- 7 months ago
The difficulties of rebuilding post-Katrina New Orleans as seen through producer June Cross' profile of 82-year-old Herbert Gettridge and his family, and how urban planning, public health, and insurance industry decisions affected their attempts to rebuild their homes and lives.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Frontline is made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
00:21With major funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building
00:28a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.
00:31And additional funding from the Park Foundation, committed to raising public awareness.
00:37Additional funding for this program is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
00:44Ford Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation,
00:49and by the 21st Century Foundation, National Black Programming Consortium,
00:58and the Katrina Media Fellowships of the Open Society Institute.
01:11Tonight on Frontline...
01:13My whole family is scattered.
01:14I miss the kids, I miss the grandchildren.
01:16The story of a man and his family...
01:20I want my wife to come back home.
01:22She wants to be here.
01:23...who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina.
01:25Grandma, you don't have no house to go to.
01:28It's water from the floor to the ceiling.
01:31But they came home determined to rebuild.
01:34I ain't going no place, man.
01:35I'm going to stay right here.
01:37This is it.
01:37This is my home, and this is where I'll be.
01:39When I came to New Orleans six months after the hurricanes...
01:42Correspondent June Cross tracks the struggles of one New Orleans family in the face of political turmoil...
01:49This damn government don't give a damn about poor people.
01:52...frustrated by bureaucratic inertia...
01:54They drag, and they drag so long, man.
01:56It's a business.
01:57It's hell.
01:58...and broken promises.
02:00We will do what it takes.
02:01We will stay as long as it takes.
02:03I guess I would have to be at the White House in some of these damn meetings to find out what's wrong, why the people don't get the money.
02:11Tonight, the moving saga of the old man and the storm.
02:33In the ninth ward of New Orleans, time stopped on the morning of August 29th, 2005.
02:52Since the levees broke, the Alfred E. Lawless High School has lain in ruins.
03:04Its children scattered so far, no one even knows where they all are anymore.
03:11You could fill this building with all of the studies done since Hurricane Katrina.
03:16You could read them all, and still not comprehend what it means when 500,000 families are displaced.
03:28What it means to lose 200,000 homes.
03:33220,000 jobs.
03:37600 congregations.
03:39You wouldn't understand what it means to lose even one neighborhood.
03:58When I came to New Orleans six months after the hurricanes, the devastation was overwhelming.
04:05The storm surge had pushed everything before it like a wall.
04:09Belongings had floated with the currents.
04:18Then, just four blocks from the levee in the lower ninth ward, I saw one house still standing.
04:25And in the yard, one solitary old man.
04:29Why am I back here?
04:31Man, I'm back here trying to clean my place up.
04:34I'm back here because this is where I'm going to be.
04:36If nothing else happens, I'm going to be here until they pull me out of here.
04:43I ain't about to leave.
04:45It took me too long, and I worked too hard to build what I had here, to just pick up and leave like that.
04:52I ain't about to.
04:54I ain't about to leave.
04:56His name was Herbert Getridge.
04:58He was 82 years old when we first met, and he built this house for his family more than 50 years ago.
05:05I'll be damned.
05:07Occasionally, he found a photograph, its colors fading, as though the water had tried to erase history itself.
05:14My whole family is scattered.
05:17Everybody's in different places.
05:19Nine-headed kids.
05:20Seven living, I'm sorry about that.
05:22Seven of my kids living, and they're all in different places.
05:25And I got some grandchildren, 42, 43, 44 years old.
05:30They're all scattered.
05:32And the great-grandchildren, 60 or 70 of them, and they're all...
05:36Ain't nobody in the same places with their mother and their dad.
05:40Everybody's gone.
05:42This is what this storm did to us.
05:45So, let's face it, you just got to own up to it.
05:48There ain't nothing you can do about it.
05:50Not a thing.
05:53This hurricane has the potential to strengthen even more than it already has.
05:59Nearly 300 members of Mr. Getridge's extended family had been scattered across the country by the storm.
06:06They were part of a diaspora one million strong.
06:10We were in Baton Rouge.
06:12We were in Shreveport, Houston, Tennessee, Ponchatoula, Atlanta, Austin, far away is Wisconsin.
06:23We were scattered all over.
06:24You're talking about a close-knit family where we all lived five to ten minutes from each other.
06:32Mr. Getridge and his wife, Lydia, ended up in Madison, Wisconsin.
06:36With their daughter, Cheryl.
06:40There were still those that we hadn't heard from, and you wondered, you know, God, are they okay?
06:46And the more you looked at it, the sicker you became.
06:49Mr. Getridge was glued to the television, trying to find his house in the flyovers.
06:53He was out of his mind, worried about when he was going to be able to get back to the house.
07:02When a second hurricane, Rita, hit the Gulf Coast in late September, it sent another storm surge over the levees.
07:10The family tried to hide the reality of the destruction from Mrs. Getridge.
07:15My grandma is, what, 84?
07:18And she kind of was, like, confused for a while.
07:21She kept saying, I'm ready to go.
07:23One day, I just said, Grandma, you don't have no house to go to.
07:26She kept saying, I'm ready to go.
07:27I said, you don't have nothing to go to.
07:29It's water from the floor to the ceiling.
07:34The water stayed put until mid-October.
07:38After the Army Corps of Engineers pumped it all out,
07:41Centrel and her Aunt Gail snuck back into the Lower Ninth Ward.
07:47The house and everything in it had simmered in flood water for weeks.
07:52What water hadn't destroyed, mold had overgrown.
07:59It was a dream, and I was waiting to wake up.
08:03This was the living room.
08:04This was the blue room.
