[StBernard] At Center of Storm Destruction, Eager Few Try to Reclaim Parish

[Westley Annis]

>From the New York Times

<"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/national/nationalspecial/17bernard.html?
pagewanted=all">

January 17, 2006
At Center of Storm Destruction, Eager Few Try to Reclaim Parish 
By SUSAN SAULNY
VIOLET, La., Jan. 12 - In the stillness here on Louis Elam Street, where the
houses are nothing more than rotting shells collapsing on themselves for
block after deserted block, the Robinson family has decided, against all
odds, to re-create life all by itself on lot No. 6429.

The Robinsons are living where few people even dare to drive, here in the
midst of a vast stretch of desolation on the banks of the Mississippi River
east of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish. In all of southeast Louisiana,
Hurricane Katrina was the most vicious and thorough in its destruction here,
and some streets remain impassable nearly five months later, blocked by
houses that the storm surge lifted, twisted and deposited as wrecks. 

The blue house with the white trim was one of them, and it belonged to the
Robinsons. Now, the family members have come back to what used to be its
front yard in a government-issued trailer, determined to make a home again
on what seems like the edge of civilization.

"It's heart-wrenching to wake up and see all this mess around you," Gaynell
Robinson said while a pot of red beans bubbled on her small stove, turning
the stale air fragrant with spices. "But I'm ready to see some progress, and
I'm ready to step up and do whatever I can for Violet. I can't imagine not
being here. I was raised on this land."

Except for her cellphone and weekly church services, Ms. Robinson has little
connection to other people apart from her family in the trailer. It is a
45-minute drive to the Wal-Mart in Gretna, the best option for groceries.
There is no mail service, shopping mall or movie theater. And there is just
enough electricity to light her trailer and part of the street. 

In her pioneering spirit, Ms. Robinson is not entirely alone in St. Bernard
Parish, New Orleans's rustic, outdoorsy neighbor, where hunting, fishing and
the oil and gas industries have always seemed to keep people connected to
the land, generation after generation. Residents speak of "the parish" with
the sort of affection usually reserved for a grandfather and are never far
from tears when talking about how the storm crushed it.

Despite dire early predictions that the parish would never heal, and despite
living conditions that seem unfit for all but the hardiest, officials
estimate that 8,000 people like Ms. Robinson have begin to repopulate St.
Bernard Parish, which used to have close to 70,000 residents. 

The repopulation is mostly an independent movement, with residents saying
they have received little guidance or help from the local government as they
clean, gut and rebuild on their own. Departments in the parish government
have had to lay off up to 40 percent of their workers, and the parish is
desperate for an infusion of federal aid to stave off bankruptcy until the
tax base can be rebuilt.

What is left of the local government is doing what it can; most streets have
been cleared of debris and fallen wires, and the major intersections have
working traffic signals. The parish has yet to impose or even propose any
restrictions on rebuilding. In fact it is encouraged, in contrast to the
stance in New Orleans, where a rebuilding committee has proposed a
four-month moratorium to gauge neighborhood viability. 

Ms. Robinson, 46, has put her house on a list to be demolished. She has not
heard yet when that might happen. She hopes it goes quickly. She cannot
stand to see it anymore. 

While residents are eager to move on, they remain plagued by the
uncertainties that arise when people try to jump-start a community largely
on their own. Ms. Robinson wants to build a new house, but wonders whether
any of her neighbors will make a similar investment. 

Residents also want assurances that the levees will be strong enough to
protect them, and they demand the closing of the Mississippi River-Gulf
Outlet, the shortcut shipping canal that acted as a conduit for the storm
surge to deluge them. 

Some people say they are not getting enough information from the parish. 

"I ask questions, and nobody can tell me anything," said Linda Mercier
Napolitano, a hotel worker whose home in Chalmette had water over its roof
for 15 days and was coated in crude oil from a nearby refinery spill. "Is it
safe? I don't know. Is the government going to tell me later that I have to
raise my house, after I've rebuilt it? I don't know. Will they tear down my
house? I don't know."

