Katrina a year later: Resiliency amid devastation

NEW ORLEANS — A year after Hurricane Katrina broke levees and flooded a quarter of a million homes here, a second deluge has come — an inundation of uncertainty.

It is uncertainty that has largely stymied progress a year after the worst — at $100 billion — disaster in the nation's history. Although FEMA has already distributed $8.8 billion, most of it infrastructure and housing, uncertainty on what to do next curls like question marks from many conversations.

"It's a tough decision for these people," said Melvin Phillips, waiting in a sweltering St. Bernard Parish warehouse to distribute LDS Church-donated tools to volunteers who are gutting houses. A wheelbarrow top with a pillow inside rests nearby. Its occupant, a heat-flushed poodle, stands as motionless as a nearby case of crowbars.

When his large home in the suburb of Violet was flooded, Phillips lost all his belongings — including two autos and an antique car. During the past year, his home was gutted and power washed in preparation for renovation, but still stands empty.

"We got insurance on it — Allstate — till the first of the year," he said. "Allstate is pulling out of Louisiana so I won't have insurance. Why should I put $100,000 trying to bring back that house if I don't get insurance?"

Heroic in their endurance, Phillips and several hundred thousands of others who lost their homes and belongings are doing what they can to deal with the many perplexing questions left after the storm.

"They are watching the (insurance situation), they are watching the levees, and they are watching to see the storms," Phillips continued.

"These storms have been coming closer and closer to us. Last year's got us, and so we are waiting, ourselves. I looked (at the weather channel) this morning to make my day go well."

Phillips is interrupted by a call on his cell phone. It is from volunteers gutting a home: "The refrigerator came open!" he says. "Didn't they tape it?"

A refrigerator falling open while being taken from a vacant house becomes a minor disaster as fumes and contents, rotting in the hot Gulf Coast climate for the past year, issue forth amid the out-of-state volunteers. He shakes his head.

"Why didn't they tape it?"