Lose your house ... lose your teeth

My group and I just finished up our time in the Gulf Coast. Our final days were spent building, rather than our usual biking, with one day in each Mobile, AL and Biloxi, MS plus four more in New Orleans, LA. The region is estimated to not fully come back for 10-15 more years. And although things are looking better in NOLA and almost back to normal by the coast, there are still some obvious repairs waiting to be made and most definitely a long road ahead.

One elderly man in New Orleans stopped to talk to a group and I while we were gutting his neighbor's house. True to the nature of most people in the city, he was quite friendly to us strangers and even more glad to hear that we were volunteers from around the country. He quickly launched into his story, since like many others, he is eager to share the pain and trouble which he and many others have silently been enduring since hurricane Katrina.

He didn't evacuate. He didn't explain why and many people stayed for different reasons. Some, no many, literally could not afford it. It was the end of the month, so the last pay check was long ago and money for the necessary gas and food to get out of the city was low or not there. Others didn't have the transportation necessary. Pre-Katrina New Orleans had a pretty good public transportation for a city of its size, and so many people didn't have cars or ways out of the city. (Both the population and the bus lines have dramatically decreased after the storm.) It was too late, Mayor Ray Nagin hesitated to call a mandatory evacuation supposedly due to fear of economic backlash or possibly even disbelief in the weather predictions. Many residents, like their mayor, didn't think that Katrina could be that bad. The older ones had survived Betsy in '56 which only caused minor wind damage and a little flooding in the ninth ward. (Of course, Betsy was not termed minor at the time, but in comparison to Katrina, now most except it as such.) And finally, some just didn't want to leave something they loved behind. I am guessing that the old man I talked to was in the latter two camps. He didn't say.

The storm was fine. The sun was out. They made it! Right? Oh, I wish. He lives near the ninth ward where instead of trickling flood waters, he got a gush which allowed him just enough time to run to the highest story of his house and watch as his neighborhood was covered with more and more water. He wisely had loaded up this top room with water, food, and other supplies so that he was able to survive alone for days. A boat finally came to get him -- a family which was also stranded it in this newly-formed vast ocean, covering their streets, schools and almost all other signs of the pre-existing city. He took about five minutes to go over all the animals that he saw -- lots of snakes and basically everything else.

He joined this family and shared his hoard of stuff. Providing protection for each other at night in a two-story apartment complex they had found (as in were borrowing to put it nicely), they used their boat (also borrowed) to rescue other victims during the day. The old man estimated that they took about 200 people from roof tops and second stories to what he called "the ferry land" with boats shuttling people to safe ground.

All the while, he is talking about losing his dentures. He took them out one night to wash them after four days of not due to lack of clean water. When he did rinse them, it was with soda and set them down. In the middle of the night, someone came with word of the last ferry leaving. He rushed out fearful of the mayhem which might occur when they send in the military and increased disillusionment of the remaining survivors. He left his teeth and when he was allowed back in to look for them weeks later, the apartment complex could not be found. Of course, he only had a general idea where it was since all the street signs were covered. But he tried. And finally asked a random waitress who mentioned that the place had burned to the ground sometime after the storm. They were gone. Eighteen months later he is telling me his story and he still had no teeth. He lives in a trailer outside his house -- probably waiting for road home money to rebuild his house and certainly hoping his street and the city will recover.

We must have been talking for almost an hour. He never really went into much detail about his life since returning to the city. But it is hard to ask some one who has no teeth and 1/10 the neighbors they had 2 years ago how they are doing when the answer is too clear.