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American Morning

Six Months After Hurricane Katrina; The Mardi Gras Indians

Aired February 27, 2006 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Miles O'Brien reporting live from Slidell, Louisiana.
Take a look at this scene here on Brookwood Drive. Trailer, trailer, trailer, gutted out home.

Then take a look across the street. This house, they're back to normal.

In some cases, people are putting it together. It's spotty. One -- somebody, I guess it was Mayor Nagin of New Orleans called it the jack-o-lantern effect, is the concern, that just little pockets will come together.

But as you look down this neighborhood, you see people trying to put it together. And then there are people who are in trailers still, trying to make the best of it.

We're going to talk to the man who is living in this trailer in just a few moments, who has decorated it in full Mardi Gras carnivale splendor here. And we're going to get into the whole notion of what trailer life is like, especially if you're in the middle of a limbo, when you're caught between the federal government, and the insurance companies and the regulations.

We'll get into that in just a moment. But first, let's get to Soledad, about 26, 30 miles from where I stand right now, at the New Orleans Convention Center.

Good morning, Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Miles, good morning. Good morning to you.

Yes, the dichotomy is amazing, isn't it? People who are celebrating Mardi Gras, those who feel that Mardi Gras is almost an insult, people who feel they're going to rebuild, and other people who feel like, forget it, I'm moving out of here.

One thing that's really struck me -- and we're at the Convention Center. We're in this little median. The convention center is long. It's about 10 blocks long. It goes on for a really long way this way, then down that way. There's a little a hospital around the corner here.

But one of the things that we first saw when we came here was a body, a dead body who -- on the side of the grass in this median that had been left for a couple of days. And it was one of the most disturbing things, because it was a clear sign of just how chaotic and odd things were, that a body covered up with just a blanket thrown over it -- him was not even a high priority. It was so -- we came back the next day, and the man, who'd been shot, was still there.

Again, right on this median, right on the side of the road. Things have been cleaned up. Things have changed dramatically. But of course psychological I there is a long way to go. And even rebuilding a very long way to go. We're going to take a look at that this morning as well.

(NEWSBREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: A lot of folks in this part of the world, Slidell, Louisiana, concerned what happens this spring if there's some heavy rainfall, because they still have a compromised pumping system and drainage systems. So even separate from the hurricanes, they're concerned just about the (INAUDIBLE) rainfall.

Let's take a look at life in Slidell. This is Brookwood Lane. And this is a trailer that has been well decorated in all it's Mardi Gras splendor. But there it is, your classic FEMA trailer with some adornments.

We're going to talk to the man who did this in a few moments. But first, we want to give you a sense of what trailer life is like here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: His name is Camper, Curtis Camper, and, no, he isn't a very happy one.

CURTIS CAMPER, SLIDELL RESIDENT: We was hoping to get back in our house, you know, sooner, but you know, like circumstance with the insurance.

M. O'BRIEN: He has camped out, like so many, in his own front yard. A home he misses, so close, yet so far.

CAMPER: I mean, it's a nice bed, but cramped up when you get up in the morning. I mean, you know, it's not like your own bed in your own house.

M. O'BRIEN: His house of 25 years needs to be gutted down to the studs and the joists. The foundation needs work and the roof must be replaced. His laundry list is long. and his insurance check is short.

CAMPER: It's not enough.

M. O'BRIEN: Just about half of what he needs to make the repairs.

CAMPER: I mean, the insurance company only give us 50, and I need about another 40.

M. O'BRIEN: The problem is as old as supply and demand. In the post-Katrina economy, contractors are charging double what they did before.

CAMPER: Before the storm, I could of got my roof down for $3500. After the storm, it's $7200.

M. O'BRIEN: And not only are they pricey, they are scarce.

ROBERT DAVIS, SLIDELL RESIDENT: There's a lot of work going on. People are going to go where the money is. So the nicer places kind of get put in front.

CAMPER: And so trailer life lingers on, as it does for Robert Davis. Katrina wiped his house off the foundation. His insurance coverage is not nearly enough to rebuild. He's hoping FEMA will bail him out.

