| Katrina
aftermath: Personal stories from ground zero | | |
| "I have no idea when it might
come. I don't think they will be delivering mail for quite a while," she
says. "It's going to take a big hit on the company; we were already suffering.
They're probably going to operate out of Baton Rouge, but I don't think there's
much left."
Forced out of town by mandatory evacuations that
could last weeks, tenants of apartments and rental properties are caught between
absent landlords and governmental orders. It's impossible for them to clear their
belongings from the property, but it's also difficult to pay rent on a place when
they might have to stay elsewhere for an entire month. For those in Orleans Parish,
it could be three months. "I'm just too confused right
now, sort of taking things one day at a time," says Simoneaux. "I'd
hate to go back at some point and see my stuff was taken out. The rent money is
about all I have left." Jan
Ramsey
For almost 20 years, Jan Ramsey's OffBeat Magazine had covered
the music scene in New Orleans. From Fats Domino and Frankie Ford to Harry Connick
Jr. and the Neville Brothers, music has been a cultural foundation of the Crescent
City. Now that the music has stopped and the entertainment business won't be priority
for months to come, there is simply no advertising revenue to support the publication.
"In terms of the magazine, I can't see it surviving unless
we get some help. We just don't have a big cushion of money. We just don't have
it," says Ramsey. "This is a business that I have built up for 20 years.
It's all just down the tube now. The business has its hands tied. We don't even
have access to our bank account." Some of the staff has
already relocated, and the 51-year-old publisher still sinks in shock at how quickly
everyone became homeless and unemployed. Her income has dried up, she doesn't
even know the condition of her home and she has little enthusiasm for getting
a job after running her own successful business for 20 years. "I
just don't have the energy in me to do this again. I've been struggling for 20
years to get it where it is, and I just don't have the energy in me to do it anymore."
Alan Demma
Alan Demma,
a 46-year-old resident of Jefferson Parish, was in the process of becoming a deacon
with the Catholic Church before Hurricane Katrina. Now he, his wife and his two
adult children are living out of a hotel in Baton Rouge. Demma expresses great
concern about their finances and how much help will really come from FEMA and
the insurance companies. "If you were home, you wouldn't
have to be eating out three times a day. And with the hotels, everything's adding
up. Because you're being told you can't go back home, you're in the situation
you're in," he says. "I'm saving receipts and putting everything on
one credit card that I had paid off. I'm just hoping that I'm going to get reimbursed
from the insurance company. If not, I'm sunk." | 
