Magnitude 3.0 Earthquake - LOUISIANA2005 December 20 00:52:20 UTC

Magnitude 3.0
Date-Time Tuesday, December 20, 2005 at 00:52:20 (UTC)
= Coordinated Universal Time
Monday, December 19, 2005 at 6:52:20 PM
= local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 30.275°N, 90.703°W
Depth 5 km (3.1 miles) set by location program
Region LOUISIANA
Distances 10 km (6 miles) ESE (110°) from French Settlement, LA
15 km (9 miles) ESE (118°) from Port Vincent, LA
17 km (10 miles) SW (232°) from Killian, LA
47 km (29 miles) ESE (116°) from Baton Rouge, LA
70 km (44 miles) WNW (299°) from New Orleans, LA

Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 29.8 km (18.5 miles); depth fixed by location program

Looked pretty close to Lafayette on that map up a few posts. One of the places of refuge for my Sister's religious order.

This is fairly off topic except for location but it is a personal perspective of my sister and the sister that she works with up at the Carmelite Shrine in Darien Illinois on their first trip home since the hurricane, for the purpose of the congregation starting to evaluate and discuss future plans for many of them, now drastically different than those before the hurricanes.

For any interested this was the substance of much of my sister's (the Carmelite sister) yearly keeping us "up to date yearly 'form letter'" that I received yesterday. Before they could attend their Assembly she and her work associate from out of the area now, felt they needed to have some idea of what the others had gone through and what what to be dealt with in the future. PLEASE EXCUSE MY CHANGE OF TOPIC TO THIS OLDER ONE.

"We had a Congregation Assembly in mid-November in Louisiana, so in going down there for the meeting, we were able to see the devastation in the areas of New Orleans where our sisters live. We are grateful that all of the sisters survived even though 59 of them had to evacuate and be re-located several times. Hopefully, everyone who did evacuate is permanentl re-located "temporarily", --meaning no one will have to move again until things are repaired, if they can be repaired.

With the breach in the 17th Street Canal, which is less than a mile from our property, about 9 feet of water from Lake Pontchartrain flooded everything to the East of the canal, which included water rushing onto our 7 acres of property on Robert E. Lee Blvd. Standing there for nearly 2 weeks (the water) destroyed the first floors of the Motherhouse and Cub Corner (our day care center), Mt Carmel Academy offices, classrooms, cafeteria, gym, new classroom building, new Assembly Center, drama center and faculty house. We have a Formation House (convent) on 28th Street, which was likewise heavily damaged, as well as our convent in Metairie. We also have (rather we used to have) a small house in Bay St. Louis, MS, which was completely destroyed. The slab where it stood was all that was left. Eight cars were lost to the flood waters in New Orleans, mainly because no major flooding was expected, so with the price of gas as high as it is, the sisters decided to evacate during the hurricane in as few cars as possible ...

As I said, Libby and I drove around the area where our Motherhouse and high school, etc. are located and through the neighborhood of St. Dominic's parish where we used to teach. Every single buiding/house is marked with an orange X, giving the date when that place was searched, if any bodies of people/animals were found, and some kind of code numbers regarding safety.

You would think that driving around through all these empty streets you'd come to something that was not ruined. No. Everything needs to be torn down (if only one story high) and rebuilt. When we were there, people had already emptied their houses/bldgs., at least the first floor of everything, and all that garbage had been removed by the time we were driving through the area. Where it was taken, I don't know. At the time we were there, the levee was still not properly repaired, so I would wonder how people can even begin to decide if they will return or rebuild. I also wonder how they can decide about returning or rebuilding when they really don't know what their neighbors are going to do. Seems to me it is quite a dilemma.

These Sisters of Mt. Carmel have been endowed with many properties in the New Orleans area, have given back some in outlying areas and may be in the first huge dilemma of their existence.

Half-jokingly, Sr. Mary told me a while back that it was a good thing that she and Sr. Libby had "jobs" out of the area as they might be the only sources of employment income for the Community for some time to come.

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