Posted on 12/13/2005 12:22:56 PM PST by kingattax
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Visitors to New Orleans who once toured the graceful mansions of its Garden District or learned the history of its Mississippi River plantations have a new attraction: The Hurricane Katrina disaster tour.
Gray Line New Orleans will begin on January 4 a "Hurricane Katrina Tour - America's Worst Catastrophe!" to show the ruin that befell the city when the storm hit on August 29, breaching a faulty system of river levees and flooding 80 percent of its neighborhoods.
Gray Line New Orleans normally organizes trips through the city's historic districts as well as its swamps and spooky cemeteries, but its business has been severely curtailed by the hurricane. The company said the Katrina tour was born of frustration over the government's slow response to rebuilding.
About 10 percent of the $35 ticket price for the three-hour tour will be donated to Katrina relief groups.
"People around the country don't understand it until they see it firsthand," Gregory Hoffman, general manager of Gray Lines New Orleans, told Reuters. "We're going to walk them through what we as locals experienced leading up to and following the hurricane."
Critics say a commercial tour only sensationalizes the city's suffering, with tens of thousands of residents still dispersed across the United States. Other victims can still be seen on city streets trying to salvage belongings from their wrecked homes.
"There should be tours, but they should be linked with people who are displaced and coming up with a plan of action," said Corlita Mahr, a hurricane victim who works with the grassroots People's Hurricane Relief Fund.
The Gray Line tour includes a history of the Mississippi River and the levees intended to protect city inhabitants, as well as its industries, from oil and gas production to seafood harvesting.
The tour will follow a route through the ravaged Lakeview neighborhood and pass by the Superdome stadium, where storm victims waited for days to be rescued with little food, water or medical attention.
Hoffman, who along with many of his employees lost his home to the flood, noted that visitors are already poking into destroyed neighborhoods on their own accord, not unlike tourists who lined up to see the ruins of New York's World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001, attacks four years ago.
Passengers will not be let off Gray Line buses to take photos of neighborhoods, he said.
"We may pass out maps that show the depths of the devastation, but after you ride around for fifteen minutes in those areas you don't really need any more," said Hoffman
Perhaps Detroit should start a "disaster tour" as well.
Tourism IS NOLA's biggest industry, don'tcha know?
Will they leave rotting corpses for effect?
Translation: "Yo, Gray Line, give us money for 'relief' or we'll make such a stink you'll cancel this due to the publicity."
Nice to see that extortion is alive and well in the Big Easy.
}:-)4
What a great country we live in! Capitalism at its best.
Anything with "People's" in the name should be suspect.
Zephaniah 2:15 This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.
And pay 35 bucks for the privilege.
One can only hope the first stop on said disaster tour is the Governor's mansion.
When we destroyed the area where Saddam was captured, I figured it was a mistake. A future Iraqi tourist attraction was destroyed.
I could visualize the American tourists being bussed to the site and given a talk about how Saddam was captured, and the high point would be when the tourists are shown the "spider hole" a Saddam double climbs out and makes a run for it. - Tom
I think the tour should be given on the unused school buses and Nagin should drive or at least be the guide.
Or did you mean the entire city and not just the sports teams?
Well, why not? It would be a lot more entertaining than the phony tourist traps of New Orleans.
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