On their sixth afternoon camped on the sidewalk of Belleville Street, a dozen neighbors seeking refuge from sweltering, dark homes stood watch over the remains of Algiers Point's public enemy No. 1. It had been a 40-foot oak tree, uprooted by Hurricane Isaac and tipped precariously into the power lines across the street. 
 
 The surrounding blocks went dark for days. Algiers Point, because of its high concentration of big, fallen trees, became one of the city's neighborhoods where Isaac's mass outages lingered longest. 
 
 The New Orleans City Council has called a hearing for this morning to hammer Entergy's officials about the recovery. On its eve, as of 6 p.m. Monday, Entergy had restored power to 89.6 percent of the homes and businesses in New Orleans that lost it after the storm, leaving 16,772 still in the dark. In Jefferson Parish, just 69 percent of power has been restored, with 52,566 left to go. 
 
 A 90-year-old man without power at his home died of heat stroke in Jefferson Parish, where Parish President John Young has been the loudest critic of Entergy's "snail's pace" response to Isaac, a Category 1 hurricane. 
 
 Overheated residents, too, have targeted their wrath at Entergy. 
 
 "What burns my ass is there's no reason in the world it should have to be like this," said Melvin Odenwald, whose Algiers Point house is well above 100 degrees after six days without power. 
 
 "After customers have been without power for days, you can certainly understand the frustration," said Bill Mohl, president and CEO of Entergy Louisiana. But the company has made "very good progress" in the wake of a sluggish storm that knocked out power to more than half the customers in the state, delayed repair crews and complicated recovery. 
 
 In St. John the Baptist Parish, where flooding forced thousands out of their homes, power had been restored to 63 percent by Monday night, leaving 7,183 still out. In St. Charles Parish, 2,256 homes and business remained dark Monday. In St. Bernard, 92 percent had been restored, with 1,434 still without power. In Plaquemines Parish, drowned in the storm, 8,610 remained without power Monday and restoration is expected to take much longer because of mass flooding and damage. 
 
 In sum, more than 600,000 homes and business in Louisiana -- of the 704,000 that lost power -- were back up and running by Monday night. 
 
 There are now 10,800 people in Louisiana working 16-hour shifts to restore power, Mohl said. 
 
 But they weren't working quickly enough in Algiers, as far as the neighbors were concerned. 
 
 The 40-foot oak remained slung across the street for five days. 
 
 District City Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer visited several times a day to check on it during her patrols of the neighborhood. Council Vice President Jackie Clarkson stopped by to see it, too, said Tim Masterson, who lives on Belleville. 
 
 Tree trimmers came, but they couldn't cut it without Entergy; Entergy said they couldn't deal with it without tree trimmers. 
 
 "The coordination aspect makes it more difficult -- when it's a tree and a pole, that seems to be a little more complicated," Palmer said. 
 
 Neighbors referred to it as an Abbott and Costello show. 
 
 Tales of the tree made their way around the block to Claire and Melvin Odenwald, who now also blame the tree for their six days without power -- which they believe might have killed their 60-pound dog Penny had they not taken her for periodic, air-conditioned rides in their truck, sometimes in the middle of the night. 
 
 "She was suffering, just in a really bad state," Melvin Odenwald said of his beloved black dog's 3 a.m. panting. "My poor Penny. If I wouldn't have gotten up last night, I just don't know if she would have made it." 
 
 Unable to get relief from Entergy on Sunday afternoon, a crew of hot, aggravated and sunburned neighbors fetched their chain saws and began to hack the tree to pieces on their own, said Tim Masterson and Ken Braden, neither of whom would confirm nor deny their participation. By the time police officers came and ordered that they stop, they had chopped the tree nearly down to its stump. 
 
 A bucket truck from Georgia arrived Monday at 7 a.m. and got to work on the lines. 
 
 The group -- now folk heroes in Algiers Point -- gathered outside Mary and Nicole Todd's house to watch the electricians string new lines. 
 
 "We don't blame (the electrical crews)," said Nicole Todd, who offered an electrician a free place to stay if he comes back to town under better circumstances. 
 
 Power in the neighborhood blinked back on at 4 p.m. 
 
 Claire Galofaro can be reached at cgalofaro@timespicayune.com or 985.898.4828. ||||| On Tuesday night, Isaac's winds whipping and floodwaters high, a Braithwaite father and son kept watch over the minimal levee between eastern Plaquemines Parish and the Gulf of Mexico. As midnight hit, Jesse Shaffer Sr. and Jr. decided one would rest for an hour while the other sat on the levee, locally known as the "wall." Then they would switch, hour by hour, charting the water's rise. But at 12:10 a.m. Wednesday, relatives called to say the water already was rushing over the wall several miles south of their location. 
 
