As promised, here's a video and some pictures taken from my visit to Abramson High School ONE MONTH AFTER Hurricane Katrina. I visited 2 days after New Orleans East was opened back up to residents. The school received about 4 ft. of water throughout. The smell was pretty hard to believe, the smell of the entire city was quite hard to believe actually, but at Abramson, even with a mask on, the smell nearly knocked me down more than once.

Click here for the raw Abramson video (37 Meg file)

Stills from Abramson High School (click picture for larger image):

The grey line on the wall marks the level of "standing" water, the water obviously was higher at some point, but the grey line is the "standing water" line. Water stood at this level for well over a week.

It's easy to see the different "standing water" levels when you see the inside of the School. Notice the different "Lines" as stages of "de-watering" were offset by the arrival of Rita and other rainstorms.

Trees down in the school's courtyards, as well as some trees that didn't belong tossed into the school compound (probaby from Joe Brown Park across the street). NOTE: All the trees at Abramson are dying. In fact, almost every tree I saw in areas that were flooded are dying. In fact, every plant I saw throughout the entire trip was dying. I should also mention that there were VERY few birds around, some ducks that couldn't fly, but other than that, almost no birds at all. Even the insect population was extremely low compared to what's normally present in New Orleans, I expected to see roaches everywhere, I saw NONE.

Large windows and glass walls blown in by wind and storm surge.

So that's Abramson High School. Generally destroyed, but given it's brick and cinderblock construction, the school structure "may" be saved, who knows. Coming up tomorrow, more images from N.O.

--Jason

Posted by JasonColeman at October 17, 2005 1:51 PM

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