N.O. families struggle toward normalcy The Baton Rouge Advocate April 17, 2006 By Joe Gyan Jr. NEW ORLEANS There s no place like home!

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1 N.O. families struggle toward normalcy The Baton Rouge Advocate April 17, 2006 By Joe Gyan Jr. NEW ORLEANS There s no place like home! Dorothy said it in The Wizard of Oz, but Tammy and Roy Arrigo and Jeanne and Karl Pfefferle of Lakeview and Sandra and James Lewis of Gentilly are living it. Even though their homes still show the scars of Hurricane Katrina s flood waters and their neighborhoods resemble war zones, the couples are back home not in temporary travel trailers or mobile homes, but in their homes. It s just so wonderful to wake up in your own bed with your own sunshine, Jeanne Pfefferle said Thursday while sitting in her makeshift kitchen with her husband, their 14- year-old Weimaraner, named Blue, and an English bulldog named Roxy that belongs to one of their three grown sons. Even though it s a shambles, it s home. Ain t nothin no better, James Lewis said of sleeping in the couple s own bedroom. Immediately before and then for weeks after Katrina, the Lewises spent time in Texas (Houston and San Antonio) and Lacombe. I don t like too much to impose on people, he said. The Arrigos, Pfefferles and Lewises living arrangements are the rare exception in Lakeview and Gentilly rather than the rule. While there are far more travel trailers in front yards in both hard-hit sections of the city than homes that are up and running, there also are far more vacant houses than trailers. There is desolation street after street, block after block. It is clear that numerous houses have not been touched since the storm from of the height of weeds in lawns and lack of repairs to the houses. Many houses have been gutted but sit idle with their windows open. A vacant home next to the Arrigos home, on flood-ravaged Bellaire Drive along the 17th Street Canal, sports a Lakeview Civic Association yard sign that pledges We re Coming Home to Lakeview. A Bring New Orleans Back Commission sign in the Arrigos front garden proclaims We re home. The Arrigos doorbell plays Dixie, and the Louisiana state flag and another flag with three fleurs-de-lis fly from the front porch of the two-story house the couple built less than five years ago. A garden under the flags is re-landscaped. A pool in the back yard is clean again, and various types of palms adorn the gardens around it. We re home, Tammy Arrigo said while standing in a furniture-less den that has new gypsum wallboard extending 8 feet high. The home, which is 200 feet from where the 17th Street Canal levee failed, took on 7 feet of flood water and a foot of what she calls

2 Katrina crud. The Arrigos are living upstairs while the downstairs, which had to be gutted, is put back together. Roy Arrigo has been living on the second floor of the house since January, when power was restored. Tammy Arrigo returned earlier this month. We ll be back in here (the downstairs which includes the master bedroom and bathroom and her husband s office), completely, everything done, in early summer, she said, adding they also have potable water and sewerage service but no telephone or cable television. A sign on the wall where the staircase bends toward the second floor warns, Looters. There is nothing upstairs worth dying over. No electronics, no jewelry, no money. Don t risk dying. LEAVE NOW (or take the risk). The Arrigos do have a microwave oven and coffee maker plugged in upstairs in a hallway sitting area. Their refrigerator is in the garage. They do a lot of cooking on an outdoor barbecue pit. The Pfefferle home at the corner of Marshall Foch Street and Filmore Avenue, about a dozen blocks from the levee break and four blocks from the Orleans Avenue Canal, which did not breach, is a wave of color in a sea of devastation. The bright-green rye grass and colorful flowers in the front yard are eye-catchers. So are the horizontal, brownish-orange lines on the silver back of a stop sign across the street from their house that graphically illustrate how high the flood water eventually settled in their neighborhood for several weeks. The Pfefferles had more than 5 and a half feet of water in their house, which Karl Pfefferle said sits 7 feet higher than the street. They have lived in the house for 24 years and were determined to return. They have been back in the house for about a month, doing much of the work themselves. Jeanne Pfefferle said she didn t want to get too comfortable with that feeling of detachment during their exile from New Orleans. Being able to do a lot ourselves and not being afraid to do it you work hard, she said, explaining how the couple has been able to do what so many others in Lakeview have not. Karl Pfefferle said they are trying not to set timetables. I discourage her from setting (deadlines) because it s just so hard coming back, he said. Right now I don t want to set a deadline (for when they will have the house completed) because it gets everybody s hopes up.

