Thousands of residents returned Friday to a city that only vaguely resembled the one they had left weeks earlier.
The French Quarter’s usual sounds of laughter, horse-drawn carriages on cobbled streets and rock music blaring from bars were replaced by silence, punctuated with the rumble of military trucks and the hum of generators.
In Uptown, an oak tree on St. Charles Avenue had crashed onto a front porch. Foul smells wafted from discarded refrigerators sitting on medians as residents raked leaves and patched windows.
Those who were just returning vowed to sort through the mess–mostly shattered windows, fallen trees, torn roofs, mildew-covered rooms–one day at a time as they restore their homes. They just needed time.
Despite the misgivings of state and federal authorities, Mayor C. Ray Nagin threw open the French Quarter and the Uptown section as part of an aggressive plan to get the city back on its feet. Algiers, a neighborhood across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter, reopened to residents on Monday.
Altogether, the neighborhoods account for about one-third of New Orleans’ half-million inhabitants. Most of the reopened areas have electricity, but only Algiers has drinkable water.
Serious hazards remain because of bacteria-laden floodwaters, a lack of clean water and a sewage system that has not been fully repaired. The stench of garbage in some areas was overpowering, and stretches of the city are pitch-black at night.
On Friday, Nagin named a 17-member commission of local business and civic leaders to produce a reconstruction plan within 90 days.
“I know there’s this great debate about whether New Orleans should be rebuilt,” Nagin said at a news conference, flanked by members of his Bring Back New Orleans commission.
“I know there’s some spin doctors out there basically saying that `You know New Orleans’ and Louisiana’s colorful past–we shouldn’t trust that the money will be well spent.’ Well, we have behind me people … of the highest integrity,” he said.
Diverse panel appointed
The advisory commission, a diverse panel of blacks, whites and Hispanics as well as religious and educational leaders, hopes to guide the rebuilding of a city that before Hurricane Katrina was divided along racial and economic lines and had some of the worst slums and schools in the nation.
But one of the first tasks confronting the panel may be deciding how much of the city is even habitable.
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More than 80 percent of New Orleans was covered by floodwaters after several levees protecting the below-sea-level city burst. Water rose to rooflines in some neighborhoods, including the impoverished Lower 9th Ward and the better-off Lakeview community.
In some areas, experts believe, not a single home may be salvageable.
But the mayor added that officials would not wait to repopulate their city until the levees are rebuilt to withstand another Category 4 or 5 hurricane–a costly process that will take many years.
“This is not just about Bourbon Street,” Nagin said, noting that a third of the nation’s oil and natural gas is either drilled, refined or pumped through the region. “This is about the commerce of this country.”
Ginger Hitt, 55, returned to the French Quarter on Thursday night to assess her shoe store and her home of 15 years. On Friday morning, she made herself a cranberry and vodka cocktail and put it in a plastic cup, known as a “to-go cup.” Then she went for a stroll to survey the damage.
“It’s not like we have to go to work or do anything,” she said, “so let the good times roll.”
But the silence and the putrid garbage bothered her. If only it could be collected, Hitt said.
“The empty streets and the silence are deafening. We are used to the hustle and bustle,” she said.
Hitt stopped in to check on friends at the Ol’ Toone’s Saloon, which had reopened four days earlier.
“It’s getting better each day. Little by little, it’s getting better,” said owner Keith Cloyd, 59.
Ann Cloyd offered Hitt a refill of her cup.
“This is my finest Cajun crystal, darling. Don’t knock it,” Cloyd, 59, joked about the plastic cup. “We’re all drinking more. You’re worried about your house. You’re worried about your business, and there’s nothing to do.”
`A lot of false hopes’
A few blocks away in the French Quarter, Melvin Schaefer had just been fired from his job at an air conditioning company. He carried a can of light beer as he surveyed the damage to his home Friday.
“We have nothing to celebrate,” he said. “There’s a lot of false hopes. How do you let people come back when people had 6 feet of water in their houses?”
Heaps of trash filled many corners of Uptown: refrigerators, chairs, carpeting, tree trunks. Some houses still had boarded-up windows.
Arthur Johnston, 40, came home to mold and a damaged roof.
“The more I look, the more damage there is,” he said. “Everything I look at is ruined.”
Todd Ford, 38, helped Johnston by raking leaves and thought for a moment about the future.
“We’ll be Mardi-Gras-ing before you know it,” he said.
Across the street, Joann Albrecht, a teacher, returned Thursday night to empty streets and no power. She had some mold, broken windows and some damage to her roof.
“It was eerie, it really was,” she said of her return. “Today, it’s kind of like normal again. It is so good to be home. To be home again, it’s a good, good feeling.”
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