08:06And to be in there, and the mud, and the refrigerators crossed the hallway,
08:11then floated all the way from the kitchen to in the middle of the hallway now.
08:17I thought I was dreaming.
08:19I thought I was dreaming.
08:21And it was hard.
08:23When my aunt wasn't looking, I cried.
08:29But New Orleans is a city where despair gives way to celebration.
08:45And so it trumpeted the first Mardi Gras after Katrina as a triumph over adversity.
08:50Leading the parade was Mayor Ray Nagin.
08:59He pretended to be Army General Russell Honore,
09:01who had saved the city after the levees broke.
09:06The tourism industry pretended that the city had come back from the dead.
09:10The next day, as the debris from Mardi Gras lay on top of the debris from Katrina,
09:19was when I'd first met Mr. Gettridge.
09:22I got to go in the attic and take out three bags of asbestos.
09:28He'd left his wife Lydia in Wisconsin and moved back to the family home.
09:32He was living without electricity, drinkable water, or even a bed
09:38in an area most city officials had written off as uninhabitable.
09:42I don't need no electricity.
09:44My grandfather was a Choctaw Indian, man.
09:47I can make it with a flashlight.
09:49We got water. I got water. That's all I need.
09:52And if I didn't have water, guess what?
09:54When it rained, I'd catch what I can.
09:56And what I couldn't catch, I'd do without.
09:59But I'm making it.
10:01I ain't going to no place, man. I'm going to stay right here.
10:04This is it. This is my home, and this is where I'll be.
10:08Meanwhile, an intense political battle brewed over how New Orleans would be rebuilt.
10:13Did any of these local politicians do anything for you?
10:16No.
10:17Have they done anything for you?
10:18No.
10:19Suspicions were rampant that the city might use the evacuation as an excuse for a land grab.
10:25This damn government don't give a damn about poor people,
10:28and especially don't give a damn about black people.
10:31Those suspicions were heightened when Mayor Nagin appointed a group of high-powered businessmen
10:39to his Bring New Orleans Back commission.
10:42Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Mayor.
10:44One of the mayor's supporters, developer Joe Cannizzaro,
10:47made it clear that the rebuilt city would have fewer poor people.
10:52We're going to make doggone sure that our African-American population is as strong as ever,
10:57but I will tell you, we will not have as many poor people.
11:00There's no question.
11:01I've talked to a lot of them.
11:02They're better where they are.
11:03They want to stay where they are because they had a better life.
11:05Bear in mind that as we went into this storm, we had a lot of crime in our community.
11:09We were having lots of difficulties that we were trying to deal with.
11:12The commission's job was to recommend a rebuilding plan for New Orleans.
11:17Their draft report suggested turning the most devastated areas of the city into green space.
11:23This is a process.
11:25No one was happy with that proposed plan.
11:27None of us want to be in this particular place.
11:30Especially not the residents of the Ninth Ward.
11:34They focused their anger on Joe Cannizzaro.
11:37Mr. Joe Cannizzaro, I don't know you, but I hate you.
11:42I hate you.
11:44Because you've been in the background trying to scheme and get out of the lane.
11:49Just like that lady that said, I'm going to die on mine.
11:55Pressured from all sides, Nagin shelved the commission's report.
11:58From what I can understand, they wanted this section down here for casinos, gambling places,
12:05Gulf courses.
12:06That's what they wanted to put back in here.
12:08Now, I don't know how true that is, but some people say it was in the newspaper.
12:14I didn't see it.
12:15But if that's what they want, if everybody's like me,
12:20they got a tough struggle to get it because I ain't telling them this one to lose.
12:23Soon after I met him, Mr. Gettridge began attracting wider media attention.
12:30First in the pages and on the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
12:34Herbert Gettridge is an old retired merchant seaman
12:36who one or another of the reporters discovered down there banging together his house
12:43in a world of absolute ruin.
12:46He's become kind of a poster child for Lower Ninth Ward struggle, perseverance, resilience.
12:52How's the rebuilding going?
12:55It's going pretty good.
12:55In times, CNN would find him too.
12:58And Billy Crystal with HBO's Comic Relief.
13:01I'll tell you what, after we do Comic Relief, I'll come back and we'll paint it together.
13:05That'd be all right.
13:05It'll be fine.
13:06To each of them, he expressed one goal.
13:09He wanted to fix his house so he could bring home Lydia, his wife of over 65 years.
13:14So when you talk to Lydia, do you talk to her on the phone when she's in Wisconsin?
13:18I talk to her every other day, and that's our main question.
13:24How long is he going to be?
13:27But I would discover there was much more to Mr. Gettridge's story.
13:31That he was a fifth-generation New Orleanian.
13:34That his house, set on land his ancestors had once worked as slaves.
13:40That he was part of a special group of craftsmen who built and maintained New Orleans' distinctive architecture.
13:47The slaves were the black boys, black people, doing these different crafts.
13:52And they didn't only learn plaster, they learned everything.
13:55He quit school when he was 10 years old, during the Depression, and began his career mixing mortar for a neighbor.
14:05That was his introduction to the elite plasterers' union.
14:09The plasters were all Creole type of people.
14:12Light-complected, your-complected, and lighter.
14:14Some of them looking like real Caucasians.
14:17So for that reason, we couldn't get to be a plaster or a bricklayer, because it was all those Creole people.
14:27And they didn't take this, and then everybody in there.
14:30And that's what I had to fight.
14:32And did I fight it?
14:35Along with his brother, Herbert Gettridge broke the color line in the union.
14:40Among his peers, he became known as the Wizard.
14:42The owner of this house says he watched in awe as Mr. Gettridge improvised these designs.
14:50I don't think there's another house in the city with a design on the front door, in and out.
14:55It's the same way.
