“The city has let people down,”  she said. “They told us to come back. But what have they done?”

On Thursday night, William attended a city-sponsored event aimed at improving New Orleans East’s image as a dilapidated and largely abandoned neighborhood. Dubbed the “State of New Orleans East,” the two-and-half-hour presentation at City Cathedral attracted more than 1,400 people and carried a message that New Orleans East residents want to rebuild.

Fourteen panelists representing several key industries in New Orleans East outlined detailed plans to help bring people, businesses and investors into the area. CNN reporter Tom Foreman moderated the event.

Audience members heard about strategies to reopen the area’s hospital, attract investors, fight crime, improve schools, reconnect  utilities and construct a new shopping center.

“This message is a national message: New Orleans East is thriving and doing well,” said Shermin Copelin, president of the New Orleans East Business Association (NOEBA) and a key organizer of the event.

Methodist Hospital, which was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina, is set to  reopen by December 2011 at the earliest, and early 2012 at the latest, said Fred Young, president of Methodist Health System Foundation. He said the reopened hospital would employee 415 new staff members, who will make an average of $50,000 annually. While some whispers in the audience could be heard criticizing the project’s timeline, Young’s announcements were met with loud applause.

Melanie Hall, director of communication for Energy New Orleans, said power lines will be added to surrounding areas not currently fully serviced.

The city also plans to develop a recycling station in the area, said D’Juan Hernandez, a representative from Sun Energy Group. “We think we can bring recycling back to New Orleans.”

Alicia Plummer, vice president of NOEBA, summed up city officials’ messages. “East New Orleans is ready and open for business.”

The night’s agenda also included plans to decrease crime. “I’m not going to rest until we get our murder rates down to near zero,” said Leon Cannizzaro, Orleans Parish district attorney. Cannizzaro said he and his staff plan to work closely with the community to investigate crimes in the area as well as work on rehabilitating nonviolent offenders and juvenile offenders.

Officials also hope to work on maintaining local schools, said Woody Koppel, president from the Orleans Parish School Board.

A deal to build a shopping center on  the site of Lake Forest Plaza is also in the works. Cesar Burgos, a  lawyer  who serves on the mayor’s “Bring New Orleans Back” commission, said he hopes to replace the plaza with an outlet mall. The audience responded to his plan with shouts of “Yes!”

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis summarized public sentiment at Thursday’s meeting saying, “We don’t want what we had in the past. We want better!”

Despite the optimism of city officials, residents admitted some skepticism after the meeting, Evelyn Bickham said, “We’re hoping – that’s all we can do is hope” that officials will fulfill their promises.

Nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina, a drive along these streets shows  that home abandonment continues to be a major problem for the city.

“We drove through here, and it looked like a bomb hit. It really looked bad,” said Sandy Kelly, who, with her son Jason and husband, Phillip, is working to renovate and sell homes in the partially abandoned area north of the Gentilly neighborhood.

The family plans to stop redeveloping soon. Thieves often search abandoned neighborhoods for signs of redevelopment – new appliances and tools – costing them thousands in stolen supplies. Other houses in the area remain  abandoned, and lots still sit overgrown and empty. The neighborhood still looks like a shell of what it once was because other landowners just haven’t returned.

“I never made any profit off of any of these,” said Kelly’s son, Jason Johnson, as he took a break from renovating a home he plans to live in. Until widespread redevelopment happens here, his next-door neighbors will be two empty,  unkempt lots.

According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, the percentage of homes receiving no mail for 90 days or more – a U.S. Postal Service benchmark for abandonment – was 34 percent in 2008; as of May 2009 it has dropped to 31 percent, or 65,888 units.

There are nearly 47,000 vacant homes and buildings in the city, according to the center. Out of a total 65,888 abandoned buildings, the city has acquired 12,000 permits for demolition, and 7,000 of the homes are in livable conditions.

The outlook for blight in New Orleans is expected to improve as more public-amenities projects and other repopulation initiatives lure prospective residents. Pontchartrain Park redevelopment, complete with a golf course and renovated homes, is one of the city’s latest projects. Also, the city is buying property in abandoned areas and turning it over to redevelopment agencies.

Part of the problem hampering repopulation, city officials and redevelopers say, are “fence riders” who still technically own their abandoned properties but won’t maintain, renovate or sell them because they have little financial incentive to do so. This is what creates a domino effect leading to a high concentration of abandoned buildings in certain areas, according to New Orleans Recovery Authority (NORA), a city redevelopment agency.

Some have said code inspections are still failing to catch these absentee landlords.

Ommeed Sathe, real estate director at NORA,  likened code inspections in abandoned neighborhoods to parking tickets on broken-down cars. “It doesn’t work,” he said. “They’re just going to hold that piece of land forever.”

 Tina Marquardt, operations director at the nonprofit Beacon of Hope Resource Center, said that as the city starts to improve efforts in housing-code enforcement, fence riders will face court dates and fines if they don’t address the eroding conditions of their properties.

Court appearances are especially likely for people who accepted state money – Road Home funding – and haven’t repaired their properties.

“There was a covenant that they had to renovate their homes within three years if they accepted that money,” Marquardt said. If the agreement is broken, homeowners could face reimbursement penalties of up to $150,000. “Those fence riders may be getting off that fence real soon,” she said, grinning.

Property rights laws were strengthened in 2006 through an amendment to the state’s constitution, giving landowners the ability to retain ownership of abandoned lots. This ultimately hurts city dwellers, said New Orleans City Councilwoman Stacy Head.

