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“I selected Waveland because it was a wonderful, picturesque little village,” said Ms. D’Ingianni, who had worked as a dental hygienist. “There was a little pine forest, a post office, a coffee shop, two restaurants and easy, easy access to New Orleans, where I’m from.”
But Ms. D’Ingianni spent only two nights in her new house before Hurricane Katrina destroyed it with a 30-foot wave that flattened the whole town and swept miles inland.
This spring, Ms. D’Ingianni finally had the heart — and the insurance money — to start rebuilding. She rented a trailer to stay in while the new house, a modest two-bedroom affair on stilts, went up. Ms. D’Ingianni watched as the framing was done and the wallboard put in. Every day, she walked five miles on the beach, barefoot and happy, her retirement dream come true.
But the oil spill has brought a new wave of bad luck: One Wednesday afternoon this month, when Ms. D’Ingianni went out for her walk, there were brown streaks of oil in the water.
“On the sand there were big blobs,” she said. “They say tar balls, and there were some little balls, but there were also big blobs that were maybe six inches and sort of melting and oozing. I continued walking, I don’t know why, and pretty soon the oil was covering my feet and oozing between my toes.”
She followed the beach down to a drainage canal, where the water was inky black.
When she followed the canal back into the wetlands, all the grasses were stained black. And on her way home, a policeman ordered her off the beach, telling her: “Waveland Beach is closed indefinitely. BP has declared it a hazardous zone.”
Now, there are cleanup crews on the beach every day. And every day, more and more for-sale signs go up, in front of empty lots and new houses alike.
Ms. D’Ingianni knows that each new tide, each new storm, may bring a new round of oil. And neither she, nor anyone else, knows how long it will be before Waveland Beach gets back its pristine beauty.
“Had I known what was going to happen, I would not have rebuilt,” Ms. D’Ingianni said. “If it’s going to be a year before it’s clean, I’ll wait it out. But if it’s going to be five years, I can’t.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/us/17voices.html