'It's like a sci-fi movie'

2005-10-01 08:59

New Orleans - A towel on his head to protect him from the sun, 72 year-old Herman Dutzy walked an hour on Friday to reach what was left of his family's home in New Orleans.

He was among the estimated 180 000 displaced New Orleans residents invited back into devastated parts of the city for the first time since Hurricane Katrina drove them from their homes just over a month ago.

The city's mayor, Ray Nagin, lifted the roadblocks so refugees could return to "look and leave," or stay depending on what they found.

Making their way around downed trees, furniture and overturned cars, returnees trickled in through the day and found the devastation difficult to bear.

"For God's sake, look at it," Dutzy said, his eyes tearing up at the sight of his family's muck and algae coated house in Lakeview.

Like a movie

"I never dreamed it was going to be this bad," he said, putting down his metal cane to pull aside broken siding blocking his kitchen door.

"It's as if most of my life was washed away."

Mould coated the inside of the house. A thick layer of mud covered the floors. A toppled refrigerator prevented Dutzy from getting to the one thing he wanted, a framed portrait of the family patriarch.

The house has belonged to Dutzy's family for generations.

The empty homes of neighbours he had known all his life were equally dismal. The street was submerged under a blanket of cracked dry mud.

"If my sister sees this, she's liable to have a heart attack," Dutzy said. "Nobody will live here for a long time."

On the edge of the parish, where the 17th Street levee burst, Kevin and Pam Lair and their sons returned to find the rushing water swept the first floor of their house bare, taking everything with it.

"This is ground zero," Kevin Lair said, glancing past where the rear wall of his house once was to the seeping mountain of rocks used to patch the levee. "It's incredible. We found stuff eight or nine blocks away."

Inside walls were stripped to beams. Branches, mud and dead crabs were left in crannies and corners. The air was heavy with the odour of rot and decay.

The street was blocked by a house torn from its foundation and flung across the road like a barricade.

"The whole thing looks like something out of a science fiction movie," Lair said as his wife and children salvaged belongings from the second floor.

Lair still has the financial burden of paying his "big mortgage" and the insurance company has already denied his claim, he said.

Kevin Laird said they bought the house because it seemed a safe, comfortable place to live. Now, they fear moving back into the shade of the levee.

"It's a Band-Aid on an abcess," Eric Landry, a local contractor fixing the levee, said of the patch. "If we have another hurricane, it's going to hell in a hand basket."

Mayor Nagin on Friday called for federal cash and tax breaks for his hurricane-ravaged city.

"New Orleans is not asking for a hand-out," Nagin said. "We are asking for a hand up."

- AFP