“It prohibits the government from taking and transferring properties to third parties except in very, very limited circumstances, and we need to do that in New Orleans,” she said. adding that property laws applying to rural Louisiana towns should not impact redevelopment efforts in the urban and partially abandoned city.

“That’s limited the city’s ability to get properties back into commerce,” Head said.

“It takes three years and a lot of blood sweat and tears – and money to get properties into commerce,” she said, adding that in tax sales in most other states, the landowner acquires foreclosed or abandoned properties after 18 months.

A method NORA began using last spring to acquire property is eminent domain, when the government can sue housing-code violators out of their property. The process works on a neighborhood level with the agency, Sathe said, but at the scale of the abandonment issue in New Orleans, the costly legal process is impractical in his view.

“We’ve got something like 1,500 imminent domain lawsuits in progress at the moment; that’s probably the world’s record,” Sathe said, “And it’s a drop in the bucket.”

Eminent domain, Sathe said, acquires enough land to create an upward trend in repopulation and development and does enough to scare other landowners into maintaining their properties – or risk losing them to the city if they will not maintain them.

Marquardt said, “I don’t think anyone, or any one state, could service the size of this disaster.” Because of that, Beacon of Hope volunteers use GIS – Geographic Information Systems – software to help the city pinpoint which lots are abandoned, are being renovated or are now livable in area neighborhoods.

The information is then funneled through the “Lot Next Door” program, enabling homeowners to see which nearby homes are available for purchase and renovation.

Marquardt, from  Beacon of Hope, said civic engagement by residents in abandoned areas could assist city and state agencies trying to assess abandonment and rebuild.

“It’s not that they’re not doing the same for all areas, it’s a matter of what’s coming from the bottom up,” Marquardt said.

Johnson continues to work on his soon-to-be home, located near a school that is still under construction. He hopes its completion brings residents to the area before land values in the area bottom out.

“What’s ever going to happen to them?” Johnson asked of the deserted properties. “Am I going to live across from an empty lot for 20 years?”

Now, life imitates art. Nearly four years after Katrina in real-life New Orleans, entomologists say a change in the ecosystem has caused some bugs to proliferate and others to die off.

Danielle Taylor was one of the first evacuees to return to her neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. She noticed a lot of flies and mosquitoes.

“We called them Katrina flies,” she said.

It’s no surprise that flies flourished, considering all the refrigerators with rotting food sitting on the sides of roadways. But other differences were not so immediately noticeable.

The poisonous brown widow spider is more common. Mosquitoes and some species of ants also have increased.

But not all bugs are doing well. The fire ant’s population has diminished. And in a display of how ecology works, without the fire ant to prey upon it, the sugarcane borer has increased. That in turn has meant more damage to sugar cane crops, which has meant less revenue for farmers.

Edward Martin, an entomologist who owns a local Terminix franchise, said the brown widow spider became more evident after the storm. He said he hadn’t seen a brown widow in all the time he’d worked in the area – since 1960 – until after the storm.

“Within a year or two,” he said, “they were everywhere.”

Jayme Necaise, an entomologist and director of animal and visitor programs at the Audubon Insectarium, said the massive influx of building and garden materials from other states, such as Florida, were to blame for bringing in the spiders. He said no one was inspecting all the materials coming in to Louisiana to rebuild homes.

Zena Ezeb has seen brown spiders, in her house and outside. She said that she sees them the most when she opens her door.

Usually she is not scared of spiders, but these particular spiders scare her.

“The thing that scares me is that they look deadly,” she said.

Necaise said the brown widow thrives in an undisturbed habitat with no human activity, such as abandoned houses and buildings, which have been plentiful since the storm.

“The brown widow has become quite established here in the New Orleans area,” he said.

The spider has a yellow-to-orange hourglass marking, according to the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center; it may be gray or tan to dark brown and 1 to 1.5 inches long. The best way to control the spider is to remove trash piles or other areas where they nest and by sealing cracks around doors and windows, the center advised.

Necaise said anyone who is rebuilding should be aware of the brown widow, especially   construction workers operating in undisturbed areas. The university agriculture center said that people should wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants. Necaise urged people to wear leather gloves, because spiders are unable to bite through leather. While the brown widow is not as aggressive as a black widow, its bite can be severe.

Meanwhile, a particular mosquito also has thrived in the area since the storm.

Kenneth Brown, principal research entomologist with the New Orleans Mosquito and Termite Control Board, said he noticed that the common salt-marsh mosquito, Aedes sollicitans, had become abundant as a result of high tides or heavy rain.

Necaise said the large numbers of untended and abandoned swimming pools made excellent breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

“Mosquitoes’ larvae do extremely well in water containing lots of decaying organic matter,” Necaise said. That means people who don’t want mosquitoes should drain that water.

Decaying vegetation, construction debris, empty lots and abandoned buildings also have been blamed for the rise in some varieties of ants, such as sugar ants and black ants, according to Mike Groetsch, the owner of Metro Termite and Pest Control.

But fire ants, which help to control the sugarcane borer, diminished in number because of the influx of saltwater, said Timothy Schowalter, a professor and department head of entomology at Louisiana State University. He said fire ants were eliminated in the portion of south Louisiana covered by the storm surges from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

That led to a tripling of the sugarcane borer population, Schowalter said, resulting in an estimated loss in revenue to the Louisiana sugarcane industry between $1.9 million and $2.9 million in 2006.

Taylor, who is dean of humanities at Dillard University, said that she thinks army ants are back after disappearing for a while.

