French Quarter survives -- with luck and a prayer (Let's hammer the Media about the slow response)

The French Quarter was damaged by Katrina, but it was not destroyed, and tourists and residents let the good times roll and wondered why they were so lucky.

NEW ORLEANS - At the start of hurricane season, the historic St. Louis Cathedral in the heart of the French Quarter offers a short prayer in the Sunday church bulletin to Our Lady of Prompt Succor.

Each year, the city's Catholics clip out the prayer, place it on their refrigerators and repeat the entreaty whenever a tropical depression appears in the Gulf of Mexico: Spare New Orleans from a direct hit by a hurricane.

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050830/NEWS0110/508300384/1260

NEW ORLEANS — Gail Henke could think of no better way to celebrate the French Quarter's survival of Hurricane Katrina than to belly up to a bar on Bourbon Street with a vodka and cranberry juice. Call it a libation to the storm gods.

"You know what? There's a reason why we're called the Saints," the 53-year-old tour booker said Monday as she communed with 20 or so other survivors. "Because no matter what religion you are, whether you're a Catholic, whether you're voodoo, whether you're Baptist or so on, so on, and so on — we all pray. We all pray. I'm not a religious fanatic. But God has saved us."

In New Orleans' historic French Quarter of Napoleonic-era buildings with wrought-iron balconies, water pooled in the streets from the driving rain, but the area appeared to have escaped the catastrophic flooding that forecasters had predicted.

On Jackson Square, two massive oak trees outside the 278-year-old St. Louis Cathedral came out by the roots, ripping out a 30-foot section of ornamental iron fence and straddling a marble statue of Jesus Christ, snapping off only the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.

At the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets of balcony French doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Elow of New Orleans pressed her weight against the broken doors as a hotel employee tried to secure them.

"It's not life-threatening," Mrs. Elow said as rain water dripped from her face. "God's got our back."

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.

The fear was that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.

Officials said a levee broke on one canal, but did not appear to cause major problems.

Blanco took little comfort in the fact that the hurricane may have spared New Orleans much worse flooding, given the still uncertain toll in surrounding parishes.

"I can't say that I feel that sense that we've escaped the worst," she said. "I think we don't know what the worst is right now."

http://www.wsav.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSAV/MGArticle/SAV_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031784753009&path=!frontpage

Superdome Survives Katrina; Evacuees Finally Get to Breathe Fresh Air Associated Press Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The roof has holes and there are leaks everywhere but some people sheltering a second night at the Louisiana Superdome are thankful for one small sign of progress: a little fresh air.

As National Guardsmen watched to make sure they didn't leave, some refugees from Hurricane Katrina lined up for a stroll on the large walkway around the dome last night.

Obviously by your most recent post, you like to pick a fight and to bait others. I said very much earlier on in this thread I did not wish to 'go there' with you.

The original source was about the Intecession of Our Lady of Prompt Succor. Those who want to ask for Her intercession have done so for years, did so this time, and will continue to do so whatever you think or believe in your narrow view and tolerance of those who turn to prayer other than the kind you espouse.

(Go boldly now to the Throne to seek to have Her silenced as an Intercessor; my guess it that you will not be heard. Care to try it out?)

The Father listens to Her, since He chose Her to be the Mother, and the Son listens to Her, because She is His Mother. Therefore She intercedes, which means to go between, and on behalf of, which She has done for the people who are believers in N.O. who sought Her intercession in the face of this hurricane.

It is interesting to note in addition that despite the mayor's original claims of 10,000 deaths in N.O., the estimates from the house to house searches now are that the 'numbers may be much less'. (Like thousands less).

I thank you not to post to me again. A review of your threads reveals you are not at all the righteous person you claim to be, and cannot be called a Christian, at least not by standards I have known:

Among others are

-Anti-Cuban

-Anti-British ('snobs')

-Anti-trailer trash

-Anti-blacks

-Anti-gays

-Anti-Catholics

...and from one of your posts in this thread, anti-police and anti-minorities who happen to have been made police officers in N.O.

Go 'practice' your righteousness on someone else; obviously you have not perfected it very well, because it has had no effect on me.

See ya.

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