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| McShane holds a photo of her and her husband, who died in 1991. It's one of the few mementos that survived Katrina. Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor |
As Gustav evacuees return to New Orleans, a varied homecoming
Many find their houses are fairly intact. Power loss is still a problem.
from the September 5, 2008 edition
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Reporter Alexandra Marks discusses hurricane Gustav's effects on residents.
"We heard FEMA was coming with some tarps today, but they can only give out one apiece," said Marsha Martinez, who was also waiting outside Plaquemine's hardware store.
On Wednesday morning, officials were saying it could be four to six weeks before power in Plaquemine was restored. But people are hoping it will be much sooner.
Back in New Orleans, one of the first things Ms. McShane did, after helping her mother back into the house, was turn on the air conditioner to clear out the 90 degree heat. At first, it didn't seem to work.
"I just pray it's not broken," she said. With the flick of a circuit breaker, it hummed to life. Then she looked at the pile of furniture stacked high in the middle of her living room.
Last Friday, her son had come over, taken the railroad ties he uses in his work to jack up houses, and built what looks like a log-cabin box in the living room. On top of it he stacked the sofas, coffee table, chairs – anything else that would fit.
"My son was trying to save this. He said, 'Well, if the water comes, maybe it won't get up so high this time.' So he did this," she says, pointing at the towering stack, "because I just can't keep buying furniture. I can't afford to do that."
Three years ago, Katrina had flooded McShane's house to the ceiling. The water destroyed almost everything that McShane, known as Big Mama to family and friends, owned.
"Before we left for Katrina, my granddaughter said, 'Big Mama, you better get Big Papa,' " she says, holding a framed picture of herself and her husband, who died in 1991. "This is what I have left. Katrina took everything else, besides two or three other pieces I took with me."
Her home, which is in New Orleans' 17th Ward, had to be gutted, stripped down to the studs. It took 2-1/2 years to rebuild. She and her mother and two grandsons, whom she has adopted, moved back to this home only this past January.
During their two years of living as essentially refugees with family in Natchez, her grandchildren Walter and Shane desperately wanted to come home. She recounts how children at school there constantly teased them, "Go home to New Orleans where you belong. We don't want you here."
When the family prepared to leave again last week because of Gustav, McShane says: "Walter was asking, 'Big Mama, are we going to have to do the house all over again?' I prayed and prayed about it, and I told him: 'Don't worry about it. The Lord's not going to let it happen to us all over again.' "
When asked how she feels now, having just returned safely to her cool, dry, and restored home, she says: "Happy, happy, very happy ... but I'm tired of running every time it clouds up. I don't know what's going to happen with the levees. Will they ever function to full capacity? But I guess they did this time."
• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.1 | Page 2
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