Donald Martin agrees. “I’ve seen an increase in ants,” he said.

Martin, who lives in the Iberville neighborhood, said the proliferation of ants does not pose a problem for him: “I keep my house clean.”

Necaise said the phorid fly, a tiny insect that resembles the fruit fly and is also known as the humpbacked or scuttle fly, increased in number greatly up to a year after Katrina because there were more places to breed.

“When people aren’t around to clean up their mess, flies explode in population,” Necaise said. Their growth has since been controlled.

Schowalter has also seen an “abundance of aphids and other sap-sucking insects,” which have thrived on sprouts from trees damaged by Katrina.

Brown said it is also possible that the stinging caterpillar’s population might have increased.

Joanne Lozano said that she hates to go to her sister’s house during the spring because there are always a lot of slimy caterpillars.

Tiffany Frasier, an attendee at The New York Times Student Journalism Institute at Dillard University, thought she had been bitten by a spider but later found out she was bitten numerous times by a caterpillar. The bite mark was red, swollen, and had a ring around it.

Schowalter recalled other instances where hurricanes have transported many insects and other organisms. For example, during Hurricane Ivan in 2004, soybean rust was introduced in the South along the rim of the storm, he said. During Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Gustav in 2008, a variety of tropical birds appeared in the South, he added.

Taylor said she tries to avoid bugs, but it is really hard to avoid them in New Orleans.

“I watch the bugs, because I believe in killing them,” she said.

Christy Garrison in front of her 1997 Mitsubishi Diamante, which has been her home for about a year. The car no longer starts, but will have to be moved soon. (Ray Tyler/ NYT Institute)

Christy Garrison’s 1997 silver Mitsubishi Diamante is her most prized possession. It provides her with storage. It’s where she eats. It’s where she sleeps. It is home.

A native of Plaquemines Parish, Garrison is one of Hurricane Katrina’s forgotten castaways, one of the estimated 12,000 homeless people now living on the streets

Wetahanna Trask, 34, a resident of Baronne Street transitional housing, and the program's director, Johnell Williams, sit in the common room as Trask discusses the adjustment period she went through when she lost her home. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

in the city of New Orleans.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, New Orleans’ rate of homelessness is more than four times the national average. And the number of homeless children continues to make up a large proportion of that.

“I don’t want my baby staying in this car,” Garrison said. “She can’t take a bath and go to school. It’s not good for her.”

A soft-spoken woman with striking hazel eyes, the 35-year-old has seen a lot. She used to have a home and was “doing fine until Katrina came and took it.” After the storm, Garrison was staying in Belle Chase, La., in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer on Captain Larry Lane. Her trailer was taken away a year ago, and ever since  Garrison and her daughter Asia, 11, who’s mentally and physically disabled, have been homeless. The father of her other daughter, Shanbriel, 15, has custody of her.

For about a year now, Garrison and Asia have been living in the car, often parking on side streets near apartment complexes and abandoned buildings to sleep. Just two months ago, neighbors called child protection services to report that Garrison was sleeping in the car with her child. Garrison quickly had to make preparations for Asia to stay with some of her father’s relatives to avoid trouble with the authorities.

“I don’t need child protection on my back,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t want them to take my baby.” Of the relatives, she said, “I just need them to keep her until I get on my feet.”

Because of Asia’s disabilities – she has difficulty walking because of a stroke – an emergency shelter wasn’t an option: Being surrounded by large numbers of people and noise triggers bouts of seizures.

“I don’t know where to go, I really don’t,” Garrison said. “That’s why I need my own place.”

The urgency of Garrison’s situation continues to increase by the day. Two weeks ago the car began to overheat and hasn’t started since. The owner of the property where the car is sitting, in Algiers, has told her she has until Friday to move it.

With no transportation, Garrison now has to walk an hour from Algiers to Gretna to search for work. Her search has yet to yield results.

“There are times when I just sit in the car and cry,” she said. “But I have to stay strong for my child’s sake. I can’t just give up because I know she wants to be with me and I want to be with her.”

New Orleans is a foreign place for Garrison. She doesn’t know of many places she can go and has sought help from the few resources she knows of, namely the Red Cross and United Way. She’s also been to Lovetouch Ministries’ shelter in Gretna for help, but the building is currently under renovation.

“A lot of people don’t know what’s really happening in the streets,” said Pastor Joan Powell, founder of Lovetouch Ministries. “There are a lot of families out there that are homeless.”

Powell said that all she can do is refer families to another agency that itself may already be filled.

With the help of Lovetouch, Garrison has filled out an application to be considered for UNITY of Greater New Orleans’ housing voucher program. UNITY is the lead HUD-designated agency for homelessness in the Greater New Orleans area, partnering with 50 other agencies in the area. The agency has only 100 permanent housing vouchers at the moment to give out to qualifying families. While the vouchers are best fit for families, others may qualify for the vouchers as well. UNITY has been taking applications over the past couple of months and is still in the referral process.

Until then, Garrison can only hope and wait.

“I’m just praying I get something,” she said.

But as Garrison and others wait, the number of homeless families continues to increase.

Connie Andry, the director of homeless services for Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, has also noticed the rise of families seeking assistance following the storm.

Twenty-five years ago, when Andry opened one of the first homeless shelters for families, she noted three main causes of the homelessness crisis: the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the economics of low wages and the lack of affordable housing. Today, Andry still notices these as common denominators with an added factor – the remnants of Hurricane Katrina.

“People just don’t have enough money to live off,” Andry explained. “It is very costly to live and the wages don’t match. Since Katrina, everything’s gone up.”

