The Road to Recovery

The SMU in NOLA blog is designed to give you an inside view of what we six journalism majors are seeing, experiencing and feeling on this trip. All of us are here in New Orleans for the first time since the storm, and for the first time as journalists.

We hope you'll use this blog to supplement the coverage on SMU-TV over the next week. You can watch SMU-TV on Charter Cable, Channel 7.

This first post is titled "The Road to Recovery" because that is precisely how we arrived in New Orleans. Driving down from Dallas we got on to I-10 at Lafayette, and rode it the rest of the way into New Orleans.

For most New Orleanians, I-10 was the only escape route during the storm. Residents could go east, and try to race safely out to the other side of the storm's past; or they could go west, on the same stretch of road we approached from. Evacuees who left the city late found I-10 jammed past its two-lane capacity. Even with both sides of the freeway going the same direction, traffic must have been unbearable. We all remember the images of cars stopped on the shoulder, dead or out of gas. There are no other routes out of the city. I-10 is mostly one
long bridge from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, and there is one 12 mile stretch with no exits.

Our trip east along I-10 was much different. The road and weather were both clear, thinking about being trapped on that road with a hurricane approaching was sobering. When we first saw the lights of the city we tried to imagine doing that drive in the immediate aftermath. How different that view must have been...

Now I-10 brings hope back into the city. We passed a military cargo truck that belonged to the national guard and countless freight trucks that use I-10 to get across the nation, many of which were probably bringing their cargo here to the Crescent City. Returning evacuees from Houston take this road all the way back home to New Orleans. Now I-10 has brought us - and we hope that we can do some good here as well.

-Garrett