Numbers show slow but steady recovery By Coleman Warner Staff writer
The numbers tell the story of a painful, clawing, slow-motion
recovery from Katrina.
Statistics gleaned from around New Orleans offer snapshots of hope
and determination nearly a year after the storm: Schools and businesses
reopening here and there; thousands of residents signed up for the Road
Home grant program that will dole out billions of federal dollars; a
torrent of building permits; repaired traffic signals.
Population is rising, albeit slowly.
But the latest statistical snapshot also shows how far the metro area
has to go, starting with a levee protection system that, while its
Katrina breaks are nearly repaired, remains largely shy of
federally-authorized levee heights.
Wounded N.O. economy remains in coma
Experts say it's still too early
for full prognosis
Friday, August 25, 2006
By Rebecca Mowbray
Despite the sounds of hammers, drills and saws in neighborhoods
throughout the metro area, economists and construction experts say it's
too early to view the economy as recovering and agree that the
much-anticipated construction boom hasn't begun.
When Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans and the floodwalls
toppled, the one-two punch wiped out an economy that had been wobbly at
best since the oil boom of the 1970s and hastened further decline in a
city that had been losing population since the 1960s.
"It's in shambles. There's no way to sugarcoat it," said Ryan Sweet,
associate economist at Moody's Economy.com. "This is the first time in
U.S. history where a city has sat dormant for almost a year. New Orleans
has a long, long way to come back."
EDDIE COMPASS BREAKS HIS SILENCE
Friday, August 25, 2006
By Trymaine Lee
A month after Katrina drowned his hometown and traumatized his
troops, New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass stood before a
throng of reporters inside a downtown hotel, preparing to deliver his
resignation.
By then his public gaffes and stirring monologues of a city under
siege, where killers ran amok and rapists violated babies, had been
debunked mostly as myth. Compass soon became a worldwide scapegoat for
the rumor-mongering that had possessed post-Katrina New Orleans.
Through a series of emotional flare-ups, he had become a lamb who
seemed to lead himself to slaughter. Images of his teary breakdowns
would be forever seared into the city's collective memory, in ways both
inspiring and troubling.
The reporters in the hotel that day would cut him little slack,
punishing him with his own words.
Post-Katrina New Orleans proves pricey
Some say new economic realities
will reshape the city permanently
Friday, August 25, 2006
By Rebecca Mowbray
Like many repatriated New Orleanians, Lolita Barber has noticed that
it's gotten a lot more expensive to live in the New Orleans area than it
was before Hurricane Katrina.
While she and her family are fixing their flooded home in eastern New
Orleans, they're living in an apartment in Metairie, so they're paying
rent while carrying a mortgage note. She's driving her Chevy Blazer
twice as much as she used to, at a time when gas is $3 a gallon, and
using more mobile phone minutes as she confers with contractors and
talks with displaced friends. In addition, the homeowners insurance bill
for her house nearly doubled, from $1,071 last year to about $2,000 this
year.
"All that stuff, it adds up," said Barber, an operating room medical
secretary at the still-shuttered VA Medical Center in New Orleans who
has taken a leave of absence from her job to work on their home and a
rental property. "I think it's going to affect a lot of people. They
were looking at prices before Katrina."
Katrina accelerated the speed of people leaving
Louisiana, N.O.
09:42 AM CDT on Monday, August 21, 2006
Jeremy J. Alford / Houma Courier
BATON ROUGE -- By now, most folks in south Louisiana have seen the
maps.
They’re generated by government agencies, private groups and
newspapers, and usually include clusters of dots depicting where
hurricane evacuees are now living. Places like Atlanta and Washington
are inundated, and there are even tiny indicators in exotic locales such
as Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Alaska.
The dispersion of people can also clearly be seen in headlines: Home
prices in Baton Rouge are up 27 percent for the second quarter. Evacuees
in Houston are being credited with a 17.5 percent spike in the murder
rate. Bayou jam sessions are being held in Brooklyn.
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 22, 2006; 11:11 PM
WASHINGTON -- State officials in Louisiana are still struggling to
ensure that money to rebuild houses hit by Hurricane Katrina is fairly
distributed, the Bush administration's Gulf Coast coordinator said
Tuesday.
Nearly a year after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, only $44
billion has been spent to get the battered region back on its feet,
coordinator Don Powell said. More than $110 billion has been designated
for the massive rebuilding project _ $17 billion of which is to help
rebuild an estimated 204,000 homes in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Money has begun to reach Mississippi homeowners, Powell said. But in
Louisiana, state plans for distributing the dollars were delayed, in
turn holding up the funding flow.
"There is always a balance and tension between getting the money out
fast and getting the money out responsibly fast," Powell told reporters
at a White House briefing.
Local inertia dooming recovery, report says
N.O. 'has no plan at the moment'
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
From staff reports
The lack of a comprehensive rebuilding plan and shortages of housing
and labor are crippling New Orleans' recovery from Hurricane Katrina,
while other communities in the Gulf Coast region are coping with a
windfall of economic growth, according to a storm-impact study released
today by independent researchers.
The first in a series of reports by the Rockefeller Institute of
Government of the State University of New York and the Public Affairs
Research Council of Louisiana is critical of leadership in New Orleans
for failing to articulate a plan for the future.
"New Orleans has no plan at the moment, and the excruciatingly slow
pace of the recovery bears witness to that," PAR President Jim Brandt
said. "What seems to make the difference is the ability of local
officials to take clear, decisive steps to get the planning process
under way as well as provide an opportunity for as many members of the
public to participate as possible."
Officials nail down storm plans
As season peaks, bus evacuation arranged
Sunday, August 20, 2006
By Michelle Krupa
The first post-Katrina hurricane season has, so far, prompted little
more from southeast Louisiana residents than a giant sigh of relief.
With more than a third of the season gone, nary the hint of a
catastrophic weather system has blown toward New Orleans, sparing
residents the harrowing question of whether to evacuate.
But historically speaking, the curtain is just now rising on the main
attraction. Today marks the beginning of a six-week period ending Oct. 1
that usually is the most active part of hurricane season. With memories
still fresh of the tremendous suffering of people who rode out Katrina
almost a year ago, officials said they are close to nailing down plans
to assist those who lack the resources to get out of harm's way.
FOR DEAR LIFE: How hope turned to despair at
Memorial Medical Center
When Katrina threatened, patients, nurses, doctors and loved ones
trusted they would be safe at Memorial Medical Center.
But over the next five days, it seemed all hope was lost.
August 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt
As they gathered that morning on the emergency room ramp, three days
after Hurricane Katrina, John Kokemor looked more like a vagrant than a
successful doctor. His shorts and LSU T-shirt were stained with sweat.
He hadn't showered for the better part of a week. Despite the grim
conditions, he felt more hopeful than he had in days.
More than 1,000 people were still trapped inside Memorial Medical
Center, and food and water were running low, but Kokemor and the other
sleep-deprived doctors and nurses believed they were finally going to
get some good news as they huddled for the 7 a.m. briefing on Thursday,
Sept. 1.
Within a day of the storm, helicopters had rescued 18 babies and a
few critically ill patients, and hundreds more patients were ferried to
higher ground on Wednesday by seven boats that showed up unexpectedly.
But Kokemor and other doctors worried that time was running out for the
most vulnerable patients at a hospital still surrounded by at least
eight feet of water. Ten patients had died overnight, and a makeshift
morgue in the second-floor chapel was full.
NEW ORLEANS — In many ways, New Orleans is a huge crime scene, with
bodies and victims and fingerprints - many, many sets of fingerprints.
But who did it? Who is responsible for this mess, for a barely
functioning city with large swathes still uninhabited - or uninhabitable
- a year after Hurricane Katrina?
An anonymous critic, posting his verdict at the edge of the French
Quarter, blames the Army Corps of Engineers and its failure to build
levees that could keep the floodwaters out: "Hold the Corps
Accountable," demands the sign.
Others curse the Federal Emergency Management Agency - for its
failure to rescue New Orleans as the waters rose, or in the months
after. In ravaged Lakeview, a makeshift gallows bears a sign that reads:
"Last Resort Shelter. Reserved for Looters/FEMA Reps/Adjusters."
N.O. council stalls on elevation rules
Elevation rules stall in council
Friday, August 18, 2006
By Frank Donze
Enraged over what they say amounts to blackmail, New Orleans City
Council members refused to take action Thursday on the controversial
higher elevation standards that federal and state officials are
demanding in exchange for millions of dollars in rebuilding aid.
But the council appears to be locked in a battle it cannot win.
Whether or not it adopts the guidelines, members learned Thursday
that effective Sept. 1, homeowners who have not yet secured building
permits for post-Katrina rebuilding will be forced to abide by the
advisory base flood elevations proposed by FEMA or be shut out of a
share of billions in federal assistance earmarked to the state's Road
Home program, designed to cover uninsured losses.
City fire department in a crisis
By Bruce Eggler Staff writer
Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Fire
Department is in bad shape and getting worse, the City Council was told
Thursday.
The department has “a rapidly deteriorating morale problem” and
post-Katrina personnel losses are undermining its ability to do its job,
District Chief Tim McConnell said.
“I am here in a crisis mode,” Fire Fighters Association Local 632
President Nick Felton told the council, pointing to what he said was
firefighters’ anger over the city’s failure to include most of them in
recently announced raises for police officers.
“I don’t know how much longer I can hold the men and women together,”
Felton said, adding that “the stress level is past critical mass” and
that pay is so low that fast-food chains are offering new workers higher
per-hour wages than the Fire Department. “Your Fire Department is
whittling away to nothing,” he said.
Study: Katrina evacuees who fled on their own faring
better
8/14/2006, 12:33 p.m. CT
By STACEY PLAISANCE
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Evacuees who got out of Katrina-flooded areas on
their own early and those who landed in parts of the country with fewer
other evacuees are faring better almost a year later than the thousands
rescued and dumped in cities saturated with evacuees, according to a
report released Monday.
The study conducted by seven law firms enlisted by the Appleseed
Foundation, a nonprofit political action group founded by Ralph Nader,
also found that local and state governments and nonprofit and
faith-based groups acted more quickly and efficiently than the federal
government in providing for evacuees.
The study focused on five major cities that accepted the most
evacuees: Atlanta, Baton Rouge, La., Birmingham, Ala., Houston and San
Antonio. It also took a close look at New Orleans, where about 40
percent of the city's residents have returned.
Corps racing against time, red tape
Many key projects haven't even started
Monday, August 14, 2006
By Sheila Grissett
Six months after the Army Corps of Engineers was given about a
billion dollars to raise sinking levees and rush unfinished hurricane
protection and flood prevention projects to completion by September
2007, none of that construction has started anywhere in the metropolitan
New Orleans area.
Corps managers say the scale and complexity of decision-making,
problem-solving and documentation involved with spending this kind of
money -- it's only part of the $5.7 billion Congress has provided since
Hurricane Katrina -- is taking longer than many had anticipated.
"We are poised to do $6 billion worth of work in an environment no
one has ever been in before, and we have a lot of good people working
unbelievably hard to make it happen," said Task Force Hope chief Dan
Hitchings, the corps' civilian overseer of post-Katrina repairs and
upgrades. "But we've had to come up with new rules to do it because the
old ones were based on our normal processes -- and this isn't normal."
Car trouble
In Katrina's wake, abandoned cars by the acre were a long-term blight.
But many thousands were stolen, chopped or crushed
Sunday, August 13, 2006
By Greg Thomas
Tens of thousands of flooded and abandoned cars were stolen in the
months after Hurricane Katrina and either sold on the black market or
dismantled for scrap, state officials say.
Many of the vehicles were disposed of at renegade car crushing
operations in eastern New Orleans where state officials worry they were
improperly dismantled.
Peter Ricca, a criminal investigator with the state Department of
Environmental Quality, said a major concern is that many early
car-crushing operations in eastern New Orleans may have been on
unpermitted car storage sites and that the cars' toxic fluids were
probably allowed to drain directly into the ground.
Other stolen vehicles were left whole, raising the possibility that
they could be reconditioned and resold outside of the state.
Study: A year after Katrina, New Orleans showing
positives, negatives
03:43 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Alan Sayre / Associated Press
Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina wiped out much of New Orleans,
the city is showing early signs of a rebirth, but a lack of health care
and other services and a dearth of affordable housing could stymie a
recovery, according to a study released Wednesday.
A rebuild New Orleans flag adorns the front of a home in the Gentilly
area in New Orleans on Friday, July 21, 2006. Residents of the area are
still waiting for Louisiana's 'Road Home' funds to reach them. About
123,000 homeowners are expected to have enough damage to qualify for the
program.
The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said
positive signs include a possible turnaround in the housing market and
increased visitor and business travel.
The long, strange resurrection of New Orleans
Hurricane Katrina was the biggest natural disaster in US history - and
its aftermath became the biggest management disaster in history as well.
A year later, Fortune lays bare this surreal tale of incompetence,
political cowardice...and rebirth.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Charles C. Mann
August 9 2006: 1:42 PM EDT
(FORTUNE Magazine) -- Ruthie Frierson's dining room does not look
like the birthplace of a populist rebellion. The room is quiet,
insulated from any street noise, with treatments in heavy fabric around
the windows.
Asian paintings in elegant frames hang on the walls. The ceiling is
gilt - not painted gold, but proper gilt, rectangles of gold leaf so
thin that a brick of 100,000 sheets would be less than an inch thick.
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Fortune
Yet it was here, late last year, that Frierson and several women of
her acquaintance first planned to attack the powers that be. In this
case the powers were the political establishments in New Orleans, Baton
Rouge, and Washington, D.C. - establishments the women believed bore
much of the responsibility both for the city's collapse before Katrina
last August 29 and for the paralytic pace of rebuilding.
New population statistics gloomy
Rate of return to area down dramatically
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
By Gordon Russell
After a string of encouraging months, the return of New Orleanians to
the metro area seems to have slowed to barely a trickle in the second
quarter of 2006, an analysis of change-of-address forms filed with the
U.S. Postal Service shows.
The number of people who lived in the region before Hurricane Katrina
and had come back as of June 30 rose by only 2,000, or less than
two-tenths of a percentage point, compared with three months earlier,
according to the data. If extrapolated, the figures suggest the metro
area's population stood at less than 1.1 million at the end of June,
compared with the region's pre-Katrina population of 1.5 million.
The estimates include 171,000 pre-Katrina New Orleanians who have
returned to the city. Current estimates from city officials and others
claim that a total 210,000 to 250,000 people are living in New Orleans,
though they don't say how many of them were here before the storm and
how many are workers who have come for the rebuilding.
August 8, 2006
Critic’s Notebook In New Orleans, Each Resident Is Master of Plan to
Rebuild
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 3 — Rebuilding a city, it seems, is too important a
task to be left to professional planners. At least that’s the message
behind a decision to place one of the most daunting urban reconstruction
projects in American history in the hands of local residents.
Ever since a botched attempt to develop a comprehensive plan for New
Orleans fell apart last winter, city and state officials have been
straining to avoid the sticky racial and social questions that are
central to any effort to rebuild and recover after Hurricane Katrina.
Their solution, hammered out in July, was to turn the planning
process over to a local charity, the Greater New Orleans Foundation. On
Aug. 1 the foundation opened a series of public meetings in which groups
representing more than 70 neighborhoods would begin selecting the
planners to help determine everything from where to place houses to the
width of sidewalks.
Insurance rates have doubled, tripled for most
10:06 AM CDT on Monday, July 31, 2006
Jeremy Shapiro / Houma Courier
HOUMA -- When insurance rates triple but your income remains the
same, something has to give.
Whether facing a price increase on a homeowners policy renewal or
buying a new policy with the state Citizens plan, local residents are
having to figure out how they will afford insurance. That may mean
taking a new job, refinancing a car, postponing a vacation or even going
without insurance.
Nikki Bush, an east-Houma resident, was notified in May that Farm
Bureau would drop her wind and hail coverage July 1. That started a
crazy two-month search for how to insure her family’s Village East home.
Bush said her original policy cost $690 a year.
A policy with the Citizens plan, a state-run program considered an
insurer of last resort, cost $1,200 a year, so she opted for that. But
there were several problems. First, Citizens wouldn’t insure the
trampoline Bush had bought her kids as a present last Christmas. She
would have to get separate coverage elsewhere just for the trampoline.