Affordable housing is very difficult to come by, Andry said. Four years ago, a two-bedroom apartment would cost about $600 a month; now they average between $900 and $1,000.

Clarence White, an outreach worker with UNITY of Greater New Orleans, climbs from underneath an abandoned house to find mentally and physically ill homeless people, in hopes of providing them help. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, a UNITY partner, operates four transitional housing programs for homeless families that allow women with children to stay in a unit as long as they’re working and saving up to eventually move out on their own. Additionally, they provide a number of outreach services that focus on prevention of homelessness.

Wetahanna Trask, 34, is one of the 15 adult residents at Baronne Street Transitional Housing, a program operated by Catholic Charities. There, residents must have some source of income and pay anywhere between $50 and $200 a month for their stay. She and her 16-year-old daughter, Cierra, and twin 2-year-old boys, Devone and Devonte, came to Baronne Street Transitional Housing nine months ago, with a referral from an emergency shelter where they had been staying.

Like Garrison, Trask was living independently before  Katrina and at one point even held down two waitress jobs, at Shoney’s and IHOP. Trask’s home wasn’t damaged, but when she returned, the landlord had some other news for her.

“When I came back my landlord met me on the step, saying he was increasing the rent by like $200,” she said. “I couldn’t afford that.”

Three weeks later, Trask received an eviction notice and has been “bouncing around” since. Despite her situation, it took time to dawn on her that she was in fact homeless.

“The last thing you want to think is you really are homeless,” Trask explained. “I got comfortable staying at my sister’s or my cousin’s house. But it still wasn’t mine. It took a while for me to realize that we were actually homeless.”

And when Trask finally realized it, it hit her hard. In 2007, after falling into a deep depression, she tried to commit suicide.

“It took a toll on my pride, my womanhood and motherhood,” she said. “I just wondered,  Why can’t I get this together?’ ”

Now enrolled in classes to prepare for her General Education Development test, Trask is thankful for the help she’s received from the staff and caseworkers.

“I found a friend. That’s been my uplift because I hadn’t had a friend in many years.”

Three UNITY outreach workers, Mike Miller, Shamus Rohn and Clarence White, are also on a mission to help those needing a friend. As part of the UNITY Welcome Home project, twice a week the trio goes out in search for the “sickest of the sick,” those staying in abandoned buildings throughout the city, with the goal to get them needed medical care and eventually off the streets.

Many of these people are mentally and physically disabled and may be suffering from substance abuse as well. Because of their chronic illnesses, it’s often difficult for them to stay in emergency shelters, Miller said.

After surveying abandoned buildings during the day, looking for any signs of inhabitants, the workers make a note of the buildings and make plans to come back at night when they’re most likely to find someone.

Tuesday and Thursday nights, carrying flashlights and cups of black coffee, the group head out in search of their newest clients. The people they seek are usually at the most severe end of the spectrum, such as a 27-year-old mentally retarded woman with a history of a crack cocaine addiction who’s also believed to be five months pregnant.

She’s been staying in an abandoned house in Algiers with a group of other men and women. The only way to get inside is to climb up under the house and through a hole in the floor.

The workers called out, announcing themselves: “UNITY outreach, anybody home?”

Someone shuffled through the bushes, but it was not who they were looking for.

Stanley Lee Jefferson, 42, has been staying in this abandoned house for three years now. He says the woman they were looking for left with the rest of the group.

On any given night, the group may find just whom they’re looking for, or have no success at all.

Preparing to call it a night, they ran into a former client, Terry White. White has lupus and after Katrina she was living in abandoned houses after the city cleared out the I-10 overpass. The 46-year-old had been homeless for the past three years as well. Last year UNITY was able to get White medical and housing assistance. For six months now, White has been staying in a two-bedroom house in the Seventh Ward thanks to a permanent housing voucher from UNITY.

“It’s wonderful,” White said, smiling. “I knew they’d eventually help me.”

In his last annual State of the City address, delivered on May 20, Nagin noted that Iberville’s redevelopment would not be a “total demolition.” Plans call for larger apartments, enhanced landscaping and a regular street grid.

“I believe it’s all for the good for what the project has been through for Katrina,” said Lester Jackson, 62, a lifelong Iberville resident.

Maggie Merrill, mayoral policy director for the city of New Orleans, said much planning for the site remained, including the number of units. “There is no master plan yet, and because of the quality of life issues that are there, we want to help improve it,” she said. Merrill said it is uncertain when groundbreaking will begin on Iberville and that it will largely depend on the financing available for the project.

In December 2007, Nagin approved the demolition of three of the four housing projects in New Orleans: Saint Bernard, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper, followed by Lafitte in early 2008.

For the Iberville project, the city will seek to have community input. A resident advisory committee will work with designers to create a master plan for the community, Nagin said in his address.

Merrill said the committee is being formed to make sure the needs and wants of the community are being met.

“A lot of times residents know better about what needs to be done than the people from the outside,” Merrill said.

Located next to the French Quarter, the Iberville neighborhood is steeped in culture that dates to the late 19^th century, when it was called Storyville. As a famous jazz district in the early 1900s, the area was known for its restaurants and clubs; in the 1940s it became a site for public housing.

Currently, there are 629 units in the Iberville housing development. Wayne Woods, chairman of the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, said that there has been no discussion on whether the community will be mixed-income.

However, in his address, Nagin said the goal is to move toward mixed-income housing, which allows people with different income levels to reside in one area.

