Katrina's Five Year Anniversary is Over, So Now What?

It's been five years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, and in many ways the city is starting to return to normal. Rebuilding is happening, people are finally moving back to their homes and throughout the metropolitan area you can feel life moving forward.

If you were here over the anniversary weekend you would have noticed the swarm of media descending on the city. Five years is a big anniversary (fittingly, a traditional five-year anniversary gift is something made of wood) and the national news organizations made sure to give it the commemoration it deserved. Brian Williams and Nightly News rented out a house in the Industrial Canal section of the Ninth Ward where Brad Pitt has been building brightly colored and architecturally awesome sustainable housing for the Make it Right 9 campaign. The Today Show broadcast Matt Lauer and Al Roker from the French Quarter to show just how restored neighborhood is today.

In the Upper Ninth Ward, Harry Connick Jr. was shaking hands for the cameras with Mayor Mitch Landrieu in Habitat for Humanity's Musician's VIllage, an enclave for the city's musicians that Connick Jr., has been helping the organization build since Katrina.

Today, the anniversary has passed and most everyone is gone, but there is still work to do. I spent the weekend helping to rebuild 50 houses in the Gentilly suburb with the nonprofit Rebuilding Together. The 50 for 5 campaign, sponsored in part by Sears, HGTV and WD40, provided low income people with the means to put their homes back in working order so that five years after the storm they could finally return home.

But Rebuilding Together isn't going anywhere. They have rebuilt around 800 homes in New Orleans since Katrina and by year's end they will reach 1,000.

Ann Drorbaugh, 58, and her husband, Dave Kopra, 54, both retired, first came to New Orleans to volunteer from Olympia, Washington one year after Katrina. They have been back 12 times since.

"We figure this is a ten year project," Drobaugh said. "We're five years in and it's gonna be great. We'll keep coming back until it's done."

The story of New Orleans today isn't a sad story — and that's something this weekend's coverage might not have conveyed well enough. Things are getting better. Families are moving back in and even though a really horrible terrible bad thing happened to these folks, a lot of them are still smiling. The wonderful thing about the people of New Orleans is that they don't take a damn thing for granted. They're on their hands and knees hammering shingles and pulling out studs alongside the volunteers.

That's what Adolph and Mary Christmas (right) were doing this weekend. When Katrina bore down on the Gulf, Mary fled with the kids while Dolph stayed home to stand guard. When the levees broke, their Debore Street house was submerged under 10 feet of water, forcing Dolph to swim to safety. He spent four days on the Interstate 610 Overpass before being rescued. He saw and experienced things that left him so shaken he still has a difficult time talking about it.

Dolph and Mary worked each day this week with the teams rebuilding their homes in addition to cooking massive pots of red beans and rice for the volunteers. They were the best red beans and rice I have ever tasted.

Outside of the media fishbowl of anniversary activity, these nonprofits are thankfully in it for the long haul. Habitat for Humanity will continue their work across the city and will finish the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in Musician's Village within the year. Make It Right 9 has 19 homes currently under construction and is experimenting with new ways to make the Lower Ninth a sustainable community.

In November an amazing woman, Sister Mary Keefe, will for the third year in a row welcome a group of nuns from across the country for a week they call Nuns' Build.

The nuns, along with friends and relatives, will get their hands dirty rebuilding homes with the St. Bernard Project.

Right after Keefe came to New Orleans to help rebuild she went home to visit family in California who expressed disbelief at the new vocation she had chosen.

"They got this look in their eye and I knew they were thinking why are those crazy people in Southeastern Louisiana moving back and before they could say anything I told them, "That's just like us sitting here waiting for the big earthquake!" Keefe, a normally very even-keeled woman religious, said with some fire in her voice.

People ask Keefe all the time what New Orleans is like. They always assume that the roads are still flooded or everything is now all sparkly and new. They don't understand the limbo that exists between disaster and rebuilt.

We need not feel bad for New Orleans. We just need to help, if and when we can. After five years they don't want pity. They want to thank you for your kindness — generally in the form of delicious food, so why would you think twice?

My bus driver this weekend, Tyrone Fels, who calls himself Mr. T., summed up his neighbors resilence the best I have heard.

"I used to watch the Wizard of Oz and it never meant much. I watched it after the storm and I understood what Dorothy meant when she said there was no place like home. There is no place like this place, there is no place like my home."

Photos by Jo Piazza