DAVIS: I've submitted the paper work, I've faxed all of it to them, and now we're just in a holding pattern. When it gets tough, I'll send my wife down, and she gets them moving again.

M. O'BRIEN: Moving is what Susan Keys is dreaming of in her trailer.

SUSAN KEYS, SLIDELL RESIDENT: The trailer is getting very small, very small, but it's a roof over our heads so I can't complain about it too much. We'll be in our house one day, one day!

M. O'BRIEN: The trailers, once so elusive, are here all right. And now the worry is they will overstay their welcome. In the meantime, while they may be ever so humble, they are home, and Susan Keys is trying to make the best of a bad situation.

KEYS: I just thought that, you know, we needed some color down here, so it kind of brightened the mood a little bit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: Making the best of a bad situation. Look, we got some tiki lamps here, a very nice touch, pretty nice deck. And I guess you could call that a patio.

And let's go in and see who's living inside here. This is Bobby Allbay's FEMA trailer, be it ever so humble.

Bobby, good to see you. This is cozy. It's (INAUDIBLE), I guess.

What's it been like living in this trailer?

BOBBY ALLBAY, SLIDELL RESIDENT: At first, tough to get used to, a little cramped and stuff but as it goes on, time goes, you get used to it, and you adjust it and you make things work, like you set things up, and the way you can get to it. Everything is not on top of you. And you go with from there with it.

M. O'BRIEN: It is nice when you're trying to rebuild your house, which is right back there, which incidentally you had just renovated three weeks prior to Katrina.

To start over and get the work done, at least you're here, but it must be kind of hard when you're so close, yet so far. There's your house, you wish you could be in it, right?

ALLBAY: Right. We're going to get there one day. It was kind of hard at first, because we did renovate it before the storm and we lost everything like in a flash, and we're going to try to put it back the way it was.

M. O'BRIEN: Are you concerned that because of difficulties with insurance, or the federal government or whatever the case might be, that this life, this trailer life might linger on longer than you'd like.

ALLBAY: It will probably go on longer than what we would like but as far as the insurance or the government, we have no complaints about it, it's all working fine. But our problem is that we were insured, but we didn't have enough insurance. And now we have to put the house back together, and we have to do it ourselves, because we really can't afford to pay other people.

M. O'BRIEN: That is such a common story, people just hadn't checked their policies, didn't really know what they had.

Boy, if there's a lesson in all of this for all us, is double check what you're insured for, right?

ALLBAY: Yes! Make sure you up the insurance, because it will happen to you sometime if you're not careful what's going on.

M. O'BRIEN: Give us a quick tour here.

Over here at the end, you got a little bathroom there, right?

ALLBAY: Right. A small shower. We're a little cramped. You know?

M. O'BRIEN: Come on out here. I think we're losing our signal. I want to make sure people can see it. And then you got your refrigerator, you got your kitchen. And then right here, it's...

ALLBAY: The bathroom back there.

M. O'BRIEN: That's it, right?

ALLBAY: That's it!

M. O'BRIEN: That is as basic as it gets, isn't it?

ALLBAY: Yes, it is. It's basic. As basic as it gets. We're very fortunate to have it, though. It's that or live in a tent. So we're doing fine with it.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Bobby Allbay, thank you very much. Good luck with the trailer. Good luck getting back in your house, more importantly.

Send it back to Soledad at the Convention Center.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Miles. Thanks.

Ahead this morning, we're going to share with you a group with a pretty unique tradition. They're called the "Mardi Gras Indians." We'll explain what that's all about to you in these Mardi Gras celebrations.

Also Kathleen Koch has got a special report for us as well -- Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm here live in Waveland, Mississippi.

And coming up, I'll introduce you to the all female Krewe, who most lost their homes in the hurricane, but they did not lose their Mardi Gras spirit.