Affordable homeowners insurance mostly a thing of the
past in south Louisiana 10:04 AM CDT on Monday, July 31, 2006
Jeremy Shapiro / Houma Courier
HOUMA -- You’re a 31-year-old Houma resident, recently married with a
kid on the way.
Sarah Tassin-Guidry and her husband haven?t been able to build their
dream home on the lot they bought in Sugar Ridge subdivision near
Chackbay because they can?t get insurance.
The apartment you’ve been living in is suddenly looking cramped, and
you’ve always wanted your own home anyway. While you’re not rich, with
some financing, you can afford your first home.
After an exhaustive search, you find it, and it’s perfect. The lender
says you’re good to go, except before it’s a done deal, he wants you to
buy homeowners insurance, specifically wind and hail coverage because
it’s south Louisiana, and hurricanes happen.
Desperately seeking tourists: N.O. awaiting return of
visitors Most tourist destinations have reopened
11:43 AM CDT on Monday, July 31, 2006
Alan Sayre / Associated Press
Masks and other souvenirs sit in a shop window in the French Quarter
of New Orleans. Even though most of the shops are back, few tourists
have been around to spend money.
The areas where tourists go largely escaped devastation -- and are
anxiously awaiting visitors to come and spend money.
Plenty of hotel rooms are again available, most of New Orleans'
world-renowned restaurants are open, events such as Mardi Gras and Jazz
Fest are back and the city is reassembling its national sports presence
centered around the Louisiana Superdome and New Orleans Arena.
Report says city squandering recovery opportunity for
lack of planning
By Gwen Filosa Staff writer
Without a citywide rebuilding plan or a central agency in charge of
redevelopment, New Orleans is likely to squander its opportunity to make
a strong recovery as billions of dollars head toward the Gulf Coast,
according to top officials with the Urban Land Institute .
As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina fast approaches, New
Orleans lacks leadership from Mayor Ray Nagin and the City Council, said
John McIlwain, the senior fellow for housing for the Urban Land
Institute.
McIlwain was part of a panel of 50 specialists in urban and
post-disaster planning brought in by Mayor Ray Nagin’s Bring New Orleans
Back Commission to help the city create a recovery strategy. The
commission largely rejected the institute’s advice, particularly its
recommendation to rebuild first on higher ground in the lesser damaged
neighborhoods — a theory that turned into a hot debate over the city’s
footprint and who would be encouraged to return.
Map shows potential for flooding
By Sheila Grissett East Jefferson bureau
If the kind of tropical rain produced by Hurricane Katrina were to
occur this summer, with floodgates closed against a storm surge in Lake
Pontchartrain, a 6,650-acre area of New Orleans and East Jefferson could
get anywhere from a few inches to several feet of water, according to
computer generated maps released Wednesday by the Army Corps of
Engineers.
That would be enough to swamp some vehicles and invade homes in
lower-lying areas, though corps officials have said history shows the
chances are slim that a storm wouldproduce enough surge this hurricane
season to warrant closing floodgates at the 17th Street, London and
Orleans Avenue canals. Based on storms from the past 46 years, the gates
would have been closed only three times, and only one of those
hurricanes — Katrina — produced heavy rain.
Nagin finally speaks on recovery progress
By Frank Donze and Michelle Krupa Staff writers
Armed with facts, forecasts and a cadre of upbeat advisers, Mayor Ray
Nagin stared down the naysayers Wednesday and offered an abundance of
evidence to support his claim that 11 months after Hurricane Katrina,
New Orleans is making steady, definitive progress toward recovery.
Addressing the news media at roughly the midpoint of the first 100
days of his second four-year term, Nagin said he has been hard at work
fulfilling his election night promise of two months ago to jump-start
the rebuilding effort.
Though that task is far from complete, with the most devastated areas
showing few signs of life and even the most resilient neighborhoods
still dogged by crime, debris and shuttered stores, Nagin said his
wounded city is becoming safer, cleaner and economically healthier by
the day.
Katrina unemployment checks end
Businesses hope for more workers
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
By Bruce Hamilton
Disaster unemployment assistance has ended for those who lost their
jobs as a result of Hurricane Katrina, prompting back into the work
force many of the 64,000 who were receiving the federal benefit when it
officially ended.
The cutoff was another blow to storm victims in financially dire
straits, but it's good news for the area's labor-strapped economy,
especially in sectors such as the service industry that have endured
continual hiring struggles since the storm.
"I would expect that we would see some of these jobs being filled by
people who are forced to go back to work," said Philip Jeffress, a
consulting economist in Slidell. He said the aid may have caused many
jobs throughout the region to remain unfilled.
Louisiana Department of Labor data show the number of continuing
Katrina unemployment claims declined gradually since its May peak. The
number dropped drastically in the two weeks following June 3, the last
day claims were accepted, from 64,318 to 1,584.
Senate to vote on bill crucial to state
Its drilling royalties plan less generous than House version
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
By Bill Walsh
WASHINGTON -- Louisiana faces a critical hurdle this week in its
decades-long campaign to secure a permanent stake in the billions of
dollars in offshore oil and gas royalties derived from drilling in the
Gulf of Mexico.
The Senate is considering legislation that would open to exploration
8.3 million acres in the eastern Gulf and cut Louisiana and three other
coastal states in for a 37.5 percent share of the royalty payments
private companies would be charged. Capitol Hill aides say the bill
could mean $200 million to Louisiana in over the next decade and as much
as $650 million annually after that as the state shares in royalty
payments for the entire Gulf of Mexico.
It's not as generous as a House-passed bill, which promises more than
$9 billion to Louisiana over 10 years, but it's also not as
controversial. A bipartisan coalition backing the Senate bill predicted
it would clear a key procedural obstacle today and win final passage
Friday or Monday, at which point House and Senate negotiators will meet
to hash out a compromise.
DEQ says landfill closure will slow recovery
By Bruce Eggler Staff writer
The state Department of Environmental Quality has promised to abide
by whatever decision local officials make about the future of the
controversial Chef Menteur Highway landfill in eastern New Orleans. But
in a strongly worded letter to Mayor Ray Nagin and City Council
President Oliver Thomas, a high DEQ official warned that closing the
landfill will significantly slow the city’s recovery from Hurricane
Katrina and could cost the city significant amounts of money.
Meanwhile, local opponents of the landfill say two recently issued
scientific reports support their position that it is environmentally
unsafe because it includes hazardous household and other wastes as well
as inert construction and demolition debris. DEQ disagrees with that
claim.
The landfill is next to the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge
and not far from some residential areas, such as the heavily
Vietnamese-American community of Village de l’Est.
Unemployment climbing in N.O.
Metrowide rate hits 7.2% as storm still taking toll on jobs
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
By Ronette King
While unemployment fell statewide last month, The jobless rate in the
New Orleans area rose to 7.2 percent, up from 6.4 percent in May,
according to figures released Tuesday by the state Department of Labor.
Last month's unemployment rate is higher than the 6.1 percent level
of a year ago. The rate has climbed two months in a row as the number of
people seeking work has risen faster than the number of jobs, which has
also increased.
The number of jobs was up 7,457 from May for a total of 411,955, but
it was still down from 595,755 in June of last year.
The decline in jobs from last year signals that the metro area hasn't
rebounded from Hurricane Katrina, the Labor Department said. The New
Orleans area includes Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St.
Charles, St. John the Baptist and St. Tammany parishes.
Law
bans dropping coverage Battle with Allstate may go to court
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
By Rebecca Mowbray
Allstate's efforts to drop wind and hail coverage for existing
homeowners policies in coastal areas violates Louisiana's most important
consumer protection statute on property insurance, Louisiana Insurance
Commissioner Jim Donelon said, adding that the efforts are likely to end
up in court.
On Friday, Donelon said Allstate planned to drop hurricane coverage
for 30,000 of its 140,000 customers in 18 coastal parishes.
"It's totally opposite of what the reading of the statute says, and
what the practice of the industry has been statewide since that statute
was enacted in 1992," Donelon said. "They are gutting the homeowners
protection policy and taking the majority of coverage away."
State protests FEMA cash cut
'People will suffer' from antifraud rules
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
By Bill Walsh
WASHINGTON -- Louisiana lawmakers and state disaster officials
expressed outrage Monday at new FEMA antifraud policies that would cut
the level of emergency financial assistance for hurricane victims and
force states to pick up 25 percent of the tab.
Federal Emergency Management Agency Director David Paulison said the
get-tough approach this hurricane season, including ID verification and
stricter limits on benefits, is meant to keep a rein on taxpayer money
after reports of rampant fraud and abuse in the aftermath of Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita.
The most visible change is the reduction in "expedited assistance"
for postdisaster emergency expenses, which will be cut from $2,000 to
$500 per household. State governments also will feel the pinch. The
federal government paid all of the $1.5 billion in expedited assistance
last year for Louisiana. This year, Louisiana will be on the hook for a
quarter of the costs.
Air service to N.O. hasn’t taken off
By Jaquetta White Business writer
When the American Library Association brought its annual conference
to New Orleans last month, tourism officials praised the return of the
city’s convention business. But while the 18,000-person conference was
largely regarded as a success, the event also exposed the limits of the
city’s post-Hurricane Katrina air service.
One attendee had to drive to the conference from Houston after her
flight from San Antonio was delayed, causing her to miss a connecting
flight to New Orleans. There wasn’t another available seat for two days.
And some conference sessions were canceled when speakers couldn’t get
flights into the city.
The challenges illustrate the difficulty in getting the tourism
industry up and running while there are only two-thirds the number of
flights and about half the number of seats there were before the storm.
Inmates in training program do work on judge's house
Program is to teach construction skills
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
By Leslie Williams
Two Orleans Parish Prison inmates participating in a
government-financed program to learn construction skills were put to
work Monday and Tuesday at the Octavia Street home of 1st City Court
Judge Angelique Reed.
The assignment, though, didn't come directly from the Opportunities
Industrialization Center of Greater New Orleans Inc., which operates the
training program, the head of the nonprofit said.
Philip Baptiste, the center's executive director, said he "loaned"
the workers to the judge's uncle, David Reed, an OIC contractor who owns
a private company overseeing construction of an addition to his niece's
home. But Baptiste said he did not know Reed intended to dispatch the
inmates to the judge's home. It's "improper involvement," Baptiste said
after he was asked about the inmates who, under the supervision of a
criminal sheriff's deputy, were seen standing next to Reed's pool
Tuesday morning.
Insurers told to extend deadline
Policyholders deserve 2 years, regulator says
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
By Rebecca Mowbray
BATON ROUGE -- Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon ordered
property insurance providers Tuesday to give homeowners and business
owners two years to file lawsuits against them.
If insurers don't grant the extension by Aug. 1, Donelon said, he
will use all means necessary as the state's chief insurance regulator to
force them to do it, including possible fines and revocation of the
insurance companies' certificates of authority to operate in Louisiana.
The action comes a month after Donelon asked the companies to extend the
deadlines voluntarily. Only a few companies did so.
Insurance companies had little time to react to the afternoon
announcement.
HUD approves $4.2 billion for Louisiana's rebuilding
program
7/11/2006, 5:40 p.m. CT
By BRETT MARTEL The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The federal government will pay $4.2 billion into
a program to help Louisiana residents rebuild or sell houses severely
damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, officials said Tuesday.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development also announced it
would provide $1 billion for hurricane-related housing needs in
Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Florida, and called on those states to
apply for the additional money.
Louisiana's $4.2 billion will be added to federal allocations the
state had already received to fully fund its more-than-$9 billion "Road
Home" program for hurricane recovery.
The money "seals the deal for Louisiana," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said
after HUD deputy Secretary Roy A. Bernardi presented her with a large
mock, light-blue check. "For the first time we can guarantee that we
have all the funding we need ... . We will bring back our communities
devastated by both Katrina and Rita — two pretty vicious hurricanes."
BUYERS' & SELLERS' MARKET
Undamaged homes are fetching record prices, but even houses that did
flood are selling better than some expected. Sunday, July 09, 2006
By Greg Thomas
The average sales price of undamaged homes in Orleans Parish has
soared higher than storm surge in the eight months since Katrina, while
flooded homes are discounted to about half the average prices of a year
ago.
Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes appear to be more stable markets,
with post-storm prices having jumped about 11.5 percent over prestorm
values. For St. Tammany, that's a slight quickening of the market above
the 9.2 percent increase noted in 2004 prices, while in Jefferson, the
rate of increase has been level for the past two years.
The run-up in Orleans Parish prices for undamaged homes is the most
startling number in a metrowide report on real estate sales prepared by
Wade Ragas, the founder of Real Properties Associates and a retired
finance professor who has studied the local market for 25 years.
For
some New Orleanians, the pace of recovery is too slow, the threat of
another hurricane is too scary, the future is too uncertain. They're getting out.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
By Mark Waller
Their house was emptied of everything but the echoes, the backyard
shed swept clean and the van and rental truck loaded for a long drive.
Sarah Miller and her family were ready to leave behind the hurricane
aftermath and the specter of future storms to start a new life safely
inland in Oxford, Miss.
Only one task remained before they hit the highway. They drove to a
store to buy a small statue of St. Joseph, then to a church to get it
blessed by a priest, then returned to bury it in the front yard,
headfirst and facing the street, in keeping with the old tradition that
says the saint helps people sell houses.
"Some people say it works," said Miller, 57, who prayed over the
patch of upturned soil as her husband, Mark Loftin, 55, stood by with a
shovel. "You've got to cover all your angles."
FBI investigating donated cars
FBI starts probe of donated autos
Friday, July 07, 2006
By Gordon Russell
When carmaker DaimlerChrysler AG donated 40 trucks and sport utility
vehicles to Katrina-crushed governments in southeastern Louisiana last
September, company officials never imagined some of them would wind up
in the hands of private nonprofits.
In fact, the company said Thursday that it made clear to the cities
and parishes that received the gifts -- collectively valued at more than
$1 million -- that they were for the exclusive use of public agencies or
government units, such as police and fire departments. Dave Elshoff, a
DaimlerChrysler spokesman, said those instructions were delivered, both
verbally and in writing, to then New Orleans City Councilwoman Renee
Gill Pratt, who signed for 20 of the cars when they were delivered to
Baton Rouge.
Yet eight months later, Gill Pratt would arrange for the donation of
four cars to two nonprofits to which she has close ties -- donations
that on Thursday, four days after they were disclosed, led City Council
members to call for the cars to be returned to the city and the local
head of the FBI to announce a criminal probe of the matter.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 6, 2006
Filed at 9:27 p.m. ET
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Even before Hurricane Katrina hit, the city's
public housing projects were sinkholes of crime and despair.
Federal housing officials now plan to tear down four flooded-out
projects but some residents are suing and staging marches, saying the
plan to demolish their homes is discriminatory.
It will take up to three years before the housing is rebuilt as
mixed-income units, and those being displaced will have to look for
private property rentals with housing vouchers. For some, it evokes the
feelings of abandonment that they had after Katrina hit.
City residents energy bills could be going up
By Pam Radtke Russell Business writer
New Orleans residents could see their electric and gas bills rise
about $45 a month under a plan Entergy New Orleans has filed with the
New Orleans City Council.
The filing is the first time since Hurricane Katrina that Entergy New
Orleans has requested a rate increase to help pay for damage it
sustained in the hurricane and to adjust rates based on its much smaller
customer base.
The City Council has until Nov. 1 to act upon the filing.
City Council President Oliver Thomas said Wednesday that he has not
had time to review the rate increase and couldn’t yet comment on the
filing. Clint Vince, an advisor to the city council on Entergy-related
issues, is also still reviewing the filing, but said he wouldn’t expect
the council to rubber stamp the request.
Public housing advocates protest St. Bernard's closure
Marchers demand HUD reopen units
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
By Kate Moran
Dozens of displaced public housing residents, led by a young activist
with drums affixed to the front of his bike, marched around the
perimeter of the St. Bernard complex Tuesday to demand that the federal
government help low-income residents return to their former
neighborhoods.
The rally brought dislocated residents together with protesters from
the Common Ground collective, most of them young, white and bedecked
with piercings, shaggy facial hair and other trappings of
counterculture. For the Fourth of July, they staged an event that
blended biblical allusions with democratic traditions of civil
disobedience.