Such arrangements can have both a positive and negative impact on a community, with an integrated economy as one of the biggest pluses, said Stephen Filmanowicz, communications director for the Congress of New Urbanism. However, he noted that it could push out some current residents.

 ”Over time it’s best to have as much public housing there as there was before to minimize displacement,” Filmanowicz  said.

 Although reaction by residents about the proposed plans has been mixed, Jackson said that having a mixed-income community is like a rainbow.

“During the storm there were people of all economic backgrounds coming together,” he said. “A new beginning will cause people to have a different attitude because of everything they have been through. I think it could be a motivational tool.”

Christina said she struggled with depression that intensified after Hurricane Katrina. The high school tutor said she constantly battled thoughts of suicide.

“I thought about it because I couldn’t control my life,” said Christina, who chose to withhold her last name because of the nature of her story.

Friends and family have helped Christina cope. But she said there are days when she wakes up saying to herself, “Oh, why couldn’t I have just died in my sleep.”

From the beginning of the year to date, there have been 24 suicides in New Orleans. One occurred Tuesday, when a man jumped off the Crescent City Connection Bridge.

From 2006 to 2008 the number of suicides jumped to 42, from 14. “We have a crisis,” said Dr. Jullette Saussy, the emergency medical services director for New Orleans.

Psychiatrist James Barbee said, “Post-traumatic stress often gets worse in the third to fifth year following the event.”

“The stress level is still quite high in the city,” said Barbee, the director for the Anxiety and Mood Disorders Clinic in New Orleans and a professor at Louisiana State University.

But the number of available mental health clinicians, facilities and services to deal with the high level of post traumatic stress and depression remains scarce.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness gave Louisiana a “D,” citing an urgent need to finance mental health services under Medicaid; to expand crisis, inpatient, and community services; and to address the mental health workforce shortage.

Three years ago, the state received the same grade for a lack of mental health infrastructure, lack of patient information access and portability, and a low per capita mental health expenditure of $51.34 for a population of more than 4.4 million.

This compares unfavorably to Connecticut, which received a “B” grade because its per capita mental health spending was $151.03 for a population of more than 3.5 million. Louisiana’s total mental health care spending was $2.3 million, while Connecticut’s was $5.25 million.

The city is currently facing more than a $2 billion deficit, and, adding to an already crumbling mental health infrastructure, Gov. Bobby Jindal announced earlier this year his plans to close the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital, the only public mental health facility in the city that treats juveniles. Children’s Hospital, also in New Orleans, is private.

In December 2007, Mental Health Weekly reported that more than 45,000 children were experiencing mental health issues resulting from Hurricane Katrina.

Psychiatrist Mordecai Potash, a professor at Tulane University, who has an inpatient and outpatient practice in the city, reported that because of the lack of facilities, many chronically mentally ill individuals were placed in Orleans Parish Prison, making it, by default, the largest psychiatric center in the city

“The access to mental health is not very good,” Saussy said.

Potash added that symptoms of post-traumatic stress persist if left untreated. Symptoms include bad dreams, fear and the inability to stop thinking about the event, according to HelpGuide.org, a nonprofit Web site that helps people “understand, prevent and resolve life’s challenges.”

Retired judge Calvin Johnson, executive director of the Metropolitan Human Services District, said he still has dreams about the bodies he saw floating in the water as he was going back to the Criminal Court building on Tulane Avenue to assist with the evacuation effort during Katrina.

The people on the bridge and interstate who begged Johnson for help still creep into his dreams. According to Johnson, one haunting image is of people he saw as he rode through a city underwater. He couldn’t help. The truck he was in was full and he gave away all of the water he had.

“All those are memories that live with me,” Johnson said.

Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder may take weeks, months and even years to develop, according to HelpGuide.org. Symptoms can occur immediately or gradually and may come and go. Post-traumatic stress disorder may be triggered by a reminder such as a noise, smell, words and an image.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, four years later many New Orleanians are constantly reminded of that dreadful day when they step outside of their homes.

Potash said that people are “re-experiencing visual cues.”

“There are parts I used to go to pre-Katrina, but I don’t go there now,” said Potash. “There is nothing but destruction. I don’t need to be reminded. Some areas look like it just happened yesterday.”

Every day people walk or drive past the skeleton of vacant houses and businesses bearing an X, revealing the date the home was searched, who checked it and the number of bodies found.

“Recovery is slow,” said Saussy. “People are left in a limbo type of position.”

HelpGuide.org and research by Potash also revealed that post-traumatic stress disorder affected emergency workers and law enforcement officers.

Officers who experienced the chaos firsthand had to combat post-traumatic stress and take the place of mental health practitioners and counselors. Every month police officers were transporting 185 to 200 mental health patients to hospitals. Today, the New Orleans Police Department has a crisis unit that consists of volunteers who aid in the transportation of people with mental illnesses.

“Katrina has been a major factor in exposing a serious mental health problem in New Orleans,” said criminologist John Penny, a professor at Southern University of New Orleans.

Penny said that depression is a major issue in the city, and that suicide homicides are increasing as well. The rise in “angry outbursts, murders and substance abuse,” Penny said, are “compounded problems brought on by the lack of treatment facilities.”

The system has been “disabled,” Barbee said, but he has been able to treat everyone.

Potash has a sliding scale fee in his outpatient practice, and he tries to assist patients with Medicaid. But he said there is an urgent need for inpatient facilities.

David Gavlinski, an aide to City Councilwoman Shelly Midura, said that if the community fights to keep the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital open then the state government will cut the Assertive Community Treatment and the Forensic Assertive Community Treatment programs. Both programs have 100 beds for the “most vulnerable.” Gaylinski said there is a need for all facilities.

