Tip of Louisiana falls off recovery map

Life on the bayou looks pretty sweet as the Hamilton family's oyster boat comes to dock. The sun bounces off blue water, the boat is full of plump oysters, the buyer is ready to load and three generations are happy with the day's work.


With sun-baked faces and mud-speckled clothes, they head for home, a place that is not so sweet. Home for the six is two trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency parked below an earthen levee that separates them from the mighty Mississippi, just miles from the river mouth.

That's life for most of the few thousand who reside in lower Plaquemines Parish, 50 miles (80 km) south of New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina made landfall 16 months ago, ripping everything on the narrow watery strip between the river and the Gulf of Mexico to shreds.

These people have weathered many a storm. When Betsy, Camille, Flossie, and others came through, they would tie their boats to trees and ride out the hurricane in the cabins.


But Katrina was bound to be different and almost everyone evacuated. With the erosion of wetlands and barrier islands over the years, there was little to stop the storm before it hit with brute force.

And because wind and flooding damage was so extensive, destroying much of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, money for rebuilding has been slow to come.

Now many fear it will never come.

from Reuters