Reaching for The Light

It's still so easy to be angry. Last August, a single storm swamped and choked and nearly killed a major American city, as the government seemed to abandon its residents. The shock and outrage have haunted New Orleans, a famously nostalgic city that has always lived closely with the ghosts of its past. But today's challenge is to look forward, not back. Photographer Anthony Suau visited southeastern Louisiana five times over the past year to document the tribulations and occasional triumphs of a region struggling to rebuild. Meanwhile, new threats are always gathering off our shores, along our fault lines and across our plains. As Amanda Ripley writes in her investigation of America's curious and dangerous reluctance to prepare for the next disaster (see page 54), the question a year after Katrina is not who will save us the next time but how will we save ourselves.

SCARRED STILL DESOLATE This section of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward is a mix of demolished houses and those still awaiting bulldozers. Hurricane Katrina destroyed some 353,000 homes in the Gulf Coast region, casting a diaspora of exiles across the country. More than 113,000 families still live in trailers provided by FEMA.

REVIVAL LOOKING FOR UPLIFT Residents of New Orleans' Seventh Ward worship at a tent revival in July. Some said that turning to religion had eased their suffering. Only 50% of the city's pre-Katrina hospitals, 23% of child-care centers and 17% of buses and streetcars are running. By some estimates, about 40% of the city's residents have returned.

PROTECTION REBUILDING THE LEVEES Hurricane Katrina caused 50 major breaches of levees and flood walls in New Orleans, toppling this wall, now rebuilt, along the Lower Ninth Ward. The ensuing flood covered 80% of New Orleansup to 20 ft. deep in some places. The government has reconstructed and in some areas even raised the height of the breached levees, but the system is designed to withstand only a Category 3 hurricane. Category 5 is the worst.

HOUSING STARTING OVER On the day of her First Communion, Reagan Cavignal, 7, and her father witness the demolition of their neighbors' house in St. Bernard Parish. The Cavignals live in a trailer beside their wrecked house. Their neighbors' house was torn down in May, a month before FEMA's offer of free home demolition expired. Louisiana's Road Home program allocated $7.5 billion for rebuilding, but none of the money has been dispersed to residents yet.

CRIME A SCOURGE RETURNS On a day in late July, photographer Suau captured the promise and peril of life in the resettled city. At top, kids in the Seventh Ward eat ice cream to fend off the summer heat. Just hours later and a few blocks away, a quadruple homicide takes place, sending shock waves through the neighborhood. In the middle photo, Juanita Thomas, aunt to three of the victims, breaks down. In the early morning hours the next day, in the Fifth Ward, National Guardsmen, deployed to help police the city, interrogate a suspected drug dealer. Robbery and homicide numbers in New Orleans are nearing pre-Katrina levels, despite the drop-off in population. As drug dealers and gangs return to town, fierce turf battles have convulsed low-income neighborhoods, adding to the fear and uncertainty of already anxious returnees.