Posted By: Brad Martin
By Matthew BiggMon Nov 13, 7:54 AM ET
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - More than a year after Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans, thousands of homes damaged by flooding
still stand empty, stained by black mold and some of them
infested with maggots.
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City authorities are now cranking up a $20 million drive to
deal with a problem until now addressed mainly by charities,
home-owners and contractors who have worked to gut the
properties and eliminate the health hazard they pose.
Volunteers from the charity Acorn began the two-day process
of gutting one such house belonging to Gwen Brown in New
Orleans East suburb in late October, removing damaged goods and
stripping the house to its walls, floorboards and ceilings.
They wore white full-body protective suits and put on gas
masks, goggles and thick gloves because the spores infested
every corner of the house.
"There's nothing like a maggot-filled refrigerator," said
Daryl Durham, the team leader, as he hauled one into the street
to join a growing pile of possessions. The stench from the
fridge filled the road.
Flood waters that surged into the famed city of jazz in
August last year churned the house contents around like a
whirlpool and then sat at a depth of 5 feet for weeks before
receding. Since then the house, like thousands of others, has
been left untouched.
Acorn says its volunteers have gutted around 1,600 homes at
a rate of around 20 per month and around 2,000 homes remain on
its list to be cleared out, though many other residents have
signed up with other groups to have their houses dealt with.
"People ... just think it was a city that was demolished.
If people realized that these were people's lives then more
things would happen quicker," said Lauren Pembo, 19, a student
volunteer and New Orleans native.
CITY PLAN
As part of the Good Neighbor Program, Mayor Ray Nagin
proposed $15 million in his $419 million November budget to
strip 5,000 homes and $5 million to demolish 10,000 more, said
Anthony Faciane, chief of development in the mayor's office.
The program, which started a year after the storm, involves
a three-step, 120-day process for homeowners who have not
cleaned out or demolished damaged homes or applied to a
volunteer agency to do the job.
Homeowners are first given notice that they are in
violation of local laws, then after 30 days a notice is put on
the property and on a Web site and 30 days after that
authorities can seek permission to demolish or to gut and board
up a property.
"It is crucial that most of our resources have to be given
for making a high-quality of life for the pioneers, the people
who came back and started to rebuild. We need to clean
neighborhoods up," Faciane told Reuters.
Around 120,000 properties were damaged by flooding in New
Orleans. Permits had been issued for around 100,000 to be
gutted or repaired, leaving around 20,000 untouched. Of those,
around 15,000 would have to be demolished, Faciane said.
Many homeowners, traumatized by their experience of losing
so much, were reluctant to make a decision on whether to return
and rebuild so the city was setting deadlines to help them
decide, he said.
"What people don't realize is that this was the first time
in history is that an entire American city was shut down,"
Faciane said.
CROWBARS, SENSITIVITY
Volunteers use crowbars to prize sheetrock from walls in
damaged homes. But they have to be careful -- items that look
worthless may be of intense personal value.
For many people, seeing the contents of their flooded
houses piled up in the street is traumatic.
Brown, whose New Orleans East home yielded the
maggot-infested fridge and who fled to Houston, Texas, just
before the storm, maintained telephone contact with the team
clearing her single-story home and the next day returned to see
it.
"This was my first place. I was so happy here. I would sit
on this patio after work," said Brown, 51, as she picked
through old records, carpets, plastic flowers and other items.
A neighbor who failed to get out before the storm drowned
in her back yard. The body was removed in the immediate
aftermath of the storm, she said.
Almost every item she found triggered memories. A framed
print of jazz singer Billie Holliday had survived as had a
bottle stuffed with coins her daughter used as a piggy bank.
Insurance money she received went to pay off the mortgage
and she planned, one day, to rebuild the house and move back.
But Brown was unsentimental about her ruined possessions
and marveled how much "junk" she'd accumulated over the years.
"It's a closure because this part of our life is over," she
said as she surveyed her stuff. "We loved this house but I
can't get none of it back."
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