Summer tourism fears are borne out
City can't break storm's legacy, seasonal drop-off
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
By Jaquetta White
As the Essence Music Festival hit the stage last weekend -- not in
New Orleans, its traditional home, but in temporary, post-Katrina digs
in Houston -- the absent spending power of the event's thousands of
attendees was clear to local restaurants, hotels and retail shops.
"What we're obviously missing right now is the Fourth of July buzz,"
said Glenda McKinley English, president and creative director of G.Mc +
Company Advertising Inc., which handles multicultural tourism accounts
for the city and state. "It's a void in our community."
Temporary displacement of the festival, the summer's biggest musical
attraction, and the cancellation of other events already have industry
analysts comparing summer 2006 to those of the dismal summer of 1985,
when just half of the city's hotel rooms were filled.
Street-level flooding is more likely
Closing gates for tropical storm would be culprit
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
By Mark Waller
Heavy rain from a tropical storm could fill more streets with water
this year than residents were used to seeing before Hurricane Katrina,
according to new government projections.
The Army Corps of Engineers has drawn up maps showing parts of
Gentilly, Lakeview and Uptown that can expect rainwater accumulation
this hurricane season even if they did not typically flood in previous
tropical storms. Closing the floodgates under construction at the 17th
Street, London Avenue and Orleans Avenue canals in advance of a tropical
system is what would trigger the extra flooding from rain.
However, the likelihood of closing the gates is slim: Corps officials
have estimated they would have closed them only three times in the past
45 years, based on a historical analysis of weather data. And the gates
would not be closed for rain events unrelated to storms that bring a
surge -- meaning even a record rainfall such as the one the New Orleans
area received on May 8, 1995, would not trigger gate closures.
Canal Street facelift resuming
New sidewalks, lights aim to revive strip
Monday, July 03, 2006
By Bruce Eggler
Hurricane Katrina didn't change the minds of New Orleans Mayor Ray
Nagin and the Downtown Development District about the importance of
upgrading the appearance of the Canal Street business district.
The $12.9 million Canal Street Improvement Project, which started in
early 2005 and was interrupted by Katrina, once again is moving ahead.
Installation of new sidewalks and other work will begin today in the
blocks on the downriver side of Canal between Decatur and Burgundy
streets.
This is the third of seven zones into which officials have divided
the project.
Work on the neutral ground between the Mississippi River and
Claiborne Avenue was completed before the hurricane, and construction on
the downriver blocks between the river and Decatur is just about wrapped
up, officials said.
BELL'S ABOUT TO RING
Monday, July 03, 2006
By Steve Ritea
Some say it's like trying to repair a car going 60 miles an hour. And
adding to the problem, you're almost out of gas.
No one ever thought fixing New Orleans' public schools would be easy.
But now, after decades of half-baked reform efforts that have failed
generations of students, the city's schools might finally have a shot at
real, substantive change for the better. In any event, Louisiana's grand
experiment in public education is unlike anything the nation has ever
seen.
Since November's state takeover, 25 campuses have managed to open,
serving 12,500 students. About 30 more schools are preparing to open
later this summer for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, expanding
the city's total public school capacity to 34,000, although closer to
22,000 are expected.
Trailers take turn from a blessing to a curse
FEMA slow to retrieve temporary housing
Monday, July 03, 2006
By Kate Moran
Her government-issue trailer might be white, but that does not mean
Jenelle Jordan wants it anywhere in the background of her daughter's
wedding photographs.
The Kenner resident hasn't needed the temporary housing since April,
when she moved back into her home and started asking the Federal
Emergency Management Agency to remove the trailer from her front yard.
It crowds the driveway, and it will make an unwelcome backdrop when
limousines pull up to the house for the summer nuptials.
But Jordan has found that getting a trailer hauled away is no easier
than having one delivered. She has tried the FEMA hotline, but her calls
were bounced from the agency to its private contractors and back again.
She is frustrated that her trailer sits idle while other families are
still desperate for theirs to arrive.
Ex-official Renee Gill Pratt steers cash to nonprofits
Jefferson family part of tangled dealings
Sunday, July 02, 2006
By Gordon Russell
As one of her last official acts as the City Council member for
District B, Renee Gill Pratt steered a $16,071 city grant from a council
discretionary fund to a little-known Central City nonprofit agency
called Orleans Metropolitan Housing.
Gill Pratt didn't mention her long history of showering millions in
taxpayer money on the group -- or her ties to its president, Mose
Jefferson, with whom she has had a long personal relationship. In an
interview, Gill Pratt described Mose Jefferson -- the brother of
embattled U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, Gill Pratt's political mentor and
former boss -- as a friend.
As it turns out, the 11th-hour grant to the housing nonprofit was
just one of several deals Gill Pratt made from which she or someone
close to her benefited personally.
Federal government to continue full payment of debris
cleanup for four metro area parishes until Dec. 31
The federal government will continue to fully pay for hurricane cleanup
in New Orleans, and St. Bernard, St. Tammany and Plaquemines parishes
until the end of the year, the White House announced this afternoon.
The move, approved by President Bush and that also included
Washington Parish, gives cash strapped governments in some of the five
hardest hit parishes a reprieve from having to pick up 10 percent of the
cleanup costs, a requirement that was to kick in Saturday.
But the order leaves out Jefferson Parish and other communities in
Louisiana still cleaning up damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
In a press release, the White House said Bush on Thursday authorized
the federal government to continue paying for the full cost of eligible
cleaning up work.
Power outage an omen, official says
Entergy's system in disarray and struggling, post-Katrina
Thursday, June 29, 2006
By Pam Radtke Russell
Late Tuesday afternoon, as temperatures climbed to 95 degrees, power
surged and then ebbed at homes in Gentilly and around Esplanade Avenue.
And then finally, about 4 p.m., it went out.
For more than four hours, 7,000 to 10,000 customers sweated it out on
their stoops as Entergy worked to restore power after shutting it off
for safety reasons.
The outage, and others in recent weeks, underscore the system's
fragility after Hurricane Katrina, officials said. Repairs made after
the storm to get power restored are considered temporary. The system no
longer has back-up redundancy, and won't until millions of dollars are
spent to repair the system, officials said.
This is the transcript from Anderson Cooper's 06/26/06
AC360 show.
It speaks to the sentiments of a lot of us regarding the city, the
inactivity, the crime, and the frustration:
It is June 26, 26 days into Mayor Ray Nagin's plan for rebuilding New
Orleans. Coming up, he won a second chance to steer his city into better
times, but what has really changed since he launched this 100- day plan?
We're "Keeping Them Honest" tonight.
Plus, another reality check on the streets of New Orleans -- a wave
of murders has some people in the Big Easy heading to the nearest gun
store -- next on this special edition of 360, live from New Orleans.
Lengthy drought takes toll on local earthen levees
Officials monitoring cracks, loss of grass
Monday, June 26, 2006 By Sheila Grissett
Darryl Ward routinely walks the levee along the edge of Lake
Pontchartrain in Bucktown, using the solitude to pray.
But when Ward changed his routine one day this week by veering away
from the water to stroll the levee's gravel crown, his sacred reverie
was shattered by what he found: a series of holes and horizontal cracks
scattered along the surface of the big dirt levee east of Cherokee
Avenue.
"At first I thought someone was testing something, but as I kept
walking, I saw more and more of them," Ward said. "Some of the cracks
were 15 to 20 feet long, and they looked pretty deep. It got me worried,
and I said to myself, 'I don't need Metairie to flood again. Someone
needs to see this.' "
Officials with the East Jefferson Levee District said the cracks,
which they said they're already monitoring, are the result of the
drought conditions that are baking the region and everything in it.
Troubled New Orleans criminal justice system struggles to
rebound
04:30 PM CDT on Saturday, June 24, 2006
By SHARON COHEN AP National Writer
NEW ORLEANS — Their faces glisten with sweat, their red-rimmed eyes
stare ahead vacantly as they're herded into the sweltering room where
another day of court is about to begin.
"Sorry you have to sit on the floor," Commissioner Marie Bookman says
to about 50 men and women in leg shackles before she calls her first
case in the bond hearing.
It's a spring morning in the New Orleans court system's long road
back from Hurricane Katrina.
This session of magistrate court is temporarily being held in a
police lineup room furnished with plastic tables. Flies buzz about. Two
giant fans offer no relief.
Most of the men here have been arrested on drug charges; most of the
women have been accused of prostitution. Few can afford lawyers.
Big Easy's big struggle
Katrina closed key small shops
By Keith O'Brien, Globe Correspondent | June 11, 2006
Third in a series of occasional articles on post-Katrina New Orleans.
NEW ORLEANS -- The two cousins were as close as sisters. Their
families followed each other from Saigon, Vietnam, to New York to
Lancaster, Pa., and then south to New Orleans.
There, near a bend in the Mississippi River, Vy Banh and Carolyn
Takacs-Snell grew up, watching their parents sell steaming bowls of pho,
a brothy Vietnamese soup, at the family's restaurant, the Pho Tau Bay,
which opened in 1982.
Over the years, one restaurant became four. A fifth was due to open
early in September 2005 in downtown New Orleans. It was exactly what her
family had hoped for when they fled Vietnam in 1975 , Banh said.
Editorial The New Orleans Muddle
Published: June 21, 2006
It has been almost 10 months since Hurricane Katrina battered the
Gulf Coast, and there is still no redevelopment plan for New Orleans.
Congress has passed the emergency relief bill, and President Bush has
signed it into law. Billions of dollars are headed the city's way.
Leaders in New Orleans and in the state capital of Baton Rouge will have
only one chance to get it right. There are no more excuses for local
officials, no more pointing toward Washington. It is time for
southeastern Louisiana to rebuild itself.
Yet Adam Nossiter reported this week in The Times that it will be six
months before a "master planning document" answers the questions
foremost in the minds of residents, like which neighborhoods will
return, where rebuilding will be encouraged and where returning
residents will have to make do without city services. That is totally
unacceptable.
HUD raising amount of Gulf Coast Section 8 vouchers to
help with rising housing costs
By Gwen Filosa Staff writer
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will
dramatically increase its rental assistance in response to the
post-hurricane spike in rents across the Gulf Coast that have left
thousands of families without a place to live, officials said Wednesday.
At a morning meeting of the Housing Authority of New Orleans, HUD
officials said that as of July 1, Section 8 housing vouchers will jump
to 120 percent of the post-hurricane “fair market rent” formulas, an
unprecedented move for the federal agency that has overseen the city’s
housing authority since 2002.
While the government-set fair market rate for a one-bedroom unit in
the metro area is $803, the beefed up Section 8 voucher will net
recipients $964 per monthly payment. Landlords who deliver Section 8
housing receive the payment electronically to their bank accounts on the
first business day of the month.
The post-Katrina vouchers range from $870 for a one-bedroom unit,
$1,128 for a two-bedroom, $1,447 for a three-bedroom, $1,496 for a
four-bedroom, and up to $2,275 for a seven-bedroom unit.
Officials unveil evacuation plan
Tourists included in crisis readiness
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
By Frank Donze Staff writer
New Orleanians and visitors without transportation who are ordered to
evacuate in advance of a hurricane will be able to gather at a dozen
sites across the city that will be used to move them out of town,
emergency preparedness officials said Monday. Advertisement
But where evacuees ultimately wind up remains unclear three weeks
into the new storm season.
The 12 pick-up locations were submitted to the Ground Transportation
Committee of the City Council, whose responsibilities include oversight
of the city's hurricane evacuation procedures.
The sites are divided into two categories: one for senior citizens
and residents with special needs and another for the general population.
Tow trucks begin hauling flooded cars off streets
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
By James Varney Staff writer
With the whir and clank of heavy machinery, Louisiana officials began
dragging hurricane-wrecked cars out of New Orleans on Monday and toward
a more permanent graveyard.
The program's launch comes on the heels of months of contractual
wrangling, curious decisions and legislative hearings, but marked a
welcome development in the state and city's efforts to scrub the
landscape free of reminders of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Under a contract let by the Department of Environmental Quality, an
Alabama firm with an armada of Louisiana tow trucks will haul an
estimated 100,000 vehicles and 50,000 boats off public land across
southern Louisiana and into staging areas, pending their ultimate
crushing, authorities said. That process is expected to be completed by
Aug. 30, DEQ Assistant Secretary Chuck Brown said.
New Orleans leaders ask for National Guard
6/19/2006, 11:12 a.m. CT
By CAIN BURDEAU The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mayor Ray Nagin asked the governor on Monday to
deploy up to 300 National Guard troops and 60 state police officers to
patrol the city following a violent weekend in which five people were
shot to death.
City leaders convened a special meeting to voice outrage that five
teenagers were killed Saturday in an area near the central business
district.
"If we don't have wind knocking us down, we have shooters knocking us
down, and that's unacceptable," said City Council President Oliver
Thomas.
The slayings — plus a fatal stabbing Sunday night in an argument
about beer — brought this year's murder toll to 53, raising fears that
violence was back on the rise in a city plagued by violent crime before
Hurricane Katrina drove residents away last year.
June
18, 2006 In New Orleans, Money Is Ready but a Plan Isn't
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, June 17 — Billions of federal dollars are about to start
flowing into this city after President Bush on Thursday signed the
emergency relief bill the region has long awaited. But, with the
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, local officials have yet
to come up with a redevelopment plan showing what kind of city will
emerge from the storm's ruins.
No neighborhoods have been ruled out for rebuilding, no matter how
damaged or dangerous. No decisions have been made on what kind of
housing, if any, will replace the mold-ridden empty hulks that stretch
endlessly in many areas. No one really knows exactly how the $10.4
billion in federal housing aid will be spent, and guidance for residents
in vulnerable areas has been minimal.
A month into his second term, Mayor C. Ray Nagin has said little
about his vision for a profoundly different city. In an interview on
Friday, he said it would be six months before a "master planning
document" was issued to address questions like which areas should be
rebuilt, although he suggested that thousands of residents were making
that decision on their own.
Public housing activists take anger to St. Charles Avenue
neighborhood
07:24 AM CDT on Sunday, June 18, 2006
WWLTV.com
A few dozen public housing residents and supporters marched on one of
New Orleans’ wealthiest neighborhoods Saturday in protest over plans to
knock down much of the city’s public housing developments.
Alex Brannon / Associated Press
Public housing residents and activists walk the streetcar tracks on
St. Charles Avenue to protest HUD's plan to demolish most public housing
in New Orleans on Saturday June 17, 2006. HUD plans to demolish four
housing developments, some damaged by Hurricane Katrina, to make way for
mixed income housing.
Mayor on the road with rebuild message
ALSO: Nagin's recovery tour
Saturday, June 17, 2006
By Frank Donze and Gordon Russell Staff writers
Mayor Ray Nagin just can't seem to stop talking about God and
chocolate.
Five months after he offered a fervent mea culpa for a Martin Luther
King Day speech in which he vowed to rebuild New Orleans as a "chocolate
city" and linked Hurricane Katrina to the Almighty's disenchantment with
American war policy in Iraq and black-on-black violence in American
cities, Nagin struck some similar themes this week, this time in
Chicago.
Talking on Tuesday to the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Rev. Jesse
Jackson's organization, Nagin suggested that Hurricane Katrina was a
divine effort to reorder the city's social landscape, according to an
account in the Chicago Tribune
HUD demolition plan protested
Residents say they're being shut out of city
Friday, June 16, 2006
By Gwen Filosa Staff writer
Dozens of public housing residents Thursday protested the federal
government's plan to demolish four complexes in New Orleans, saying they
are left without homes in a city where rentals are nearly impossible to
find. Advertisement
One day after U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso
Jackson announced that New Orleans would lose housing complexes but gain
a "renaissance" of better low-income housing, some of the families who
called St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper home cried foul
at a City Council hearing.
"By tearing down developments you're not giving me the choice to come
back home to New Orleans, where I was forced to leave," said Cherlynn
Gaynor, 42, who grew up in the Lafitte complex and was raising her 11
year-old daughter there before the levee failures during Katrina drowned
the city. "I pay taxes and I work. Why would you shut us out from where
our culture is?"
