Meet Tony Dyer

This is Tony Dyer in front of his home in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, a home he's owned since 1971. He was born and raised in this neighborhood and never left except the one year (1969-1970) he served a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Today he stands on his front porch burning waterlogged bills and bank statements in the same grill that once cooked the meat for family parties. Katrina took the first three feet of their house. Rita took the water to the first floor ceiling. Looters took the valuables on the second floor. He tried getting back to his home four times but the area was fenced off. "They didn't let me in, I don't know how (the looters) got through," he said.

The day before Katrina hit, Dyer and his wife were en route back to New Orleans from a visit in Indianapolis. When they arrived in Memphis, he called his children and told them to evacuate to Tennessee so they could be together. After staying in Memphis for awhile, they moved to Fresno, Tex., where they lived in seven places in eight months, a few times in their truck.

Almost immediately, he said, he was hassled by insurance companies, FEMA and bad luck. FEMA told him he wasn't qualified for relief funds because he didn't pay his taxes. He said he didn't pay taxes because he was a retired engineer and living on social security checks (his wife works for the U.S. post office). After filling out paperwork in Memphis and Texas, sitting down with FEMA officials, he kept getting different answers that didn't make much sense. To this date, he received a total of $3,600 from FEMA which paid for two month's rent.

"They'd just tell you, 'oh you're on file'. At that time we were taking care of my granddaaughter. I said, 'I have a granddaguther that needs to be fed'," he said. "I was stressed out and I lost a lot of weight from FEMA not doing nothing."

Dyer also got hit with bad luck. Just before the floods, his flood insurance expired and he didn't yet renew. He received just $11,000 from the insurance company to replace the roof but that money was immediately handed over to the bank to pay his mortgage. So his roof still takes rain.

"So really, we didn't get nothing. We had a few dollars saved up. We managed to stay alive a little bit," he said.

His home has yet to be gutted and inside the broken windows is his family's former life, now caked in mud and transformed into sewage. There's no money to gut but he did contact Common Ground, a relief agency to get help. Because New Orleans has been home for 57 years, he wants to return, but this time to a suburb like Kenner or Metarie.

The shock is, Dyer has no anger in his voice, bitterness or frustration. He talks matter of factly, gently while he stokes old bills with a wooden stick, watching them smolder and turn into ashes that even looters can't carry off. I tell him if it was me, I would be crazy with anger.

"I want to come back and rebuild. Me and my wife, we just didn't get much help from the government. Just like my friends in Vietnam," he said.

Then, a car pulls up and two women shout to him from the window. It's his former neighbors, the first time they've seen each other since the flood. In the first 30 seconds of calling to each other from street to porch, they make the connection that they've both relocated to the same part of Texas. He gets up to walk to their car and exchange contact information.

"The storm's over," he says before we part ways. "Recovery's harder."