“Our area needs to make mental health education and treatment a high priority,” said Penny. “It needs to be at the forefront of any endeavor we undertake.”

Last year was the first time Christina saw a counselor for her depression. Every day had been a struggle, she said, but “through encouragement from friends, I manage to tame the thoughts.” Although times can be hard, Christina said, she knows there is “still something special” waiting for her.

“I’ve been given another day, and I should cherish it for the betterment of others,” said Christina. “It’s not about me. It’s the circle of life, and albeit we travel different paths and potholes, we write our own stories. And I want mine to have a happy ending.”

When he saw his neighborhood filled with over five feet of water, his family displaced by the storm and his friends suffering each day, he wanted to do something to make a difference, to make things be the way they used to be.

“Katrina comes along and destroys our neighborhood,” Zeller said. “I’m sitting there keeping up with the information, watching the news, trying to decide what to do. Do we come back to New Orleans and try to help rebuild?”

He decided to do just that, going back to the place that, for months, he had been watching on television from New York.

Zeller set up a nonprofit called the Mothership Foundation, with a mission to be “dedicated to social change by bringing forth a higher quality of life for all Louisiana and New Orleans residents through the promotion of arts, culture and recreation.”

Through the foundation, in 2006 Zeller created a free annual music festival for the local community called the Bayou Boogaloo. The event, held each Memorial Day weekend on the banks of Bayou Saint John at Orleans Avenue in Mid-City, ended Saturday.

“I wanted the festival to have a representation of musical genres from around the world, really which New Orleans has,” Zeller said in an interview on Saturday at the festival. “We have funk, jazz, blues, reggae, a little bit of everything. So it’s a diverse bag of talent.”

Zeller has never shied away from challenges. He spent 10 years as a music producer and an event coordinator. He also works for a local nonprofit radio program in the New Orleans area.

In general, Zeller said his life’s work can best be described as “full-time work for part-time pay.”

“I’ve lost a lot of money over the years on some of my endeavors, I guess you can say,” Zeller said with a grin. “People have said I’m overly ambitious, but I don’t mind. As long as I’m making a difference in this neighborhood, in this community, then I am OK with it.”

Since its first year, Bayou Boogaloo has featured popular artists from Louisiana. This year the list of acts totaled 16 musical performances featuring the likes of the Storyville Stompers, Little Freddie King and Equal Opportunity Employment, and five art shows by Rhino Contemporary Artists, a group of painters from the area.

One musician who represented the festival’s diversity was Charmaine Neville, a Louisiana native who heads an eclectic band whose music ranges from blues to funk.

Neville said the music festival means more than just a good time to the people of Mid-City, because music represents what makes New Orleans and its neighborhoods what they are today.

“Music is everything in New Orleans,” Neville explained. “I mean, without music, what would New Orleans be? It would be just another city in America.”

The post-Katrina recovery for the neighborhood has not been easy, Zeller said. But with the free music festival, he said, the residents now have something to look forward to every year as they continue to rebuild and reshape their neighborhood.

“Bayou Boogaloo gives people a break from the stress of everyday life. I think that was important after Katrina,” Zeller said. “We were completely consumed with rebuilding, preplanning our lives, and we needed a day to say this is why we live here. The people, the culture is worth saving.”

Four years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward, where she lived, and two years after her 19-year-old brother was fatally shot, Smothers readied herself to file into New Hope Baptist Church in New Orleans. She had finally fulfilled her brother’s last wish: She was graduating as valedictorian; she was not a victim.

“It made me want success even more, seeing everything we worked for go down the drain,” she said. “We didn’t quit. We didn’t give up. We didn’t drop out after the storm, after everything we lost.”

With diplomas in hand, the Class of 2009, the Katrina Class, celebrated the end of four turbulent years.

Their stories, of high school freshmen thrust into Hurricane Katrina, are riddled with frequent transfers, periods out of school and long journeys home.

On Friday afternoon, loud choruses of happy laughter filled New Hope Baptist as nearly 400 family members and friends of George Washington Carver High School’s graduating class packed the small church’s pews and aisles. Students, in hunter green caps and gowns, happily strolled across a makeshift stage in front of the pulpit.

Latecomers, who in a rush double-parked their cars, were shunted into the balcony, babies and balloons in hand. Many leaned over the railing to get a view of the seniors.

Smothers, 17, had fled New Orleans the Saturday before Katrina, just two weeks after her first day at New Technology High School. Four months later, she returned to Louisiana from school in Texas, attending in succession Old Perry Walker High School, Sarah T. Reed High School, and finally Carver.

“We lost everything, but I wouldn’t let that bring me down,” Smothers said. “To see on the news, how my neighborhood and houses were gone. It was emotional but instead of me crying and being bad and fighting in school I turned it around to being a good thing.”

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, George Washington Carver’s commencement speaker, summed up the students’ experience.

“This is the first graduating class that has withstood the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, that survived mandatory evacuations for Hurricane Gustav, that excelled despite the fact that they had to study in toxic FEMA trailers that got moved from one city to another city, that lost their friends, that lost their loved ones. But they never lost their desire to succeed and to achieve.”

Brodrick Antoine, Smother’s classmate at Carver, spent a week after the storm with his mother, younger sister and older brother living in their Chevy Suburban outside New Orleans. “We were stuffed up in there-packed in.”

