Looking For Hope Amid The Muck

A month to the day since Katrina stormed ashore, things are improving across the hurricane zone.

But hard-hit St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans, is still "an unbelievable mess,"

For two days, the Pei family has been trying to get a grip on what Smith describes as "the overwhelming mess that was once their home."

"I kind of knew what to expect, but you can't believe it when you see it. That's the shock," Susan Pei says.

Slime, the result of Katrina's tidal surge mixed in with heavy crude from a local refinery, covers everything in sight. The stench is almost unbearable.

Pei calls it "unbelievable. I've lived here all of my life … " Then, on the verge of tears, she stops speaking.

Smith visited St. Bernard Parish eight days after the storm and watched as parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez gave then-Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown a profanity-laced lecture on what needed to be done in his parish.

Pointing his finger at Brown, Rodriguez said at the time, "I don't want 'em ... hijackin' none of my (expletive) money."

"That's why I'm here," Brown said.

"Good," Rodriguez shot back.

That was also when Smith asked Brown the question Smith says everyone else wanted to ask: "Did you screw this up?"

"No," Brown said. "No."

"If, in the end," Smith continued, "there's an investigation and they say, 'This (the Katrina relief effort) just wasn't done right,' who's accountable?"

"That's what the investigation will tell us," Brown said.

Days later, Brown was out of a job.

Back then, Rodriguez was concerned that much of his parish would have to be leveled, remarking, "There is no housing. There's nobody who can come back here and live in a house, nowhere in this parish."

Rodriguez has changed his tune a bit. He says the Environmental Protection Agency has told him his neighborhoods, covered in 20,000 barrels of oil sludge, will be OK.

Now, Rodriguez is focused on the future.

"A year from now," he says, "I think we'll be up and running. We won't be at full-speed. I think it's gonna take us about three years to get up to full-speed; three, maybe four years."

That is if Rodriguez can make it through the next four weeks. With his tax base wiped out, the parish is on the verge of going broke.

"We only have enough money to last us for two more, that's 30 days of payroll, and then were gonna have to make some tough decisions," he says, "like just lettin' most of our people go, maybe shuttin' the parish down altogether."

Rodriguez says money for the parish is bottlenecked somewhere between the federal and state governments. He says he's been promised money to pay his workers, but he hasn't seen it yet.