14:57Plus those columns, it's got there.
14:59I've never did another one like that in the city of New Orleans.
15:01I've never seen one.
15:05Mr. Gettridge had built his own home on a lot in the Lower Ninth Ward that he bought for $2,500 in 1952.
15:12He bought the house next door for $30,000.
15:16He paid $10,000 cash for this house that he renovated with his signature plasterwork.
15:23It's a house designated a historic landmark in the city.
15:27All three homes suffered major damage in the storm.
15:32Mr. Gettridge had two different insurance policies.
15:36Homeowner's hazard insurance had covered wind damage.
15:39His flood insurance policy was underwritten by the federal government.
15:42Don't ask me nothing about insurance.
15:45Okay.
15:46What would you say if I asked you?
15:49Insurance people, I don't think was...
15:52Flood insurance was decent about paying off.
15:55But homeowners, any insurance you went to, they wanted to show you the place where your damage wasn't from the wind,
16:02it was from the water, this, that, and the other.
16:03So, uh, I can't say much for the homeowners insurance.
16:09They paid a little something, but sticking to the policies, they didn't do that.
16:15The flood insurance paid off within two months.
16:19Mr. Gettridge received $97,000 for a three-bedroom, one-bath home valued before the flood at $125,000.
16:26The other two houses had no insurance, so for them, he received nothing at all.
16:34Without adequate insurance, charity was the solution of last resort for those like Mr. Gettridge.
16:41More than a million volunteers have flocked to the Gulf Coast to help rebuild after Katrina.
16:46I had people like the Baptist laymen out of Kansas City, Kansas, and there's a church in Philadelphia called Enoch.
16:56I had the people from Georgia, from a Baptist church, and who else?
17:01Common ground, they helped me.
17:03The city hadn't done anything for me putting this house back.
17:07The state government hadn't done anything, and the feds hadn't done anything.
17:11Nothing. Nothing federal happened here. Nothing.
17:17But the federal government had promised to do a lot.
17:20After the storm, the Bush administration had committed itself to a massive Gulf Coast rebuilding effort,
17:26including an urban homesteading act that would resettle homeowners like the Gettridges.
17:31We will do what it takes.
17:33We will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.
17:39Here's the challenge. How do we accelerate the average income of the African American here in town?
17:47Bush had also appointed Don Powell, a former banker and chair of the FDIC, to coordinate federal reconstruction efforts.
17:54I don't think when I first did this I had an appreciation of the complexity
17:59and how large, how devastating this catastrophic event was.
18:06In terms of your responsibilities coordinating the federal response, what keeps you up at night?
18:13Not having the power or authority to do what I know needs to be done.
18:19What would you want or need?
18:25Dictatorship.
18:28Six months after the flood, cleanup had barely begun in New Orleans.
18:33The president's initiatives to help homeowners had gone nowhere.
18:37A congressional proposal that would have essentially put the federal government in charge of rebuilding Louisiana
18:42was killed by the White House at the last minute.
18:44For many people in Washington, Katrina is yesterday's problem, and Rita never happened.
18:54That decision angered Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco.
18:58It's time to play hardball, as I believe that's the only game that Washington understands.
19:05Publicly, Governor Blanco threatened to block federal leases that allow oil and gas drilling off Louisiana's coast.
19:12Privately, she sent an emissary from the state's Louisiana Recovery Authority to negotiate.
19:18I took the opportunity to call Don Powell back channel.
19:22He had been to LRA board meetings.
19:25He had confidence in the LRA.
19:27And I said, look, can we get together and just talk about possibilities?
19:31Over the next few weeks, a delegation traveled to Powell's Washington office.
19:35We talked to our fans at FEMA, we talked to the SBA, we had satellite image, we talked to people in the insurance business,
19:40we talked to a lot of people and came to consensus about how many of those homes were destroyed and what the need would be.
19:47Over lunch on a paper tablecloth, Powell and Riley had begun to hammer out the numbers.
19:52FEMA had estimated that there were roughly 123,000 damaged homes in Louisiana.
19:57Private consultants suggested that some $60,000 would be needed by each underinsured homeowner.
20:05That would make this the largest federal rebuilding effort ever.
20:09You take your level of damage, you subtract your insurance collected, and that gap is covered up to $150,000.
20:19So the more insurance you had, that gap is smaller, you get less.
20:23But theoretically, you get to cover the extent of your damage.
20:26The money for what would become known as Governor Blanco's road home program reached the state about one month before the first anniversary of the storm.
20:38And they keep where the cats are. Everybody else come, they go.
20:43The road home could potentially be a lifesaver for thousands of underinsured New Orleans homeowners, like Mr. Gittredge's son, Leonard.
20:51Two years before the storm, Leonard had bought his dream home in the middle-class suburb of New Orleans East for $154,000.
21:00Flood insurance hadn't covered his losses.
21:03I was underinsured.
21:08I didn't get the value of the house. I mean, we lost everything.
21:11And I guess I might have gotten three quarters, maybe, if that much, of what we lost.
21:20Leonard works as a switchman for the Kansas City Southern Railroad.
21:25I work full-time, six days a week, eight-plus hours a day.
21:29So I do what little I can with the other time that I have.
21:34When he wasn't working at the rail yard, Leonard worked on gutting his house.
21:41They tell me they got a machine that does this a whole lot easier.
21:46But using Arnold Schwarzenegger's, one of his terms, that's for girly men.
21:57Leonard was living in a FEMA trailer parked at his house.
22:01His wife, Geraldine, showed me around.
22:03As you can see, he's a junk food eater.
22:06And he reads the newspaper and figures out bills and paperwork.
22:11So he sleeps here, and I'm back there in a hubby hole.