After a week of homelessness, they tried to return to their Gentilly home. They made it as far as one of the bridges into the city. “We sat on the bridge for a minute, and the water was rising up so we went back. It was like at the bumper of a car, and after awhile the water was over the hood,” he said.

Reality set in after four hours on the bridge.

“Life is very short,” he said.

His family settled in Ohio, where he attended school for four months. He returned to Carver High to start his sophomore year.

For Smothers, adjustment to school in Texas came quickly. Within weeks, she rose to the top of her class.

Others did not make out so well.

Nicolas Bijou, 18, vividly remembers fighting his way through school in Houston. One afternoon, a group of students from New Orleans confronted a group of Texas students after a white student called a black student from New Orleans “the N-word.”

“Conflict, I would say, arose just because we were there,” he said.

Soon after, he moved to Slidell, La., where he enrolled in school. Eventually, he made it back to St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, an all-male predominately black high school, for his junior year. His Katrina lessons remain with him.

“It’s a ‘been there, done that’ type of thing,” he said. “It’s like if you can overcome Katrina, the worst natural disaster to happen on American soil, if you can overcome such a big obstacle, there’s no telling how many milestones or obstacles you can surpass.”

Most students found that friends drew them back.

“We always kept in touch from state to state,” Smothers said. “We all came back together.”

“These kids cried every day begging their parents to bring them back,” said Paula Lincoln, an administrator at South Plaquemines High School. “Their parents lived in FEMA trailers so these kids could come back to school. We wouldn’t have had a high school if it wasn’t for this class.”

Lakein Andry of Buras found her way back from Nacogdoches, Texas. She left two days before the storm.

On the trip to Texas, Andry, 17, sat in the passenger side of her mother’s 1999 blue Chevy Cavalier watching people frantically call loved ones. The 24-hour drive to Texas – it usually takes seven – passed slowly.

“The ride was horrible,” said Andry. “I thought I was in a dream and I really wanted to be in a dream but it wasn’t.”

Then a freshman at Buras High School, she learned the storm was coming at her school’s jamboree, an exhibition football game against the school’s traditional rival.

“It makes me feel really sad that Katrina took a lot of my friends and family away, but it’s getting better now,” said Andry, who attended three schools before landing at South Plaquemines. “I have new friends.”

Some of her new friends now were students who sat in the bleachers across the field from her at the jamboree.

South Plaquemines has become home to students from three schools: Buras High School, Port Sulphur High school and Boothville-Venice High School. After Katrina, South Plaquemines opened as a consolidated school offering area students a chance to return home.

At first, it operated as three schools in one, said Lincoln. Eventually, the ice broke. “They worked that out themselves – this class,” Lincoln said. “They just got to know each other. They bonded and became one class. They set a precedent that is one school.”

Last Friday, just before entering New Hope Baptist Church, Smothers reflected on her late brother’s dreams for her.

“My brother always told me that he wanted to see me graduate at the top of my class,” she said. But in 2007, a gunman killed Dorrel Williams.

“I’m turning it into something good. Instead of me crying, I’m going to smile,” she said.

Smothers now has her own dreams to fulfill. Next year, she will be a freshman at Southern University majoring in criminal justice. She hopes to become a lawyer.

Attempting to hold back tears, Smothers entered the church through a space created by Carver supporters who cheered on her class.

“We made it,” she said just moments before the processional. “That’s what makes us so different.”

The oldest black church in New Orleans, the First Street Peck Wesley Methodist Church, is celebrating its 176th anniversary. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

The oldest black church in New Orleans, founded before the Civil War as the Lafayette Mission, celebrated its 176th anniversary on Sunday, gathering its members under the theme  ”Giving Our Best.”

“So many positive things have happened to the church, we just want to give our best to him,” said the Rev. B. Lance Eden, senior pastor of the church, now known as First Street Peck Wesley United Methodist Church.

Over the years, the church has survived several name changes, and more recently, a three-way merger after Katrina, which ultimately led to a larger congregation.

Members began the celebrations on Friday with a banquet and fashion show in the multipurpose building of the church,  at 2309 Dryades St. During the festivities, congregants were divided into four “generations”:   builders, boomers, busters and bridgers.

“We are multigenerational church feeding the needs of all and many,” Eden said.

With 14 tables of seven apiece, the builders, those born prior to 1946; boomers, those born from 1946 to 1965; busters, those born from 1965 to 1983; and bridgers, those born from 1983 and thereafter, conducted a “generational celebration” in which the groups were asked to dance the way they used to, to the songs that came out during that time period.

“I love the closeness of the church,” said Caroline Bowers, a   ”boomer” who is president of United Methodist Women in the New Orleans district, before dancing to The Temptation’s “My Girl.”

During the banquet, prepared by church members, an appetizer of tossed salad and gumbo was followed by baked chicken, rice pilaf, seafood pasta, green beans and assorted dinner rolls. An array of cakes finished off the meal.

The fashion show, with members of the church as models, was divided into three categories: sportswear, “Sunday’s best” and formal gowns. Styles ranged from two-piece bathing suits and tennis whites to coordinated family ensembles and colorful full-length dresses.

During a break in the show, Amina Woods, a “bridger,” performed an inspirational dance in a flowing white gown.

The weekend’s celebrations honored a long history of a resilient congregation in New Orleans.

In 1833, the church was begun as the Lafayette Mission. By 1848, it became known as the Winans Chapel, named after the Rev. William Winans, the pastor at the time. The church became the First Street Methodist Episcopal Church in 1865.

