Brian Manzella
Administrator
The traffic in and out of New Orleans is bad.
Real bad.
But that's good. Because that means there is action in the Cresent City. The city is coming back. A great portion of it never left. But if you live in Peoria, you think New Orleans is done.
Why does the media do such a poor job?
The "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story" philosophy is alive and well in the mainstream media. Even in the media that Rush Limbaugh is a part of—the 'so-called' alternative media.
They both have at least one thing in common—an agenda.
But enough about them.
I'm going to tell you the TRUTH about us, the citizens of The Cresent City (by the way, locals almost never use the term "Big Easy," and they never ever call it Nawlins), and IT—the city. One of the best cities in the world.
Katrina was a bad storm. But, really, it wasn't all that bad. How could it have been? My 40 year-old ranch house is still standing. The only real "storm" damage was from a tree that fell on the roof that our insurance company says would only cost a couple of thousand dollars to fix.
My wife had to evacuate—most of us were smart enough to listen to local officials and The Weather Channel—without me, as I was in Atlanta on business.
She had plenty to do—gather all the real important stuff, our important papers, our "Westie" Bailey, our wedding photos from just 2003, and our LSU season tickets—and didn't have the time to do the time-honored tradition of boarding up your house.
Our little ranch house, unprotected.
Well, not a window broke. The new fence held. The shingles stayed put.
But, oh yeah, one small detail, the 17th street canal levee. The one about 175 yards from our front door, breached on Monday morning of the storm.
It flooded the house with salt water from Lake Ponchartrain and every chemical and non-chemical matter it washed our way. The water rose to 11 feet—our slab little ranch house has 9 foot ceilings—and totally ruined every single item we ever owned in our lives including the house.
That is not exactly correct though. We did save our china, glassware and silverware. We also salvaged a few of our CD's and DVD's.
But that's it. Everything else was shot.
But not from Katrina.
Not even from the extensive, HUGE levee system that protects us from the two main bodies of water that surrounds us: Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi River. Those levees are massive structures and didn't fail in even ONE place.
What flooded our home and a large portion of New Orleans were breaks in the levees of several small canals that are inlets of the two main waterways.
In Jefferson Parish (County), which borders the "City" of New Orleans, the inlets have locks and pumping stations that protect against storm surge.
They did.
But, in Orleans Parish—The City—the inlets like the 17th street canal that lays a solid six-iron from my front door, had NO locks where they meet the main waterways.
Every single one of them broke.
The levees that hold back the water from a 24-mile-across lake and the largest river in the USA are 60-70-80 yards across and up to 18 feet high, and had little problem with the "great storm."
The levees that I can throw a golf ball over—while laying on my back—and had little silly I-walls attached to the top like a fence on a rich man's property, all broke easily.
Why?
They were built by the United States Government, and everyone knows if you need something built right, you call the people who gave us FEMA to save us in case their levees broke.
Ha.
But, we are coming back. Most of us never left or went very far.
My mom, childhood friends, and brothers, ALL live near the City.
They lived near the City before, in the suburb of Chalmette. Now they live in the suburbs of Slidell, Covington and Gonzales.
In a city that had about 1,500,000 within an hour of Bourbon Street, you now have about 1,200,000 living inside the same circle.
Those people in Peroria think it is less than HALF.
That's because the media, the ones that are PAID to report, keep thinking of New Orleans as JUST Orleans Parish. But Orleans Parish only had 480,000 people of the 1,500,000 before the storm.
About half of the residents who lived in Orleans Parish are not currently living in the "City" right now. Some live next door to my mom and brothers who moved a bit too.
My wife and I are rebuilding, right back on the same peice of property in the Lakeview section of "The City."
The Cresent City that is coming back better than ever.
We are tearing down a home that looked liked it could have been IN Peoria, but are rebuilding it with one that would look right at home in the Historic Garden District of New Orleans, a popular tourist attraction in a tourist town.
The same tourist town that saw next to NONE of it's attactions—The French Quarter, The CBD, The Arts district, and the Garden District—damaged by Katrina.
Sure the Dome sprang a leek, but watch the first Saints home game on Monday Night Football in a few weeks and see if the Dome isn't better than ever.
It will be, and so will the rest of the city, the city I love, the city that the Media never talks about.
Come down and see me, I'll take you for a little tour.
Brian Manzella is a member of The PGA of America and a golf teaching professional. He does Television work for the Tourist Network which has a station in New Orleans market.