22:16And I toss and turn all night.
22:18That's why he said...
22:19The bed's not comfortable?
22:20He said, I was all around the bed.
22:23Because I can't...
22:24I can't stand that confinement.
22:27Geraldine so hated that trailer that she'd moved 40 minutes away.
22:30She drove down on weekends to help Leonard with the house.
22:33Do you want to do a little bit?
22:37I can't use the glove.
22:39Just push on it easy.
22:43You see my African violet?
22:45See?
22:46That's what I'm talking about.
22:47I like that.
22:48That is so beautiful.
22:49Yeah, the kids, they used to call me Shearer.
22:52Talking about, oh, my, my...
22:53Gee, he, man.
22:54Look at her show.
22:55That's why I married her.
22:57Look.
22:57I needed help with her air conditioning one time, and she lifted up on it, and it went
23:01higher than my head.
23:02And I said, well, I got to marry this woman.
23:03I want me a strong woman, man.
23:07A strong black woman?
23:08Look.
23:09It's worth the waiting gold.
23:12Leonard and Geraldine put on a jovial front, but it was clear the everyday rhythm of their
23:17lives had been destroyed.
23:19What's the hardest part?
23:20The absence of normalcy, I mean, you know, on a normal day, I would be out working in
23:32the garden, cutting grass.
23:34The grass would be beautiful green and flowers and everything else.
23:39And so that's the hardest part.
23:41It's just no normalcy.
23:44Another hard part is not being able to see my grandkids.
23:48They're all over the place.
23:50I hate to talk about them because I cry a lot.
23:57My kids are my world.
23:59It's for years we grew up together, and it's not a day went by that they weren't around me
24:06or I couldn't touch them.
24:09And now it's not like that, so it's hard for me to just have them away from me, you know?
24:21Geraldine's two grown daughters had moved to Texas, and they had no plans to return to
24:26New Orleans.
24:26Ashanti, her daughter from a previous marriage, had started life over in Galveston with her
24:33two small children.
24:34I got my kids in school, and I just sat down and just wanted to thank you.
24:39What is the first thing that you're supposed to do to start over?
24:41And you didn't know.
24:44I'm the only one here out of our immediate family besides my sister.
24:47It's nobody else.
24:48So I do get bored.
24:49I do get homesick.
24:51Some days I have my good days.
24:52I have my bad days.
24:53I cry some nights and just work through it, you know?
24:59Geraldine and Leonard's daughter, Naya, works in Houston.
25:03A seventh-generation New Orleanian, she's found the transition particularly difficult.
25:09It's just so huge.
25:11Houston is so, so huge.
25:14I get homesick a lot, and it's not really homesick for New Orleans because that's where my mom and
25:21dad are, and that's where I would normally be.
25:25They were 40 minutes away, so I can get in the car and drive if I needed to.
25:29Here, it's like, I have to have a week off of work to drive home and visit and then come
25:37back.
25:38So I think that's the biggest adjustment has been not being able to have them accessible,
25:44and that's just, that's the hardest thing.
25:46It's all together a different life from before the storm.
25:52I'm here by myself.
25:54Almost day and night, I miss the kids.
25:58I miss the grandchildren.
26:01I miss a lot of stuff, everyday actions in this household we used to have.
26:05Kids playing in the yard, kids sitting on, looking at the television, shooting video games
26:10and stuff like that, I miss all that.
26:14I had 36 grandchildren, and out of them 36 grandchildren, I'll bet you 26 of them will
26:19be here in a week's time.
26:21Ain't a month past that they all don't pass by.
26:24Our grandma, our grandpa, that's it.
26:28But you miss that, you know?
26:31In the pictures taken just after the flood, the eyes of Mr. Getrich's grandchildren reveal
26:36the trauma.
26:37Among the dozens of Getrich family members we met, many conceded they could probably use
26:43some counseling.
26:45The signs of their distress were everywhere.
26:50Like the afternoon we spent with Mr. Getrich's youngest son, Ronald, who was also working alone
26:55to rebuild his family home.
26:57Clean up here.
26:59As Ronald was finishing up for the day, we asked how he was handling the stress.
27:03The depression is constant.
27:07It's a day-to-day, you know, situation that you deal with.
27:10Just like the stress as well, but I cope with the stress quite well.
27:14But the depression, you know, you think about, okay, my sister is out here.
27:18I've got a sister.
27:19A sister in Baton Rouge.
27:21A sister in Dallas.
27:23A sister who's been up in Wisconsin.
27:24You know, in those type of situations, you know, family is kind of like separated.
27:31And that makes the days that much harder.
27:34Basically, late at night, you know, when the house gets quiet and everybody's asleep and
27:40it's just me, I'm thinking about, okay, all that I have to do.
27:44And that's not, that should not be.
27:47And you look back at, you know, the day to see what you've accomplished, and it's very,
27:52very little.
27:53That often leads to a...
27:58I'm sorry.
28:05I didn't mean to.
28:07I understand.
28:07I understand.
28:14I'm sorry.
28:16To look back and see you have not really accomplished a whole lot when it's your intentions.
28:24But I could usually, when I get into that state, I'll pick up a book, one of the self-help
28:29books on the Bible, and I'll do some reading time to dismiss that depression.
28:35Right.
28:36Now my sign assistant's flared up.
28:38See what that, see what you done done, Julia?
28:40I need to get a handkerchief, otherwise we're going to get a pull.
28:45Ronald reassured us that he'd found a way of coping with his despair.
28:49But a lot of New Orleanians had not.
28:52The overwhelming stress since August 29, 2005, has worn out many a brain.
28:59And, you know, both drink, you know, drinking's gone up, domestic violence has gone up for
29:05a time.
