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The remnants of Hurricane Katrina can still be seen in this residential neighborhood in the New O

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A year after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas, signs of the destruc

The flooding from the broken levees has torn away at the city’s buildings. The mud that has enveloped the ruined homes and the street pavements are signs that the impact of Hurricane Katrina has not yet physically disappeared – one year later.

The leftover debris that lay silently on the deserted streets of the Ninth Ward section of New Orleans echoed the haunting remnants of one of the costliest and deadliest natural disasters to hit the United States.

But in the midst of these gutted houses and the rotting wooden planks lies a row of newly built homes. Each home, one after another, is painted a different bright color – some are red, some are yellow.

Each of these single-family homes will be given to local musicians whose homes were destroyed in the hurricane.

“These musicians who are going to be living in these homes are going to help sustain the jazz culture of New Orleans,” said Aaron Gleiberman, a first-year graduate student at Tulane University who volunteered to help build these homes.

Gleiberman got the opportunity to build through a community service student group at Tulane. The construction gave him a hand in the rebuilding of the city and allowed him to see firsthand how heavily the hurricane fell on some areas of the city.

The homes and their families reflect the return of music, the return of culture to a city known for its vibrance and New Orleans’ resurrection back to normalcy.

But the effects of last August’s natural phenomenon have still affected some aspects of life in New Orleans, both academic and social.

One year ago, at 10:30 a.m. on August 29, 2005, residents were told to leave New Orleans.

Gleiberman, a resident advisor at Tulane, had just helped incoming freshman move into their on-campus dorms. Earlier in the week, they had all been watching the news to see where the hurricane was heading.

He said he is familiar with evacuations, having left the city in 2004 because of Hurricane Ivan growing up in South Florida.

“We’ve done this before for other hurricanes, so it wasn’t anything new or unprecedented,” Gleiberman said.

But the hurricane’s effects, he added, were something neither he nor the city had ever seen before.

At 5 p.m. that day he left with friends, heading east toward Atlanta. Traffic was surprisingly light, as opposed to the westbound freeways. He expected to come back in five days.

He didn’t return until January.

After spending fall semester at Dartmouth University, Gleiberman returned to Tulane. His parents had come earlier in November to get his personal belongings, which had been boxed up and kept by the university.

One year later, Gleiberman has still been unable to locate about $500 to $1,000 worth of items.

But this amount of damage is small compared to the damage Gleiberman has seen in other areas of New Orleans.

Though the uptown area of the city, where Tulane is located, was not significantly affected, surrounding areas have been greatly altered.

A university campus cannot prevent the impact of the hurricane from reaching its students.

Camellia Grill, in Gleiberman’s opinion, was the flavor of the city. Gleiberman would bring his visiting family and friends to have a taste of the local cuisine in the small New Orleans restaurant.

But since the hurricane, many businesses owned by locals have not reopened.

“Food and music are probably the biggest attractions here. Some are restaurants that have been here forever, staples of New Orleans and owned by local people,” Gleiberman said. “It’s not there and it’s never going to be opened again.”

Sarah Joslin, a third-year biology student at UCLA, visited New Orleans four years ago, pre-Katrina.

She said she remembers looking through a store in the French quarter that was decorated with Mardi Gras beads and masks on the inside. As she strolled through the same part of town during her spring break this year, going with her church as part of a volunteer and clean-up effort, she passed the same store – but this time, it was closed and empty.

Some of the nightclubs on Bourbon Street have shut down, but an influx of new ones has occurred at the same time, said David Gordon, a fourth-year finance and accounting student at Tulane who attended the University of Florida last fall.

Because of the damages and financial losses, Tulane has been forced to cut some academic and athletic programs.

“Because there are less classes available, I feel in the business school all the classes are full and there are not many options,” Gordon said.

But one thing that has surprised Gordon is the number of freshmen from the 2005-2006 year returning for the upcoming school year. He said the school was excepting a 50 percent retention rate after the storm, but instead received 94 percent.

And though normal life has resumed for students such as Gordon and Gleiberman, they witness on a regular basis the lives of other New Orleans residents who are still dealing with the effects of the hurricane.

“For someone like me, an affluent student that lives in the uptown, Katrina hasn’t affected me. But I know lots of people whose family is from New Orleans and their families live in trailers now,” Gleiberman said.

Gordon said he hopes to see more government action and more funding, especially for low-income areas still unable to bounce back from the hurricane.

“There’s not very much incentive for the government to build back up the very poor areas,” Gordon said, echoing a tune that has been grimly sung for months.

But with the coming hurricane season approaching, Gleiberman said people are worried whether the city is capable of warding off the flooding, especially with the broken levees.

He said he also hopes the cultural and social aspects of the city will be dominant once again.

“This year’s Mardi Gras was a lot more timid, but maybe this Mardi Gras will be bigger. I hope to see the return of the unique cuisine, demographic diversity, southern attitude, tourism, and a strong economic growth in the next year,” Gleiberman said.