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In Lower Ninth Ward, the barbecue pit survives the house
By Andy Sullivan
NEW ORLEANS, Sept 20 (Reuters) - The small, wood-frame house washed away in the flood. But the brick steps and barbecue pit, built painstakingly by a man six years dead, remain as evidence of the lives lived here.
It's the first time Wayne Williams, 43, has returned to his childhood home in the Lower Ninth Ward. Entire blocks have been reduced to kindling and the only signs of life are the bony dogs that roam the ruined landscape.
Hurricane Katrina devastated many New Orleans neighborhoods, but none were hit as hard as the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the poorest areas of the city.
Like every other address on the block, 1943 Tennessee Street is completely demolished, a tangle of wooden siding and stinking mud. Williams will only have photographs to bring back to his mother in Baton Rouge and his wife in Atlanta.
Only the two semicircular front steps and the barbecue pit out back remain, the handiwork of his deceased father.
The oak tree that abuts the foundation survived as well.
"My momma was worried about this tree falling on the house," Williams said, shaking his head.
While residents were allowed to return to some neighborhoods on Monday, the Lower Ninth Ward remained off limits.
Williams, a longshoreman, returned to New Orleans a week ago to help reopen the city's port.
Before that, he had never left the city until his wife packed up the car and drove him out of town ahead of Katrina.
"I leave the city and look what happens," he said.
Williams' own home several blocks away stands intact, though it had been filled with eight feet (2.4 metres) of water. He now spends his nights with other city workers on a cruise ship anchored along the Mississippi waterfront.
He said that he hopes his neighborhood can rebuild once the bulldozers and environmental engineers complete their work.
Williams said he understood Mayor Ray Nagin's decision to close the city while Hurricane Rita threatens the region.
"We already had a scare, and it wasn't a scare," he said. "It was a whole lot of water we couldn't drink."
(c) Reuters 2005.