The Great Third Floor Flood of 2006
I’m living on the third floor of a beautifully restored building in the French Quarter overlooking the Mississippi River and the French Market. Please note that I said, “restored”. The Vieux Carre Commission does a very wonderful job of keeping the Quarter historic and as anyone knows, it’s difficult to get some things done to houses and apartments in the Quarter, in part because their job is to keep things “safe from modernization”.
One of the things that the Commission will not allow you to do is to weatherproof windows on the outside of the building around the frame. I didn’t know this until I called my construction guy and I agree with them. The Quarter needs to be maintained so that the historic beauty of the area is kept alive but the area hasn’t had a rain like we did this morning.
A very powerful storm (I’m guessing the strongest since Rita or Katrina) blew through this morning about 2:30 am. I normally sleep like a rock, phones, doorbells etc…these things don’t affect me. I am a sleeper.
This morning was just a little different. The thunder and lightening didn’t wake me; it was the rush of water flowing from the three windows overlooking the French Market down the hall out into the foyer.
Waking up to a literal river of water going down the hall was not really the way I planned to begin my day. My favorite Homer Simpson PJ’s were soaked and I got a wonderful 2:45am “free” shower from what felt like a fireman’s hose washing me off. Trust me kids, don’t try and close shutters when it’s pouring, the wind is blowing and your just waking up from 3 hours of sleep.
After everything those of us in the area have gone through, once I actually woke up and figured out what the heck was going on, I couldn’t really do anything but mop up the water, giggle, fix some coffee and think about where else in the world could you get a river of water flowing through a third floor loft except for New Orleans.
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you’re not kidding! I woke up during the storm, and while walking to the bathroom almost slipped and fell on a tile floor that was soaked. Water was cascading down from the top of a door casing. I’ve never seen so much lightning in such a short time in my life, and I’d never seen the apartment leak before this.
I heard a tornado touched down as well. *eek!*
A.
Insult to injury, that was last night. One of my wife’s good friends from high school called from Houston crying because one of the tornados touched down near her parents’ house on Canal Blvd. in Lakeview. It ripped the back off the house and rolled north from there. Apparently, it also hit the small strip mall at the SE corner of Canal Blvd and Robt. E. Lee Blvd, damaging those stores even more. Several of those stores were trying to work towards reopening; now if you want those steaks from Meme’s Market, you are gonna have to wait even longer. Sigh. Figures. I wonder how many more ‘one step backs’ we have left before we get things back.
Mike
Mother Nature seems to be testing NOLA.