The long road back from Katrina

Automating the city of New Orleans’ permit department after Hurricane Katrina and setting up a new damage-assessment team was full-time work for Michael Centineo, the city’s director of safety and permits, but he had another full-time job waiting for him when he got off work: rebuilding his home.

Centineo lives in the Lakeview section of the city, two blocks from the 17th Street Canal levee, which broke, inundating the neighborhood with 8 feet of muddy water and rendering his house unlivable

Furniture on the first floor of the building had drifted from the dining room to the living room. The floors were ruined. The family’s Mercedes — used only rarely for long road trips — was totaled. When the water finally drained, it revealed yards littered with cars, boats and uprooted trees. The concrete roads are anything but flat after water lifted some sections and undermined others, so they no longer fit together to make a smooth surface.

The front doors of houses were sprayed with orange paint identifying the damage-assessment team that inspected the house, the date of the inspection and the number of bodies found inside, a grim reminder of the toll of the storm.

Ten months later, Centineo’s house sported a spanking new front door, one of the few in his neighborhood. In fact, his was the only occupied home within two blocks. A firefighter who owns the house next door and the owners of two homes over Centineo’s back fence have not returned, at least not while Centineo was around. Their yards were still littered, felled trees leaned against them and windows were smashed. “The older people have given up,” he says. “They’re all gone.”

The white walls of Centineo’s home were still marked with a dingy horizontal line — the high-water mark. But his yard was cleaned up, the mud removed and a well- tended vegetable garden thriving. His wife even planted two ornamental trees just off his home’s new deck.

Michael Centineo, director of safety and permits, New Orleans, leans on the rebuilt 17th Street levee, which gave way during Hurricane Katrina, flooding Centineo’s Lakeview neighborhood.

Click to see: Michael Centineo, director of safety and permits, New Orleans