mandatory evacuation order before the hurricane, as did New Orleans.
Moving upriver west from Algiers, one comes to the city of Gretna and then the unincorporated portions of Jefferson Parish: Harvey, Marrero, and Westwego, all up against the levee of the Mississippi and opposite New Orleans. These areas, like New Orleans, rely upon the system of pumping stations to remove water after any heavy rain. The farther south and away from the river one goes, the lower the ground, until one is well into the bayous (various swamps, marshes, channels, creeks, etc., amid all the low ground).
St. Rosalie Parish in Harvey and the sisters’ Immaculata and Immaculate Conception schools in Marrero are located about a half mile’s distance from the Mississippi, as also is the sisters’ school in Westwego. Abp. Shaw HS is about a mile south of the river. Harvey’s St. John Bosco Parish is four or five miles farther south. Immaculata and Immaculate Conception often have flooding problems after a heavy rain. The other places do not, but reaching them on the local streets may be problematic.
