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• Saturday, March 11, 2006 09:38 PM

  Broadmoor Was Designed For a 100 Year Flood

  While I appreciate Salon’s continued efforts to keep people informed about our struggles to rebuild our city and our lives, this article only illustrates how too many people with insufficient and inaccurate information are being allowed to make decisions that will affect us for generations.

  As a native New Orleanian and Broadmoor resident, I am incensed that John McIlwain would pontificate from such lofty point of ignorance about the naiveté of Broadmoor residents. His comments not only reflect his DC-Beltway arrogance, but also his extreme lack of knowledge about the architectural planning that essentially saved most of the homes in Broadmoor. If he'd taken time to study the architectural history of or drive around the neighborhood, he would have noticed that the overwhelming majority of homes are elevated at least five feet above street level, with many (including mine) elevated at least ten feet or more—centuries old building requirements for surviving a “100 Year Flood”. What looks like a second floor entry on a house is actually the entrance to the home's first floor, with the lower portion of the house being what is described in local circles as a "raised basement". These raised basements are often "unfinished" (i.e., no sheet rock, flooring or wall outlets), with nothing more than thick support pillars throughout them to hold up the structure. A closer inspection of one of these homes would have also shown Mr. McIlwain that Broadmoor houses are typically built of thicker than average boards of cypress and redwood (two types of rot- and termite resistant woods). This is why we found no rotten lumber and very little mold in my basement after removing the sheetrock from the walls of the recently (and unwisely) created basement apartment I'd added before the post-Hurricane flooding.

  The raised basement/rot-resistant wood architecture characteristic of Broadmoor is why so many residents were able to return to their homes once the flood waters subsided, why displaced residents of other flooded neighborhoods are buying homes in Broadmoor, and why we are all confident the neighborhood will survive—even if we occasionally need to use pirogues (the canoes our Cajun & Creole ancestors used to navigate bayous and flooded areas) to travel in and out of it.

  —Tessa
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