More AMERICAN MORNING after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Take a look at this. Indimnian (ph) had its parade last night. Now normally, this parade is on a Saturday. But the weather was so bad they actually moved it. Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi were the grand marshals; 2,200 riders, 33 floats, celebrating the 40th anniversary. The theme was the legend and the lure of gold.

But here's a question for you, because here's a big problem. What do you do if you want to have a Mardi Gras celebration, but Hurricane Katrina took away every ability to do that?

Kathleen Koch has a special story for us this morning.

KOCH: Yes, and it's a story of a very special group of women, the Krewe of Nereids, some 120 women, a very small group who every year decorate floats, get together costumes, parade down the streets of Waveland, though this year was a difficult challenge to pull that off.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH (voice-over): They sparkle in the mounds of broken debris, dangle like macabre decorations. Mardi Gras beads tossed by Katrina. The revelers who first threw those beads found the hurricane left their floats in ruins, too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a huge tin building. All of the floats lived inside.

KOCH: But Waveland, Mississippi's all-female Mardi Gras Krewe called Nereids was determined.

CINDY MEYER, WAVELAND NEREIDS MEMBERS: We all have boxers (INAUDIBLE) this year. We used paint scrapers and literally scraped all of the fabric that was left.

KOCH: Cindy Meyer and a dozen other women spent two months repairing the wood and the fabric floats for last weekend's parade.

MEYER: I never thought for a minute we weren't going to be out there. We needed to be with our community. We needed to give them something besides FEMA, and the battles that you do every day. You needed to get away from that, if it's just for an afternoon.

KOCH: There is a lot to escape from.

MEYER: Just like everybody in the Krewe, we have Mardi Gras rooms.

KOCH: Meyer had 19 feet of water in her house.

MEYER: It was like a snow globe inside my home, like someone just picked up my house and shook it.

KOCH: Ruined in the process, her husband's Mardi Gras finery.

(on camera): This is a mask? I mean, there were, what, feathers.

MEYER: Big beautiful plumes.

TOMMY KIDD, WAVELAND NEREIDS COLLECTOR: We didn't know we had anything left until we got up here to check this out.

KOCH (voice-over): But the Nereids krewe's Mardi Gras mementos are in tact in at least one home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We collected, or tried to collect, every poster from each year.

KOCH: Tommy and Linda Kidd's lower levels were ruined, but their Mardi Gras room made it through.

(voice-over): You're probably one of the only people in the Krewe who has this sort of memorabilia left.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I could well be. I could well be.

KOCH: The Kidds want to share their memorabilia, hoping the posters can be copied.

LINDA KIDD, WAVELAND NEREIDS MEMBER: I believe what I'll do is probably donate these.

KOCH: Turning over costumes to be preserved for posterity. But for now, this Mardi Gras crew has nowhere to put anything. MEYER: Our insurance was not enough to rebuild our building. So the babies are going to have to be out here for a while. It is who we are. So it will be back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH: And if the Nereids Krewe is not able to rebuild the giant warehouse that was used to protect these beautiful floats, they will simply remain exposed to the elements, and the women admit that all the hard work that they've put in over the past couple of months will be wasted and the floats will be destroyed.

Back to you.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, gosh. Kathleen, that would be terrible! Hopefully, somehow, somebody could help them get it together to get a warehouse, at least to protect those floats. They're so beautiful.

I need to ask you a question. Remember the last time we spoke over the weekend, you were going to be a grand marshal in a parade in Bay St. Louis, your hometown. You had the boa on for us, had the mask you got to show us. How did it go?

KOCH: It was great, Soledad. You cannot imagine the experience of rolling down the destroyed streets of Bay St. Louis. But seeing all of the smiling faces, all of the gratitude, and it was really extraordinary. The women of Nereids were telling me when they had their parade, people ran up to them and thanked them for being there, for having Mardi Gras.

And my neighbors, my friends were coming up to me and thanking me, thanking CNN for sticking with them, for being committed to Mississippi, to telling their story, and so as much fun as it was to ride on the float and -- or on the convertible, it was, and throw the beads, just seeing the outpouring of gratitude was really overwhelming.

