NEW ORLEANS – The last neighborhood in New Orleans that had remained closed after Hurricane Katrina reopened Thursday, with some residents of the Lower 9th Ward saying they planned to abandon the area and others vowing to rebuild.
Residents were allowed in for the day to gather what belongings they could. Until now, people had been able to view the destruction only on bus tours. Residents still cannot stay in the neighborhood, which has no electrical power.
“This is all I know, right here,” Palazzolo Simmons said as he stepped onto the sidewalk from the roof of a collapsed house he shared with his mother until Katrina hit Aug. 29. Simmons said he would rebuild.
The Lower 9th Ward was the last section of the city to reopen, owing to the destruction wrought by the storm and floods after the London Avenue Canal levee breach.
The neighborhood remained treacherous. Streets were clear, but hundreds of buildings were on the verge of collapse and yards were full of broken glass, metal shards and boards studded with rusting nails.
Darlana Green said floodwaters carried her house off its foundation while she and her two children were inside. She scoffed at Mayor Ray Nagin’s public pronouncements that he wants all evacuees to come home.
“Come home to what?” she said. She and her husband recognized the heap of debris that used to be the family’s home only after spotting their children’s Spider-Man bedsheets amid the wreckage.
Frank Wingate, who returned to inspect his mother’s property, found a refrigerator lying on the edge of a neighbor’s rooftop, where it had come to rest as storm waters receded.
Red Cross officials, on hand to provide water, snacks and counseling, said about 1,000 cars carrying 9th Ward residents had passed a city checkpoint by midday, and the traffic was backed up four blocks from the entrance.
“We just came for a little closure, just to see,” said Vandell Smith, standing in his front yard with wife Terri and looking at what was left of their barely upright home. They could salvage nothing from inside – the wood-and-brick building was too rickety to enter.
“It’ll be bulldozed, and we’ll move on,” said Smith, who said his family had already planned to move to a safer neighborhood on the west bank of the Mississippi River even before the storm.
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