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 On the northern end of Braithwaite, "it was coming up 6 inches every 10 minutes," Shaffer Jr. said. 
 
 Water quickly flowed into lawns and down streets in eastern Plaquemines Parish. Then, it seeped into first floors. Residents who had remained in their homes soon climbed stairs with possessions in tow. As the water rose further, many climbed again, to attics and roofs. 
 
 Eventually, they had climbed as high as they could. They flailed their arms and screamed. 
 
 With official emergency crews waiting for the winds to subside and the sun to rise, no one responded to their cry, except the Shaffers, who are credited with helping to save about 120 lives. 
 
 They rescued a 6-month-old baby and a 70-year-old man. They chopped through roof ventilation systems to gain entry. Some residents swam to them. The Schaffers discovered others fragilely bobbing in the currents, clutching debris that floated 10 to 15 feet above asphalt streets. 
 
 And whereas Wednesday morning everyone scrambled with all their might to exit, residents now desperately want to return. They want to survey the lake that once was home, and determine what remains of their material lives. 
 
 So as Hurricane Isaac moved on, the Shaffers have taken on a new community role: They are guiding residents back. 
 
 Many returning residents said this weekend that they will no longer rebuild within Plaquemines' walls. They said, instead, they will move a few miles north to St. Bernard Parish's protected enclave. 
 
 Cut off from the world 
 
 Eastern Plaquemines residents call their insubstantial 8- to 9-foot levee the "wall." It's supposed to protect eastern Plaquemines from Braithwaite to White Ditch, but it does not meet federal standards and leaves residents vulnerable when storms approach. 
 
 The wall is also what they call the mammoth new 26- to 32-foot federal levee system that cuts across the St. Bernard and eastern Plaquemines Parish line, protecting St. Bernard from waters to the south. 
 
 Eastern Plaquemines has just one parish border: To the south, east and west is Mother Nature, either the Mississippi River or the unbridled Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 When a massive storm is set to hit, the 20-foot-tall levee gate on Braithwaite's northern border shutters, removing easy entry for eastern Plaquemines residents to the walled-off world of safety. By the time the 8-foot parish wall alongside the Gulf began overtopping Wednesday morning, most residents who lived behind it and could flee had done so. Shaffer and son observed the caravan of cars racing into St. Bernard. Eastern Plaquemines had only about 2,000 inhabitants in 700 homes, and while most already had evacuated before the gate closed, the remaining hundreds crossed the border by riding along the levee itself as the actual road was blocked by that solid 20-foot gate. 
 
 "We had watched the cars coming through, and the surge coming over the levee kept getting stronger and stronger. And those cars had to drive through the surge coming over like a waterfall. It was crazy," the younger Shaffer said. "There was a lot of people that didn't make it. They didn't have cars there, so ..." 
 
 Helping people reach the wall 
 
 The spontaneous rescue effort began about 4 a.m. Wednesday with Jesse Shaffer Sr., 53, searching the east bank with his brother-in-law, Lanny Lafrance, 52. That was about seven hours before any other rescue team arrived. 
 
 "I had some friends calling me that were stuck. We had to get to them, and the Sheriff's Office was on the other side of the river ... and the water came up so quick," Shaffer Sr. said. 
 
 Before dawn, the men already had scooped up eight people, including two floating on a spare tire and a couple with a baby. 
 
 "This man here, Jesse, I called him and said my son and grandson were trapped, and he said 'I'm on my way,'" said Mary Williams, 66, who couldn't enter her home on Saturday because the water still was too high. "Him, he needs to go to the President. He needs to be a national hero." 
 
 At the break of dawn Wednesday, Shaffer Sr. rescued her son, Richard Clark, along with several others trapped on the second floor of his Braithwaite home. Clark said Shaffer's boat "was the first one we seen that morning." He said he had called the Coast Guard two hours earlier but officials had told him the winds were too strong to stage a rescue. 
 
 "We didn't know at the time if we would drown or not," Clark said. 
 
 With winds still gusting at near-hurricane force, Shaffer Sr. pulled up to Clark's second-floor window in his Carolina skiff. 
 
 Until the sun rose, Shaffer Sr. wouldn't let his 25-year-old son join him on the rescue mission. He was protective of his son. 
 
 At least in the light, you can find a tree to grab on to if the boat goes under, the father said. 
 
 Shaffer Sr., a former cabinet maker, current shrimp trawler and commissioned deputy sheriff, knew his community well enough to navigate it in pitch dark, in a boat, with 80 mph winds and fierce currents. 
 
 While he waited to join his father on the boat, Shaffer Jr. used his youthful instincts. 
 
