They're still finding bodies down here 13 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit—30 in the past month—raising the death toll to 1,053 in Louisiana. The looters are still working too, brazenly taking their haul in daylight. But at night darkness falls, and it's quiet. "It's spooky out there. There's no life," says cardiologist Pat Breaux, who lives near Pontchartrain with only a handful of neighbors. The destruction, says Breaux, head of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, depresses people. Suicides are up citywide, he says, although no one has a handle on the exact number. Murders, on the other hand, have dropped to almost none.
Mayor Ray Nagin opened up most of the city to returning evacuees last week, but only an estimated 60,000 people are spending the night in New Orleans these days, compared with about half a million before Katrina. The city that care forgot is in the throes of an identity crisis, torn between its shady, bead-tossing past and the sanitized Disneyland future some envision. With no clear direction on whether to raze or rebuild, the 300,000 residents who fled the region are frustrated—and increasingly indecisive—about returning. If they do come back, will there be jobs good enough to stay for? If they do rebuild, will the levees be strong enough to protect them? They can't shake the feeling that somehow they did something wrong just by living where they did. And now the money and the sympathy are drying up. People just don't understand. You have to see it, smell it, put on a white mask and a pair of plastic gloves, and walk into a world where nothing is salvageable, not even the mildewed wedding pictures.
Beyond an island of light downtown, most of Orleans Parish is still in the dark. Of the city's eight hospitals pre-Katrina, only two are open to serve a population that swells to 150,000 during the day. The public school system—destroyed by back-to-back hurricanes—is in limbo while the state considers a takeover and charter-school advocates vie for abandoned facilities. One lone public school for 500 students is set to open this week. The once flashy city has become drab. The grass and trees, marinated for weeks in saltwater, are a dreary gray-brown. Parking lots look like drought-starved lake beds, with cracks in the mud. Within a few hours, anyone working outside is covered in a fine layer of grit. The trees that gave New Orleans such character—the centuries-old live oaks with their grand canopies and graceful lines—are toppled, exposing huge root balls 10 ft. or more in diameter. It's all the more surreal because the Garden District, which survived the flood, is lush and beautiful once again.
The tax base has been shredded, forcing New Orleans to limp along on about a quarter of its usual income of $400 million to $500 million per year. The city has lost an estimated $1.5 million a day in tourism revenues since Katrina, and only a quarter of the 3,400 restaurants are open. Moody's has lowered the city's credit rating from investment grade to junk. The latest insult? The nation's flood-insurance program ran out of money for the first time since its founding in 1968, and some insurers temporarily stopped issuing checks. ....
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1132780,00.html
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