Six Months Later: What is and Isn’t Being Done in New Orleans
A local resident states, “It was really devastating-not the hurricane damage, but being abandoned by the country.” “Most people cannot rebuild, so they must stay where they are. FEMA will not pay for damages(my my home or begin rebuilding) until the levies are built.” So people have to stay dislocated, unless they can afford to pay for or have the insurance to pay to fix their home themselves. Rent is very high.” Many people leave for good. One individual, who housed 12 families, ended up saying only two of them stayed in New Orleans. The rest are more then likely permanently relocating-this means that it is hard for the local economy to fill needed jobs.
And for those that do come back, there are tremendous problems. There is the drive back, “When I was driving it back it “hit” me. The giant trees now snapped like twigs. The billboards everywhere on the ground. The sound barriers with water marks up so incredibly high. Ships still stranded on land, from where they floated in. Many of the ships are still there where they landed. They are too heavy too move, especially the giant levies”.
When they reach their homes, many times the damage is incredibly overwhelming and the resources still so limited. Even now, another local resident says that many utilities are not available. “Many people still don’t have phone access or the basics to live.” I am very lucky, I have a cell phone and a few of us do. People are literally ‘soldiering on”. A refrigerator a crucial basic that many of us take for granted, is literally a horrifying encounter, one resident describes her experience, “Most people’s refrigerators are filled with maggots. I couldn’t afford a new refrigerator so I wore rubber gloves and a mask to clean it out. I told myself I was living a CSI episode. If they could do it, so could I.”
There is an underlying rage and pain for many residents, many people are suffering from depression. The scars of sadness express themselves on the very homes of the current residents. “When the soldiers went in to search the house, they put numbers in black or day-glow orange of the number of dead found in each of the houses. Instead of painting them, many people are keeping these numbers on their homes to commerate what happened and what we went thru.” The feelings of abandonment not only from the Federal Government, but by the people of this country as well, “I wish I could mail the scent to people, so that they could understand what we went through.”
