By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer
Wife waits while husband sifts through the rubble of their Mississippi home.

AUBURN – The disappearance of a special rocking chair wasn’t the worst thing to happen, Auburn native Lisa Smith said of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on her Mississippi home.

It was one more thing lost and symbolic of the way things are going.

The chair was one of the few things her husband, Robert, was able to salvage from their ruined home, and he put it in their front yard to dry.

Just about everything else – his Navy uniforms, her clothes, her 2-year-old’s toys, family pictures and heirlooms – were swept away or ruined. The chair was a lucky find. They bought it while they were stationed in Italy, so it had good memories.

“He called back later, really upset, and said somebody stole it,” she said. “They just took it out of our front yard.”

That was just one piece of disappointing news she has heard since her husband left last week. Worse news has come from insurance adjusters and emergency relief agencies. She doesn’t know if they’ll replace her home, help her fix it up or leave her hanging. It could be a month before they hear from an insurance adjuster, and the waiting is driving her crazy.

“I guess our plan now is to rebuild and sell the house,” she said. She wants to move north now, away from the coast. They’ve lived in Saint Martin, Miss., for the past three years, about 10 miles east of Biloxi. Her husband has six more years left to serve there, and then she wants to go somewhere else. New England is at the top of her list. Auburn, where she grew up, is a possibility.

“I’d take a blizzard any day over another hurricane,” she said.

Wind and water

The Smiths were wrapping up their summer vacation, visiting Robert’s family in Ohio, when the hurricane struck. They decided the hurricane zone was no place for a 2-year-old, so the family went their separate ways.

Robert bought a truck from his brother-in-law, loaded it up with emergency supplies such as fresh water, Gatorade, blankets and generators, and headed home. Lisa talked to Kelly Lauze in Auburn, her best friend since they were 11. Kelly invited Lisa and 2-year-old Owen up to stay for the duration.

“She’s the only reason I came back,” Lisa said.

She talks daily with Robert, a petty officer in the U.S. Navy Seabees, and doesn’t like what he reports. She doesn’t know if the hurricane wind or flood waters ruined their house. She’s hoping it was the wind, since she didn’t have flood insurance. Neighbors say their insurance claims are being turned down.

“We bought the house three years ago, and they told us we didn’t need it,” she said. “We were not in a flood zone, and shouldn’t have been in danger of flooding.”

Whether it was flood waters or hurricane wind and rain, the storm destroyed her neighborhood. Streets all around were flooded.

“My husband says people are sleeping in tents, and they’re all carrying guns,” she said. She’s worried for his safety.

No relief

Relief agencies haven’t helped much. She tried to register with the Red Cross in Toledo before coming to Maine but was told she couldn’t. The local chapter is offering food, shelter and clothing.

“But we have our vacation clothes and a place to stay, so there’s not much they can do,” she said. FEMA has been even less help, she said.

“They tell us to apply for a Small Business Administration loan for help, that they can’t do anything else,” she said. “I guess if the SBA turns us down, then they can do something.”

She wishes FEMA were coordinating efforts to rebuild.

“What they should be doing is identifying qualified contractors or registering them somehow,” she said. “My husband has people coming up all the time, offering to help work. But he doesn’t know who they are, if he can trust them or not.”

All she can do is wait and try to explain things to her son. He desperately wants his daddy, his toys and his room.

“Then he says, Mommy, my house blew away, up in the sky,'” she said. “I don’t know where he got that.”

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