‘New Orleans is still crying’

Figuring out the future
Chris Hankel, a manager of a family-owned clothing business, and his wife, Marilyn, a university librarian, fear that the city they love so dearly will be forgotten. “The music, so many different cultures and our history — New Orleans just gets in your blood,” Chris Hankel says. “It’s a special place. To see a lot of that go, it’s a sad time in the history of New Orleans.”

After losing their home, the Hankels moved in with relatives in a suburb of New Orleans. Months of sleeping on air mattresses in a spare bedroom only added more stress to their conflict over what to do next. “Chris and I been disagreeing over whether to stay or go,” Marilyn Hankel says. “And his response is, ‘Well, I just want to leave.’ And my response is, ‘Well, I don’t want to leave.’ And we kind of come to an impasse.”

Countless families’ lives were turned upside down by Katrina, and for many, the turmoil is as raw and real today as it was a year ago. As for the three clans featured in “Rising From Ruin,” each is a little more settled today: Carol Emery and her husband are getting ready to move back into the first floor of their home; Haden Brown and his family are off the cruise ship living in a new home on the West Bank; and Chris and Marilyn have decided to stay, at least for a while, after moving into the neighborhood where they lived as newlyweds. But as they’ve all discovered, every day living in the Crescent City post-Katrina presents a new challenge.

An incomplete recovery
Some of the features of an American city have come back to New Orleans. Most levee repairs have been completed, and basic utilities have been restored to almost every part of the city. In the city center, streetcars and buses are running on schedule again. Much of the debris that once littered the streets has been hauled away, and “Men at Work”  signs checker the city as demolition crews keep busy clearing away 30,000-plus uninhabitable homes.

But while the empty lots and exposed slabs make it a little easier to imagine new beginnings there, they are also stark reminders of what has been lost. The progress is overshadowed by the vast stretches of the flooded region that still look and feel as they did during the first days after the water was pumped from the city.

Special to MSNBC.com Producers Kelly Whalen and Abigail Spindel have spent the past year documenting New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane Katrina for the MSNBC documentary “Rising From Ruin.”

“It’s still an emotional roller coaster for New Orleanians,” says Jim Amoss, editor of New Orleans’ daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune. “You wake up one morning and you see that the huge pile of debris is finally being carted away, and it gives you a wonderful lift. Then you wake up the next day and you read an article in the paper about global warming and hurricanes being more intense than ever. Hopeful one day; dismayed and disparaged the next. That is the way that we are living.”

Kelly Whalen produced and photographed “Rising From Ruin,” airing Aug. 29 on MSNBC at 10 p.m. ET. Abigail Spindel, co-producer of “Rising From Ruin,” contributed to this report.

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