Flood Gone, But Tears Still Flow

By BAIRD HELGESON bhelgeson@tampatrib.com

Published: Jan 5, 2006

NEW ORLEANS - Daniel Lacour rarely sleeps through the night without terrifying nightmares about his days as an evacuee in the Superdome.

For Lacour, the sound of thumping helicopter blades triggers chilling flashbacks of more rescued evacuees being dropped off at the Superdome as it sinks into chaos and violence.

Once a smiling jokester, Lacour has become anxious and angry. He now gulps Budweiser through the day to keep his nerves in check.

"The Superdome was the worst days of my life," said a teary Lacour, 42, who was rescued from the roof of his parents' submerged home in the Gentilly neighborhood. "It was so bad in that dome, I started telling them to take me back. I was better off sleeping in the attic."

Lacour is like untold numbers of storm-rattled New Orleans residents who have watched hope give way to despair as the Hurricane Katrina recovery drags into its fourth month. The bleak landscape of ravaged neighborhoods, debris and growing doubts about a meaningful revival are taking their toll.

Charles Curie, the mental health administrator at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, has said the scope of the disaster and the ensuing scale of mental health problems are unprecedented for the nation.

Suicides are up, mental health crisis centers are slammed, and experts say the prolonged misery is driving vulnerable people to drinking and violence.

At least seven people have committed suicide in New Orleans in four months, according to local officials. The city has less than a quarter the population it had before the storm, now about 100,000. In 2004, New Orleans had a rate of nine suicides per 100,000. The national rate for 2002 was 11 suicides per 100,000.

About 14 people a day are calling a local crisis phone bank expressing thoughts of suicide, said Debra Morton, executive director of the Metropolitan Human Services district in New Orleans. That's up from four calls a day in October.

Local filmmaker Stevenson Palfi, 53, wrote a suicide note and a will, and then apparently shot himself on the second floor of his home on Dec. 14. Palfi's house in the Mid-City section of New Orleans was under 8 feet of water, and he was distraught over losing the contents of his office, according to news reports.

No Beds

Doctors and mental health experts, such as Morton, said they routinely see people suffering from a level of depression that normally would require hospitalization, but no beds are available in the area. Previously stable people now talk casually about death and suicide. Patients on antidepressants haven't had prescriptions filled in months.

"Every social support mechanism these people had has been destroyed," said Steven Shulman, a doctor who came from New York to help during the recovery. "Many people are walking around in a serious, high-level depression. It's common for people with tough exteriors to become weepy."

Freddie Hicks is among them.

Hicks slept on a rooftop for seven days before being rescued from the devastated Lower 9th Ward.

"I'm destroyed," said Hicks, 41, a seemingly stoic automotive mechanic who admitted he's begun drinking more than he should.

His daily routine now includes a trip to the wreckage of his home. Each time, he bows his head and cries.

Cindy LeBlanc can't stop dwelling on the grisly moment she found the decomposing body of her great aunt, Patsy Capetillo,her legs dangling from the rafters of her home nearly a month after the storm.

Capetillo, 94, defiantly dismissed pleas by family members to evacuate her home in the Lakeview neighborhood. But a levee breach a few blocks away caused her home to fill with sludgy water. Capetillo apparently grabbed her black overnight bag, pulled down a ladder and climbed into the attic, LeBlanc said.

Water swiftly submerged the house, eventually engulfing the attic and causing the ceiling to collapse.

"You try to convince yourself that she just went to sleep," said LeBlanc, 48, a transportation manager for a New Orleans molasses broker.

LeBlanc returns regularly to clear out the contents of her great aunt's home. Other family members stay away because of the lingering stench left behind by the body.

LeBlanc's family didn't celebrate Christmas this year. She didn't buy gifts, and there was no ornately decorated tree. Instead, she made her first trip to clear out Capetillo's home on Christmas Eve.

"It's depressing," LeBlanc said. "There's no two ways about it. But I feel a strange need to be here."

City On The Mend?

Much of the despondency and anger of residents fester in the shadows as New Orleans business and political leaders try to convince the world that this famously hospitable city is on the mend and ready for visitors.

Tourist shops on Bourbon Street sell T-shirts that tout: "I stayed in New Orleans for Katrina and all I got was this lousy T-shirt, a new Cadillac and a plasma TV."

The Old Coffee Pot Restaurant in the slightly damaged French Quarter offers military rations. The menu reads: "MRE - A Hurricane Katrina favorite. Please order early. FEMA needs 4-7 days for delivery. $782."

Vesta Burgdahl finds it loathsome that some make light of the storm and its aftermath. She said the only message local officials should send to the nation is that New Orleans residents are suffering, depressed and angry about the lethargic recovery.

"I don't know why they are making it seem like everything's OK," said Burgdahl, 58, who lost her home to flooding.

The recovery also has been tough on children, including Burgdahl's granddaughter, Vesta Heuschkel, 9.

Vesta Heuschkel's friends are scattered in Houston, Arkansas and Florida. Worse, her year-old dog was crushed by a car when it chased a raccoon across a busy street at a relative's Plaquemines Parish home, where she and Burgdahl are staying.

"Some days I get really sad," Vesta Heuschkel said.

The cycle repeats itself every day, as more New Orleans evacuees return to find homes ruined, cars in distant marshes and neighborhoods turned into landfills of debris and garbage. In St. Bernard Parish, where fewer than 10 of the parish's 29,000 homes avoided serious flooding, someone spray-painted on a house: "Welcome to my nightmare!"

"I don't know how anyone can be optimistic," said Loretta Cantrell, 68, who sat near the street as her family gutted their home. The house had been flooded with 10 feet of water for weeks.

Cantrell, who lived in the home 40 years, spends the first hour of her day crying over the wreckage and lost memories.

"Coming back here and seeing this every day is way worse than I imagined," she said. "I don't think I'll find peace in my lifetime."