DOWN, BUT NOT OUT
Determined homeowners are leading the recovery in parts of parts of
eastern New Orleans
Friday, June 16, 2006
By Leslie Williams Staff writer
In about two weeks, Mtumishi St. Julien, an eastern New Orleans
resident ousted from the city by Hurricane Katrina, will resettle into
his two-story home in the Lake Bullard subdivision. He won't be
returning to the wasteland some predicted the heavily flooded area east
of the Industrial Canal would become.
The jack-o'-lantern effect of one or two isolated homes lit up on
some desolate streets is neither his reality nor that of many of the
thousands of people and businesses repopulating eastern New Orleans more
than nine months after lingering floodwaters and hurricane-force winds
wrecked their neighborhoods.
Eight months since Katrina, driest in more than a
century
By Michelle Hunter East Jefferson bureau
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew through the greater New
Orleans area, dumping nearly 1 ½ feet of rainwater, many prayed for
drier days to make work easier for rescuers and allow their submerged
city a chance to dry out.
“Be careful what you wish for,” said State Climatologist Barry Keim.
In a ironic twist after most of New Orleans sat submerged in water
for weeks, the eight months since Oct. 1 have been the driest south
Louisiana has seen in the 111 years that the state has kept rainfall
records, he said. Since October, most locales in the southern half of
the state have averaged just 21 inches of rain, down from the usual
40-inch average, Keim said.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development announced Wednesday that it will reopen 1,000 additional New
Orleans public housing units this summer and increase the amount it pays
for rental assistance to help bring the city's poor people back.
The plan - the first announced since Hurricane Katrina destroyed much
of the available public housing 10 months ago - calls for demolition of
the city's largest public housing development, St. Bernard, and three
others.
Those developments will be rebuilt into a combination of public
housing, rental housing and single-family homes, HUD Secretary Alphonso
Jackson said in a statement.
Units in the least-damaged and newest developments will be repaired.
Problems smoldering for N.O. Fire Department
By Michael Perlstein Staff writer
If New Orleans firefighters had half a moment to ponder their
problems, they’d probably spontaneously combust: flooded and ruined
equipment, 50 percent of their stations out of commission, a nearly 10
percent drop in personnel, drought-like conditions, anemic water
pressure and a long, hot hurricane season staring them in the face.
Distracting these firefighters from their litany of woes is,
ironically, fire. A seemingly unending rash of calls has kept the
department scrambling day and night, stretching already taxed resources
but somehow boosting the squad’s sense of purpose, District Capt. Norman
Woodridge said.
“There’s a tremendous amount of stress in dealing with all this, but
it’s your job. When duty calls, you go and perform your task. That’s
what firefighters do,” Woodridge said.
June
13, 2006 Police Struggles in New Orleans Raise Old Fears
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
NEW ORLEANS, June 9 — Within the Police Department here, the SWAT
team is known as The Final Option. Before Hurricane Katrina, it was
assigned to the city's worst crimes, and as residents return, it is once
again kicking in the doors at the worst drug dens and engaging in
shootouts with violent offenders.
But the team is also running dangerously low on firepower. Flooding
ruined 300 of its guns, its bullet-resistant shields and the bulk of its
ammunition, none of which have been replaced more than nine months after
the hurricane. The 40-man team has had to borrow body armor from
suburban forces, and the Police Department is lining up corporate
sponsors to contribute more.
"I tell you what: we're hurting," said the team's commander, Capt.
Jeffrey Winn.
Momentum grows for Nov. 7 vote on assessors
Advocate of delay changes his mind
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Bruce Eggler Staff writer
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, key state legislators and leaders of
Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans and the Business Council of New
Orleans all have agreed to support Nov. 7 as the date for voters to
decide the fate of a constitutional amendment that would cut the number
of Orleans Parish assessors from seven to one, Nagin said Monday.
The House is expected to consider the issue today.
Advocates of consolidation say that having just one assessor would
make assessments fairer and more uniform citywide, while opponents say
it would make the assessor's office more remote from the people.
At the urging of Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, the House Ways
and Means Committee voted last week to delay a statewide vote on the
proposed amendment until October 2008. But Richmond said Monday that he
now supports having the election this fall.
To stay or go? More people deciding
Activity is replacing paralysis, report says
Thursday, June 08, 2006
By Coleman Warner Staff writer
New Orleans homes for sale have reached a new peak and the city is
reporting an escalating number of residential building permits, two
seemingly conflicting facts that combined suggest homeowners are
accelerating their decisions on whether to rebuild or get rid of their
Katrina-flooded homes, the Brookings Institution said Wednesday.
Advertisement
In releasing its latest Katrina Index report, the Washington
nonprofit research organization gave a sobering interpretation of the
home-sales figure: "This may signal the decision made by families to
leave Orleans Parish." But a measure of hope can be gleaned from both
home sales and building permits, according to the group's deputy
director, Amy Liu. Together they signal a turn away from paralysis, and
sales could improve the rate at which homes are cleaned up and put back
into use, she said.
Millions of gallons of water seeping away
Fissures in pipes traced to Katrina
Thursday, June 08, 2006
By Michelle Krupa Staff writer
About 85 million gallons of drinking water -- more than two-thirds of
the total pumped into the pipes -- are leaking into the ground every day
through breaks in New Orleans' hurricane-fractured water system, even
after crews this week plugged a 15 million-gallon-per-day crack using a
process that cut water pressure, in some cases to a dribble, from Uptown
to Gentilly.
Even with that fix, the city continues to waste nearly twice the 50
million gallons per day that residents are paying to use, Sewerage &
Water Board Executive Director Marcia St. Martin said. Given the
difficulty of locating underground leaks, especially with so few
residents around to report them in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, St.
Martin said much work still must be done.
Levee districts overhaul under fire
Lawmakers trying to scale back changes
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
By Robert Travis Scott Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Landmark legislation passed in February to consolidate
authority over the New Orleans area's fragmented levee districts came
under surprise attack Tuesday by opponents of the initiative.
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Amendments placed on unrelated bills in the House and Senate would
peel back some provisions in the levee board overhaul championed by the
governor and Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi, setting the stage for a
reprise of the emotional confrontation that characterized the issue four
months ago.
Supporters of Boasso's plan, which would be implemented Jan. 1 if
voters statewide approve the measure in a Sept. 30 referendum, are
calling on Gov. Kathleen Blanco to stop lawmakers in the current
legislative session from chipping away at its provisions.
Census tallies Katrina changes
But the changing New Orleans area is a moving target
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
By Coleman Warner Staff writer
In a sweeping collection of demographic information showing how Gulf
Coast communities were reshaped by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the U.S.
Census Bureau will release data today showing that the storm's impact
left the New Orleans area somewhat older, whiter and more affluent, even
as more people temporarily found themselves in food stamp lines.
New population estimates for July 1, 2005, and Jan. 1, 2006, offering
pre- and post-Katrina benchmarks, give heft to the notion that, while
there was widespread devastation along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the
storm's human toll was concentrated in the New Orleans area.
Population losses in the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard
and Plaquemines in the months after Katrina totaled 385,439, roughly
nine times the combined losses for Mississippi counties hit hard by the
storm.
Most in N.O. uncertain of future
UNO researchers poll New Orleanians
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
By John Pope Staff writer
In the months since Hurricane Katrina turned every aspect of life
upside down, New Orleanians are worrying more and sleeping less, and
complaining about the difficulty of getting things done, especially mail
delivery and home repairs, according to a University of New Orleans
survey released Monday.
"We don't expect this to be positive, because we've just endured the
worst disaster in American history," UNO political scientist Susan
Howell said at a news conference.
The findings, based on 470 telephone interviews in March and April,
bore out her statement.
Pollsters found that slightly more than two-thirds of the New
Orleanians interviewed said they are worried about what may happen in
the next five years, and that nearly 40 percent are sleeping worse than
they did before Katrina pummeled their city. In the week before they
were questioned, at least 20 percent of the interviewees said that they
had felt tired, irritable and sad; that everything was an effort; and
that they had a hard time concentrating.
June
6, 2006 Clamoring to Come Home to New Orleans Projects
By SUSAN SAULNY
NEW ORLEANS, June 5 — Hundreds of displaced residents of public
housing have for several days been returning here for the first time
since Hurricane Katrina.
They are armed with little more than cleaning supplies and
frustration, in an effort to force the city to reopen their
storm-damaged apartments.
The city, saying the projects are not ready, has refused.
Outside the largest complex, the St. Bernard Housing Development in
the Seventh Ward, tenant groups have organized evacuees into a tent city
called Survivors Village. At the C. J. Peete Development in Central
City, older residents, mostly women, broke into their old apartments and
carted away plastic bags of refuse and ruined furniture.
A Very Late Checkout
New York’s last Katrina evacuees prepare to depart (under duress) from
the JFK Airport Holiday Inn.
By Matthew Philips
(Photo: William Mebane for New York Magazine)
This winter, FEMA put up over 300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in New
York City hotels. Almost all of them have gone back to their lives,
their jobs. But not Theon Johnson. He’s currently sprawled out watching
Halloween 5 on one of the two full-size beds in his room at the JFK
Airport Holiday Inn. He is one of four evacuees still living in a hotel
in the city.
The others left in February and March, when, after spending more than
$500 million, FEMA stopped paying for hotel rooms housing some 40,000
evacuees across the country. That left many scrambling for places to
live. But thanks to the city’s squatters-rights law, evacuees here were
safe. Their rooms weren’t paid for, but since they’d been in them for
more than 30 days, the hotels couldn’t just kick them out. Only a
judge’s order could evict them.
Insurance sought outside flood plain
Inexpensive move brings peace of mind
Monday, June 05, 2006
By Meghan Gordon
West Bank bureau
Even though homes in the lowest-risk areas are predicted to flood
less than once in 500 years, Hurricane Katrina's images of roofs peaking
above waves have scared homeowners into putting money on the odds that
the same could happen to them.
New Orleans area insurance agents said that no matter how high a
property's ground elevation, clients outside the flood plain have
flocked to them like never before with requests for flood policy quotes.
And unlike the near-impossibility of securing homeowners insurance in
the region, federally subsidized flood insurance policies are easily
obtained as long as the home meets the current elevation standard and
wasn't substantially damaged by Katrina, agents said.
"I've never sold so much flood insurance in my life," said Chris
Paulin of Independent Insurance Underwriters in Metairie.
East of the Harvey Canal, people are rattled by slow
progress in plugging its gaps
Monday, June 05, 2006
By Meghan Gordon
West Bank bureau
A symbol of New Orleans' inadequate hurricane protection, the 17th
Street Canal stays bathed in light while crews work around the clock to
close the drainage outlet before the next storm surge fills Lake
Pontchartrain. Advertisement
Across the Mississippi River, another waterway remains just as
vulnerable to a hurricane's monster tide. Yet owners of homes and
businesses east of the Harvey Canal must endure another nerve-wracking
hurricane season before the precarious hole in the West Bank's federal
levee system is plugged.
"The path of least resistance is right here," Peggy Guthrie said from
her living room on Vulcan Drive in Harvey, a home that unmanned pumps
allowed to soak with 2 feet of Hurricane Katrina's rain. "We're the
sacrificial lamb for Jefferson Parish."
HOMESICK
Public housing residents return to clean out their apartments, and
wonder when they can come home
Sunday, June 04, 2006
By Gwen Filosa Staff writer
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina forced them from New Orleans,
scores of public housing residents returned to New Orleans on Saturday,
ready to clean out their storm-damaged apartments despite continuing
uncertainty over when the Housing Authority of New Orleans will decide
the future of the complexes where they formerly lived.
Several frustrated residents and outraged activists had threatened
this week to cut through the chain-link fence around the sprawling St.
Bernard complex in the 7th Ward to reclaim their homes Saturday. But
that didn't happen.
Instead, the day offered a peaceful demonstration of the residents'
desire to return home, as dozens of them gathered to protest outside the
sealed-off complex.
The scene resembled a block party as residents, student volunteers
and other supporters created a "survivors village" on the St. Bernard
Avenue neutral ground, complete with tents, music and food.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 4, 2006
Filed at 1:16 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- During pre-Katrina visits to New Orleans, Steve
Lyons set aside a few hours for an errand that would probably only occur
to the Weather Channel's hurricane expert. He'd wander through the city
and ask residents whether or not they would evacuate if a hurricane was
on its way.
Last spring, he walked into a fast food restaurant and put the
question to the young woman serving his soda. She stared at him blankly.
''What's a hurricane?'' she replied.
''I still to this day wonder what happened to that girl,'' Lyons
said.
With the memories of Katrina fresh and the Gulf Coast still
rebuilding, Lyons is preparing for the new hurricane season that started
Thursday. The Weather Channel marks that event this week with several
days of hurricane programming.
Katrina cars still not being towed
By James Varney Staff writer
Negotiations on a contract to rid a landscape checkered with cars
wrecked by hurricanes Katrina and Rita continued Thursday, but a firm
date on which towing of the eyesores will commence remains unset,
officials said.
Louisiana’s attempt to drag away the abandoned, dirt-caked vehicles
has been dogged by setback and scandal, but the situation appeared to
clarify 15 days ago when the state picked DRC Inc. of Mobile to handle
the job.
That selection came after the state’s first attempt to award a towing
contract unraveled over questions about the financial wherewithal of an
obscure consortium that bid roughly $62 million. The state’s false
start, in turn, followed an embarrassing chain of events for New Orleans
Mayor Ray Nagin, whose administration first spurned a cash offer from
car crushers to take care of the thousands of flooded cars cluttering
city streets, then backed off a controversial plan to pay a national
engineering firm more than $20 million to tow the cars before joining
the state contracting effort.
June
2, 2006 Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
In a sweeping new study of the causes of the disaster in New Orleans
last year, the Army Corps of Engineers concludes that the levees it
built in the city were an incomplete patchwork of protection, containing
flaws in design and construction and not built to handle a storm
anywhere near the strength of Hurricane Katrina.
"The hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeast
Louisiana was a system in name only," said the draft of the nine-volume
report, released yesterday in New Orleans.
Several outside engineering panels that have been critical of the
corps have come to similar conclusions, and have found a more extensive
chain of flaws in the design, construction and maintenance of the
350-mile levee system.
But the 6,113-page report is remarkable for being a product of the
corps' own official investigation, which brought together 150 experts
from government, academia and business to study what went wrong and how
to build better systems for the future.
The Army Corps of Engineers has
made available the Final Report of the Interagency Performance
Evaluation Taskforce (IPET). The report is provided in nine volumes:
HUD officials try to stave off complex takeover
By Gwen Filosa Staff writer
The nation’s top housing official Thursday pleaded with public
housing residents in New Orleans not to enter the shuttered complexes
this weekend, and promised that help is coming for those forced from
their homes by the Aug. 29 hurricane.
“I would encourage residents really not to break the law,” said
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson, in an
telephone interview. “I do not want to see anyone hurt. Many of those
units are not safe. I don’t want something to happen where people are
exposed to heavy lead or mold.”
Thousands of New Orleans families who lived in the 5,100 occupied
units of public housing before Katrina remain shut out of the city nine
months after the deadly flooding.
June
1, 2006 For Many, Education Is Another Storm Victim
By SHAILA DEWAN BAKER, La. — For hundreds of children at Renaissance
Village, this is their lost year. After fleeing Hurricane Katrina, they
have landed in a vast gravel moonscape of government trailers, lacking
even a playground.
All day they play video games, ride bikes or sit at a picnic table,
watching men play horseshoes. They are not in school.
Of the 560 children who are evacuees and were enrolled in the Baker
school district in mid-September, only 190 were still attending when the
school year ended on May 19.
Part of the decline occurred because some families moved, but as of
April there were still more than 800 children under 18 at Renaissance
Village and the other trailer parks run by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
Child health experts and advocates for evacuees say that Baker, on
the outskirts of Baton Rouge, is not unique. Throughout the areas where
hurricane evacuees ended up, they say, are pockets where education has
fallen by the wayside, raising the possibility that thousands of
children could become permanent dropouts.
May
30, 2006 An Autopsy of Katrina: Four Storms, Not Just One
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Most people believe that a single Category 3 hurricane, Katrina,
devastated New Orleans on Aug. 29 of last year. The flood protection
system for the New Orleans area was designed to protect the city from a
direct hit by a fast-moving Category 3 storm.
