Freret Street Revisited
Throughout New Orleans residents band together to regroup and rebuild
The city recently launched a plan to reclaim abandoned property and set a deadline for gutting flood-damaged homes, but in the meantime Parker worries that her kids could be shot by a stray bullet in one of the myriad turf wars now being waged here. Every day she calls a city number to report the abandoned house next to hers, and every day she hears gunshots. She worries, too, that the house next door could go up in flames and take hers with it. For these reasons and more, Parker has struggled with anxiety and depression since the storm. But counseling is a luxury in a town where only 22 of 196 psychiatrists who were practicing pre-Katrina have returned. Parker got a boost a couple of months ago when her sister-in-law was able to leave San Antonio, her temporary home in the wake of the evacuation, to return to New Orleans. Now Parker has a confidant, and someone to help her watch her children and her daughter's new baby, her first grandchild. That baby is part of a boomlet of sorts that has hit New Orleans since the storm, where the birthrate has risen an estimated 25 percent this year.
But Parker remains terribly worried about the conditions in her neighborhood. Last month she begged her husband, Peter, to come back from his job upstate, where he was earning good money and commuting home on weekends, to live with her again. He is back now, but Sarah would feel safer if she saw more of the police-"and if they would get out of their little cars and walk some," she says.
Citywide, emergency responders are overwhelmed and understaffed. The police force now stands at 1,452, having lost 362 officers post-Katrina. The department is budgeted for 1,700 officers, but applications are down-only 12 recruits have been added in a year-while more cops leave every month, including 25 in July alone. Throughout the city, hospital beds are at a premium and patients report emergency room waits of upwards of eight hours on a good day. Firefighters, too, are underfunded and understaffed, operating on a budget that has been reduced by nearly a third since the storm.
Up in flames. Those cuts may have made the difference for the Original Brown Derby. Back in November, U.S. News met the owner of the corner grocery, Sam Ottallah, as he was struggling to scrape together enough money to rebuild his business after the storm. He did not have flood insurance, and he and his wife and children did without window shades, some furniture, and other items that Ottallah considered luxuries in the family's flooded home to save money to stock his store shelves. The store reopened and was doing brisk business. That is, until it burned down this May, felled in a four-alarm fire.
Firefighters said they would have been able to arrive sooner had they not needed to respond from a station nearly 10 minutes away-instead of one two blocks down the street that the city didn't have the funds to keep open. By the time cashier Vivian Richards-still in her pajamas-joined Ottallah at the Derby just after 5 a.m., it was consumed by flames caused by a gas leak. "He cried his little heart out," says Richards of her longtime friend and boss.But like most New Orleanians, they did not surrender to sorrow. At her local nail salon, Richards heard of some vacant property just a couple of blocks from the old shop, on Louisiana Avenue. Ottallah, Richards, and her son, Dennis, restocked the shelves and reopened for business just a month and a half later.
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