29:05The suicide rate was triple what we'd ever seen in the city.
29:10And, you know, those people, too, are coming in seeking treatment.
29:15Watch your head.
29:17A year after Katrina, it was estimated that nearly 50 percent of the population of New
29:22Orleans had a diagnosable mental disorder.
29:25Yet the city's health care system was in disarray.
29:29Few psychiatrists were left.
29:30And where there had once been nearly 300 psychiatric beds, there were now just 20.
29:37I knew I was right, but I couldn't explain it.
29:40About Cuba?
29:41Cuba.
29:42Okay.
29:43The need has never been greater.
29:44And our infrastructure, both on a personnel level and on a bricks and mortar level, is
29:52not adequate at present.
29:53As New Orleanians coped with the psychological impact of the storm, tens of thousands of homeowners
30:00pinned their hopes for the future on the Governor's Road Home program.
30:06In New Orleans East, Leonard Gettridge showed us all the paperwork he had to fill out.
30:12This is the Road Home application.
30:15I don't know how many pages that is, but it says, congratulations, we have determined that
30:21you are eligible for benefits under the Road Home Assistance Program.
30:25They take the pre-stone value.
30:28They take the insurance procedure that you receive.
30:32Estimate minus insurance minus FEMA.
30:36And that's how they arrive at the figure that the Road Home is going to give you.
30:42Oh, I got so much stuff for FEMA.
30:45FEMA name is on everything.
30:48I dream about FEMA.
30:49Oh, my pleasant dreams.
30:54Over in the Lower Ninth, Leonard tried to persuade his father to submit his Road Home application.
31:01Did they got you with the Road Home stuff?
31:03I got to sit down and fill that paper out, mail it in.
31:06Right.
31:06And I don't know how much good that will do, because when they give you this kind of stuff,
31:12if they give you $150,000, you got to get a contractor.
31:16The contractor has to do your work for you.
31:18Yeah.
31:19And then they pay.
31:20You don't get no cash money.
31:22Right.
31:23I'm not particular about no cash money.
31:25I'm particular about getting somebody that's going to do my work the way it's supposed to be done.
31:29So for that reason, I'm skeptical about it.
31:32But I'm going to send the papers in.
31:34Yeah.
31:35I'm going to finish filling it out and send it in.
31:37Yeah.
31:38See what they tell me.
31:39By the winter of 2007, 18 months after the flood, over 100,000 Louisiana homeowners had applied for Road Home money, but fewer than 500 had received a check.
31:52Governor Kathleen Blanco's administration had to answer some tough questions about why the company she'd picked to run the Road Home program prospered while Louisiana homeowners struggled.
32:04ICF International, based in Fairfax, Virginia, had done work for the Department of Homeland Security, but it had never run such a large and complex program.
32:14So when public filings revealed that more than $2 million in bonuses had been given to its leadership team, homeowners and officials across Louisiana expressed outrage.
32:26I was pretty upset about that, too.
32:28I'd taken a year and a half off from my job.
32:32I was working for free.
32:33These guys were getting paid the big bucks, and they were giving themselves bonuses.
32:38And I was pretty upset about that.
32:39And here we, volunteers and the staff of the LRA, were helping, were solving, were identifying and solving their problems.
32:47Oh, no, that, that, the homeowners were right to be upset about that.
32:50And, but on the other hand, that's what private companies do.
32:54ICF declined the opportunity to discuss the Road Home contract on camera.
32:59In an email, they defended their overall performance.
33:02And they justified those bonuses by saying that their executives get paid less than the average industry standard.
33:09Meanwhile, the city had begun to demolish homes in earnest.
33:18Lawmakers told homeowners that a year's time was more than sufficient to decide whether to come back and rebuild.
33:24But in the Lower Ninth, Mr. Getrich worried that the financial obstacles were so great, many of his neighbors just couldn't afford to come back.
33:32There is a lot of people that would be back here now, but what are they going to come to?
33:36A lot of these people build these houses just like I built mine, from week to week, paycheck to paycheck.
33:43They ain't got a quarter in the bank to start working.
33:45But if somebody give them some money, if they get some money from Road Home, then they can come back and put their places together.
33:54Mr. Getrich had been working on his own home for nearly a year.
33:58He didn't know when it would be ready for his wife's return.
34:01And that's what I'm aiming for right now.
34:05I want my wife to come back home because this is what she wants.
34:09She wants to be here.
34:12A thousand miles north in Madison, Wisconsin, Lydia Getrich yearned for New Orleans.
34:19That's my very place.
34:21I went to school there.
34:23So I miss it.
34:24All my friends are there.
34:26The churches that I went to was raised up in the day.
34:29Right.
34:30So I miss everything about it.
34:33As she waited, Mrs. Getrich's health deteriorated.
34:37Then in December 2006, there was a crisis.
34:40Her blood pressure spiked, and she was just incoherent.
34:45She didn't sleep for two days in a row.
34:48She had been up all of 48 hours.
34:50And she took a fall.
34:53And when she did that, the doctor, I called the doctor, and they said,
34:57we're going to send an ambulance.
34:58It sounds like it's a stroke.
35:00It was a stroke.
35:02She was hospitalized, then moved to a nursing home in Madison.
35:06One weekend, her youngest son, Ronald, came to visit.
35:10The New Orleans is quite miserable.
35:11You could take New Orleans.
35:12You could take any one.
35:14You could take New Orleans pre-Katrina, but post-Katrina, New Orleans is quite different.
35:20I mean, you have nothing there.
35:22What do you mean you have nothing?
35:23I mean, you have nothing.
35:23Mrs. Getrich insisted she wanted to go home, while her son tried to explain how inadequate
35:29the city's medical services remained.