 "I put it on Facebook. I said, 'Message me, text message me.' By the end of the day, I had 80 texts... addresses, locations of more individuals who had to be rescued," he said. 
 
 Shaffer Jr., a volunteer firefighter, emergency medical technician and nurse, vividly recalls his first rescue. 
 
 "We was heading south on Highway 39, past this house that was a trailer home and there was five people on there and they were screaming, they were just screaming like crazy," he said. 
 
 "They were so relieved to see us. They were spinning around. They were screaming the whole time. By the time we pulled to their roof, they had about that much, that much leeway before the entire house was engulfed with water," he said, holding his hands a few inches apart. 
 
 They had three children, all under 6 years old. 
 
 
 
 When a Times-Picayune reporter reached him on his cellphone at 7:52 a.m. that morning, Shaffer Jr. told him they'd rescued 23 people. He was in the boat, and shouts mixed with whistling wind could be heard in the background. 
 
 About 30 minutes later, he found 10 people in a trailer park, eight of them elderly. As they couldn't fit all of them in the boat, Shaffer Jr. agreed to stay behind with the four younger rescues on a roof for an hour until the boat returned. While Shaffer was on that roof, he gave the reporter a call back to pass the time. It was 8:32 a.m. 
 
 "I'm just sitting on a roof right now, watching the wind go by," Shaffer told the reporter at that time. "As of right now, I don't see any other boats running." 
 
 "So, we are doing what we can. We are slowly moving down the south end." 
 
 On Thursday, the Shaffers had their last rescue - a veterinarian who chose to stay with six dogs. 
 
 "I'm pretty sure he was the last one out there, other than the people we just don't know of," Shaffer said. 
 
 He worries the people who may have not gotten out in time are those who are socially isolated. 
 
 "People who don't have family. People who don't have people they talk to," Shaffer said. "There are people like that all over. People who are like that, who are all alone." 
 
 Shaffer's mother, Suzanne, says, "It was a very long night anticipating my son and my husband's safety, and their return home." 
 
 Returning "home" 
 
 But home now is a relative term. Every one of the about 70 houses in Braithwaite was flooded through its first floor. By Wednesday evening, the brackish marsh water had reached nearly 15 feet in some areas. 
 
 And despite receding water this weekend, it was still hard to assess damage to the homes. Some residents crawled through second-floor windows, while others tore new entrances to their homes with sledge hammers. 
 
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 Jumping off Shaffer's 16-foot Carolina skiff, some returning residents grabbed clothes and family mementos, others Saints paraphernalia. One man filled a plastic bag with guns. One mother was smiling, "beyond tickled pink," to find her 7-year-old son Connor's tortoise, Bob, alive and well on the second floor. 
 
 "People smiling, huh?" Shaffer Sr. said with a slight grin while driving people through the tumult. "How are they smiling? Got to smile to keep from going crazy." 
 
 At the Shaffer home, water overflowed the attic, where family members had hastily placed many of their possessions. 
 
 Like most in Plaquemines, Suzanne Shaffer, 48, said their family's future is uncertain. The family lost everything in Katrina in August 2005. 
 
 "Where do we plant our seed once again after 7 years? Where do we do it all over again?" 
 
 She said they definitely will not rebuild in eastern Plaquemines. So where? 
 
 "Not sure... not far... maybe St. Bernard." 
 
 When her insurance company asked her what date the flood occurred, she took a double take: August 29. "I told them, you can just use my claim from Aug. 29 seven years ago." 
 
 Isaac fell on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. 
 
 An avid outdoorsman, Jesse Shaffer Jr. ran and designed graphics for a local hunting club called Team Braithwaite Outdoors. Since the recent disaster, he has changed its name to the Team Braithwaite Foundation. 
 
 That foundation is accepting donations to help east bank residents rebuild their lives. Checks can be made out to the foundation and sent to 3237 Sugarmill Dr., Kenner, LA 70065, or to the Remix Bar at 103 W. St. Bernard Hwy., Chalmette, LA 70043. 
 
 Benjamin Alexander-Bloch can be reached at bbloch@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3321. 
 
 
 

– Hurricane Isaac was no Katrina, but it has left its mark on Louisiana all the same. It's been almost a week since the storm hit, and in that time utility companies have restored power to 92% of homes, according to Entergy—meaning nearly 57,000 homes are still without power. Residents are furious, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports; at least one 90-year-old has died of heat stroke in his powerless home. Some impatient New Orleans residents even took matters into their own hands, sneaking out at night to cut up a massive felled tree that had hit a power line—a feat that the paper says has made them "folk heroes" in their neighborhood. There has also been significant flooding, an all-too-familiar situation for some residents. One resident says that when the insurance company asked for details about the flood, "I told them, you can just use my claim from Aug. 29 seven years ago."