HOPING TO SURVIVE IRMA

MIAMI, CAN YOU BE AT LEAST AS RESILIENT AS NEW ORLEANS AFTER KATRINA?

          (a bizarre triptych of mattress, boat filled with tires and burned out car at a NOLA cemetery)

Within the next 24 hours, our lives could change like never before.

Hurricane Irma, with record high winds and Category 5+ strength, could take our possessions, take our house, take our cash reserves, take our pets or take our lives.

Most likely, the best case scenario is we will suffer moderate to significant damage to our nearly 100-year-old house and our vehicles -- including Heidi's $75,000 wheelchair ramp-equipped specialty van.

We care for more than a half dozen outside cats, and worry if they will drown or be felled by debris.

We had both a brand new roof and impact-resistance windows -- at a cost of far more than $50,000 -- installed within the past decade.

Both passed city inspection, but who knows if they will stand up to a storm whose size and ferocity may make Hurricane Andrew look like a weakling.

Even if it steers north or south -- a miracle to us equaling devastation to the Keys or county north of us -- and we get the effect of a Category 1 or 2 from the outer bands....we can count on days, likely weeks without power.

Heidi's wheelchair will run out of juice.

We will take cold showers and endure brutally hot South Florida late summer nights with no AC or fans.

Wilma and Katrina knocked out power in Little Havana for 5 and 7 days.

We lost the contents of the fridge, etc.

With every expert saying Irma is the worst on record, and something named Jose not far behind, we are actually rooting for a half month of no electricity and maybe $10K of damage.

That seems like just about the most fortunate scenario, along with hundreds of hours spent working to repair damage or volunteer to help neighbors harder hit or less fortunate.

For those of you in South Florida, we share your fear and trepidation.

For those of you in the rest of the U.S., please keep us in your thoughts.

Maybe skim off a little excess positive energy and send it our way.

As soon as we wake up from the nightmare, will try to post something to tell everyone we're surviving.

(Central City New Orleans House boarded up more than a decade after Hurricane Katrina)

STEAMBOAT HOUSES

 
LOWER NINTH WARD

Steamboat houses on Egania Street at the Mississippi River.

A visitor attraction long before Katrina, these over-the-top ornate Victorian wooden houses in steamboat-baroque style are on the high ground of the least affected portion of the Lower 9th, the Holy Cross neighborhood (with only a few feet of floodwater for a few days, as opposed to over the rooftops, then standing water for weeks in many sections of the Lower 9th).

Take a look at the exterior of these houses, then walk up to the top of the levee for a striking view of central New Orleans around a bend of the Mississippi.

--Wiki Travel Guide

This neighborhood of predominantly African-American working-class homeowners became tragically famous when it was devastated by floodwaters with the catastrophic failure of the federal levees during Hurricane Katrina.

Levee failures rendered 100% of residential properties uninhabitable in 2005.

Over nine years later, few businesses have reopened, only one of seven public schools has been rebuilt, and only 34% of the population has returned.

The sections of the neighborhood most affected by the Industrial Canal levee breach are still either seriously damaged or simply empty lots where rows of houses once stood.