Yet Hurricane Katrina, a Category 4 storm that did not strike the
city directly, overwhelmed systems in dozens of places and cost more
than 1,500 lives and billions in property damage.
Why? In part, say experts who studied the disaster, because the
hurricane was more like four storms — at least — that battered the area
in different ways. They say the system in New Orleans was flawed from
the start because the model storm it was designed to stop was
simplistic, and led to an inadequate network of levees, flood walls,
storm gates and pumps.
BOUND TO BUILD
Broadmoor residents band together to bring their neighborhood back from
destruction
Monday, May 29, 2006
By Coleman Warner Staff writer
Broadmoor resident Brian Sennett hadn't paid much attention to his
neighborhood association. The New Orleans firefighter said he and his
wife, Rosalind, a St. Augustine High School financial officer, mostly
left that sort of thing to others. Advertisement
But that was before Katrina, before Sennett used a personal
watercraft to rescue his wife, 16-year-old son and others from the
family's South Dupre Street two-story, its bottom floor awash in 5 feet
of water. And it was before residents of this diverse slice of New
Orleans concluded that the city's official recovery process was useless
if not downright destructive, and that they had to close ranks if they
were to survive.
Evacuate. Leave. Get out. Confused?
Council tries to clarify what it really means
Monday, May 29, 2006
By Bruce Eggler Staff writer
The call for a voluntary evacuation gave way to a "mandatory"
evacuation order on the day before Hurricane Katrina hit the city Aug.
29. And still tens of thousands of New Orleanians, from choice or
necessity, ignored Mayor Ray Nagin's appeals to flee the city.
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With that precedent in mind, and in an effort to reduce confusion,
the city has a new law that tries to define "mandatory evacuation" more
precisely.
But, confusingly, the law adds another term, "forced evacuation," to
the discussion, and debate on the measure revealed that at least one of
the most prominent holdouts last time still has no intention of fleeing
the city, order or no order.
The man who knew too much
LSU scientist Ivor van Heerden long believed it was a matter of when and
not if a hurricane would devastate New Orleans.
He only wishes he had been wrong.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
By Susan Larson Book editor
What haunts Louisiana State University scientist Ivor van Heerden
most is that a disaster in New Orleans was inevitable. He and his
colleagues at the LSU Hurricane Center predicted it. Advertisement
And after it happened, he knows the response could and should have
been better. Planning for the future could be better too. After reading
"The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina -- The
Inside Story From One Louisiana Scientist," readers will know it too.
And not just Louisiana readers.
Levee failure report discussed at town hall
By Sheila Grissett East Jefferson bureau
Forensic scientists investigating failures that transformed Hurricane
Katrina from a nasty storm into a national tragedy — and exposed a local
levee system that they say remains substandard — continued to push
Monday in New Orleans and Baton Rouge for an overhaul of the nation’s
levee-building system.
From the White House and Congress to local government buildings in
storm-ravaged south Louisiana, the Independent Levee Investigation Team
called for a sea change in standards, practices and attitudes that it
says is necessary if levees in New Orleans and elsewhere are to be safe
enough for people to live with.
Katrina report blames human errors
Poor levees, policies cited by investigators
Monday, May 22, 2006
By Sheila Grissett East Jefferson bureau
Hurricane Katrina wouldn't have breached the region's hurricane
protection system had it been properly financed, designed, built and
maintained, say a group of forensic scientists who are calling for
strict new federal levee safety standards and an end to "dysfunctional"
local government interference they say also hampers flood protection.
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"People didn't die here because levees were overtopped," said
Independent Levee Investigation Team leader Ray Seed, a geotechnical
engineer at the University of California-Berkeley. "People died because
mistakes were made and because safety was exchanged for efficiency and
reduced costs.
May 20, 2006 In New Orleans, Suspense but No Drama as Race Ends
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, May 19 — At rallies, in grocery store aisles and at
church pulpits, the two candidates for mayor sought last-minute votes on
Friday, the day before the election, under a blanket of muggy
late-spring heat. But with the city's future on the line, the relaxed
rhythms of New Orleans made an odd contrast to the tensions of the race.
Over the last weeks, voters have been treated to a series of tepid
debates and halfhearted campaign appearances, which, far from defining
the path the battered city should take, have only obscured it.
There are leisurely gaps between campaign events, with the two
candidates, Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, apparently
deciding to forgo traditional stumping. It is also difficult to
accomplish, with so many voters still out of town.
New Orleans Race For Mayor Is Tight
Nagin, Landrieu Push for Today's Vote
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 20, 2006; A02
NEW ORLEANS, May 19 -- Mayor C. Ray Nagin made a final flurry of
appearances in his campaign for reelection here Friday, jumping into
traffic to lobby commuters, visiting senior centers and walking the
aisles of a gourmet grocery, moving within a halo of news photographers.
"How you doing, baby?" he cooed to shoppers at the Whole Foods Market
in Uptown. "I'm doing good, doing good."
Behind in fundraising and behind in major endorsements, and with his
campaign undermined by some of his controversial remarks, Nagin is
nonetheless running well enough that, to the surprise of many here, the
race against Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu is considered too close to call.
Parishes play tug of war over pump
Jeff wants more say over N.O.-owned site
Thursday, May 18, 2006
By Michelle Krupa Staff writer
With less than two weeks to go before hurricane season begins,
officials on both sides of the Orleans-Jefferson parish line appear to
be sparring over control of two huge pump stations, including one that
drains neighborhoods in the city and the suburbs that flooded heavily
during Hurricane Katrina. Advertisement
The main prize is Pump Station No. 6, which straddles the 17th Street
Canal about a mile south of Lake Pontchartrain. The New Orleans Sewerage
& Water Board owns the facility and wields the lion's share of power
over pumps there that drain about 7,500 acres of Broadmoor and Uptown.
But because the station also drains about 2,500 acres of Old Metairie
and Old Jefferson, Jefferson Parish pays for about a quarter of the cost
to operate and maintain it.
Guard leaders adjust storm response
Officials of 12 states coordinate efforts
Thursday, May 18, 2006
By Robert Travis Scott Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- The next Hurricane Katrina will be met with earlier,
quicker deployments of supplies and military units, and maybe not as
much ice. Advertisement
That's the forecast as adjutant generals from 12 states met with Gov.
Kathleen Blanco and state and federal homeland security officials
Wednesday to plan emergency responses designed to deploy National Guard
and, if necessary, federal military units to disaster areas sooner and
with better coordination than after Katrina.
"Our state is prepared for the June 1 hurricane season," Blanco said
during a media briefing on the planning session with about 50
high-ranking officials from the uniformed and civilian arms of the
regional and national response operation.
3 cops disciplined in Katrina inquiries
One had 'no idea' city was evacuated
Thursday, May 18, 2006
From staff reports
Three more New Orleans police officers have been suspended for their
actions related to Hurricane Katrina, bringing to 239 the total number
of officers disciplined for failing to properly carry out their duties
during the crisis, according to civil service records.
The latest suspensions were handed down several months after the
initial wave of disciplinary cases. The cases were delayed because the
officers were out with illness, injury or some other legitimate reason,
said Assistant Chief Marlon Defillo, commander of the Public Integrity
Bureau.
In 2000, when I was writing a 50,000-word Washington Post series
about dysfunction at the Army Corps of Engineers, I highlighted a $65
million flood-control project in Missouri as Exhibit A. Corps documents
showed that the project would drain more acres of wetlands than all U.S.
developers do in a typical year, but wouldn't stop flooding in the town
it was meant to protect. FEMA's director called it "a crazy idea"; the
Fish and Wildlife Service's regional director called it "absolutely
ridiculous."
Six years later, the project hasn't changed -- except for its cost,
which has soared to $112 million. Larry Prather, chief of legislative
management for the Corps, privately described it in a 2002 e-mail as an
"economic dud with huge environmental consequences." Another Corps
official called it "a bad project. Period." But the Corps still wants to
build it.
AP Centerpiece: Post-Katrina real estate booming
5/8/2006, 12:11 p.m. CT
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The 2,200-square-foot house promises three
spacious bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths — a bargain at $175,000.
Except for the fact that the home, located in one of this city's
previously elegant neighborhoods, has been gutted to the studs and has
no drywall, no wallboard, no fixtures.
"Home was flooded by Katrina," reads the advertisement posted by the
listing agent at one of the city's largest real estate firms. "Ready to
turn into your dream home."
The pitch is less far-fetched than it may seem: Although vast swaths
of this hurricane-battered city are still without electricity and basic
services, residential real estate sales are at a fever pitch, a shining
spot in an otherwise struggling economy.
For the first quarter of the year, sales of single-family homes in
the greater New Orleans area zoomed to $826 million, a jump of 60
percent over the first quarter of 2005, when sales totaled $517 million,
according to New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors; 3,829
residential units were sold, 960 more than the same period in 2005.
Campaign becomes vote on character
Nagin, Landrieu share vision for city's recovery
Sunday, May 07, 2006
By Gordon Russell Michelle Krupa and Frank Donze Staff writers
Ask the New Orleans mayoral candidates about their post-Katrina
strategies for rebuilding flood-ravaged neighborhoods, sparking business
development or reforming City Hall, and the answers are remarkably
similar.
But it's another story if the question turns to who has the
credentials to lead the massive recovery effort. To hear incumbent Ray
Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu tell it, only one man is fit to serve.
The Nagin take goes something like this: Landrieu is a tax-loving,
old-school political hack who has promised to begin doling out patronage
contracts to his cronies once billions of dollars in federal aid start
rolling in this year.
Hurricane plan still fuzzy on details
Evacuation shelters, Amtrak use uncertain
Sunday, May 07, 2006
By Mark Schleifstein Staff writer
The mayor of Baton Rouge -- a likely refuge for tens of thousands of
evacuees from New Orleans if a storm hits this season -- was more than a
little irked. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin last week unveiled an
elaborate hurricane plan without so much as a call to his counterpart
upriver. Advertisement
The River Center, Baton Rouge's equivalent of the Superdome, would
not be available for sheltering New Orleanians, Mayor Kip Holden
announced.
More bad vibes emanated from Houston, which is still trying to figure
out how to house -- and police -- Louisianians who fled there after
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The Nagin plan, which pivots on people without vehicles using public
transportation, a first in the city's history, raised another urgent
question: Given how many police officers went AWOL during Katrina, was
it realistic to depend so heavily on bus drivers to get citizens out of
harm's way ahead of a hurricane? Wouldn't they be more inclined to stay
with their families even if that meant defying a mayoral mandate?
Houses no longer on solid ground
Foundations stewed in Katrina floodwater
Sunday, May 07, 2006
By Mark Waller Staff writer
Yet another side effect of Hurricane Katrina has emerged --
underneath people's houses.
Contractors are reporting a backlog of jobs to repair foundations
that took a beating from Katrina. Not just house-raising jobs, a
much-discussed topic in light of the latest advisories for rebuilding,
but repairs to existing cracked and sinking foundations.
When trees went down, their roots often yanked at piers under raised
houses. After water covered the ground for weeks, followed by several
mostly rainless months, soils contracted and shifted. While gutting
flooded houses, homeowners discovered floors that had probably grown
uneven over several years.
"It was never like this," said Greg Abry, who represents the sixth
generation of his family in the New Orleans house shoring business Abry
Brothers Inc. "It's probably more than tripled."
Levee work to protect Lower 9, St. Bernard could endanger
other areas
By Bob Marshall Staff writer
When the Army Corps of Engineers finishes rebuilding the east side of
the Industrial Canal floodwall shattered by Hurricane Katrina to 15 feet
by June 1, residents of the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish will
have the hurricane protection they were supposed to have before the
storm hit.
The completion of that job, however, will have the unintended
consequence of putting the rest of New Orleans in a more dangerous
position than before Katrina, storm experts and engineers said.
That’s because the canal’s west floodwall — which protects most of
the city from the canal waters — will remain only about 12.5 feet above
sea level, the elevation to which it has subsided since being built.
City hikes property tax to pay debt By Bruce Eggler Staff writer
Having postponed the politically unpopular task until after the April
22 primary, the New Orleans City Council voted this week to approve a
package of 2006 property tax millages that includes a sizable increase
in the city’s tax rate to help pay off its debts.
As soon as Mayor Ray Nagin signs the ordinances involved, the city
can begin mailing out the long-delayed 2006 property tax bills.
Not counting millages in special districts such as the Downtown
Development District and neighborhood security districts, the council
approved a total 2006 millage of 112.53 mills, most of which is subject
to the homestead exemption. The figure is 9.8 mills higher than last
year, with the extra money to be used to keep the city from defaulting
on its bond issues.
The total does not include millages levied by the Orleans Parish
School Board and Orleans Levee District, or a small millage for the
criminal sheriff’s office.
Party support for Jefferson waivering
By Bill Walsh and Bruce Alpert Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — Support for New Orleans U.S. Rep. William Jefferson
began to waver within his own party Thursday as the two top Democratic
House leaders called on the ethics committee to launch an investigation
into bribery allegations that exploded again this week in a federal
court.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Maryland Rep.
Steny Hoyer, who runs the party’s whip organization, distanced
themselves from Jefferson the day after a Kentucky businessman pleaded
guilty in federal court to paying more than $450,000 to a company
controlled by Jefferson’s family in exchange for official favors.
Jefferson has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing.
Kentucky business man says he paid $400,000 in bribes to
Jefferson's family
By Bill Walsh Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — Federal authorities ratcheted up their case against Rep.
William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, on Wednesday when a Kentucky
businessman admitted in court to paying more than $400,000 in bribes to
a bogus company controlled by the congressman’s wife and family in
exchange for official favors.
Vernon L. Jackson’s guilty plea is the second in the case since
January, an investigation into what prosecutors describe as Jefferson’s
four-year-long scheme to promote a small technology company in the
United States and in Africa for secret monthly payments and a share of
the company’s stock and profits.
Jefferson has not been charged and said Wednesday he was “surprised
and disappointed” by Jackson’s plea. He again denied ever taking
improper payments for performing his public duties and said in a
statement that “this simple fact will be established in the proper forum
as I am innocent.”
Brinkley drubs Nagin in Katrina account
Sources include his political opponents
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
By Gordon Russell Staff writer
Best-selling Tulane University historian Douglas Brinkley rips
government leaders at all levels for their wan response to Hurricane
Katrina -- with his most acidic prose reserved for Mayor Ray Nagin -- in
an article that will hit New York City newsstands today in the latest
issue of Vanity Fair. Advertisement
Brinkley, who since Katrina has been outspoken in his criticism of
Nagin in frequent appearances on national media outlets -- at one point
calling his handling of the crisis "criminal" -- makes ample use of a
historian's license to analyze and assign blame. He faults the
government response to the killer storm from top to bottom in the
article, which is excerpted from his 700-page book on Katrina to be
released Tuesday.
Panel: Corps shouldn't have claimed Cat 3 protection
By Bill Walsh Washington bureau
WASHINGTON - Statements by the Army Corps of Engineers that the New
Orleans area was protected against the equivalent of a Category 3
hurricane were "at best a rough estimate and at worst, simply
inaccurate," according to a Senate committee's final report on Hurricane
Katrina released Tuesday.
Noting data from the National Weather Service about the severity of
storms, evidence of subsidence that left levees and floodwalls below
authorized levels and gaps created by unfinished projects, the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee concluded that the
system was not capable of protecting against a Category 3 hurricane,
such as Katrina, with winds up to 130 mph and a storm surge as high as
12 feet.
Key figure in Jefferson investigation to plead guilty
By Bruce Alpert Washington bureau
WASHINGTON - The head of a technology company at the center of a
federal investigation into Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, is
expected to plead guilty Wednesday to aiding and abetting the
solicitation of bribes and has agreed to cooperate with the
investigation, according to court documents and sources familiar with
the case.
Vernon Jackson, CEO of Kentucky-based iGate Inc., has signed a
13-page statement of facts in which he says that Jefferson helped get
his telecommunications firm listed with the General Services
Administration so it could get government contracts, one of the sources
said.
The statement also alleges that Jefferson, an eight-term congressman
and a senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, later
demanded payments to a company that included the congressman's wife and
children in return for his help in gaining lucrative Internet and cable
television contracts in Africa.
