The Big Easy? Now It's Limbo Land

Mary Howard of Lake Charles, La., joins about 400 others displaced by Hurricane Katrina in marching to the U.S. Capitol. "We want to go home" and "Where is the money?" were the chants of storm victims who will continue their rally and protest in the District today. Story, A12. (By Michael Williamson -- The Washington Post)

Jerry Deroche, 72, and her husband, Every, 78, are living temporarily -- as if there is any other way in New Orleans these days -- in a FEMA trailer in the front yard of their Chalmette home. "It's a hell of a thing to be going through at our age," she said. "I can't even get into the tub."

Harry Anderson, magician and former star of sitcoms "Night Court" and "Dave's World," also lives in Limbo Land. Anderson opened a speakeasy, Oswald's, in May 2005. Crowds were flowing in, and so was the money. He was really looking forward to the Labor Day weekend. Then Katrina hit. Now Oswald's is dark most nights because there are just not enough tourists for his original scheme. "We are bleeding cash," Anderson said.

The city is anything but the Big Easy, he said. It is small and struggling.

"Nobody is doing any business," said Charles Nelson, a commercial-transactions lawyer. "We don't have a lot of commerce." Nelson has an office in the Central Business District. But clients are not able to come and go freely. And without clients, a lawyer has a tough time.

And everyone is waiting for the FEMA maps like they were oracles at Delphi. The maps will tell residents and businesses where and how they can rebuild. "Those maps will tell people whether or not they can get flood insurance," Nelson said. And if they can't get flood insurance, they may want to sell. But there may not be a market for the house. Or the government may swoop in, raze the house and build a park.

Preliminary FEMA maps are scheduled to come out in the spring, but final federal guidelines for rebuilding may not be released until August, when New Orleans will already be several weeks into the hurricane season. "People are afraid to do the wrong thing, to put money into a home that may or may not be insurable in the long-run, and this is causing a tremendous amount of paralysis," Blanco told the Associated Press not long ago.

Maurice Moore, 54, said his house in Lake Terrace, near Lake Pontchartrain, did not flood, though many of his neighbors' homes did. The businessman said he could move back right now, except the schools are closed and his son, Matthew, is in the 10th grade. Moore's paint-coating business took a hard blow.

Moore's family is living in Alexandria, La. He and his wife, Dianne, are not sure they want to go through another hurricane. "We'd like to move back," he said, "but the future of New Orleans is so uncertain."