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Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Fri Sep 22 21:07:50 EDT 2006


Moving on, LSU foe Tulane still feels effects of Katrina
September 21, 2006

By Glenn Guilbeau
gguilbeau at gannett.com

NEW ORLEANS "" Parts of Tulane University in once plush uptown still look
like a construction site. There are damaged and empty buildings up and down
Claiborne Avenue more than a year after Hurricane Katrina.

One can't miss the nearby Memorial Medical Center, where 34 died and more
than 1,000 were trapped with no power and eight feet of water outside in the
days after the storm. Sections of the hospital may never re-open and could
be demolished.


Tulane, which at times has seen its football program marked for demolition,
is open for business and plays its first home football game in nearly two
years on Sept. 30 against Southern Methodist a little farther down Claiborne
in the Louisiana Superdome, which lost chunks of its roof to Katrina on Aug.
29. The Green Wave last played in the dome in a 55-7 loss to Louisville on
Dec. 4, 2004, in a game postponed from earlier in the season because of
Hurricane Ivan.

Katrina's waves damaged parts of Tulane's campus, closed school until
January, evacuated the football team to Jackson State University in Jackson,
Miss., then to Dallas and finally to Louisiana Tech in Ruston.

"Taking showers in the dark," said Tulane quarterback Lester Ricard, who
signed with LSU out of Amite High in 2002 but transferred a year later.
"There was no hot water at Jackson State. Sleeping on mattresses in the gym.
The night the hurricane hit, the fire alarm goes off. Smelling leaking gas
because a generator went out. They just told us to get up. I didn't have
anything on but my drawers. I'm out there in the wind and rain with no
shoes. Finally when we got to Louisiana Tech, we could get comfortable a
little, but not really."

Head coach Chris Scelfo could not check on his damaged house on the west
bank of New Orleans for weeks. Assistant coaches Darryl Mason and Garret
Chachere were separated from their families. Mason went days unable to get
in touch with wife Denise. Chachere worried about wife Lauren finding gas as
she traveled from Houston, where she evacuated, to Virginia and did not see
her until Christmas.

And Tulane went 2-9 with all 11 games on the road, but it must be getting
the hang of it. Because the Wave is 1-1 this season after beating
Mississippi State 32-29 Saturday for its first road win against a
Southeastern Conference team since 1989.

"There's still a lot of construction," said Tulane receiver DaMarcus Davis
of Fair Park High in Shreveport during an interview in the school's repaired
athletic facility on Tuesday. "Stuff they started on before the storm that
they couldn't finish because of the storm. They had to start over. You'll
see every now and then a broken window here and there, and it makes you
think about it. It's not really depressing because we moved on from it. It
just makes you appreciate things more."

Like Saturday night's game at No. 10 LSU (2-1, 0-1 SEC). The teams, who own
one of the south's oldest rivalries, play for the first time since 2001 and
only the second time since 1996. Tiger Stadium was the site of one of
Tulane's six road-home games last season. It beat Southeastern 28-21 on Oct.
1 in front of a few hundred fans in the 92,400-seat stadium.

"What was odd was spending the night before in the English Turn country club
on air mattresses," Scelfo said. "That was odd. That was the only place we
could stay. We couldn't get rooms in Baton Rouge."

They could have slept in the stadium.

"Shoot, it looked like a high school game last year," Tulane tight end
Jerome Landry said. "It's going to be roaring this time. I'm excited. If I
can go a whole day without hearing 'Katrina,' or 'FEMA,' it'd be good. Oh
man, I've heard it so much."

Landry experiences constant Katrina reminders when he goes home to Chalmette
in St. Bernard Parish, parts of which look like Katrina hit the other day.
His parents Larry and Luann live upstairs. They're still repairing the
downstairs from the water damage. Right after the storm, Jerome's sister and
husband and their kids and his brother lived upstairs. His dad didn't have
flood insurance and temporarily lost his job.

"We're fortunate to have an upstairs," Landry said. "We just got sheetrock
downstairs and finally got air conditioning last week."

The parish finally started picking up mounds of debris recently.

"Our neighborhood's not bad," Landry said. "We've got good houses. But
you've still got one every five houses that's still not gutted and rat
infested. Rats everywhere. You see them. There are still these big piles of
debris everywhere, and rats everywhere."

Landry gladly comes home, though.

"The hurricane made my family real close," he said. "I mean I'm best friends
with my mom and dad now. You don't know what you've got until it's taken
away. But I think the worst is over."

Chachere lost his entire home in the Gentilly neighborhood where he grew up
and has moved to Metairie. His youngest son, 4-year-old Noah, keeps asking,
though, "When are we getting the gray house fixed?"

There are no plans for that.

"That's where they grew up," Chachere said. "That was their house. That was
their memories. So they're always asking."




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