3 Jeanne Pfefferle said she had hoped to have their traditional family oyster-fry on Good Friday, but the stove wasn t ready. For now, cooking is done in a toaster oven or microwave or on a hot plate or the barbecue pit. We still have breakfast every morning fried eggs and bacon, she said. Before Katrina hit Aug. 29, the Lewises lived in the upstairs part of their home on Franklin Avenue in Gentilly and rented the downstairs. Now, after Katrina sent 5 feet of water into the first floor, they ve gutted the downstairs and are slowly piecing it back together. They have lived in the house since 1978 and have been back in their upstairs quarters since shortly after Thanksgiving. I ain t goin nowhere. I ain t plannin on movin anywhere else, James Lewis, a Plaquemine native, said as he stood downstairs among the exposed two-by-four studs. Lewis said he can t say the same for many of his former neighbors. Ain t got no neighbors. It s really scary, he said of post-katrina life in his neighborhood not far from the interstate. The people ain t got nowhere to go and nowhere to stay. Lewis remains cautiously optimistic about the future of Gentilly, which was flooded when the London Avenue Canal breached. I think it s going to come back. It s not going to be like it used to be, he said. New Orleans City Councilman Jay Batt, whose district includes Lakeview, said Friday that he is bullish on Lakeview. Batt said repairs to the 17th Street Canal levee and floodgates being placed at the mouth of the canal near Lake Pontchartrain will prevent a repeat of the post-katrina flooding and put the repopulation of Lakeview in the next six to eight months on the fast track. Tammy Arrigo said her former neighbors are few and far between. Of the 10 neighbors immediately surrounding her before the storm, only four have indicated they are returning. Arrigo said she feels like she lives on an island. We re in the frontier, she said. I expect to have a lot less neighbors than we had before, she added, saying it will be quite a while before they receive mail and return to regular garbage service. The post office in Lakeview is supposed to open a temporary location in early summer, she said. Arrigo said she has noticed a recent increase in FEMA trailers in Lakeview and also in house-gutting activity, which she attributes to college students who traded their traditional spring breaks to come to New Orleans and help out.

4 Like the Pfefferles, the Arrigos have done much of their post-katrina housework themselves. They have had to look to Slidell and Walker for some of their materials. We have a determined drive to come back, Tammy Arrigo said. The Arrigos also found a silver lining in the hurricane s aftermath. We have met people blocks away that we wouldn t ordinarily have known, she said. Jeanne Pfefferle said the smallest of things can bring her joy now. Last week, the Popsicle man passed. Isn t that unbelievable? she said. Tammy Arrigo said the nearby levee repair and floodgate work is comforting, but she still has concerns. Oh, yes. Gosh, yes, she said, adding that coastal restoration cannot be ignored. Karl Pfefferle said he too misses his old neighbors. When he walks the dogs at night, he said, there is no one on front porches to say hello to. Recently, he saw many of them for the first time at a funeral at St. Dominic s Catholic Church in Lakeview. It s lonesome. It s very lonesome, he said. It s a shame you have to go to a funeral to catch up with your friends. Pfefferle said he does see Lakeview residents driving through the neighborhood. They re trying to decide whether to come back. Everybody s watching what the other ones are doing, he said. Jeanne said she heard Lakeview described, pre-katrina, as Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show. It will be different, but it will be back, Karl Pfefferle said. If it floods again, people will be gone. Jeanne Pfefferle, who is 50, said Lakeview has lost its substantial pre-katrina elderly population. They want to be home so bad, but they can t, she said. We re the old people now, Karl Pfefferle, 52, added. All the people in their 70s and 80s are gone. Jeanne Pfefferle said the police estimate that only 400 of Lakeview s 7,500 families are back.

5 That s not a lot. It s going to take a while, she said. The young kids they re coming back.