Where Katrina hit like a tsunami

By Manuel Roig-Franzia

updated 9:31 a.m. ET Sept. 21, 2005

DAVANT, La. - Directions to Davant are simple: "Go to the end of the world and turn left."

End-of-the-world Louisiana means going down, deep down, past New Orleans and its silent, flooded neighborhoods, through ruined St. Bernard Parish where the oil spilled after Hurricane Katrina, and down even deeper, down into the sinking marshes and bayous of Plaquemines Parish, where Creoles with lyricalFrench names talk matter-of-factly of walking the levee next to ghosts and spirits. Down to Davant.

Except now it's hard to say what is Davant and what isn't Davant. New Orleans filled up with water slowly. Davant was swept away fast, destroying the false sense of security that ever-taller levees gave to the place. Even in battered New Orleans, tones go hushed when conversations turn to Plaquemines (PLACK-uh-min), which takes its name from a Native American word for persimmon. "It's worse down there, bad, bad, bad," they say.

This is where Katrina acted like a tsunami, treating the big "ring levee" that comes to a looping end south of town—bent in the shape of a paper clip—as if it were a child's sand castle. The Mississippi River came roaring through here, frothy and white and mean, up over the levee on one side of town, and the salty marsh water broke through the levee on the other.

A place for answers?
Plaquemines is the place where the people who want to resurrect New Orleans, people such as President Bush, who has vowed "to build the levees higher" to protect the Crescent City, might look for lessons, and where people who love the marsh and build the levees want everyone to take note. It was the first line of defense thrown up by human beings against Katrina, and it buckled, unable to withstand a surge that cascaded through fraying marshes that in another era might have slowed the water.

"Plaquemines has been kind of out of the news," Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said recently. "But clearly, it's an important area, it needs to be brought back up."

All that's left on some blocks in this town of 900, and some of the neighboring communities along the levee, are concrete stoops. That's it. Churches and stores simply vanished and a big chunk of the road that is so important to maintaining Louisiana's rich oil fields is washed away. Sturdy wood frame houses that survived when the wind got strong and the water got high in the past were ground into kindling, reduced to mere smudges of color on the sloping sides of the river levees.

The levee that failed to protect Davant is twice as tall now, local officials say, as it was when Hurricane Camille blasted through the parish in 1969. All that extra dirt and clay had a lulling effect, and the men and women who worked the oil fields out in the marsh, or plied the bayous for oysters, got to thinking Davant was a safe place.

"People felt pretty good with the levee 18, 19 feet high," said John Barthelemy, a parish councilman with droopy eyes and a quick smile. "They'd say, 'Now we have the levees. We don't have to worry about water. We'll just worry about wind.' "

Special report: In Katrina’s wake

Wind and legends, that is. The Creole boys and girls down here put as much faith in the tales of their grandmothers — their memeres — as they do in the Army Corps of Engineers. And the memeres said Plaquemines was fated for doom. As the legend goes, the people of lower Plaquemines took vengeance on a priest in the early 1800s, killing him after he was accused of committing a heinous crime. That act of vigilantism — passed from generation to generation in scary bedtime stories filled with werewolves called loups-garous and screaming "yi, yi, yi" spirits — came with consequences, the memeres warned.

"There was something about 'thou shalt not kill,' " Simon Duplessis, 70, said as he looked for pieces of his small private plane on the narrow strip of land that his ancestors have owned since 1820. "Dad said the place was cursed."

Certainly Plaquemines, which now has a population of about 29,000, has suffered. During the great Mississippi River flood of 1927, the wealthy men upstream in New Orleans decided to save their city by blowing up a downstream levee and flooding Plaquemines. For decades, the parish was a corrupt kingdom ruled in dictatorial fashion by Judge Leander Perez, an iconic segregationist whose blunt, inflammatory speeches in the 1950s and '60s made him a national figure in the Southern stand against integration.

The Plaquemines that Judge Perez ruled looks like a cursed place now. Cattle roam untended on deserted streets, and pecan trees — once tall and majestic — lie down in the fields, toppled and broken. The lush groves that produced satsumas, sweet oranges coveted each harvest season by Louisianians, have gone brittle and brown, burned crispy by 14 feet of salty water that came through a 200-foot-wide break in the marsh levee.

MORE FROM U.S. NEWS

U.S. news Section Front

Raid nets 300 suspected illegal immigrants   Alum gives Harvard $125 million   Simpson's future now hangs on appeal   Stepbrother charged in girl's death Calif. gay marriage ban draws big money 'Precious Doe' murder trial: Mom testifies Jury selection begins in Fort Dix plot case University chief busted for Bloody Marys   Beau of woman stuck to toilet wins lottery Deputy wanted in slaying caught in Iowa U.S. news Section Front   Add U.S. news headlines to your news reader: