Home of the Saints.
Home to these scenes:
A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers.
The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina's arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in.
By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. A few hundred people were evacuated from the arena Wednesday, and buses will take away the vast majority of refugees today.
"We pee on the floor. We are like animals," said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.
At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.
The hurricane left most of southern Louisiana without power, and the arena, which is in the central business district of New Orleans, was not spared. The air conditioning failed immediately and a swampy heat filled the dome.
An emergency generator kept some lights on, but quickly failed. Engineers have worked feverishly to keep a backup generator running, at one point swimming under the floodwater to knock a hole in the wall to install a new diesel fuel line. But the backup generator is now faltering and almost entirely submerged.
There is no sanitation. The stench is overwhelming. The city's water supply, which had held up since Sunday, gave out early Wednesday, and toilets in the Superdome became inoperable and began to overflow.
"There is feces on the walls," said Bryan Hebert, 43, who arrived at the Superdome on Monday. "There is feces all over the place."
Sure, they can clean up the Superdome. They'll even make it look like no one was ever there. But everyone will remember these, it's darkest days. No amount of fanfare or touchdown celebrations down on the Saints turf will ever change that.
Its round roof against New Orleans skyline will always be a reminder of the city's darkest hour. It is a stark, concrete monument to horror.
It should not stand.
And so, when the long, hard task of rebuilding New Orleans begins, one final cathartic act of destruction should mark its renewal. The Superdome should be ceremoniously blown to Hell, a place that it effectively became for so many in the wake of Katrina.
The hole left in the skyline would not symbolize loss. Instead, it would be a clean page, ready to be filled with a replacement that befits this historic city.
One that does not taunt all those who look at it with memories they would rather forget.
One that the Saints could literally march back into. Then the touchdowns and the celebrations could return.
It would be a happy place once more.
Update: Wow. There are conflicting news reports about whether or not the Dome actually will be torn down. Michelle Malkin has the skinny.
Update II: I was thinking the Dome should be demolished because of what it is going to stand for for so many people going forward. I know that stadiums cost money, etc, and figured the Saints would have to chip in to replace the building. A commenter at Angry in the Great White North, however, brings to light something I wasn't aware of:
My B.S. meter is pegged on this. Tom(?) Benson, the owner of the Saints, has made no secret of his desire to have a new stadium with more luxury skyboxes in line with the newer stadiums of other NFL teams. About six years ago, there was a big to-do concerning Benson threatening to leave NOLA if they didn't give him a new stadium (I believe Algiers on the Westbank was the site he had in mind), possibly moving to Biloxi. He was "persuaded" to stay for something like eight years by an ample subsidy from Baton Rouge, during which time the state would find a solution to the "skybox crisis".
Wonderful. Benson is one of those owners. This May 1 Times-Picayune article adds detail, but the gist is that the Saints are ultimately unlilkely to move:
The current agreement allows the franchise to leave Louisiana after the 2005 season by repaying the $81 million it received during the first four years of the deal. The club has a one-time, 90-day window after the 2005 season to invoke the exit clause and pay the penalty. If the Saints do not take the option, the current deal remains in place through 2010.
Benson has consistently said he wants to keep the team in New Orleans and eventually turn it over to his granddaughter, Rita LeBlanc, who is a team executive. Last month, he even offered to drop the team's exit clause if the state -- which has a one-time, 30-day option to cancel the current deal after the 2007 season -- would do likewise. State officials declined.
The Saints called off negotiations after reviewing a state proposal focused on a $174 million Superdome renovation, with the Saints contributing $40 million, that would increase the team's ability to make money but also reduce the amount of guaranteed income from the state once the renovation is complete.
The state says the renovations would allow the Saints to produce more revenue. The Saints would take on more of a financial risk than in the current deal, state officials acknowledge, but could reduce that risk by winning games and bringing in more money.
The Saints, while not commenting in detail on the state proposal, have said in the past that they would credit additional revenue created from a Superdome renovation, but they walked away from the state's latest pitch.
The stalemate leaves the Saints as a potential free agent in a little more than seven months, fueling speculation Benson will follow the lead of peers Bud Adams, Al Davis, Bill Bidwell, Georgia Frontiere and Art Modell and relocate his team to another city in search of more money.
Now, let's keep in mind that the hurricane and ensuing flood has changed things here, and we do not yet know the extent of actual damage to the Superdome and how much it'll cost to repair it.
You can bet that given Benson's prior intimation that he could choose to leave NOLA if the state doesn't pony up $134 million for a massive Superdome renovation and guarantee him income to boot (ridiculous), he is going to wield Katrina like a hammer to negotiate a sweetheart deal with the state. Add in the fact that tons of federal money will be headed south (Harry Reid was throwing around $150B figures to the media today), and you have the makings of a stadium deal for Benson. All speculation on my part, but needless to say, oversight is going to be very important here.
I wrote my piece in a fit of sentimentality. I never expected that within 24 hours we would see news reports hinting that the destruction of the superdome is a real possibility. Of course, the real-world version of the story is far more complicated. In the real world, regular people get hosed by owners and politicians when stadium deals get done.
I like my feel-good version better. It's like the happy ending in a movie you know could never happen in real life.
Alex Nunez blogs at The Noonz Wire, where this was originally posted.
Edit: Corrected the lead to read "Louisiana Superdome" instead of "New Orleans Superdome."