Comments on: The rebuilding divide, and the horror

By: barry

barry — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 19:00:02 +0000

Great post I was noticing the same thing a couple of days ago in all the interviews I’ve been hearing. Certainly is intersting.
Another thing to keep in mind is that even if they do want to go back, as people find apartments and get jobs they’ll settle into a new routines that won’t easliy be shaken off. Especially if that ‘temporary’ situation last 6+ months.

By: Doxy

Doxy — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 05:23:56 +0000

“nobody that got smashed came ‘back’ – at least not to anywhere near Homestead.”
I’m not sure where you get your information from, but that’s just not accurate. I lived just slightly north of Homestead and the Redlands and all my friends and their families, 90% of the people I went to high school with, and nearly ALL the farmers/growers stayed, rebuilt, and came back. Many of the lower class who lost everything and lived in tent city were helped into pre-fab housing that is still there and still lived in.
There is always some loss. I said that above, but the majority dug in and stuck around. But then, the majority stayed in their houses in the first place. Very few people I knew evacuated for the storm.
The exodus to Ft. Lauderdale was largely from people just north — places like Naranja where people were poor and everything busted into bits, Cutler Ridge where every third house just broke into kindling, or places like Kendall where there was enough damage to get a nice insurance check and head up north.
Dox

By: whirlbrain

whirlbrain — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 20:44:25 +0000

Speaking of restaurants, here's a link to help foodservice workers find work, http://cirajobs.com/

By: Karl Elvis

Karl Elvis — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 20:39:10 +0000

I think the gumbo analogy is great – and you know, I’m hoping Dox is right, that the draw of home balances the horror. Some won’t ever go back, but these people? I think a lot of them, when they get back together a little, they’ll fight for it. They won’t let mother nature or FEMA or dubya take home away from them.

By: whirlbrain

whirlbrain — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 20:38:49 +0000

If the middle and upper classes rebuild it without the “flavor” you describe, it will just be filled up with Chili’s, Macaroni Grills, and (my nemesis) Olive Gardens, another middle-sized city paved with strip malls and restaurants with no soul, no character, and, most importantly, no flavor (in all that word’s meanings).
Our convention center has a mere 80 folks at this point. The question to return or not is about 50/50 (%) according to our newspapers.

By: M1EK

M1EK — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 19:22:16 +0000

Actually, Andrew shouldn’t be your guide; nearly nobody that got smashed came ‘back’ – at least not to anywhere near Homestead. A huge chunk of the population of Miami-Dade either left the state or moved up to Broward and Palm Beach Counties after the storm.
Not that there was any ‘there’ there in Homestead anyways, but still.

By: Doxy

Doxy — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 14:31:06 +0000

Give it time, man. Those things they saw are still fresh in their minds. They need time to remember home as something not awful. They need time to miss what it was before instead of those horrible visions of what is there now. Everyone said they were going to cut and run after Andrew. Most came back. Some didn’t. There will always be a change and the place can’t ever be exactly as it was. It’s altered now. South Miami has never been the same, and I don’t personally feel that’s for the better.
There will be a lot of work back in New Orleans soon. There will be the kinds of jobs that draw those who live paycheck to paycheck. There will be a building boom. The ones with the zest for life you’re worried about will filter back to what’s familiar. To what they know. And work and home and the distance that time puts in our minds will make them embrace it again. Not all of them. Never all of them. But enough of them.
Home is a powerful draw. It’s what keeps an old man sitting on his roof refusing to evacuate even though the water is ten feet high and bodies are floating by. There are a lot of things we can talk ourselves out of. Home is rarely one of them.