Reporter's Notebook: A Gulf Family's Heartbreaking Return

HOPEDALE, La., Sept. 19, 2005 -- -- As he drives in his new 4x4 toward his home east of New Orleans, Stacy Geraci is asked how he's doing. "I'm about to do bad," he says.

An ABC News crew accompanied the 50-year-old oyster farmer on his journey back to St. Bernard Parish, a county devastated by Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago.

Geraci and his family have lived in this area for more generations than he can count. Three weeks ago, he and his wife, Angela, along with their 17-year-old son, Cody, fled their home by boat. Now Geraci is driving back to Hopedale to see what -- if anything -- is left.

As he travels with his friend Nicky Mones and Mones' 21-year-old son, Kacy, Geraci's expectations are not high. "From what I understand and from what Nicky's told me there's not much left but the slab," Geraci says. "But we're going to find out in a little while, I would imagine."

As we make our way east, the scene changes from waterlogged homes to homes that have been moved several blocks to homes that simply no longer exist.

"This is unbelievable," Geraci says. A general store, a church, a school are all gone. Rubble and rocks stand where the community used to gather.

"Look at the store!" Geraci exclaims. "Oh man! Let me tell you, look at that. Wind would not take something and move it that far. The weight of that water just smashed that thing down."

We drive by what used to be a local Shell Oil refinery. Geraci points out a cement slab. "When Shell built that they said that was hurricane proof," Geraci says. "The slab stayed but everything else is gone. That building was said to be hurricane proof!"

"You know, Stacy, it'll never come back the way we knew," Mones says. "Never."

"Who thought at 50 years old I'd be starting again?" Geraci says wistfully.

We pull up to the house of his cousin, whom Geraci rescued in a boat that day. "He was in that top window of that house," he says. "See that top window, with that board sticking out? He busted the window out with the board.