The city continues to be rebuilt, but residents are slow to return to the devastated areas.

Calendars inside abandoned homes still rest on the month of August, symbolizing that the city of New Orleans is still caught in the turmoil of Hurricane Katrina.

Water marks from flooding are still visible along roof lines in the lower 9th Ward. Homes still lay collapsed in the middle of the street and cars are stacked on top of one another. “You would never expect how bad it is,” said Jared Jonson, a senior political science and CES major who volunteered gutting homes in New Orleans during spring break. “It looks like it happened last week.” Joseph Brown, 70, a New Orleans resident who evacuated to Dallas when the storm hit, saw the destruction for the first time on March 15 when he returned to the city. He went looking for his brother’s home in the lower 9th Ward, only to find it four blocks away from where it originally stood.

In addition to general clean-up, other problems still face the city. The broken levees are not fully repaired, and with hurricane season beginning on June 1, residents are worried. “They are predicting this year to be even worse,” said Barbara Darbon, a 70-year-old New Orleans resident. According to the article, “Warning sounded about levees; federal engineers defend materials, reconstruction efforts” in The Washington Post on March 8, the Bush administration plans to have the levees to their pre-Katrina height by June 1. Darbon, who has been through a number of hurricanes, said residents never know how bad the hurricane is going to be or if it will even reach land. She said that when one hurricane was coming into New Orleans years ago, she decided not to evacuate. Her neighbor, though, evacuated to Lake Charles, La. The hurricane headed toward New Orleans, stalled in the Gulf Coast, then changed direction and headed to Lake Charles. Darbon chuckled at the irony while telling the story.

Another issue is restoring the population of the city. Residents have already started new lives elsewhere and have no reason to return, Brown said. “I got a daughter in Dallas and another one in Arizona,” he said. “There is no incentive. They have no home to return to.” According to the article, “Study: Half back in city by 2008. But badly damaged areas slow to revive,” in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on March 15, researchers have estimated the current population at 155,000 out of the population of 484,674 before Hurricane Katrina.

“I call it a third-world country with no people,” said Jamie Powell, a University of Oregon sophomore who took a quarter off to help with the relief effort. The neighborhoods are laying in rubble and most of the homeowners are elsewhere in the country, she said.

Help wanted signs hanging in the windows of many French Quarter businesses make it evident that much of the population of New Orleans has yet to return. Some businesses remain closed on Bourbon Street, either waiting for staff or the owners to return. Other businesses offer limited operations. The Bourbon Orleans Hotel offers maid service every third day due to lack of staff. At the Hard Rock Cafe, customers wait 20 minutes even though there are open tables because there aren’t enough waiters. New Orleans occupants report skirmishes between the city and residents over what to do with the devastated neighborhoods. In the lower 9th Ward, where the destruction was the worst, the city wants to buy the homes at pre-Katrina prices and sell the property to developers, Darbon said. However, to the homeowners who have paid off their homes, the proposal doesn’t help them much, she said.

“A $100,000 check is only going to get you a large down-payment on a new home,” she said. However, Darbon said rebuilding in the area may not be a good idea, because environmentalists claim that the flooding in the lower 9th Ward was water from the Gulf Coast, not from where the levees broke. Darbon said therefore severe flooding is likely to happen again in the area.

In Broadmoor, a neighborhood that wasn’t as severely flooded as the lower 9th Ward, the city has proposed a plan to develop it into a pond, said Rusty Berridge, a Broadmoor resident. Members of the community have banded together to fight the proposal, she said.

“This is a historic neighborhood and 10 minutes from downtown,” said Berridge, who opposes the proposal. Despite the slow progress in some areas, residents are optimistic the city will return to its original state. In the front yard of a home that flood waters toppled over, a sign read “I AM COMING HOME.” Another house was spray-painted with “GOD LOVE NOLA” on the side. Music and laughter can still be heard from restaurants and bars in the French Quarter.

“That New Orleans spirit is still here, it hasn’t died,” New Orleans resident Robin Yager said. The spirit was recognizable on Bourbon Street on St. Patrick’s Day.

People dressed head to toe in green celebrated the day by throwing beads from balconies, dancing in bars and clubs, and drinking green beer. “It was cool to see the people from New Orleans relax and have some fun in the wake of Katrina,” said Amanda Sawyer, a sophomore nursing major who volunteered in New Orleans.