S. O'BRIEN: It's nice to see. We're showing pictures, too. It looks great. Looks like you got your beads caught up in your CNN mic a little bit, but it looks really good. And of course then you think about how far to go, and it kind of breaks your heart all over again.

Kathleen, thank you for two terrific reports. Appreciate that.

Ahead this morning, we're going to talk to you about another group, Mardi Gras Indians, mainly African-Americans with an incredible tradition. We'll share their story just ahead.

And then we're going to tell you about Harry Connick Jr. Boy, did he want to be here for this! However, he's got this big giant hit on Broadway. He's starring in "The Pajama Games," so he can't be here for Mardi Gras in person. We'll talk to him about what rebuilding this area means for him ahead.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: That was the scene last night on the streets of New Orleans. That's me! I'm one of the Bacchus parade floats, try my hand at tossing beads. I learned a lot about Mardi Gras last night. It was my first Mardi Gras. What a way to see it, to be on the float like that and see the excitement of the people.

And what I also learned is that the Mardi Gras you see in the French Quarter, the sort of -- kind of the spring break Mardi Gras, if you will, really only tells a very small fraction of the story. That really isn't the story of the Mardi Gras for the people here who live here. It's a story of families, that we saw along the streets of St. Charles Avenue. And it's also the story of Krewes that aren't as elaborate as Bacchus, say. Krewes that don't necessarily have a parade or floats. Krewes that call themselves Indians, of all things.

Sean Callebs with an interesting tale.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From their elaborate costumes to their tribal spirit, the Mardi Gras Indians are considered the big chiefs of the annual New Orleans celebrations. But this year is unlike any other. Katrina, at least for now, has changed the fabric of the city, but not the spirit.

VICTOR HARRIS, MARDI GRAS INDIAN: Just because of what happened doesn't stop anything, you know? Because this is our culture.

CALLEBS: The Mardi Gras Indians are mainly African-Americans who lived in the heart of the city and were among the hardest hit by the hurricane. Victor Harris took us to his home in the Seventh Ward.

HARRIS: This is one of the costumes that got destroyed.

CALLEBS: The Mardi Gras Indians say they lost their expensive costumes they call suits in the aftermath of the storm. That means using needle, thread and patience to recreate the outfits.

HARRIS: We coming back. No wind, no rain, no storm will keep me away from this home.

CALLEBS: Or keep the exotic parade from going on.

(on camera): The roots of the celebration go back well over a century. Separated by racism and slavery from other Mardi Gras celebrations, African-Americans found a way to honor their heritage and at the same time embrace Native American culture.

(voice-over): There is a certain mystery to the origin of the Indians. Wayne Phillips is a curator at the Louisiana State Museum.

WAYNE PHILLIPS, LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM: In the antebellum (ph) era, many runaway slaves found refuge with Native Americans throughout the South and that forged something of a bond, or at least an influence. CALLEBS: Unlike other parades with Krewes that follow specific routes, the Mardi Gras Indians have no predetermined path, staying mainly in their own neighborhoods.

LEWIS COLLINS, MARDI GRAS INDIAN: It's a day of expression and giving honor, because that's the day that we honor our ancestry.

CALLEBS: A day, they say, to remember history, revel in art, music, and free expression and this year, a chance to tell the world this city won't buckle in the face of disaster.

HARRIS: There's no other place like New Orleans.

CALLEBS: Sean Callebs, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: You hear that again and again, "there's no other place like New Orleans."

Ahead this morning, there are so many heroes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, not just in the days following the storm, but really in the six months following the storm. This morning, we're going to revisit with some friends of ours there. That was our friends from the Coast Guard landing just moments ago. We'll talk to them about how the last six months have been, and you'd be surprised with what they tell us about the rescues they're still doing.

Also, Harry Connick, Jr., boy, he wanted to be here for this Mardi Gras. Unfortunately, turns out he's a superstar on Broadway now. "The Pajama Game" is opening, and it's doing so well. We'll sit down and chat with him about the things that he's doing for his hometown. That's all ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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