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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.
That may have consequences for people like Marguerite Simon, 82. She worked hard cleaning other people's homes, earning just enough to buy into the Ninth Ward, one of New Orleans' poorest neighborhoods. She was wearing rubber gloves, rubber boots and a paper face mask last week, cleaning black amoebic splotches of mold off precious family treasures. Inside the small house, her well-made furniture, with its carved arms and curved legs, lay scattered as if some giant Mixmaster had been whirling away. Sitting on her tiny porch, she managed a laugh. "You have to laugh," she said, "but it don't come from the heart." She wants to stay in her neighborhood, even though bodies are still being found there. Across the street, a widower was found dead by his visiting son just last week. Simon had a small flood-insurance policy, but even so, she's not sure she can afford to rebuild or that she will be allowed to. The cost of demolishing a house is several thousand dollars and rising. For now she's living with her daughter Pamela Lewis in nearby Algiers, but Simon hates the loss of independence. "Inside, I'm hurt," she says. "I miss having things my way." Lewis is helping her complete Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) paperwork to get a trailer to place at the back of the lot in Algiers. "I believe there's a lesson and a blessing in everything. We just haven't found it yet," says Sharon Welch, another daughter who is visiting from Chicago, and the women laugh.