Big Picture: The difficult realities of life in SoLa

The difficult realities of life in SoLa

STEPHANIE RIEGEL

A FEW DAYS before Hurricane Ida laid waste to coastal south Louisiana, leaving Baton Rouge without electricity for days and much of New Orleans in the dark for weeks, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation released its 2021 City Stats report, which contained one of the more sobering statistics I’ve seen in a while: 60% of parents want their children to leave the parish and live elsewhere when they’re adults, up from 45% in 2019.

This is no small thing in a state where 78% of the residents are native born.

People don’t leave Louisiana and they really don’t like their children to leave. So you know things are bad, when a sizable majority of poll respondents want their progeny to seek a better life somewhere else.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it, though. I was preoccupied with obsessively checking the spaghetti models of Ida’s track and trying to figure out where to ride out what was then barely a tropical storm.

As we all learned the hard way, there were no good options this time. Forty eight hours before the storm hit, weather maps on TV warned viewers still thinking of taking off not to evacuate ANYWHERE IN LOUISIANA, except Shreveport.

In other words, unless you had been willing and able to travel far from the state many days before the storm appeared to be an imminent threat for almost all of Louisiana you were stuck.

And that is truly terrifying.

What are 4.2 million people supposed to do, especially when 20% of those people live below the federal poverty level and roughly half fall into the “ working poor” demographic?

Many of these people do not have transportation, and statewide contraflow evacuation protocols take at least 72 hours to implement, which is more time than it takes this new generation of super-power hurricanes to blow up from relatively harmless systems.

But where to go? As we learned in Gustav in 2008 and again in August 2016, Baton Rouge is no longer a sure bet, and, as detailed elsewhere in this issue, has its own flooding problems (see page 30).

Which brings me back to City Stats. Because while I realize the survey is about East Baton Rouge Parish, I suspect the responses would be similar if you asked people in New Orleans or the Northshore or anywhere in south Louisiana about whether they want their kids to leave.

If you really want what’s best for them, how can you not?

With each disaster, disruption and downturn, we are reminded that south Louisiana is an increasingly difficult place to live. In the era of climate change it will only get worse, as Ida has painfully illustrated.

For one, there is the sheer reality of our climate and geography. Ocean temperatures are rising. The Gulf of Mexico was a bathtub-like 88 degrees when Ida churned through its waters, which is why the storm was able to intensify so quickly.

At the same time, our coastline has become a lacy outline of its former self, no longer able to offer the protection it once did from wicked weather. That’s why Ida didn’t weaken, as predicted, after making landfall. The land is so moist, the storm continued drawing energy even after coming ashore.

There are the vulnerabilities of our aging fossil fuel infrastructure, on which we are overly reliant. The hurricane temporarily knocked out 94% of the offshore oil and natural gas production in the Gulf—20% of the nation’s total. Port Fourchon was crippled for weeks. Seven oil refineries accounting for nearly 10% of the country’s refining capacity were shut down, all of which resulted in shortages at gas stations. Demand was intensified by the need to keep generators running, a lifeline for so many who spent weeks without electricity.

Then, there are the questions about the grid failures. It is a given that coastal communities would see the destruction of their transmission and distribution systems, but how do all eight long-distance transmissions lines that feed the city of New Orleans fail, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power for weeks?

After all the federal money, resilience planning, investments in hardening the grid in the 16 years since Katrina, why don’t we have more to show for it? Why have we continued to resist calls to invest in clean energy micro grids? Why do we stick ratepayers with the bill for rebuilding the system time and again? Elected officials vow to rebuild smarter this time but are they willing to do what it takes to make that happen?

With each disaster, Louisiana get further behind the eight ball.

More small businesses suffer. More hourly workers struggle to make ends meet. Kids, who lost virtually an entire year of school due to the pandemic, now miss weeks more, falling still further behind.

Chronic diseases, so common in a state with the worst health outcomes in the nation, go untreated or are intensified by the stress, heat and living conditions in a natural disaster zone. Toxic emissions and chemical spills from damage to refineries further harm the environment and exacerbate the health problems.

The ripple effects multiply. The poorest of the population bears the brunt of it all and the downward spiral continues.

I’m not one to give up on problems. I’m not saying we should walk away from challenges.

But for anyone who thinks their children would be better off somewhere else, yeah, they would.

REFLECTIONS

KEEPING RELATIONSHIPS STRONG

This feature is a tribute by our publisher in honor of Business Report founder, Rolfe H. McCollister Sr.

THIS REQUIRED BOTH parties to have the following attitudes. The order is also important. First is humility vs. pride. Humility is a posture of admitting, “I am a part of the problem.” Second is responsibility vs. blame. Responsibility states, “I own my stuff and take full responsibility for my unhealthy actions. I will take control of me.” Next is forgiveness vs. bitterness. Forgiveness is releasing the debt of actions towards oneself that are wrongful. Bitterness is holding onto past and present offenses, and is a cancer to relationships. Attitude four is teach-ability. It means, one will and chooses to learn healthier ways of relating, mainly from the other person in the relationship. Finally, keeping relationships strong involves walking consistently in new patterns with accountability for one’s own actions. Accountability takes humility, and permits the other party to call ones’ hand when unhealthy relating surfaces again. This intersection starts the cycle of the five attitudes applied once again. This is how relationships stay strong and finish well. This cycle is repeated as often as needed, for the lifetime of the relationship. —COL Jeff Mitchell, retired Army State Chaplain, present Hospice Chaplain