Nagin's plan relies on buses, train; does not include
shelter-of-last resort
By Mark Schleifstein Staff writer
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled the city's first post-Katrina
hurricane evacuation plan this morning with warnings that he will not
hesitate to issue a mandatory evacuation for Category 2 or higher
storms.
"It is a strong plan to protect the lives and property of new orleans
during hurricanes and other disasters," Nagin said, adding that it
includes the placement of teams of National Guardsmen and police
officers at nearly every street corner to prevent looting and unrest
before and immediately after a storm hits.
The new emergency preparedness plan, a work in progress, will not
include the opening of the Superdome as a refuge of last resort.
Steel Frame Housing on the Rise
A fledgling industry is hoping that steel framing and durability turn
into insurance discounts as Louisiana rebuilds
Sunday, April 30, 2006
By Greg Thomas Real estate writer
Steel-framed homes are touted for their speed of construction, their
ability to withstand high winds, and their resistance to termites and
fire. Advertisement
And if the industry has its way, another advantage will be attributed
to the homes: lower insurance premiums . . . and a big slice of a new
market along the Gulf Coast.
The steel-framed housing industry is lobbying Louisiana insurance
regulators to give the homes they build a break on insurance premiums.
The issue was first brought up by two builders at a meeting of
Louisiana's Insurance Rating Commission nearly two weeks ago.
Official: Grants aren't lagniappe
Road Home to cover uninsured damages
Sunday, April 30, 2006
By Karen Turni Bazile Staff writer
Sheila Cayolle said Saturday that no one else paid flood insurance
premiums for her eastern New Orleans home and that it's wrong for
government officials to deduct her insurance settlement from a grant she
may receive as part of a $7.5 billion post-Katrina plan to help
homeowners rebuild.
The government "did not pay my premiums (and) now everyone wants a
piece of it," Cayolle said. "That should not be."
Her view was echoed by others in a crowd of about 200 who attended an
afternoon meeting of the Pontilly Association at St. Gabriel of the
Archangel Church in Gentilly. State Sen. Derrick Shepherd, D-New
Orleans, Louisiana Recovery Authority officials and Councilwoman Cynthia
Hedge-Morrell attended the meeting to explain details of the state's
Road Home rebuilding plan.
"This is a take-it-or-leave-it plan," Shepherd said. "I do like the
plan to a certain degree. The best I can do is present it to you."
1.2-inch rain burns out three drainage pumps
By Bruce Nolan and Michelle Krupa Staff writers
An unremarkable 1.2-inch rainfall burned up three massive Sewerage &
Water Board pumps Wednesday, officials said, underscoring the needs of a
vast municipal drainage system that still requires almost $40 million in
post-Katrina work and has received little public attention, even as
much-publicized levee repairs have been racing forward for months.
The pumps, among the largest in the city’s unique drainage system,
were located at stations in Lakeview, Gentilly and Mid-City, but no
flooding was reported, officials said.
Like scores of similar pumps in the complex system, the burned out
units were driven by huge electric motors that sat partly submerged in
saltwater for as long as three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the
city Aug. 29. The motors burned up when insulation failed as they began
to turn under a normal operating load, said Joseph Sullivan, the S&WB’s
general superintendent. Wednesday’s rain was the first significant
precipitation in what has been an unusually dry year.
April 27, 2006 Evacuees Find Housing Grants Will End Soon
By SHAILA DEWAN
HOUSTON, April 21 — Thousands of hurricane evacuees who counted on a
year of free housing and utilities are being told by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency that they are no longer eligible for such
help and must either pay the rent themselves or leave.
Of about 55,000 families who were given long-term housing vouchers,
nearly a third are receiving notices that they no longer qualify, FEMA
officials said. For the rest, benefits are also being cut: they will
have to sign new leases, pay their own gas and electric bills and
requalify for rental assistance every three months.
The process has been marked by sharp disagreements between the agency
and local officials, and conflicting information given to evacuees about
their futures. Although agency officials say they never promised a full
year of free housing, many local officials around the country say
yearlong vouchers were exactly what FEMA agreed to provide.
Katrina flooding reasons still being debated
Overtopping, says corps; breaches, says LSU analyst
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
By Robert Travis Scott Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Eight months after Hurricane Katrina, a heated debate
continues over whether levee breaches or overtopping caused most of the
flooding. Advertisement
While the Corps of Engineers contends that most of the damage from
floods in the New Orleans area resulted from water topping levees, an
analyst at Louisiana State University says that 87 percent of the
flooding in the area was because of levee breaches and only 13 percent
was from water flowing over the tops of the levees.
Only 'best residents' to be allowed back in St. Thomas
complex
By Bill Walsh Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — U.S. Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson shed little
light Monday on the future of public housing in hurricane-battered New
Orleans, but said that “only the best residents” of the former St.
Thomas housing complex should be allowed into the new mixed-income
development that replaced it.
In a wide-ranging interview with reporters, Jackson was asked about
the relatively small number of apartments in the 60-acre River Gardens
development in Uptown that have been set aside for former residents of
St. Thomas. Jackson estimated it was 18 to 20 percent, although housing
advocates said it is less.
April 24, 2006 Vote for Mayor Points to Change in New Orleans
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, April 23 — Mayor C. Ray Nagin may have led Saturday's
mayoral election, but he now faces a popular and better-financed
opponent on a political landscape utterly changed by Hurricane Katrina,
one in which the long-running dominance of the city's black vote has
been significantly reduced.
Black residents, whose neighborhoods were the most devastated by the
storm, voted in much smaller numbers than whites did on Saturday, even
more so than usual. White turnout is usually higher than black turnout,
but the gap was about double what it is normally, analysts said Sunday.
As a result, most of the votes here were cast against Mr. Nagin, who
is black, even though he came out on top in a crowded field, with 38
percent of the vote. If that trend holds, New Orleans will elect its
first white mayor in nearly 30 years on May 20, when Mr. Nagin will face
Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who got 29 percent, in a runoff.
Giuliani says 9/11 comparison to Katrina unfair
4/24/2006, 2:03 p.m. CT
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It's unfair to compare the pace of rebuilding in
hurricane-battered New Orleans with the swift recovery of New York after
9/11, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Monday on a visit
to the city.
"They're two different kinds of things. One was a singular incident —
on one day, in one place, with tremendous implications. But the rest of
the city was not affected," Giuliani said at a pre-tournament gathering
for this week's Zurich Classic PGA event in New Orleans.
While local and state leaders here were criticized for being
unprepared and indecisive during Katrina, Giuliani became a symbol of
effective leadership after the attacks, known since then as "America's
Mayor."
Giuliani stressed the two disasters should never have been compared.
African-American precincts lift Nagin to top spot
By John Pope and Matt Scallan Staff writers
Mayor Ray Nagin carried a swath of precincts across the city Saturday
to finish first in the mayoral primary, doing especially well in
precincts that Hurricane Katrina pummeled.
Nagin is black, as are most of the New Orleanians whom the storm hit
hardest. The other three top vote-getters — Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, Ron
Forman and Rob Couhig — are white.
The only Katrina-ravaged part of New Orleans where Nagin did not do
well was Lakeview, which is heavily white. Forman was the victor there.
Nagin carried 281 of the city’s 300 precincts where black voters are
in the majority. He also led the field in a massive absentee vote, in
which more than 21,000 New Orleanians cast ballots: nearly 10 times the
number of absentee ballots cast in the 2002 mayoral primary, which Nagin
also led.
Sunday, April 23, 2006 ‘Crossover’ voting likely key to N.O. mayoral runoff
By Gordon Russell, Frank Donze and Michelle Krupa Staff writers
Mayor Ray Nagin is nothing if not unpredictable. Sailing toward an
easy re-election just eight months ago, he was caught in the
crosscurrents of Hurricane Katrina and left for dead by many political
observers — only to rise, Lazarus-like, to a surprisingly strong
first-place finish in Saturday’s primary, 9 percentage points ahead of
runoff opponent Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.
That said, Nagin is hardly a shoo-in for re-election. As many
observers have pointed out, 62 percent of the 108,000 voters who cast
ballots Saturday picked someone other than Nagin, a sign of serious
trouble for an incumbent.
In a further complication for the mayor, it may be difficult for him
to make additional inroads among black voters, who comprised the vast
majority of his base in the primary. Although about two-thirds of black
voters went with Nagin, most of those who didn’t — about 24 percent —
cast their lot with Landrieu, according to an analysis by consultant
Greg Rigamer.
April 23, 2006 Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores
By JASON DePARLE
LITHONIA, Ga. — One afternoon last August, a young bus driver headed
to an office in a suburb of New Orleans, humming the song to an old
television show. He arrived just before his wife, who was pregnant with
their first child and escorting four troubled teenagers from the
alternative school where she worked.
At 24, the driver, Whitney Marcell, weighed 300 pounds, and answered
to the name Big Man. His wife, Jeralyn, who goes by Fu, had just turned
28. She brought along the hard-faced adolescents because her own hard
life had presented her with a gloriously teachable moment: Big Man and
Fu, up-from-nothing products of New Orleans's roughest projects, were
about to buy their first home.
"Are you sure you can afford it?" friends had sniped, but Mr.
Marcell's only worry about the $86,500 loan was whether the terms would
let him pay it off early. The couple signed a pile of legal papers and
left the office owning a house in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.
April 23, 2006 Runoff Election Is Set for New Orleans Mayor's Race
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, April 22 — Mayor C. Ray Nagin made a strong showing
Saturday in the city's first mayoral election since Hurricane Katrina
but failed to escape a runoff election next month in which he will face
Louisiana's lieutenant governor, Mitch Landrieu.
With 94 percent of the city's 442 precincts reporting, Mr. Nagin had
39 percent of the vote, ahead of Mr. Landrieu, who had 28 percent. A
third leading candidate, Ron Forman, a local businessman, had 17
percent.
Because no candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote, Mr. Nagin
and Mr. Landrieu will compete in a runoff on May 20.
Endorsement snafu; Butler a no-show in court
By Gordon Russell, Michelle Krupa, Frank Donze and Michael Perlstein
Staff writers
Endorsements have been hard to come by for struggling incumbent Mayor
Ray Nagin. So when he announced the backing Thursday of perhaps the
city’s second-most powerful (and also embattled) politician — U.S. Rep.
William Jefferson — it should have been a banner day for the Nagin camp.
But the normally cut-and-dried process of issuing an endorsement,
complete with glowing testimonials, soon turned into an episode of the
“Keystone Kops.”
First came the initial news release, in which Jefferson was quoted
saying Nagin is “an extremely capable individual who deserves to
continue” as mayor, among other compliments. In the release, Jefferson
also seemed to give Nagin most of the credit for securing federal aid.
NEW
ORLEANS NOTEBOOK Spring makes slow return to Crescent City
Legacy of Katrina colors tomorrow's mayoral election
By Bella English, Globe Staff | April 21, 2006
NEW ORLEANS -- Irises, tulips, and pansies have returned to New
Orleans, just as they do every spring. But nearly eight months after two
hurricanes battered this historic port city, fewer than half of its
residents have.
Miles of neighborhoods remain boarded-up ghost towns, with homes and
businesses alike standing vacant.
Nothing is easy in the Big Easy these days.
In the French Quarter and much of the Garden District, ''Help Wanted"
signs are as ubiquitous as Mardi Gras beads in the souvenir shops. But
with no housing, the jobs go unfilled.
Vulgar T-shirts hanging in the shops reflect residents' impatience
with FEMA's restoration efforts, and with Mayor C. Ray Nagin and
Governor Kathleen Blanco, who came under heavy criticism in the
aftermath of Katrina.
Nagin Among Front-Runners in New Orleans
Mayor's Popularity Grows Despite Missteps in Handling of Hurricane
Katrina
By Peter Whoriskey Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 20,
2006; A09
NEW ORLEANS -- The barbs and accusations aimed at Mayor C. Ray Nagin
these days reflect the political damage of one of the worst catastrophes
in U.S. history.
"You drowned 1,200 people!" a challenger declared during a locally
televised campaign debate. Others openly question whether the
relentlessly glib mayor has the gravitas to lead the city through the
post-Hurricane Katrina crisis. And on the streets, in reference to his
now-famous speech suggesting that God wanted the city to remain
"chocolate," popular T-shirts depict him as the fictional sweets
inventor Willy Wonka.
Yet to the astonishment of some who had assumed that his missteps and
post-Katrina despair would doom his reelection bid, Nagin the
laughingstock is also counted as a front-runner as voters head to the
polls on Saturday.
City Council sets deadline to begin work on homes
By Bruce Eggler Staff writer
Concerned that thousands of residents are doing nothing to fix up
their flooded homes, the City Council voted Thursday to set Aug. 29,
Hurricane Katrina’s first anniversary, as the deadline for people to
clean, gut and board up their homes, or risk having the city seize and
demolish them.
The ordinance was introduced by Councilman Jay Batt, who said
ravaged, mold-infested houses, especially if not boarded up, can become
“environmental biohazards” that will slow the recovery of whole
neighborhoods by discouraging nearby owners from moving back or
repairing their own homes.
The ordinance, approved 7-0, says “every owner of a dwelling or
dwelling unit shall be responsible for mold remediation, cleaning,
gutting and properly securing the premises of all properties” damaged by
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “in a manner so as to render the premises
environmentally sound and not open to the public.”
Money is city's biggest worry
Government could go broke in a month
Sunday, April 16, 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt Staff writer
When John Kallenborn sits down with a group of bankers to talk about
a big loan he's trying to put together, he is usually 99 percent certain
that he's got a deal by the time he leaves the room.
But when the New Orleans president of Chase Bank walked into New
Orleans City Hall on April 6, Kallenborn knew he was facing a much
tougher room. Though he had talked his bosses into lending the city $50
million, Kallenborn wasn't sure any of the other 10 lenders at the
meeting would be willing to take a piece of the city's proposed $150
million debt placement.
"We think there is more than a 50 or 60 percent chance, but we're not
at our usual 99 percent just because of what has happened to the city,"
said Kallenborn, who remains the only banker who has committed to
helping the city through its current financial crisis.
Survey shows stresses from absorbing 150,000 from storm
09:32 AM CDT on Saturday, April 15, 2006
By BRUCE NICHOLS / The Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON – For property manager Marcia Clark, the thousands of
evacuees from Hurricane Katrina still in Houston are "like a relative
that came to visit and stayed too long."
"You still feel like they're family," she said as she waited to
collect rent for housing some of them. "But ... can we just go back to
the way it was? You're tired."
Reports of increased crime, fights in schools and landlords getting
paid late have left some in Houston wondering whether Dallas Mayor Laura
Miller was right to be cautious in welcoming evacuees.
A recent survey found signs of "Katrina fatigue" among Houstonians,
and officials acknowledge stresses associated with an estimated 150,000
evacuees, many of them needy, still burdening public services.
Mayoral hopefuls stop playing nice
Attack ads begin as primary nears
Sunday, April 16, 2006
By Frank Donze Staff writer
Put the gloves away. Get out the brass knuckles. Advertisement
A cordial -- some say lackluster -- New Orleans mayoral contest has
erupted into a street brawl. And with just six days left to reach voters
before Saturday's primary, the melee is likely to get only messier.
For weeks now, pundits have speculated that the post-Katrina
depression still gripping much of the shattered city would temper the
negative campaigning characteristic of Louisiana politics.
Whether or not voters like it, the race apparently reverted to form
Wednesday with the debut of the first televised attack ad. It begat an
immediate, and even edgier, response.
NEW ORLEANS — High heels echoing, Ruby Ducre-Gethers crosses the
floor of her airy but unlivable home - ear on her cell phone, eyes on
the workers replacing her flooded-out walls, and mind on payback at the
ballot box.
Across town, Irma Williams says the election for mayor this Saturday
isn't truly an election without her neighbors to vote - but she says
it's past time for street lamps to work outside her temporary trailer.
Alex Beard wakes up a thousand miles away and reads the New Orleans
newspaper online, following each day's campaign news convinced that the
storm brought a chance to rescue the city he adopted and then
reluctantly fled.
Some people in New Orleans are angry about the government response to
Hurricane Katrina and want to render judgment as the city casts ballots
for mayor, city council and most every other elected official, from
sheriff to assessor. Many want to look ahead.
