Worst-hit area a ghost town in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — The city's Eighth and Ninth wards look like ghost towns. No people. No power. No life.

Twisted metal blowing in the wind and helicopters patrolling the area break the deafening silence. Gray, cracked sediment that looks like the edge of a river at low tide covers the ground everywhere.

Two military Humvees are the only moving vehicles on the road Tuesday morning, and later again in the afternoon.

Floodwater brought by Hurricane Katrina and cracked levees rose more than eight feet in this area. The higher the water lines on the houses, the thicker the mud.

Green sludge, still moist because of the lack of sunlight and hot and humid temperatures, covers the floors of abandoned homes. Some houses are knocked intact from their foundations, some are missing walls or roofs, and still others are reduced to rubble.

In some houses still standing, the ceilings are rotted out from the high waters.

Brick stairs behind one destroyed house lead to nowhere. All that remains of the home is a busted section of concrete foundation and a pool of pungent brown water.

Some of the standing homes are emptied of furniture and other goods, while others are full of moldy belongings.

Cars lifted by the floodwater jut at odd angles along the sidewalks, in the middle of the road or where houses used to stand. Some have broken windows and all are covered in a dirty white film.

Boats used to rescue residents sit overturned in trees or in front yards.

"This is where it was worst," said Tech. Sgt. Michael Ploof, a New Hampshire Air Guardsman from Rochester, as his unit of soldiers stopped to survey the damage of a dozen flattened houses in the Ninth Ward.

Air-conditioning units lay in yards alongside of lawn mowers, washing machines, hot water heaters and dishwashers.

"It breaks your heart," Ploof said as he walked by a car sitting where someone's house used to be.

In Ploof's opinion, the people were hit by three storms — the hurricane, the floods and the looting.

"It's weird. I've never seen anything like this before," said Nick Stack, 19, a Newmarket resident on his first deployment, as he stood next to a Humvee. At Stack's feet lay a child's rubber sandal and other debris in the middle of the road.

The further north the guard unit traveled, the higher the watermarks on the buildings. Eventually, murky water mixed with sewage covered the streets and the troops stopped heading north.

Numbers as high as six were spray-painted in orange and red below search markings on the outside of houses, signaling the number of bodies found inside.

"I can't wrap my head around it. I don't know how I'd feel if that were me," said Airman Sherri Carver of Dover. "You just can't imagine that happening. It's like you're looking at something that can't be real."

Back in the Sixth Ward soldiers continued their patrols of the streets and Red Cross distribution centers.

Soldiers like Sgt. Scott Sevigny, 27, of Dover worked night details guarding a nearby hospital and searching houses with open doors.

"There's not much going on at night," said Sevigny, who spent 16 months in Iraq.

The New Hampshire soldiers spend each day meeting residents, handing out food and water and guarding supply distribution stations and hospitals.

Pastor Troy Lawrence and his wife April, dressed in white, full-body protective suits cleaning out the Reaping the Harvest Full Gospel Baptist Church were the only people the guardsmen encountered in the poverty-stricken Ninth Ward.

"I can't do anything but trust God," said Troy Lawrence, who had evacuated the city before the hurricane. "I wish I took all the valuable stuff."

The church, which the Lawrences opened two years ago, lost a few of its 250 parishioners in the area, including a 13-year-old and 16-year-old-girl, he said, tears slowly running down his face.

Drug dealers were coming in off the street and attending church, Lawrence said. Before the storm hit, Lawrence urged his congregation to evacuate. He himself fled to Atlanta.

"You never know until you go through it," he said of the widespread devastation. "You go to sleep one day, everything well, and wake up the next day, everything gone."

Despite looting in the area, a large water cooler jug half filled with change and dollar bills inside the church made it through the hurricane and sat on the ground in the parking lot beside the church. Lawrence said he plans rebuild the church.

"It's going to be a new beginning," he said.