In 1866, First Street became the home of the Thomson Biblical Institute. It later became part of Thomson University and merged with Straight University.  In 1873, it became New Orleans University, which later became part of Dillard University.

“Most of our members are Dillard graduates,” said Eden, who is a third-generation graduate of Dillard with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communications and a minor in philosophy.

The present church was constructed in 1894 and was modeled after the Christ Church Cathedral on St. Charles Avenue.  In 1936, a parson house and educational building were constructed.

In 1946, two lots were purchased across the street for expansion and third lot was purchased in 1965.

In 1972, the church was designated as a Historic Landmark Site in the city. The multipurpose building was constructed and the sanctuary was renovated in the mid 1980s.

In 2005, Katrina proved to be turning point for the church.

“After the storm, five congregations worshipped here,” Eden said. He added that while two churches – People’s United Methodist Church and Mount Zion United Methodist Church – wanted to go back a start anew,  two others – Peck United Methodist Church and Wesley United Methodist Church -decided to merge to form First Street Peck Wesley United Methodist Church.

Katrina caused a lot of damage to the other churches, said Eden, whose church received only “minimum damage” and two feet of water. “We saw a need to merge.”

With the merger, Peck brought approximately 70 members while Wesley contributed 15.

First Street has seen a significant increase in membership since the storm, Eden said. Before the hurricane, the church had 75 members; now there are approximately 475.

“We were blessed,” he said. “Our membership tripled.”

The final speaker at the service on Sunday summed up the celebratory weekend. Dr. Percell Church Jr., guest speaker and senior pastor of Zion United Methodist Church, told the assembled crowd – from the builders to the bridgers – that they had been “singled out for glory.”

This year will be no different.

Since 1992, 11 hurricanes have battered the Louisiana coastline. And in the past few years, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board and the Office of Homeland Security have collaborated on countless projects.

Joseph R. Becker, spokesman for the board’s General Superintendent’s Office, said that during a hurricane 300 employees usually live in the city’s 24 pumping stations, working around the clock. He also said the stations generate their own power needed to run the stations.

“We’re basically in a bowl, so water won’t drain without being pumped out,” Becker said. “Our drainage system pumps water out of the city into Lake Pontchartrain. It basically moves water from one point to the next.”

Robert Jackson, public relations director for the sewerage board, said over the next several years, New Orleans is scheduled to make more than $800 million in emergency preparedness improvements – although he didn’t go into detail.

“In the case of a flood or hurricane, our job is to make sure we have the staff and equipment necessary to pump the water out,” Jackson said. “Water is our history.”

In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in southern Florida as a Category 5 storm, causing catastrophic damage, and hit the Louisiana coast as a Category 3 storm. Seven people died and 94 were injured across southern Louisiana.

In 2005, which broke all records with 27 named storms, including three that reached Category 5 strength, hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the Louisiana coast and outlying cities 20 days apart.

At its peak, Katrina was a Category 5 storm with winds up to 175 miles per hour, but weakened to a Category 3 before making landfall on the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The storm is nationally known as the natural disaster that weakened the city’s levee system, which broke in several places – although the Industrial Canal levee was punctured by a barge – and over 90 percent of New Orleans was flooded. Then Rita hit Louisiana as a Category 3 storm, re-breaching the Industrial Canal levee, causing massive reflooding of the area.

The city still hasn’t fully recovered.

“The main response activity for police, fire and medical workers is to evacuate in the event of a Category 3 or higher storm, then we do whatever else under the mayor’s direction,” said Tom Ignelzy, senior planner for the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. “But what we’ve found is that not many people have the finances to evacuate the city. It takes some money.”

That was evident on television stations nationwide in scenes of local residents who couldn’t leave the city making their way to the Superdome instead.

Despite forecasts of active hurricane seasons in 2006 and 2007, no storms made landfall in the United States.

Evacuation preparations were better in 2008 for Hurricane Gustav, the fourth-most -destructive hurricane ever to hit the United States. “Last year, for Gustav, we evacuated 20,000 people and went to 70 pickup points in the city, and put them on state-sponsored buses that took them to shelters,” Ignelzy said. “That’s the biggest project we work with.” Gustav made landfall along the Louisiana coast as a strong Category 2 hurricane, just one mile per hour below Category 3, killing 46 Louisiana residents.

Fourteen days later, Hurricane Ike made landfall. Levees overtopped in St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Terrebone, St. Mary and Jefferson parishes, and eight Louisiana residents were killed.

It is estimated the Gulf Coast sustained $27 billion in damages from Hurricane Ike.

Ignelzy said there are several areas in New Orleans that drain slower than others after a heavy rain, though this doesn’t necessarily cause flooding in those areas.

“We look at the areas that are prone to any kind of water collection activities and we try to make sure to clear those up,” Ignelzy said. “We’re confident that we have enough to withstand the storm season this year.”

Storm season officially runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, but storms can form close to those dates. In 2005 a storm named Epsilon became a hurricane two days after the hurricane season ended –  only the fifth hurricane in 120 years to form in December.

No storms have been known to have hit the United States between December and May, and this year appears to be no different, although stormy weather was expected this Memorial Day weekend. All three days of the extended weekend were forecast to have  at least a 50 percent chance of rain or higher, according to the National Weather Service.

Ignelzy said Homeland Security works closely with the National Weather Service in Slidell to keep updates on weather and possible evacuations.

“There are no tropical storms in the Gulf right now, just a non-tropical depression that rolled through Florida,” Ignelzy said. “We figure we’ll get some bans of rain over the next three days, roughly three inches. That’s nothing more than a good soaking.”