But trumping all that as Election Day approaches, race - and all the
history that comes with it here - has become the defining line for this
election, dividing the city by neighborhood and color.
DPS warns local police of Louisiana evacuees on parole or probation
08:44 AM CDT on Friday, April 14, 2006
By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – As many as 3,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Texas are on
probation or parole in their home state but most are probably living
under no form of supervision, and state officials are providing their
names to local authorities because they could be suspects in new crimes.
In letters to many of the state's police chiefs this week, the Texas
Department of Public Safety provides the names and criminal histories of
the evacuees and urges local authorities to consult the list to "develop
possible suspects for certain crime problems that have advanced since
Hurricane Katrina."
Homeland Security: Criticism for Katrina response was
deserved
04:00 PM CDT on Thursday, April 13, 2006
Lara Jakes Jordan / Associated Press
WASHINGTON-- Widespread criticism of the government's sluggish
response to Hurricane Katrina was largely deserved, the Homeland
Security Department's internal watchdog concludes in a report rapping
the agency for focusing on terrorism at the expense of preparing for
natural disasters.
The report by Inspector General Richard L. Skinner, to be released
Friday, includes 38 recommendations for improving disaster response
missions by the department and its Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The report's executive summary and the recommendations were obtained
Thursday by The Associated Press.
La. rebuilding plan is under attack
Who gets what is one sticking point
Friday, April 14, 2006 By Laura Maggi Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco's $7.5 billion plan to help
homeowners rebuild hurricane-damaged houses is drawing fire from both
ends of the political spectrum, and there are questions about whether
there has been ample opportunity for public input into the proposal.
Leaders of Blanco's Louisiana Recovery Authority have said that they
want the proposed housing recovery plan, dubbed "The Road Home," to be
approved by the Legislature by the end of the month. However, a
resolution unanimously adopted Thursday by the House made clear that
lawmakers have substantive problems with the plan, including provisions
that would require that any insurance proceeds be deducted from the
damage estimates used to calculate a homeowner's grant.
Advisories to raise houses also raising blood pressure
Damage estimate key to future for many local homeowners
Friday, April 14, 2006 By Gordon Russell and Brian Thevenot
Staff writers
Sometime soon, Leonard Lewis plans to head to the eighth floor of
City Hall to challenge an inspector's assertion that his Mid-City home
suffered flood damage that will cost more than half its value to fix --
a determination that will make the difference in whether he must raise
his house.
Lewis' house sits 4 feet above the ground, a foot higher than the "3
feet above grade" recommendation laid out by the federal government in
new advisory elevations announced Wednesday. His problem is that his
lowest floors are 18 inches below what the government calls "base flood
elevation," defined as the minimum standard needed to protect a home
from a 100-year flood.
Wait
Ends On Rules For Katrina Rebuilding $2.5 Billion More for Levees Also Proposed
By Peter Whoriskey and Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 13, 2006; A01
The Bush administration proposed spending an additional $2.5 billion
for New Orleans levee construction yesterday as it issued long-awaited
construction guidelines for the flood-prone region that would require
rebuilding many heavily damaged houses at least three feet above ground.
With tens of thousands of houses awaiting reconstruction, the move
could resolve an impasse over how to rebuild the low-lying metropolis.
Uncertainty over the levees has left homeowners unsure about whether to
rebuild and about how high houses should stand to avoid future flooding.
FEMA release rebuilding guidelines
By Brian Thevenot Staff writer
In a long-awaited move that could free tens of thousands of New
Orleans area homeowners from rebuilding purgatory, federal officials on
Wednesday released new elevation recommendations for reconstructing
flood-damaged homes or building new ones.
The standards go hand-in-hand with future plans for rebuilding and
improving the levee system, also announced Wednesday, along with a White
House commitment to seek an additional $2.5 billion to pay for them.
Gulf Coast rebuilding czar Donald Powell said that money, which still
needs congressional approval, would finance solid flood protection for
98 percent of the New Orleans metro area — in other words, everywhere
but lower Plaquemines Parish.
Corps admits to 'design failure'
By Bill Walsh
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — In the closest thing yet to a mea culpa, the commander
of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged Wednesday that a
“design failure” led to the breach of the 17th Street canal levee that
flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina.
Lt. General Carl Strock told a Senate committee that the corps
neglected to consider the possibility that floodwalls atop the 17th
Street Canal levee would lurch away from their footings under
significant water pressure and eat away at the earthen barriers below.
“We did not account for that occurring,” Strock said in an interview
after the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. “It could be
called a design failure.”
Storm aid to La. may be increased
Senate panel will consider bill today
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
By Bruce Alpert Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to
take up a supplemental spending bill today that would pay for increased
costs for the war in Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery efforts.
Advertisement
Details of panel Chairman Thad Cochran's proposal weren't available
Monday, but officials said they expect the committee to consider
increasing the $4.2 billion in Community Development Block Grant money
requested for Louisiana by the Bush administration. The House approved
the bill without the specific earmark for Louisiana.
Brace for another active hurricane season, forcast says
By Jeff Duncan Staff writer
The upcoming hurricane season will be almost twice as active as in
normal years, and the odds that another major storm will make landfall
along the Gulf Coast are about 50-50, scientists predicted in a report
Tuesday.
The June-to-November season is expected to produce 17 named storms,
well above the average of 10, with nine of them spinning into hurricanes
and five of those devloping into major storms, according to a forecast
by Colorado State University scientists Philip Klotzbach and William
Gray.
As bad as the news sounds, it's still better than recent years. Four
major hurricanes made landfall in both 2004 and 2005, the latter of
which proved to be the most costly and destructive year ever.
Landrieu threatens hold action on Presidential Appointees
Urges Action on Levees, Coastal Restoration
U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., said today that she intends to
exercise her power as a member of the United States Senate to prevent
further consideration of any and all Executive appointments until
significant progress is made to secure White House commitments to levee
protection and coastal restoration in Louisiana.
Levee Repair Costs Triple New
Orleans May Lack Full Protection
By Peter Whoriskey and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 31, 2006; A01
The Bush administration said yesterday that the cost of rebuilding
New Orleans's levees to federal standards has nearly tripled to $10
billion and that there may not be enough money to fully protect the
entire region.
Donald E. Powell, the administration's rebuilding coordinator, said
some areas may be left without the protection of levees strong enough to
meet requirements of the national flood insurance program. Those areas
probably would face enormous obstacles in attracting home buyers and
investors willing to build there.
Senator puzzled by state deal
to tow cars
Firm's office flooded, vacant, phone off
Thursday, March 30, 2006
By James Varney Staff writer
The featured local company in a proposed $62 million state contract
to remove abandoned cars from southern Louisiana lists a flood-ruined
9th Ward address as its headquarters and has a disconnected phone,
according to public documents and a cursory investigation by a state
senator. Advertisement
The Department of Environmental Quality contract remains unsigned,
although the negotiations have apparently been completed between the
state and TruSource Facility Services of Georgia and L&L Steel Builders
Inc. of 1939 Desire St. in New Orleans, state officials said. It is this
contract that the city of New Orleans requested to join this week,
following days of questions about its decision not to sell tens of
thousands of hurricane-wrecked vehicles to crushers but instead to pay a
company $23 million to clear the cityscape of the blight.
Levee restoration price
doubles
Map release hinges on budget action
Thursday, March 30, 2006
By Bruce Alpert Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- The cost of restoring levee protection in the New
Orleans area to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels will be about $6 billion,
twice as much as the Bush administration and Congress have appropriated
to date, Donald Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast
rebuilding, told members of the state's congressional delegation
Wednesday.
Powell said he wanted to update the delegation on the latest cost
estimates, but he did not commit to a financing source or whether the
administration would seek the traditional 35 percent local share for the
work. He said that "will be part of the deliberations" in coming weeks.
Homeowners insurance hard to
find
By Rebecca Mowbray Business writer
Tired of waiting for news on the fate of their flood-soaked
neighborhood in eastern New Orleans, Sharon and Wayne Howard decided it
was time to buy another home.
They found the perfect place in Algiers with three bedrooms, a sun
room and a nice patio. Best of all, the house was seven feet above sea
level and had no storm damage.
"I've got walls and windows," Sharon Howard said. "I've been wanting
walls and windows since August 29."
But the Howards also wanted to retain the original insurance policy
on their home in the East to protect it against liability, fire and
theft. And Allstate, their insurer for 30 years, wouldn't issue the
couple a second policy to cover their new Algiers home.
Thieves targeting homes under
construction
By Michelle Hunter East Jefferson bureau
William Borrouso left the comforts of his daughter's Madisonville
home to move back into the second floor of his flood-ruined Edinburgh
Street house in Metairie after someone pried open a door there and stole
a washer and a dryer worth $2,000 in February. The house, which was
under renovation, had just two plugs for electricity and no hot water.
Despite the inconvenience, Borrouso said he was adamant about
returning.
"It's was like we were camping," he said. "But I couldn't afford to
get anything else stolen out of my house."
Post-storm New Orleans economy
a huge question mark
3/28/2006, 2:46 p.m. CT
By ALAN SAYRE The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Most of Big Oil has returned to New Orleans since
Hurricane Katrina, Mardi Gras got the city back in the tourism business
and the skilled construction trades can't get enough workers. The city's
population — 455,000 before Katrina and almost zero after storm
evacuations — is now near 190,000 and expected to climb.
But Tim and Renee Baldwin likely won't be part of any long-term
recovery.
"It's hard to make a judgment about the future," said Tim Baldwin, a
French Quarter bartender who lives in the city's Uptown section, which
was largely spared from flooding. "It's a matter of day to day, a
question of who's staying and who's leaving. We're probably leaving."
ARE WE SAFE?
Panel says corps engineering relied on poor judgment and recommends new
analysis of entire levee system
Saturday, March 25, 2006 By Bob Marshall and Sheila Grissett Staff
writers
The safety of the New Orleans area hurricane protection system is
"open to question" until the Army Corps of Engineers evaluates every
levee and floodwall in light of recent findings on how the 17th Street
Canal failed during Hurricane Katrina, the agency's own external review
panel said Friday.
"We conclude that a determination of the overall safety of the
hurricane protection system cannot be made until such time as the
remainder of the system can be evaluated with the benefit of this new
information," the American Society of Civil Engineers' panel said in a
letter to Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the corps' commander.
Judge revokes free bond for
felon
But feds have already stepped in to arrest suspect
Saturday, March 25, 2006 By Michael Perlstein Staff writer
New Orleans Criminal Court Judge Charles Elloie revoked the
controversial free bond he issued this week for a convicted felon
accused of dealing cocaine and maintaining an arsenal of guns, but his
action was quickly trumped Friday by federal authorities, who arrested
the suspect in order to take the case to federal court.
Facing a public outcry over his leniency in the case of Brian Expose
and a complaint filed with the state Judiciary Commission, Elloie issued
a bench warrant Thursday to rearrest Expose, replacing his free bond
with a $75,000 bail. Elloie let Expose go on the recognizance bond
Tuesday after police said they caught the suspect at his Algiers home
with 6 ounces of cocaine, two assault rifles, a Tec-9 with a silencer,
four pistols and $189,000 in cash.
Tuesday, Mar. 21, 2006 Crime Comes Back To New Orleans
After months of relative calm following Katrina, the city's notorious
murder rate is again on the rise
By AMANDA RIPLEY
The New Orleans funeral procession that took place this past Sunday
might have been a symbol of recovery, a sign that the strange, haunted
habits that make New Orleans so special had returned. This particular
joyful, mournful parade through town was held for a man who had died in
September, back when the city was too broken for its traditional
rituals. But instead it turned into a symbol of a very different, dark
side of New Orleans. As the procession danced and swayed through Central
City, an 18-year-old man got out of his car and sprayed the crowd with
bullets, police say, shooting two men and killing one before being shot
in the leg by a police officer.
Arrested felons released on
lenient bonds
By Michael Perlstein Staff writer
The New Orleans criminal justice system may have been ground to a
virtual halt by Hurricane Katrina, but one controversial pre-storm
practice is continuing unabated: the willingness of Criminal Court Judge
Charles Elloie to bend over backwards to release jailed suspects on
lenient bail.
In four recent gun and narcotics arrests — two involving the same
felon accused of wielding an assault rifle — Elloie, by his own
admission, issued either free or affordable bail over the telephone
without determining the facts of the arrest. Elloie said he considered
only the suspect’s rap sheet and new charges.
Director of N.O. Homeland
Security discusses changes for upcoming hurricane season
05:14 PM CST on Monday, March 20, 2006
WWLTV.com
The Director of the New Orleans Department of Homeland Security said
Monday there will not be a shelter of last resort for the upcoming
hurricane season, and that he expects the season to bring added pressure
from the federal government to evacuate.
Thousands of evacuees gathered along the I-10 at Causeway in the days
following Hurricane Katrina to be airlifted to safety.
“My sense is the first time that a storm enters the gulf there will
be a great deal of pressure across the nation from the federal
government on down to get out of the city, so I think we’re going to be
looking earlier in the cycle to get moving,” said Terry Ebbert.
Mayor presents BNOB plan
By Bruce Eggler Staff writer
After eliminating all recommendations that would have prohibited any
of the city's neighborhoods from participating in its rebuilding
process, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Monday night presented a
blueprint for restoring and improving the hurricane-devastated city.
"It will take each and every one of us to pull this off, but if we
work together, we can achieve great things," Nagin said at the end of a
nearly hour-long speech accepting most of the recommendations presented
to him in January by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission.
Nagin appointed the 17-member commission of developers, business
people and civic leaders last fall, a few weeks after Katrina flooded
most of the city.
Rebuild, but at your own risk,
Nagin says
Recommendations from BNOB come with warnings and worries
Monday, March 20, 2006
By Frank Donze Staff writer
All along, Mayor Ray Nagin has been steadfast in his commitment to
residents of New Orleans' flood-ravaged neighborhoods that they -- and
not the government -- should have sole authority to decide whether to
rebuild or relocate. Advertisement
Nagin isn't wavering on that as he prepares to unveil his Hurricane
Katrina recovery blueprint tonight. But the final report from his Bring
New Orleans Back Commission offers some weighty caveats for homeowners
thinking about resettling in some of the hardest-hit areas, in
particular the Lower 9th Ward and a pair of low-lying sections of
eastern New Orleans.
In those so-called "delayed recovery areas," Nagin said, his
administration will continue issuing building permits to all comers. But
City Hall's pledge of cooperation comes with a strongly worded warning
to people to rebuild there at their own risk, at least for the time
being.
After Katrina, pundits
criticized New Orleans, claiming too many residents had no flood
insurance. In fact, few communities were better covered.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt and Rebecca Mowbray Staff writers
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, public officials and
insurance experts predicted that the vast majority of property losses
from the most costly flood in U.S. history would be uninsured.
Advertisement
Members of Congress rose up in righteous indignation to scold
residents of New Orleans, one of the most vulnerable cities in America,
for failing to buy federal flood insurance and then coming hat in hand
and asking to be bailed out with federal money.
The irony, now revealed in data painstakingly worked up by aides to
Donald Powell, the Bush administration's liaison to the disaster zone,
is that Louisiana was a more enthusiastic participant in the National
Flood Insurance Program than any other state in the nation.
City spurned offer of cash for
cars
Abandoned vehicles can be hauled away
Sunday, March 19, 2006
By James Varney Staff writer
Katrina turned New Orleans into an auto junkyard and the flooded cars
are still everywhere, mementos of the storm and of the city's continuing
failure to clean itself up. Advertisement
Almost seven months after Hurricane Katrina, the Nagin administration
still dickers over details of a contract that would gradually rid the
cityscape of these vehicular eyesores -- at a cost of $23 million over
another six months.
Which makes it of more than passing interest to discover that the
largest car crusher east of the Rockies, K&L Auto Crushers of Tyler,
Texas, offered in October to do the job in 15 weeks and actually pay the
city for the privilege of hauling the junk away. How much? How about
$100 per flooded car. With an estimated 50,000 vehicles on the street at
that time, the city would have netted $5 million, rather than shelling
out four times that sum, as it plans to do now
Faced with rebuilding his home, his life and his neighborhood, the
author joins the group that he hopes will save Broadmoor. Now, if he
could just figure out what's the deal with that big, green circle.