35:31I sat in the emergency room on Friday the 13th.
35:34When?
35:35I cut my eye, cleaning out my shed, cleaning storm debris out the shed.
35:38He had to sit in the emergency room five hours before they even touched it.
35:42He had towels put in his eye.
35:44And one lady said, won't y'all give this man some service?
35:47See, I am bleeding to death.
35:50And they just say, okay, we'll get to him.
35:53The medical service is just totally out of whack.
35:55What we got?
35:56We got Osner running.
35:58We got Turo running.
36:00And East Jefferson, three out of seven hospitals.
36:04She said to Ronald that she was ready to come home.
36:07Did we ever stop to think that?
36:09She was tired, tired of all the medicine she takes.
36:12It's 45 pills she's taken.
36:13And she just wants to come home to be at peace and to be at rest.
36:16And maybe the Lord will call on her.
36:21The next morning was Mother's Day.
36:24During the church service, Cheryl struggled with the idea that she'd have to let her mother go.
36:30She's up here with me.
36:32And I'm just being selfish.
36:33And I realized that I didn't need her to get back to the home house in order that maybe there could come some normalcy in everybody else's life.
36:53Back in New Orleans, the family home was coming along.
37:05Volunteers had put up new walls and painted.
37:08The floors needed finishing.
37:11Mr. Gettridge said he could do that chore himself if he only had electricity.
37:15Have you talked to the city yet in terms of when are you going to come and hook it up to?
37:19No, I haven't talked to the city, the fellas that did the electrical work.
37:22They've been down here with papers for me to sign so that they can go and file for the electricity.
37:29That's been since Tuesday or Wednesday.
37:31Okay.
37:31I'm still waiting.
37:32Okay.
37:33Mr. Gettridge had no electricity because of the problems facing Entergy, the city's utility.
37:46More than 25,000 of Entergy's utility poles had been destroyed in hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
37:536,700 miles of transmission lines needed to be replaced.
37:58Entergy New Orleans had declared bankruptcy six weeks after Katrina.
38:02It had asked Congress for $500 million to help pay for repairs.
38:07But the Bush administration said it opposed the idea of bailing out private corporations.
38:13This, of course, was enormously irritating to New Orleans because the exact analogy was ground zero in New York,
38:21where they threw a big chunk of change at Con Ed, and they got that electrical grid back up and running real fast.
38:28In New Orleans, the neocon element in Washington remembered that we don't bail out corporations.
38:35We will let them fend for themselves.
38:37And so the signals were given that there was going to be no immediate bailout, or perhaps no bailout at all,
38:42to compensate them for these damages, which were enormous.
38:47The whole grid was shredded.
38:49This is a cruel world, in a sense, and it's not the world.
38:56It's some of the people that live in it, because such is electricity.
39:02I don't know why.
39:03I've got there is electricity on Claiborne, electricity on Galveston, electricity on Dwerbany.
39:10Why can't they have electricity back here?
39:13I've been here since March.
39:16I don't know if it's because of the builders who's helped me to repair or what,
39:21but it seems like I should have some electricity by now.
39:28Walls and electricity can make a house, but a neighborhood needs police and fire stations and schools.
39:34Alfred Lawless, Jr. in senior high school, had been a neighborhood institution in the Lower Ninth Ward.
39:41Three generations of Gettridge's had been educated here.
39:45That's where I started off in music.
39:47You had the sports, but most of all, you had the basics, which was English, reading, writing, arithmetic, foreign language, libraries.
39:56And this was an intricate part of the Lower Ninth Ward.
39:59Two years after Katrina, lawless high school remained mired in red tape.
40:05Its recovery was stymied by the regulations of the Stafford Act,
40:09the federal law that governs how public infrastructure gets rebuilt after disasters.
40:14Under the Stafford Act, you pretty much are relegated to building it back the way it was.
40:19You get the depreciated dollar, and you get a vision that says,
40:25okay, that was a 40-year-old building.
40:28Let's rebuild back a 40-year-old building.
40:31But, you know, the world changes.
40:32Needs change.
40:33Communities change.
40:35State-of-the-art changes.
40:36And what we need is a Stafford Act that allows you to be flexible,
40:41allows you to say, you know what, there's a new and better way to educate.
40:44Let's build this kind of classroom instead of the old classroom.
40:47And that's where the Stafford Act is immensely frustrating
40:49and is, again, broken and needs to be fixed.
40:53FEMA finally granted the state nearly $19 million to rebuild Lawless High.
40:59But then Louisiana decided to hold that money,
41:02most likely to use in another school with more teenage children.
41:07So Alfred A. Lawless High School may never be rebuilt.
41:10Today, in the city of New Orleans,
41:14there is at least 282,000 people at our back
41:19from our pre-Katrina levels of 455,000.
41:23Mr. Gettridge had finally gotten his electricity.
41:26And so in May of 2007,
41:28when Mayor Nagin gave his State of the City address,
41:31we watched it together.
41:33New Orleanians are very determined.
41:35They fight for insurance proceeds.
41:38They have applied for road home money
41:40and are waiting to hear back and waiting.
41:43And waiting.
41:44Six months earlier,
41:46Mr. Gettridge had mailed in his road home application.
41:49Now the state wanted additional paperwork
41:51to meet the intricate requirements it had written into the program.
41:56I hear a lot of people talking about road home.
41:58I hope that this thing is for real,
42:01and I hope that everybody gets their fair share,
42:04but I'm not betting on it.
42:07In fact, the road home program
42:09was running into big problems and major delays.
42:12Federal bureaucrats had reinterpreted their own regulations.
42:17Now, they told the state,
42:18each homeowner would have to have an environmental impact review
42:21before they received their check.
