Lower 9th Finally Gets Mail Delivery
This story in USA Today is very good news. For New Orleans to rebuild to anything like its former self it needs to offer citizens basic service. Roads, water, power, and mail. Kind of hard to run a small business or even pay a water or power bill if you can’t get mail.
Roosevelt Johnson opened the door to a big surprise Monday morning. The mailman. “Mail in the Lower 9th Ward — ain’t that something,” said Johnson, 46, who hasn’t seen a mailman around the neighborhood since Hurricane Katrina deluged the city 11 months ago. “This means a lot,” he said, shaking mail carrier Wayne Treaudo’s hand.
The rest of America takes the mail for granted. But here in the Lower 9th Ward, where Katrina’s flooding reached rooftops and pushed houses off foundations, Treaudo’s first round of mail delivery carried some hope for normalcy in a place where normal is hard to come by.
The Lower 9th Ward, once home to about 20,000, is one of the last New Orleans neighborhoods where basic services remain scarce. It’s the only neighborhood in the city where electricity and gas services have not been fully restored. Government-issue travel trailers began showing up just last month.
The story goes on to explain that only about 1,000 people have returned to the lower 9th Ward and much of the area is still closed, with no power or drinkable water. But for those that are brave and strong enough to return they ought to at least be able to get their darn mail.
