As some of you may know, I made a journey to New Orleans this past month to help some friends and to see for myself the progress of the city's recovery. I just returned a few days ago and want to share my thoughts on the experience. Feel free to simply delete this message if you've had your fill of hearing about the Katrina disaster.

My trip to New Orleans was good and very worthwhile. I was able to spend a week helping a friend and her family move from "exile" in Shreveport back into her refurbished home. She still has no working kitchen yet but at least she's finally home. She's the first one on her street to be back in her house. There are some families living in FEMA trailers in the neighborhood but the vast majority of the homes are still abandoned, waiting for the long promised funds that are still tied up in red tape. According to the local news media, only 11% of the funds have reached the people so far. The bureaucracy that slows the recovery effort is viewed by many as a national disgrace.

I've been in touch with friends in New Orleans since shortly after Katrina hit the city and also have read the New Orleans newspaper online most days, so I thought I was pretty well informed on conditions down there. I quickly learned when I arrived that unless you actually go there and drive and walk around the city, you can't have any concept of the scope and depth and overwhelming volume of the devastation. Thousands and thousands of homes, churches, schools, businesses, parks ... all in ruins. No grocery stores, gas stations, laundries, drugstores or other services for many of the returning evacuees. Nothing was spared expect the French Quarter and the Garden District neighborhood. Many traffic lights, stop signs, and streetlights are still missing. Streets throughout the city have huge sinkholes. The weight of ten feet of water sitting on them for two weeks crushed the underground pipes and drains and the roads collapsed. There are tiny FEMA trailers everywhere, many with wheelchair ramps leading into them.

I talked with a man in the Lower 9th Ward whose home isn't gutted yet. The force of the water had pushed one of the walls off of the foundation and he can't gut the house until the wall is secured. Being a man of limited means, he had homeowners' insurance but no flood insurance. The homeowners', of course, will pay only for wind damage. He's waiting for his government loan so he can secure the wall. He's applied seven times and has been waiting for a year and a half.

The money is there, but each time another bit of red tape surfaces the rules for distribution change and everyone has to apply all over again. Two weeks ago, while I was still down there, there was great joy. The federal government had agreed to The Road Home, the distribution plan the state had developed, and the money was finally starting to trickle down to the people. A few days later the feds discovered a technicality they had overlooked, and they decided to enforce it. They withdrew their agreement to The Road Home plan and the rules changed again. The distribution ground to a halt once more. Everyone has to apply all over again, and hope the rules don't change before the ink on the application is dry.

In the meantime, the man and his wife in the 9th Ward are living in a tiny FEMA trailer in their front yard. Because their son's family were renters, not homeowners, they weren't able to get a trailer of their own, so they're all living in the same trailer. The man and his wife, their son and his wife, and their 4 grandchildren ... 8 people all squeezed into a tiny camper style trailer smaller than my living room, with no prospect of leaving it in the foreseeable future. They have to take turns sleeping because there's not enough space for them to all lie down at once. And this story is repeated over and over throughout New Orleans.

And yet there are rays of hope and determination all over the city: Messages painted on the walls of devastated homes ... "Don't demolish. I'm coming home!" Little gatherings of FEMA trailer occupants, clearing a small patch of ground on a street corner and planting bright flowers. A young girl pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair along a bumpy, rollercoaster-like sidewalk in the spring sunshine. Neighbors working together to gut each others homes. The aroma of hamburgers on a grill wafting through a neighborhood of FEMA trailers and gutted homes during a Sunday afternoon "block party." A shabby, faded fishing boat sitting on a residential street with a message painted on it, "Don't remove. This boat saved 18 lives." Families cutting the grass and planting flowers in the yards of their gutted unoccupied homes. Drivers waiting patiently at every intersection while they decide who'll move next because there's no working traffic light. High school kids in their uniforms walking long distances in the early morning light, hand in hand with little children, because the schools are few and far between, and busses to transport them are equally few and far between. A man sitting on the front stoop of a gutted and empty home playing a guitar, his family gathered around him clapping and singing gospel songs.

Katrina may have totally destroyed an entire city but it has not destroyed the human spirit of those who live there. I wish there was something the rest of us could do to help nurture that spirit of hope while they wait for an end to the bickering over how to provide support.

Sorry for telling you more than you ever wanted to know! But like the people of New Orleans, I am outraged when I realize that our nation can streamline the rules and cut through red tape for some disasters, but we leave an entire city mired in devastation and hopelessness for years.

And yet, in spite of that, many folks are determined to return home.
As the man in the 9th Ward said, "God has blessed us. Our family is alive and healthy. It's mighty uncomfortable and stressful with 8 of us in that little trailer ... but for now, it's home. And home is home!
Larry O'Keefe