42:23All of a sudden,
42:24we're going to decide a year and a half into it
42:27that it's a rebuilding plan,
42:30not a compensation plan.
42:31Therefore, we have to go to EPA,
42:33standards of evaluation of individual projects.
42:36You know, this kind of stuff is crazy.
42:38You know, you don't do this in Baghdad.
42:40Why are you doing it in New Orleans?
42:42Now, from the heart of New Orleans,
42:44here's Garland.
42:46Hello, America.
42:47As you well know, not my show this hour.
42:49It's Walter DeJay Road Home Show.
42:52The road home had so many problems
42:54that it had become grist
42:55for the city's most popular call-in show.
42:58During the summer of 2007,
43:01the road home program
43:02had stopped taking applications altogether.
43:04It was broke.
43:05By the end of December,
43:06we will have basically run out of money
43:09to continue payments.
43:11And about 90,000 people have gotten their grants.
43:15But we'll have, you know,
43:1650,000, 60,000, 70,000 more
43:18that will continue to need assistance
43:22that we'll just have to stop giving money to.
43:25123,000 applicants had been expected,
43:27but 180,000 had applied.
43:30You're one of about half of a Superdome
43:32full of people, you know, in line.
43:36So it's going to take a few more months.
43:38The problem was that FEMA had underestimated
43:41the number of destroyed homes.
43:43An analysis by ICF revealed
43:45that insurance companies
43:46had also paid less than expected.
43:48So as a result, the state faced a shortfall
43:51of some $2.9 billion.
43:54But the White House said
43:55that shortage was Louisiana's fault.
43:58That shortfall was because
44:01we know the numbers
44:03was based upon expanding the program
44:06unilaterally by the state
44:09to include the wind
44:10versus just those homes
44:13that were destroyed by water.
44:14It came as a bit of a surprise.
44:16I mean, it was something that, you know,
44:19the Road Home had been in design
44:20and implementation for, you know,
44:23at that stage of the game,
44:24almost 15 months.
44:25And, you know, we were off the diving board.
44:29And all of the language
44:30in the HUD application
44:33said that damage from whatever source,
44:37whatever cause,
44:38was going to be covered.
44:40The president signed an appropriation
44:42to cover the Road Home shortfall,
44:44finally, in November 2007,
44:47over two years after the flood.
44:50By then, the Road Home program
44:52had destroyed
44:52Governor Kathleen Blanco's
44:54political career.
44:56She chose not to run for re-election.
44:59Soon, the president's
45:00Gulf Coast coordinator, Don Powell,
45:02would resign, too.
45:04He said he'd done
45:05all that he could do.
45:12By the summer of 2007,
45:14Mr. Gettridge had almost finished
45:16rebuilding his house.
45:18He'd done so without any help
45:20from the Road Home.
45:21He wouldn't receive his check
45:23for another eight months.
45:25Right now, he was just worn out.
45:30I'm just wondering
45:31why the people can't get back here fast enough.
45:34Why they can't get back home.
45:35Why they can't make provisions
45:37for these people to get back home.
45:39Why can't they do that?
45:42Why they can't get back home.
45:49Yeah.
45:54Those people in the White House,
45:56they sit down
45:56and have their conferences together,
45:58I guess.
45:59I guess they say to themselves,
46:00let's put that on
46:01on a whole barn.
46:04Put that on a whole in New Orleans.
46:06We'll get to that later.
46:08They ain't worried about this place.
46:10Doesn't seem like it.
46:12I don't know what's wrong.
46:17I guess I would have to be
46:19at the White House
46:20in some of these damn meetings
46:23to find out what's wrong
46:24and why the people don't get the money.
46:27Two years,
46:28and we're still not back in shape.
46:31Two years.
46:31Some people have been away from here.
46:33Exactly two years in August
46:35they've been away from their home.
46:38Home's torn down.
46:40Automobiles lost.
46:43A few pennies they may have had
46:44that went down in the drain.
46:53Yeah, pretty soon
46:54there'll be nobody
46:55but me and the weeds back here.
46:56At the nursing home in Madison,
47:12Mrs. Getrich had finally won her battle
47:14to go home to New Orleans.
47:16It was the end of June,
47:18the beginning of a new hurricane season,
47:20when her daughter Cheryl
47:21finally relented.
47:22I didn't feel good
47:24about taking Mom
47:25out of this facility
47:26where she had done so well
47:28and she was thriving
47:29and she was talking to other people
47:32because at home
47:33a lot of the people
47:34that she used to talk to
47:35aren't living anymore.
47:37And so just to have some people
47:39in her age group,
47:40I was like,
47:40I don't want to take her to this.
47:44Cheryl had avoided
47:45telling her father
47:46exactly when they'd arrive.
47:47She'd learned
47:49that he'd made a deal
47:50with CNN's Anderson Cooper
47:51to televise
47:52Mrs. Getrich's return.
47:55I'm not letting my dad know
47:57because they were going to have
47:58a party with a band
47:59and all of that
48:00and that's not my mother.
48:03That's not something she likes.
48:05Ronald was at the airport
48:06in New Orleans
48:07to greet his mom.
48:09Good to have her back home
48:10but I know it's going to be
48:11a struggle for her.
48:15Where she was,
48:16she had people
48:17that could look after her
48:19quite regularly, you know?
48:21Yeah, she ain't got that.
48:32Katrina, you could
48:33rest up those people's lives.
48:38Katrina, rest up people's lives?
48:41Including mine.
48:42Including yours?
48:46They cut this grass
48:49so you can see
48:50our house from here.
48:51Oh yeah?
48:55At the house,
48:56several of Mrs. Getrich's
48:57grandsons
48:58welcomed her home.
