[StBernard] Katrina rebuilding is moving ahead

[Westley Annis]

Katrina rebuilding is moving ahead

By STACEY PLAISANCE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

CHALMETTE, La. -- Five-gallon buckets of paint and primer are stacked high
near the entrance of The Home Depot, occupying a spot once packed with the
pressure washers and bleach that were needed to get rid of the mold, mildew
and muck left by Hurricane Katrina.

For a community once swamped by up to 20 feet of water, it is a small but
significant sign that life is moving on, one drywall panel and floor tile at
a time.

St. Bernard Parish hugs the Gulf of Mexico just downriver from New Orleans
and got hit hard when Katrina roared ashore on Aug. 29, 2005. More than
25,000 homes and apartment buildings were severely damaged or destroyed, and
damage estimates reached into the billions.

As the parish staggers back to life, Home Depot is one of the busiest stores
in the community. It is also one of the few major retailers operating in a
parish that was home to 67,000 people before the storm.

Before 8 a.m. on a recent Friday, men loaded kitchen cabinets into a pickup
truck as other customers pushed bathtubs, water heaters, lumber and drywall
to the parking lot.

The bustle was a sharp contrast from a year ago, when the lot was covered in
gunk deposited by water from levee breaks and Katrina's surge.



"It looked like the bottom of a dried-up canal," said Tammy Hentze, a Home
Depot manager who is rebuilding her home in Chalmette, the parish seat.

Hentze is one of only six of Home Depot's pre-Katrina staff of more than 100
to return since the storm.

A home improvement store would seem to be the kind of business that would be
perfectly situated to thrive in the wake of a natural disaster. But Home
Depot's recovery, like the parish's, has been arduous. In February,
employees sold merchandise from a tent in the parking lot while the store
was gutted and repaired. It reopened sections at a time, reaching full
operation only in recent weeks.

Many people, especially the elderly, come in just to be somewhere "normal,"
Hentze said. "They come in just to talk sometimes," she said, her eyes
welling with tears. "They are thankful."

Across the parish, and in this blue-collar community, where everyone seems
to know someone who works at the oil or sugar refineries, it took more than
a year after the storm before a grocery store opened, and there is still no
hospital operating. Many traffic lights are not working, most banks,
restaurants, clothing and food stores are shuttered, and most schools still
closed.

About one-third of St. Bernard's pre-Katrina residents have come back to
rebuild, and how far along they are in the process can be gauged by what
they are buying at Home Depot.

"I never thought I'd be so excited to get windows," said Brittany Brownell,
19, of Meraux, pulling a cart with large rolls of pink insulation. She is
living with her aunt and uncle in a government-issue trailer while
rebuilding her flooded home.

"We're about to put up the drywall and insulation," she said. "It's coming
along, but it's slow."

Pushing two carts weighted with grout and mortar, Joseph Roberts of Violet
said he had just finished insulating and hanging drywall and was ready to
tile the floors of his house.

"I don't want any carpet," he said. "I don't ever want to have to rip up
carpet again."

Elsewhere in the store, a customer looked for a new doorbell. Two
construction workers in dirt-stained jeans and T-shirts pushed a cart with
new white doors. Relief workers in bright orange shirts that read "Hurricane
Recovery" stood near a shelf of bleach as they looked over a shopping list
of supplies.

"Some people are just about done and they're ready to do their garden. Other
people are just starting to get the mold out, so they're buying bleach,"
Hentze said. "Some people are just trying to get home right now." Clarence
Wallace and his wife of 35 years, Pam, had no flood insurance, so they paid
for much of the repairs themselves. They expect to be in their home by
Christmas.

"We were what they call the pioneers," said Clarence Wallace, pushing a
shopping cart with air vent covers and caulk. "We didn't go on vacations,
didn't buy new cars. We took what money we got and fixed the house."