New Orleans Checks In - One Year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
By Michael Bresciani

Considered by some as a peak in his visit the President stopped by the home of legendary singer Fats Domino. The aging rock and roll giant, like so many others in the beleaguered ninth ward of New Orleans is rebuilding his own house. The President talked one on one to many workers and residents in a manner that seemed both genuine and comforting to most. In a word the tone of the president’s visit was “fatherly.”

The broader view of the New Orleans recovery effort is riddled with less heart warming news. To understand the broader view, people living in the other forty nine states would have to take at least a mini-crash course in Louisiana and New Orleans area history and culture.

Louisiana has abounding evidence of its French and Spanish heritage. Sometimes it is so melded together that to those not so well versed it may seem a bit confusing. One example is the obvious Spanish architectural leanings of the French Quarter and the preponderance of streets with French names.

The political complexion of both Louisiana and New Orleans in particular is outside the color spectrum of all other states. Still guided by Napoleonic codes and deep cultural practices unheard of elsewhere in America, New Orleans requires a great deal of meditation to understand.

Most states have government on the state, county and municipal levels. Louisiana is guided by state, parish and city government. The parish government is strongest in many parts of Louisiana. Over 60,000 people live in St Bernard Parish which is directly east of New Orleans. That parish has had to fight to get anyone to recognize them in the public understanding. None of its towns are well known. In fact none of them are even incorporated. The parish elects a president and with councilors and police juries, the business of government goes on parish wide.

The business of getting walloped by America’s worst natural disaster also goes in St Bernard Parish.. It has virtually been flattened and although New Orleans gets the spotlight it is hard connected to that city. St Bernard Parish President Henry "junior" Rodriguez has been engaged in an uphill battle with all the powers that be to get help for his community. Twenty percent of New Orleans was spared by Katrina but all 28,000 homes in St Bernard were inundated with floodwater. With 1200 St Bernardians still locked out of their fema trailers and 400 residents’ still awaiting delivery of them as of August 30, 2006 Rodriguez has threatened to go pick up the trailers with the help of his parish workers. He was threatened with arrest if he did so but scoffed it off. No sheriff in that Parish would arrest him if push came to shove.

To the west of New Orleans is the burgeoning parish of Jefferson which includes Kenner, Louisiana’s fourth largest incorporated city. Its population recently topped over 70,000. Although it is considered part of the Greater Metropolitan New Orleans area it was not flooded in the same way as New Orleans. Wind damage there was more prevalent and one year after Katrina thousands of “blue roofs” can still be seen across the parish.

Across the mighty Mississippi River to the west is that part of New Orleans known commonly as the west bank. Most of its towns including the beautiful and historic area called “Old Algiers” escaped any major flooding but some houses sustained wind damage. The rest of the west bank is part of Jefferson Parish and it also escaped Katrina’s worst in large part.

At the one year anniversary of Katrina almost half of New Orleans and St Bernard’s population is still elsewhere. The reasons they have for not returning are complex and many. One reason is not so complex and as you might expect, it all comes down to the dollar. No rocket science needed here the math is simple.

Fema has a limit of $26,000 that it will give to any resident put out of their home by Katrina. About half of that according to fema is for expenses and replacement of items lost to the hurricane. That leaves about $13,000 to get back into their homes. Since on average it costs 60 to 70 percent of a homes pre-Katrina value to rebuild it, where does that leave the average homeowner? New construction codes are fast being adopted in the region that require elevating homes as much as 12 feet and the cost for that is $30.000. That leaves the mostly working class citizen with few options, the greatest of which is to stay out of town altogether.

Red tape and bureaucratic wrangling on every level is now beating the Greater New Orleans area with its own winds and floods. When asked why the recovery was so slow, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin answered that it was red tape and a lack of funds. He wasn’t just applying a band aid of political rhetoric to the gaping wound. All of the more than eight hundred projects for rebuilding that the city has outlined are bogged down in red tape. Of the twenty five billion dollars in federal money allocated for the rebuilding only 213 million dollars has actually been handed over for anything. Help is trickling down to a city already operating at one quarter of its normal budget the result is giving new definition to the word “slow.”

Along comes Governor Blanco with the states Road to Louisiana program armed with 4.2 billion dollars in fed money to go directly to homeowners to help rebuild their houses. Oh really! One year later less than $300,000 has gotten into the hands of any homeowners. Although ten offices have been set up around the area to help homeowners the rules and conditions are now threatening to undo any real good the program may have to offer.

The road home program is offering grants to help rebuild by making the money available in accounts not controlled by the homeowner on a need only basis. The buy out program is supposed to give seventy percent of the pre Katrina value of a house to the owner to buy them out. Here’s the rub. Almost no one in this laboring class of people owns their house free and clear. It remains to be seen how Road to La will unravel this entangled heap of red tape. If all seems lost, just then it gets worse. The Road to La program is encouraging those in the lowest income bracket to take out SBC loans. Only a bureaucratic mind could have come up with that one. Let’s ask the poorest in the bunch to get even poorer and give the free money only to those who are already better off.

This writer has toured all the areas of Greater New Orleans seven times since hurricane Katrina. New Orleans ninth ward, St Bernard Parish, Gentilly, Lakeshore and New Orleans East still look very much like they did one year ago. I have lived in that area for over twenty years and it gives me no pleasure to report that it looks like Katrina not only wrecked everything but then went on to stop the clock. To borrow an idea from a familiar bit of American country wisdom…you can wash the house out of New Orleans but you can never wash New Orleans out of the heart.

New Orleans and the surrounding area haven’t a chance of putting in a good report at present. There is much talk about the spirit of New Orleans and how its soul is immutable. I will not make light of such positive declarations because that alone is what will eventually bring the “Big Easy” back to its feet. But for now the only thing anyone can honestly report is that the whole matter is bogged down in something akin to deep Mississippi mud.

Rev Bresciani has written many articles over the past thirty years in such periodicals as Guideposts and Catholic Digest. He is the author of two books available on Amazon.com, Alibris, Barnes and Noble and many other places. Rev Bresciani wrote “Hook Line and Sinker or what has Your Church Been Teaching You,” publisher, PublishAmerica of Baltimore MD. He also wrote a book published by Xulon Press entitled “An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ.” His book is now being heralded as the clearest book on the subject of the second coming of Christ since Hal Lindsey's "Late Great Planet Earth" Rev Bresciani’s website is,

http://americanprophet.org

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