The True Cost of Katrina

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 29, 2007 — -- Two years ago, I lived in New Orleans. I was a reporter for the local ABC television station when Katrina devastated this city.

As I write this, I am about a mile away from the 17th Street Canal, one of the three levees that broke during the storm, flooding the city, taking lives and inflicting damage that even now, two years later, has yet to be rectified.

Two weeks after the storm, the water had receded to about 3 feet, and some of the city's residents began to return to survey the damage. I stood at this intersection in the Lakeview section of New Orleans. And right here, we met Louis Orduna Jr. -- a man who needed to go home.

The city was still closed. Orduna was not supposed to be in this part of town, but it was obvious that he was a man on a mission.

Graciously, the National Guardsmen protecting the city looked the other way and allowed him to return to his home in a small boat he'd found on the street.

"If this is the way you got to do it, this is the way you've got to do it," said Orduna of his quest to get back home.

This journey was especially important because Orduna was looking for his 90-year-old father, who had refused to leave his house before the storm hit.

"He wouldn't evacuate because he wouldn't go nowhere without his little dog," Orduna told us.

Orduna Finds the Unthinkable

Having spoken with his father just after the storm passed, Orduna's initial fears were quelled. In the two weeks that followed, though, he had not heard from him. Orduna still tried to hold out hope.

When he finally made it back, he saw that his house -- his entire neighborhood -- was flooded.

Orduna stared in disbelief at his front porch. He said everything he owned had "just washed to the front door."

When Louis went inside, his worst fears were realized -- his father was dead, lying in the front door. "I figured he was dead," sobbed Orduna. "But to find him here."

More than 1,800 people across the Gulf Coast died after Hurricane Katrina hit, dozens of them in Orduna's neighborhood. Many were like his father, seniors who had survived plenty of hurricanes before Katrina and refused to leave their homes.

New Homes Where the Flood Hit

In the weeks that followed, as the water went down, houses with the dead in them were marked. One we found read "one removed from attic."

Today, many of these homes no longer exist, demolished because the damage to them was irreparable.

Like his life before Hurricane Katrina, Orduna's home is a distant memory. It is literally now just a concrete slab.

He tore his house down and bought the one next door. However, the scars left by Hurricane Katrina across the region are not easily forgotten and, like many New Orleans residents, Orduna is moving on slowly.

When asked what it's like to sit on that concrete slab that used to be his home, Orduna answered, "It's pretty strange, strange because I walk across the slab and you can see the rooms are sectioned out. And you picture what they used to look like, and the things that you used to do in that particular room.

"It's hard thinking about my father's room in the back, it's hard to walk across it."

On this second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, people outside of the city, across the United States and around the world, want to know how New Orleans is faring. How many people are back? How many homes have been rebuilt?

Certainly, those markers are important and, slowly, the city is coming back to life -- one family, one home, one business at a time.

But today, two years later, we remember those who will never be back. That, at its core, is the true cost of Katrina.