Aiming for normal in New Orleans, which is anything but
By Associated Press
Published October 9, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - They are buying beads again on Chartres Street, though most of the customers are National Guard soldiers. Currents of cigarette smoke wend through the French Quarter, as they always have.
But the smoke mingles with the scent of sour rot - an aroma that is sometimes subtle, sometimes sharp, but always there.
Life has resumed in New Orleans, more than six weeks after Katrina. There are moments when all seems routine, when you encounter two men walking their Dalmatians down the Quarter's streets.
But New Orleans is a disjointed mix of serenity and surrealism, a place where normal is determined by the height of the brown, horizontal line left by receding water, where the lucky ones go about their business even as others struggle in ruins just a few feet or blocks away.
Much is going on. Electricity is slowly returning, often by grace of the tree cutters, crews with chain saws and lifts who must cut away branches from fallen power lines before they can be reconnected. The water is all but gone from the city, helped by the fact that it has not rained since Hurricane Rita. Levees are being repaired, the water supply restored.
"The busyness is deceiving," said Craig N. Wells, pastor of The Rock Church in nearby Slidell. "Nothing is close to being normal around here."
Wells, who lost his home to the flood, spent last week handing out free food, cleaning supplies and clothing to families. He and his helpers from the church give away everything every time. At the end of the day, they reload their trailer and do it again.
"When you see all these cars and trucks driving around, you think there's life going on," Wells said. "But it's not. Just because the lights come on and the water gets turned on, doesn't mean things are normal."
The feeling overall is that of an outpost, a "ghost town" as many here have put it. It is a place emptied of children; the school yards and playgrounds are quiet.
In the flood zone, traffic lights remain out. Not that there is a lot of need for them: Everyday traffic is Sunday morning traffic, mostly trucks, military Humvees and work vehicles, conveying people wearing badges or hardhats, carrying clipboards or firearms.
Supermarkets are coming back slowly. The Sav-A-Center on Tchoupitoulas is doing a full business. The A&P on Magazine Street is still several days away.
But for the most part, stores and businesses remain closed. Structures are untended, the damage left for gawkers. Military helicopters are still heard over the central city.
The mood is no longer frantic, but chaos still rules. Intersections all over the city are thickets of signs made of cardboard and steel wire, all advertising the business of hurricanes, the demolition services, mold removal, odor removal, demolition, air-conditioning services, storm cleanup, construction, cash for houses, insurance claims attorneys.
Even on the most orderly blocks, there are reminders of what has happened: a stock transfer ledger with its owner's name clearly visible, a once-valuable document turned to trash on a traffic median; so much plywood still covering windows, as if another storm were on its way. And so many spray-painted warnings of "Looters will be shot."
Gunfire is no longer an issue. Snipers and bandits brandishing weapons have been reduced to old nightmares.
Many residents are just now returning to what was left of their homes. For those who lived near the riverbank, in the Quarter, the Garden District and Uptown, the news has been mostly good - some wind damage, some rotten food, but houses intact. But many near Lake Pontchartrain, and especially those near the Industrial Canal, lost everything.
In the once-submerged lower 9th Ward, doors and windows are open to the sun and the night, the interiors of houses no longer of consequence.
Below the flood zone, the damage is mostly evident in the broken and uprooted trees, some with rootballs the size of small cars.
North of Freret Street, no more than 10 blocks from Gant's apartment, the damage is far worse. Head-high piles of debris fill up the wide median on Jefferson Street, more landfill than boulevard. As far as you can see are piles of carpet and furniture and everything else that can come out of a house. So much drywall has been put out, the streets are dusted white from its powder.
Patsy and Charlie Adams, who live at Willow and Octavio, returned from a monthlong exile in Arkansas. They have lived here for more than 20 years, raised their daughters in the place. Their house is a raised cottage, so the water stopped short of the main floor.
"We're lucky," Patsy Adams said. "The main floor is fine. It smells musty. But once we clean up the house and we get the electricity back, we can live here again."
Everywhere in the flooded neighborhoods, the waterline tells the story. It is the color of coffee grounds, etched on houses and cars.
