[StBernard] St. Bernard still facing rebuilding challenges

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard still facing rebuilding challenges
Posted by St. Bernard bureau August 27, 2007 9:46PM
By Bob Warren 
St. Bernard bureau 

John White is bullish on two things: the New Orleans Saints and St. Bernard
Parish. So much so, he's hitching them to each other. 

White envisions success for the Saints this football season, and he reckons
it should be parlayed into T-shirts, hats, jerseys and flags flying off the
shelves of his Sports Depot. 

And St. Bernard Parish? 

"I'm here, ain't I?" he said, sitting outside the store he opened last year
on Judge Perez Drive in Arabi. "I think we're going to build back up." 

Indeed, bullish. 

But while the Saints' success will be easy enough to measure in the short
term, the recovery of St. Bernard Parish is an equation that will take much
longer to assess. 

Two years after Hurricane Katrina unleashed destruction on a level few could
ever have imagined, recovery in St. Bernard Parish still comes in small
doses. A destroyed house is demolished and hauled away. A business opens it
doors. A streetlight suddenly shines again. A family moves from a metal box
in the driveway back into a repaired home. 


But the challenges remain huge. 

The lone "hospital" in the parish is a cluster of trailers in the Wal-Mart
parking lot, parish buildings sit unrepaired, entire blocks remain in
shambles, a public library has yet to reopen, and many churches remain
shuttered. 

Nearly 5,000 travel trailers line driveways and fields across the parish,
financed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency for which
parish elected officials reserve their greatest venom. 

FEMA's most recent estimate of the cost it will cover for debris removal,
emergency work and repairing public property in St. Bernard Parish is $929
million. FEMA officials have worked to streamline the process and point out
that nearly $750 million has been "obligated" to St. Bernard Parish, meaning
it has been transferred to the state for distribution. But parish officials
continue to rail that it's taking too long for the money to hit the streets.


"My biggest disappointment? We should be further along than where we are in
the parish," Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said. "Our
infrastructure is still out. Our first responders are still in trailers." 

Slowly rebounding 

As the parish prepares to mark a somber anniversary Wednesday, a thinned
population stands frustrated and mistrusting of the government. But a
powerful vein of resilience runs through St. Bernard, one that residents say
will be tapped in the coming year just as it was in the years preceding it. 

"We'll be smaller -- and lots of people you know won't be here. They're
gone," Tommy Tommaseo, manager of Chalmette's Rocky & Carlo's restaurant,
said when asked one recent afternoon what lies ahead for St. Bernard Parish.
"But the people that come back will be stronger than ever." 



>From the fishing villages in the rural eastern end of the parish to the

communities of Meraux, Chalmette and Arabi, the water plowed homes off their
foundations and swallowed neighborhoods whole. A storage tank was knocked
off its foundation at Murphy Oil, spilling nearly 1 million gallons of oil
into the neighborhoods surrounding the refinery. 

Cataclysmic toll 

The damage was cataclysmic. Save for a handful, each of the parish's 25,000
houses was flooded, many submerged in the foul water. 

The death toll was horrific: 129 people died in St. Bernard during the
hurricane, authorities said. Another 19 parish residents died elsewhere,
while six more were never found. 

Two years later, about 4,000 homes and businesses have been demolished.
Another 2,000 are on a list dooming them to the same fate, including some in
the Murphy oil spill area, where an environmental cleanup and class-action
lawsuit slowed the process. 

"Every day we have more being added to the list," said Dave Peralta, the
parish government's chief administrative officer, noting that the number of
houses to be demolished could eventually climb to 5,000. 

FEMA is footing the bill for the demolitions. Murphy Oil settled the lawsuit
for $330 million, paying residents for damages and offering buyouts to
nearly 600 homeowners on the streets closest to the spill. 

Blighted buildings remain 

Officials say removing the blighted houses -- in some instances, seemingly
whole neighborhoods of them, rotting on weed-choked lots -- is perhaps the
most vital quality-of-life issue for the residents who have returned. 

Abandoned property, Parish Councilman Mark Madary said, means abandoned
hope. And he and other officials have fought mightily to clear the landscape
of the unsightly structures. 

"The person who has the most at stake is the person who's returned," Madary
said. "We have to look out for them. They shouldn't have to look at some
ungutted house across the street or next door." 

Madary and other officials look forward to the day when the state's Road
Home program, which is buying many of the destroyed homes in the parish,
will turn those properties over to the parish. 

Parish officials in turn want to offer those properties to adjacent
homeowners who might be interested in increasing the size and value of their
lots. The larger lot sizes and reduced neighborhood density, they say, might
also attract some home buyers who might not before have considered St.
Bernard Parish. 

Smaller population 

Ann Daigle isn't particularly interested in buying the house next door;
she's just trying to make her life the best she can. 

She returned to the parish 15 months ago, moving into a FEMA trailer in her
driveway on Squadron Street in Chalmette. She and her son live in one of
only four occupied houses on the block. 

"It's like being a pioneer," she said. "It looks like it was never even a
subdivision." 

Getting a read on the parish's population these days can be difficult. 

Citing utility hookups and a growing public school population, many parish
officials tag the number at 30,000, not quite half the 66,000 or so
residents who called St. Bernard home before the storm. 

"I'm most satisfied with the number of folks coming home and the number of
people who want to come home," said Councilman Joey DiFatta of Chalmette. 

Other population estimates are a bit lower. 

The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, for instance, puts the figure
at 23,387, based largely on U.S. Postal Service data of the number of homes
receiving mail. 

Greg Rigamer, chief executive of GCR & Associates Inc., a research firm that
has done extensive studies of the area's population growth, said residents
will return in greater numbers as more services return. 

Even then, he said, "You'll see a continued return, but not a big spike." 

Scaled-down government 

The government has also shrunk. 

The parish's work force stands at 350, down from 650 pre-Katrina. The
Sheriff's Office now has 210 employees, cut almost in half from the 400 who
worked there before the hurricane. 

Peralta said parish government is trying to hire more people, "but the
reality is we continue to lose people almost at the rate we hire." 

Parish government's budget has also shrunk: It projects about $27.6 million
in operational spending this year, down from the prehurricane budgets that
hovered near $50 million. 

Back at Rocky's, as waitresses hustled by with plates stacked high with
breaded veal cutlets and heaps of baked macaroni, Tommaseo said the parish
has the feel these days of a boomtown, at least at lunchtime. 

The restaurant, which reopened Feb. 10 -- only the floor and low brick wall
that separates the bar from the restaurant remain of the original building
-- has seen its daily business explode. 

"The parish is still full of workers," Tommaseo said. "Our lunch business is
triple" the pre-Katrina volume. 

Business slows a bit at night, he said, but picks up on the weekends as
former residents return for a taste of home. 

"Weekends -- oh man, we're steady day and night," he said. "There are a lot
of people who are somewhere else but like to come back." 

Daigle, meanwhile, wonders what will become of the block she has lived on
for 13 years. 

"Life throws you things and you have to take it," she said, hosing the dirt
from her driveway one muggy recent evening. "I'm fine back here. Happy to be
back. It's just a lot quieter." 

Bob Warren can be reached at bwarren at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3363.