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Salvaging St. Bernard Parish
Written by
Janet Rae Brooks
, Special to RedCross.org
Sunday, December 25, 2005 — ST. BERNARD PARISH, La. – Cathy Attebert knew it was going to be a tough Christmas. That’s why she hung icicle lights on her new trailer, tied giant, red candy canes to its front steps and stuck a leafy branch at the curb to serve as a Christmas tree.
“Usually I go all out decorating,” said Attebert, who – like virtually every resident of St. Bernard Parish – lost everything to floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast almost four months ago.
Even though her family is celebrating Christmas in a trailer this year, instead of their own home, Attebert had decided she had to do some holiday decorating.
Attebert’s trailer sits on her mother’s lawn on Farmsite Road, alongside another trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where her mother will live while she rebuilds her home.
Last Sunday, three American Red Cross trucks stopped by Attebert’s trailer on their weekly run into the neighborhood. A crew of six Red Cross volunteers delivered mops, brooms, bleach, trash bags, grout cleaner and other supplies to Attebert and her mother to help them gut and clean their homes.
Another Red Cross volunteer, a psychology professor, rode along behind the trucks to check on how residents in the still largely-deserted neighborhood are coping.
A fleet of Red Cross trucks are sent into hard-hit neighborhoods in the New Orleans area each day to hand out essential supplies to returning residents as they start to rebuild their lives.
Many cannot move back until their promised trailers are delivered. A few are living in tents, set up inside their ruined homes or in their yards.
At the corner of Louis Street and Riverbend Drive, the honk of the Red Cross truck horns brought out Rudy and Joanne Nunez.
“Whatch y’all got?” asked Rudy Nunez. His wife was busy showing a neighbor a picture of a new granddaughter, born in Little Rock, Ark., where her parents had taken refuge from Katrina.
As the Red Cross crew unloaded supplies, Butch – the Nunez family dog – yapped at the strangers from behind a wire fence.
Butch had just returned from his Katrina sanctuary in Pennsylvania after the Nunez’s daughter in Little Rock spotted him on a “lost pets” Web site.
“Thank y’all a lot, ya hear?” Nunez yelled, as the Red Cross volunteers climbed back into their trucks.
Around the corner on Reunion Drive, large hand-painted letters on a brick bungalow spell out: “TANKS ARE OK.”
That was a message for the neighbors, according to Shelley Tank, who had planned to ride out the storm with her husband and children before they heard the predicted speed of Katrina’s winds.
“There’s always been talk of some levees breeching and this place filling up like a soup bowl,” said Tank. “I couldn’t see us climbing on the roof with three kids and 150 mph winds.”
As the Tanks packed up for the evacuation that they expected would last only a couple of days, 7-year-old Breanne Tank decided to replace the clothes in her bag with her baseball and school trophies. Her mother didn’t find out until after they’d left home. Now, with everything they left behind destroyed, she has new-found respect for her 7-year-old’s sense of priorities.
The Tanks first went to Georgia, then Mississippi, and are now living in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, awaiting their FEMA trailer so they can come home to start rebuilding.
“We started from nothing, and we’re going to do it again,” said Tank, as Red Cross volunteers unloaded supplies for her family. “But I hope my kids, their kids and their grandkids never have to go through anything like this.”
Back on Riverbend Drive, Anna-Marie Coble’s home, with its expansive patio, swimming pool and quarters for two horses, would undoubtedly have once been a showcase of the neighborhood.
Now it was surrounded by ruined flowerbeds and wind-ravaged palm trees. Inside, expensive wood furniture had been churned into kindling and the contents of the massive kitchen pulverized. Coble’s son offered her a new home in a cottage on his out-of-state property, but she has decided to stay and rebuild.
“My kids were born here,” she said. “It’s part of me now. It’s home – it’s mine and this is what I feel I need.”
She hoped to salvage a rack of hand-made, plantation-era dresses sitting in the living room. She and her daughter wore them riding horseback in Mardi Gras parades. Coble also planned to bring one of her horses – “her sanity” – back to the neighborhood soon. The other was shot in unknown circumstances on the bridge where she had taken it for safety before the storm.
Known in the neighborhood as the “little blonde-haired lady who rides the horses,” Coble used to ride up to the local McDonald’s and tie her horse up outside.
Further along Riverbend, the Ruizs are living in their new FEMA trailer, but don’t yet have the power connected. The $700 generator they bought to tide them over isn’t strong enough to run all their appliances simultaneously. So when it’s time to use the stove, it can get chilly without the heater.
“Forty-eight years of marriage, and I have nothing,” said Doris Ruiz. “A few dishes and pots – I wash them in bleach real good, and I take them to my daughter’s and put them in the dishwasher.”
Her husband, in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease, had stayed behind and went missing in the aftermath. He was finally located 10 days later in Battle Creek, Mich. The Alzheimer’s has worsened since Katrina, according to Ruiz. She also has health problems but has been unable to locate her doctor.
The strain of losing everything showed on Ruiz’s face. She thanked the Red Cross for coming, and then turned back to start rebuilding her home, her neighborhood and her community.
All American Red Cross disaster assistance is free, made possible by voluntary donations of time and money from the American people. You can help the victims of thousands of disasters across the country each year, disasters like the Midwest ice storms, by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, which enables the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to victims of disaster. The American Red Cross honors donor intent. If you wish to designate your donation to a specific disaster please do so at the time of your donation. Call 1-800-REDCROSS or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Contributions to the Disaster Relief Fund may be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross, P. O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013. Internet users can make a secure online contribution by visiting www.redcross.org.
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