Katrina: After the Flood by Gary Rivlin

Author:Gary Rivlin [Rivlin, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

ALONG THE REST OF the Gulf Coast, people stared at piles of sticks that had once been their house, or they were looking skyward to thank the force that had saved them. In a waterlogged New Orleans, everything was ambiguous, starting with the question of whether to rebuild. A flooded home meant endless conversations with insurance adjusters and no clear answers about how much money could be expected. People worried about what their neighbors might do. Would they walk away from the moldering eyesore that once was home? Every decision seemed to depend on at least ten unknowns. Were there schools? Did they still have a job? What might the federal government do about the levees? Would there be the medical facilities for the sick parent they were caring for? For themselves? Could they count on adequate fire and police protection?

Only 17 of New Orleans’s 122 public schools opened that January. All were charter schools staffed with a mix of seasoned teachers and newcomers to both New Orleans and the profession. More than fifty private schools had reopened by the start of the year, along with a large portion of the city’s network of Catholic schools. (Tulane and the University of New Orleans had reopened, and both Xavier and Southern University’s New Orleans campus—two historically black colleges—were offering classes to any student able to get back to the city.)

Regular garbage pickup had resumed, but trucks came by once a week, not twice a week as before Katrina. Most of the refrigerators had been removed, but that only meant they were piled high in a landfill somewhere else in the city. The RTA was still running less than half its pre-Katrina routes, and even some of those were only partially restored. The green streetcars weren’t running up St. Charles, and the RTA had limited railcars operating on a small section of Canal Street. The only line they had fully restored was Riverfront—a route used primarily to move tourists between the Quarter, the Aquarium, and the Convention Center. Before the storm the RTA had averaged around 125,000 daily riders, but that number was barely cracking 10,000 in January. “We needed more riders to pay for more drivers,” explained Bill Deville, who had been named the RTA’s “executive director for recovery” after the storm.

Cassandra Wall’s sister Tangee, who had moved into her Warehouse District condo after Thanksgiving, started to work on her home by early March. She wasn’t waiting on permission from the city or advice from the federal government. Her insurance company would pay what it would pay, and if that didn’t prove enough, there might be a Road Home check. Her niece—Petie’s oldest—was getting married that November. The ceremony would take place in an Uptown church and the reception would be at the Jackson Brewery in the Quarter, but Tangee was intent on hosting the wedding party at her home.

“You have to remember that we made a commitment before we left Baton Rouge that we were coming back,” Petie said. “We didn’t care how we were going to put it back.

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