49:01Okay, I love you too.
49:02One time it was just you and I.
49:06But this long-awaited homecoming
49:07would be bittersweet.
49:09Okay, how you doing?
49:11The stroke
49:11had affected her memory.
49:14Home did not seem like home.
49:15I'm trying to go
49:16to my room.
49:18The house smelled different.
49:19I don't like the smell.
49:21The bed was too high.
49:24I can't sit up there.
49:25I better stay here.
49:27And the house was too hot.
49:29We ain't got no air conditioning
49:30in here.
49:30I don't think I'm gonna make it.
49:32In an attempt to lighten the mood,
49:34Mr. Getrich tried flattery.
49:36You're looking like Sweet Sixteen.
49:39What?
49:40You said you're looking like Sweet Sixteen.
49:42I'm looking like what?
49:43I'm looking to see an old lady.
49:45Old lady?
49:46You're looking like.
49:47Yeah, and I asked my age to.
49:48You're looking like Sweet Sixteen, Bob.
49:49Like what?
49:50Sweet Sixteen.
49:52I know better than that.
49:54I ain't buying that.
49:55I ain't buying that stuff.
49:57You don't know what's on my mind.
49:58You don't know what I can see
49:59and what I can't see.
50:00Do you?
50:02Huh?
50:02You can, I don't, well, okay,
50:04I looked at Sweet Sixteen.
50:05Yes, you're right.
50:06I'm not.
50:07But even sweet talk didn't work.
50:09Mrs. Getrich was furious
50:10that her husband hadn't brought her home sooner.
50:14When you came back,
50:14we should have came back together.
50:15We wasn't?
50:16You couldn't have possibly made it down here
50:18when I came back.
50:20I don't know why.
50:21I made it in wasted times.
50:22No, you didn't make it in wasted times
50:24coming in here with nothing.
50:26Didn't have nothing.
50:26No floors, no roof, no ceiling.
50:28You couldn't have made it in here.
50:30I keep trying to tell you that.
50:31She's overwhelmed
50:32and she's seeing that things are not
50:36like they used to be
50:38and saying,
50:39God, what did I do?
50:40She said,
50:41what did I do?
50:42Why did I want to do this?
50:48As the 4th of July holiday approached,
50:55the mood brightened.
50:57Generations of Getriches
50:58gathered to welcome their Mama Lydia home.
51:01Now that Mom's home,
51:09it's a home again
51:10and not just a house.
51:11She's home and
51:12the kids,
51:14the grandkids,
51:15the neighbors,
51:16everybody's just flowing in
51:18and that's what we missed.
51:20That's what I missed
51:21while she was away.
51:23It was tempting to see
51:26a happy ending here.
51:28By sheer force of will,
51:30Mr. Getrich seemed to have
51:31accomplished more than
51:32the hundreds of millions
51:33of dollars promised
51:35to Louisiana.
51:36But his home
51:37remained a lonely monument.
51:40Just blocks away,
51:41the carcass of lawless high school,
51:43fought over by state
51:44and federal officials,
51:46sits empty
51:47and wraths.
51:56In 2005,
51:58America had watched
51:59New Orleans drown
52:00on national television.
52:03It was,
52:04some said,
52:05like watching a good friend
52:06suffer a massive stroke.
52:08Since then,
52:14I've watched
52:15the crippled city
52:15struggle to right itself.
52:18A bit of its old personality
52:20had returned,
52:22evidenced by the party
52:23that greeted
52:23Mr. Getrich's
52:24Benevolent Association's
52:26annual parade.
52:30But he said
52:31it didn't quite
52:32have that old swing.
52:33I don't like the music.
52:36I don't like the music.
52:38Mr. Getrich
52:40left the parade early.
52:42He told me he was tired.
52:43He just didn't have it
52:44in him to dance anymore.
52:46If you had it to do
52:47all over again,
52:48would you do it?
52:50I'm kind of skeptical
52:52about that now.
52:54Once upon a time,
52:55I could answer that question
52:56in a split second for you.
52:59I can't do that now.
53:08This story continues on our website,
53:28where you can watch the program again online
53:30and join the discussion about it.
53:34Read updates on the Getrich family
53:36and see some additional video.
53:39When I put on an Indian suit like that,
53:41I thought I was a real one.
53:44And I just had fun to that extent
53:45all day and half of the night.
53:48Read producer June Cross's essay
53:50on what she's taken away
53:51from this story.
53:52Just four blocks from the levee
53:54in the Lower Ninth Ward,
53:56I saw one house still standing.
53:58And more at PBS.org.
54:00Next time on Frontline.
54:16This is our moment.
54:18This is our time.
54:18Sweet dreams, baby.
54:23The road ahead will be long.
54:25Sweet dreams, baby.
54:29Our climb will be steep.
54:31Sweet dreams, baby.
54:34But America, we will get there.
54:36We as a people will get there.
54:38We as a people will get there.
54:38We as a people will get there.
54:48Frontline's The Old Man and the Storm
54:50is available on DVD.
54:53To order online, visit shoppbs.org
54:55or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
54:59Frontline is made possible
55:26by contributions to your PBS station
55:29from viewers like you.
55:32With major funding
55:33from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
55:37committed to building a more just,
55:38verdant, and peaceful world.
55:41And additional funding
55:42from the Park Foundation.
55:45Additional funding for this program
55:47is provided by
55:48the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
55:53Ford Foundation.
55:54The Nathan Cummings Foundation.
56:00And by
56:01the 21st Century Foundation,
56:04National Black Programming Consortium,
56:06and the Katrina Media Fellowships
56:08of the Open Society Institute.
56:10The
56:36Bible
Be the first to comment