Mrs. Napolitano and her husband, Roy, now live on a block where there are
only two other people, and where the gray landscape is dotted by abandoned
boats and cars turned upside down and mounds of trash. But not on their
spot: it is an oasis of order and cleanliness. 

Roy Napolitano, 64, a former machinist, used a shovel and a crowbar to clear
out his home of 35 years and reduce it to the structural supports. A trailer
sits in the driveway, which is swept daily. (The oil company cleaned its
part of the mess, and the Napolitanos might accept a small settlement from
it.)

Mr. Napolitano longs for the neighborhood he knew, where friends shared
their catches of the day and got together for big crawfish boils. When the
storm hit, his family had $400 worth of shrimp in the freezer, waiting to be
served at the next party.

He cannot speak about pre-hurricane times without breaking down.

"We had everything," Mrs. Napolitano said. "We were comfortable. Now look at
us, here all alone. We wonder, how many people do we need to sustain the
parish?"

Others are considering the same question. 

"I'm glad to give it a try again - I built this house from scratch," said
Bryan Brunet, outside his 4,000-square-foot, 10-year-old house in an upscale
subdivision, Jumonville Plantation. "I did all the wiring and contracting
and can do it again. But the whole place is totally trashed. It's hard. It's
not that you can't live here, it's, would you want to? If you don't have a
job here or a reason to return, why would you live here?"

Mr. Brunet's reasons for returning are employment and family. He and his
wife work at nearby oil companies and grew up in the parish. 

While they waited to return home, they bought a house on five acres in
another part of Louisiana. It is a fine house, Mr. Brunet said, but "all I
can say is, it's not home." 

He plans to sell the new house and revamp the one in Jumonville Plantation.
It took a full week just to shovel out the mud the storm surge deposited.
There are several trailers on the street, a sign that people are returning -
but for good, or just to salvage a few things and demolish the rest? 

"Some days you get really disgusted because you've got to drive 100 miles
just to get a box of nails," said Mr. Brunet, 48. "When I was building the
house, everything was brand new, and we couldn't wait to live in it. Now you
come out and there's devastation across the street. My little boy - all his
friends are gone. What's the use staying in a house if you've got no one
else around you?"

Officials say they are pleased with the rate of return, however, and expect
it to increase. 

When asked if he was surprised by how many people had returned, Joseph S.
DiFatta Jr., St. Bernard Parish councilman-at-large, said: "Actually, I am.
Going into five months, I didn't think we'd be where we are." 

"Our whole parish was destroyed," Mr. DiFatta said. "We made history there,
and that's not a good type of history to make." 

After Hurricane Katrina's eye roared over the parish seat in Chalmette, a
massive wall of water inundated some areas of St. Bernard Parish up to 22
feet. Hardly a building was spared water damage.

Still, the school system now has 1,000 students enrolled, and the
superintendent, Doris Voitier, sleeps in a trailer outside the
administration building, which is being rebuilt. Classes began just 11 weeks
after the storm, in 20 trailers that Ms. Voitier and her staff found and had
shipped from other states.

"We knew if the parish was ever going to come back, I needed to get the
schools operational," Ms. Voitier said. 

School buildings are being refurbished by a contractor who specializes in
quick turn-arounds. Hot meals for the students are cooked in the school
board building in Meraux, about two miles away, and transported in time for
lunch in Chalmette. Ms. Voitier said that she had been advised to give
students pre-packaged food or sandwiches, but that she had refused.

"This is the only hot meal some of these children would get," she said. 

The Dauterive family, with three small boys, was able to return to the
parish just after Christmas because the schools were open. But the best
place they have to live at the moment does not have an address. It is an old
trailer on a dusty road behind a former gas station notable for its enormous
heap of rusting debris. 

The Dauterives said that renovations on their new house were not finished,
but that they just could not wait any longer - Robert Dauterive, a trucker,
was ready to get back to his old job. "There's no other way but to be here,"
Linda Dauterive said. 

"We couldn't wait to come home," she said. Then she started to cry.