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After Katrina: Lives in limbo. Hurricane evacuees living in Stafford return to New Orleans home, assess their options Date published: 12/18/2005
Story by RUSTY DENNEN
Photos by REBECCA SELL NEW ORLEANS—Leon and Tonda Batiste’s lives used to revolve around the tidy, three-bedroom frame house they bought with their life savings in the Hollygrove neighborhood of Orleans Parish on the east side of the city. This is the New Orleans that most tourists never see, where folks of modest means live about as far as one can get from the million-dollar mansions of the city’s Garden District and French Quarter just a few miles away. This was not one of the stops where city politicians and President Bush promised help and delivered hopeful messages about financial aid and housing assistance. Though it’s a tough place, and sometimes dangerous, it’s home. Neighbors would come over for red beans and rice, and their 7-year-old daughter, Leondra, would visit friends along Forshey Street. That’s gone with Katrina. The remnants of their lives are now piled up on the sidewalk outside: broken furniture still sodden nearly four months after the monster storm, photo albums faded by putrid water that reached up to the rooftop, drawers full of mementos and memories. All of it, except for a precious few items—a portrait of Leon smiling proudly in his Army uniform in 1978, some knickknacks, a clock and a few mementos—are headed for the dump. Just down the block, a man scavenged for anything useful in front of one abandoned home. “I’m dragging everything out of there,” said Leon, wearing a thin dust mask and gloves to protect himself from the mold. Knee-high black rubber boots deflect nails in the flood-buckled pine flooring. “In this house, pretty much everything is gone.” In the small living room, Tonda reached under a pile of wet debris. She lifted ed up her mask in for a moment of exhilaration to say, “Baby, you might could salvage some of these pictures!” For the past several weeks, the Batistes have lived in an apartment in Stafford County, where they have extended family. Leondra waited for them there, asking her mom on the phone each evening when they were coming home. They are among dozens of hurricane evacuees living with relatives in the Fredericksburg area. The Batistes, like so many thousands of Katrina Diaspora around the country, are in an aching state of need. They’ve received about $5,300 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the federal government’s point entity on disaster relief.
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