Brian and Lisa Manzella's New Orleans home, before and after Katrina.
Real bad.
But that's good. Because that means there is action in the Cresent City. The city is coming back. A great portion of it never left. But if you live in Peoria, you think New Orleans is done.
Why does the media do such a poor job?
The "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story" philosophy is alive and well in the mainstream media. Even in the media that Rush Limbaugh is a part of—the 'so-called' alternative media.
They both have at least one thing in common—an agenda.
But enough about them.
I'm going to tell you the TRUTH about us, the citizens of The Cresent City (by the way, locals almost never use the term "Big Easy," and they never ever call it Nawlins), and IT—the city. One of the best cities in the world.
Katrina was a bad storm. But, really, it wasn't all that bad. How could it have been? My 40 year-old ranch house is still standing. The only real "storm" damage was from a tree that fell on the roof that our insurance company says would only cost a couple of thousand dollars to fix.
My wife had to evacuate—most of us were smart enough to listen to local officials and The Weather Channel—without me, as I was in Atlanta on business.
She had plenty to do—gather all the real important stuff, our important papers, our "Westie" Bailey, our wedding photos from just 2003, and our LSU season tickets—and didn't have the time to do the time-honored tradition of boarding up your house.
Our little ranch house, unprotected.
Well, not a window broke. The new fence held. The shingles stayed put.
But, oh yeah, one small detail, the 17th street canal levee. The one about 175 yards from our front door, breached on Monday morning of the storm.
It flooded the house with salt water from Lake Ponchartrain and every chemical and non-chemical matter it washed our way. The water rose to 11 feet—our slab little ranch house has 9 foot ceilings—and totally ruined every single item we ever owned in our lives including the house.
That is not exactly correct though. We did save our china, glassware and silverware. We also salvaged a few of our CD's and DVD's.
But that's it. Everything else was shot.
But not from Katrina.
Not even from the extensive, HUGE levee system that protects us from the two main bodies of water that surrounds us: Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi River. Those levees are massive structures and didn't fail in even ONE place.
What flooded our home and a large portion of New Orleans were breaks in the levees of several small canals that are inlets of the two main waterways.
In Jefferson Parish (County), which borders the "City" of New Orleans, the inlets have locks and pumping stations that protect against storm surge.
They did.
But, in Orleans Parish—The City—the inlets like the 17th street canal that lays a solid six-iron from my front door, had NO locks where they meet the main waterways.
Every single one of them broke.
The levees that hold back the water from a 24-mile-across lake and the largest river in the USA are 60-70-80 yards across and up to 18 feet high, and had little problem with the "great storm."
The levees that I can throw a golf ball over—while laying on my back—and had little silly I-walls attached to the top like a fence on a rich man's property, all broke easily.
Why?
They were built by the United States Government, and everyone knows if you need something built right, you call the people who gave us FEMA to save us in case their levees broke.
Ha.
But, we are coming back. Most of us never left or went very far.
My mom, childhood friends, and brothers, ALL live near the City.
They lived near the City before, in the suburb of Chalmette. Now they live in the suburbs of Slidell, Covington and Gonzales.
In a city that had about 1,500,000 within an hour of Bourbon Street, you now have about 1,200,000 living inside the same circle.
Those people in Peroria think it is less than HALF.
That's because the media, the ones that are PAID to report, keep thinking of New Orleans as JUST Orleans Parish. But Orleans Parish only had 480,000 people of the 1,500,000 before the storm.
About half of the residents who lived in Orleans Parish are not currently living in the "City" right now. Some live next door to my mom and brothers who moved a bit too.
My wife and I are rebuilding, right back on the same peice of property in the Lakeview section of "The City."
The Cresent City that is coming back better than ever.
We are tearing down a home that looked liked it could have been IN Peoria, but are rebuilding it with one that would look right at home in the Historic Garden District of New Orleans, a popular tourist attraction in a tourist town.
The same tourist town that saw next to NONE of it's attactions—The French Quarter, The CBD, The Arts district, and the Garden District—damaged by Katrina.
Sure the Dome sprang a leek, but watch the first Saints home game on Monday Night Football in a few weeks and see if the Dome isn't better than ever.
It will be, and so will the rest of the city, the city I love, the city that the Media never talks about.
Come down and see me, I'll take you for a little tour.
Brian Manzella is a member of The PGA of America and a golf teaching professional. He does Television work for the Tourist Network which has a station in New Orleans market.
Brian and Lisa Manzella's New Orleans home, before and after Katrina.
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