By David Winkler-Schmit
Photo by Donn Young
Broadmoor resident Dr. Janet Strangi tends to her house on Napoleon
Avenue. The Bring New Orleans Back Commission report said that
neighborhoods like Broadmoor would have a chance to determine their
future. It's a warm, cloudy Saturday morning in January as I push my
2-year-old daughter, Claire, in her stroller. We walk up Napoleon Avenue
towards Fountainbleu to meet a group congregating on the dead, matted
grass of the neutral ground. The 30 or so people gathered are a mix of
black, white, old, young, upper middle class, lower middle class, a few
in strollers, and one in a wheelchair.
NOPD clears cops in looting
probe
They had OK to take clothing, officials say
Saturday, March 18, 2006
By Michael Perlstein Staff writer
Four New Orleans police officers have been cleared of looting
allegations stemming from a news videotape that shows them taking items
from the Uptown Wal-Mart two days after Hurricane Katrina, but the
officers were suspended for 10 days for failing to stop civilians from
cleaning out the ransacked store, the New Orleans Police Department said
Friday. Advertisement
The video, shot by an MSNBC crew inside Wal-Mart, shows the officers
filling a shopping cart with shoes, clothes and other items. In the
background, citizens can be seen calmly looting everything from sweaters
to bicycles. When a reporter asks the officers what they're doing, one
of them responds, "Looking for looters." She then hastily turns her back
to the camera.
Vitter, Landrieu get big win
for coast in budget bill
06:23 AM CST on Friday, March 17, 2006
Brett Martel / Associated Press
U.S. Sens. David Vitter and Mary Landrieu secured a major victory
Thursday in their effort to bring billions of additional dollars to
Louisiana for hurricane protection and coastal restoration projects.
During debate on the federal 2007 budget resolution, the Senate
approved an amendment that would divert a greater share of offshore oil
and gas revenues to the Gulf Coast.
"These amendments open the door for significant new hurricane
protection funding and support for our small businesses," said Landrieu.
"While much more work is needed to get these funds through the entire
legislative process, I look forward to continuing our fight for stronger
levees and coastal protection."
Omissions revealed in levee
design
No soil borings done at weak spot, experts say
Friday, March 17, 2006 By Bob Marshall Staff writer
The key to learning why the 17th Street Canal floodwall failed during
Hurricane Katrina may lie more in what designers didn't do than in what
they could have foreseen, experts now say.
Lost in the controversy swirling around a government panel's comment
last week that the designers of the floodwall could not have anticipated
the combination of forces that brought the structure down was its
finding that one of the main triggers for that failure -- extremely low
soil strengths under the toe of the levee -- would have been detected
had the design team done soil borings in that area, an official with the
Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.
"IQ" nickname challenged for
assessor candidates
By Gordon Russell Staff writer
A legal skirmish gets under way today to decide whether a slate of
challengers running in tandem against the city’s seven assessors can use
“I.Q.” as their nickname in the April 22 ballot. Lawsuits have been
filed against two of the seven challengers who qualified listing the
nickname, which stands for “I Quit.”
All seven have pledged that if elected they would forgo the post’s
$90,000 anual salary to hire a professional appraisal firm to handle
property valuations.
The two lawsuits are set to be heard today in Civil District Court —
one against 4th District challenger Chase “I.Q.” Jones and one against
5th District challenger Ron “I.Q.” Mazier. The suit against Mazier has
been allotted to Judge Carolyn Gill-Jefferson, sister-in-law of 4th
District Assessor Betty Jefferson.
"Unforeseen" events predicted
in 1986 study
By Bob Marshall Staff writer
Findings by an Army Corps of Engineers-sponsored panel that the
collapse of the 17th Street canal floodwall during Hurricane Katrina was
the result of an “unforeseeable” combination of events is contradicted
by a 1986 research project done by the corps itself, National Science
Foundation investigators said Monday.
The Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, working for the
corps to investigate the levee breaches, said in its second interim
report Friday that the 17th Street failure was caused by rising water in
the canal that forced the floodwall to flex away from the canal, causing
a separation between the wall and the levee inside the canal. Water
pressure building inside the opening then exerted force on a weak layer
of soil under the wall and land-side toe of the levee, causing the layer
to slip, bringing the levee down and the wall with it.
Locals not waiting to be told
what to do
By Coleman Warner and Keith Darcé Staff writers
Big green spots covering portions of flooded neighborhoods on a map
of a rebuilt New Orleans might have discouraged some people.
But in the densely built Broadmoor neighborhood, the symbol marking
the area for possible new green space lit a fire under its neighborhood
group.
"It didn't devastate us; it pissed us off," said Virginia Saussy
Bairnsfather, a board member for the Broadmoor Improvement Association.
Within weeks of the map's unveiling in January by Mayor Ray Nagin's
Bring New Orleans Back Commission, membership in the neighborhood group
jumped 400 percent.
Corps: Floodwall break caused
by unforeseen stresses
3/10/2006, 4:11 p.m. CT
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A foundation problem — although not the one
targeted by earlier studies — caused the 450-foot-long break in a
floodwall and levee on New Orleans' western edge when Hurricane Katrina
hit on Aug. 29, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Friday.
Part of the levee was pushed 40 feet backward, and can be seen above
the water — along with that section of floodwall — in an aerial
photograph published as part of the second report by the task force set
up to find out why the levees broke.
Unprecedented high water pushed back the floodwall, which is set into
the center of the earthen levee. Once water got between the floodwall
and the front half of the levee, it effectively cut the levee in half
lengthwise.
NEW ORLEANS, March 7 — When Frank A. Glaviano Sr. told friends that
he believed his company, Shell Oil, would return to New Orleans
despite the devastation done by Hurricane Katrina, many had a good
laugh. Forget it, they said; you are moving to Houston.
After all, more than 100 Shell employees lost their homes when
water covered much of the city and the surrounding suburbs. Mail
delivery was still unreliable, air service remained thin, and only a
small fraction of the previous hospital capacity was back. With
Shell's American base in Houston, it seemed to make sense to move
its exploration and production unit there from New Orleans.
But Shell, a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, returned
last month to its marbled office building here at One Shell Square,
after making an extraordinary investment to do so. It bought $32
million in residential properties in the area — 120 houses and
condominiums in all — to lease to its employees. The company owned
no residential property in the United States before Hurricane
Katrina.
Katrina rewrites relationship
between city, suburbs
But city's survival critical, some say
Sunday, March 05, 2006
By Kate Moran East Jefferson bureau
Look past shared traditions such as Carnival and gumbo, and a
deep-seated ambivalence has always loitered between New Orleans and its
suburbs.
The tourism commission in St. Tammany Parish tripped over it several
years ago, when it unveiled a logo designed to feed off the thriving
tourism market in the city. While the new brand name, "New Orleans
Northshore: St. Tammany Parish," might have tantalized visitors from out
of state, it irked locals who associated the central city with rampant
crime, poverty and other social ills.
"We do not want to be part of New Orleans," an angry resident wrote
to The Times-Picayune in 1999, at the height of the uproar. "Visiting
New Orleans, for us, is like visiting a hornet's nest and praying to get
out alive -- not a place, or pace, we want to live."
Probes find plenty of blame to
go around
Investigators see storm blunders from City Hall to White House
Sunday, February 26, 2006
By Bill Walsh and Bruce Alpert Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- Even as the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was
still being assessed, a frenzy of finger-pointing and blame-fixing over
government delays and failures was well under way. Advertisement
The harshest scrutiny fell first on the public officials who were
most visible: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and
then-Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown. Instant
analysis made them the clear scapegoats of the unfolding disaster.
But six months, three federal investigations and dozens of public
hearings later, a more complex and nuanced picture of what went wrong
and why is emerging. Neither Nagin, Blanco nor FEMA are off the hook.
But hindsight puts their failures into a context that shows blame can be
spread much wider than it has been.
Fear of blight confounds many
wanting to rebuild
Few ways to force cleanup for now
Sunday, February 26, 2006
By Coleman Warner Staff writer
Leland Champagne is in a hurry to put his home back together on
Argonne Boulevard, one of Lakeview's high-demand streets before
Hurricane Katrina and a busted flood wall drowned the neighborhood.
Workers crawl around the place as the orthodontic sales rep makes cell
phone calls rapid-fire from the driveway. He wants to move in by April.
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But Champagne's push comes against a bleak backdrop. Several other
homes in the 5900 block of Argonne show little or no sign of cleanup,
much less gutting or renovation. Information is sketchy about what will
become of them. A few still have moldering furniture inside and
splintered doors. Personal effects are scattered about, as if the
disaster just happened.
But six months have passed, and Champagne, now staying in Kenner, is
getting antsy.
February 26, 2006 New Orleans Running Out of Options as It Scrambles for
New Loans
By GARY RIVLIN
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 25 — Somehow, some way, at some point in the
future, city officials here will need to pay back all the money they are
borrowing. In the meantime, though, the Mardi Gras parades must still be
protected, the police must still patrol the streets and the garbage must
be picked up.
And so, even though the city has already racked up $120 million in
debt, officials here are scrambling for loans of as much as $200 million
more so that New Orleans can continue to pay its bills through the end
of the year.
"We can't keep borrowing money," said Oliver M. Thomas Jr., the
president of the New Orleans City Council. "But the need for fire
protection doesn't just go away. At some point, we need to rebuild our
parks and restart recreation programs as children and families start
coming back."
6 months later, recovery gaining
focus
City may be near turning point
Sunday, February 26, 2006
By Gordon Russell Staff writer
Six months after Hurricane Katrina, Louise Leflore is one of tens of
thousands of New Orleanians still waiting to come home. And with all due
respect to Atlanta, she's sick of it. Advertisement
This week, the post-Katrina era reaches the half-year mark. Millions
of cubic yards of debris have been swept from city streets. More than a
million cubic yards of clayey soil has been compacted into levees to
replace what was washed away, a job the Army Corps of Engineers now says
is 40 percent complete. The main post office in New Orleans is scheduled
to reopen next month. Out of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population of
462,269, city officials estimate 189,000 have returned.
NEW ORLEANS — They're throwing Mardi Gras beads again - so many
strands, they're landing in tree branches and getting snagged on the
trellised balconies of the French Quarter.
You'll find them adorning the arms of Spanish statues. Tourists are
wearing them, but these days so are contractors and the National Guard.
It's hard to walk on Bourbon Street without stepping on them. You're
likely to crunch them underfoot, long necklaces of plastic pearls
brightening the asphalt.
At the corner of Bourbon and St. Peter, Pat O'Brien's is once again
serving its syrupy, yet potent Hurricane cocktail. At Tropical Isle, you
can get an equally potent Hand Grenade in a tall, plastic go-cup.
Post-Katrina Rebuilders Hug
Ground, Trust Levees
Some Say They Don't Have the Time or Money to Elevate Houses
By Peter Whoriskey Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 26,
2006; A03
NEW ORLEANS -- Hurricane Katrina revealed fatal flaws in the way this
city is built. But as thousands of New Orleanians seek construction
permits, many are planning to rebuild their homes in the same place, at
the same elevation, without any guarantee that the levees will hold in
the next big storm.
While residents say they have neither the time nor the money to
elevate the homes they are rebuilding, experts say the rush of
reconstruction could lead to a repeat of the disaster. Officials at the
Federal Emergency Management Agency are studying safe building
elevations for the city, but the agency has yet to adopt new guidelines.
February 25, 2006 Mardi Gras Diary Amid Revelry, Evidence of City's
Cruel Transformation
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 24 — For a long time I hated Mardi Gras, and tried
to flee the city in those weeks.
It was the opposite of what made New Orleans beguiling, or so it
seemed to me: loud and raucous, the city's ritual self-abasement
enforced mass jollity. The workaday New Orleans, underpopulated, green
and quiet, was best in its absolute regard for individual states of joy
or gloom.
For years I failed to see the point, a distaste reinforced when
visiting hordes from the mainland let their hair down and turned the
French Quarter into a "Disneyland for drunks," as a dyspeptic bookseller
friend put it. The history of Kings of Rex going back decades was
commemorated in some of the city's grandest homes, while the city's
crumbling social compact failed to receive similar attention. I knew too
that some Jewish families in the Uptown neighborhood left town during
Carnival because they would not be invited to the fancier balls.
Report: study entire levee
system, not just breaches
03:31 PM CST on Saturday, February 25, 2006
Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. — The federal investigation of what went wrong with
New Orleans levees during Hurricane Katrina should study the entire
system, not just the breaks that flooded the city, a new report says.
"While a few places failed, that doesn't mean other places won't fail
in the future," said Wayne Clough, president of the Georgia Institute of
Technology and chairman of the committee which put together the report
for the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research
Council.
Sections of levee close to failing might have remained intact because
another section failed first and relieved the pressure, Clough said. In
addition, by rebuilding the damaged and broken areas to make them
stronger and more stable, the Corps might make breaks more likely in
other spots.
Forman pollster does a little
pushing
ALSO: Incumbents challenged; Butler among them; Same show, new place
Saturday, February 25, 2006
By Gordon Russell, Bruce Eggler and Frank Donze Staff writers
A poll of mayoral candidates made public this week found that only 29
percent of Orleans Parish respondents said they had high "awareness" of
Audubon Nature Institute's chief executive, Ron Forman, who is widely
considered a leading contender in part because of his claim to a large
war chest.
The downside of that lack of recognition, for Forman, is that he
needs to become better known. The upside, presumably, is that he may get
to publicly define himself on his own terms. Other top contenders with
long political records, including Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch
Landrieu, have no such luxury.
Black leaders say Katrina
forcing dialogue on poverty
2/25/2006, 3:27 p.m. CT
By PAM EASTON The Associated Press
HOUSTON (AP) — Black leaders who gathered Saturday to discuss issues
affecting the community said Hurricane Katrina is forcing a much-needed
dialogue on poverty in the U.S.
"The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced.
Now it is time for a sea of change," said broadcaster and author Tavis
Smiley, who organized Saturday's State of the Black Union dialogue in
Houston.
Marc H. Morial, President of the National Urban League and a former
New Orleans mayor, said many along the Gulf Coast lost not only their
material possessions, but their lifelong community ties.
"The government of this nation has the responsibility to make people
whole," Morial said. "We all have to be advocates, because Katrina is
not just about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Katrina exposed poverty
and it also exposed neglect."
February 23, 2006 Lieutenant Governor Makes Bid for Mayor of New Orleans
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 22 — Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu formally entered the
race for mayor of New Orleans on Wednesday, adding a politically potent
name to a foreshortened contest certain to raise the make-or-break
issues facing this city.
The primary is on April 22, with a possible runoff in May. The stakes
and shifting demographics here have made the contest unlike any other in
recent memory.
In addition to Mr. Landrieu, two other well-known whites have entered
the race, underscoring the possibility that New Orleans could elect a
white mayor for the first time in more than 30 years. They are Ron
Forman, president of the Audubon Nature Institute, credited with making
a financial success of the city's zoo and aquarium, and Peggy Wilson, a
Republican former city councilwoman considered a voice for wealthier
Uptown residents.
February 22, 2006
New Orleans Journal Away From Mardi Gras, Glints of Life as the Hopeful
Trickle Home
By DAN BARRY
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 21 — At evening time in parts of the Gentilly
neighborhood here, headlights become searchlights, skipping spectrally
across the facades of empty houses, street after street, in the pitch of
absence.
This is how it has been since Hurricane Katrina, six months ago. But
now isolated beacons of light suggest the return of the determined: here
the glow emanating from the small windows of a government trailer, there
the power lamps revealing the gut renovation of a house.
On an otherwise deserted Music Street, for example, Karry and Deanna
Causey have set up a trailer, hired contractors, stripped the first
floor of their home — and surrounded their storm-damaged house with
bright lights to ward against the uneasiness that comes from camping out
on the wilderness of their own property.
Session is stormy for Blanco agenda Levee compromise in, housing trust out
Saturday, February 18, 2006
By Jan Moller and Ed Anderson Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- The Legislature wrapped up a contentious 12-day
special session Friday that produced a compromise bill to restructure
southeast Louisiana's patchwork system of levee boards but failed to
deliver on Gov. Kathleen Blanco's efforts to downsize New Orleans'
government and to form a state trust to distribute federal housing aid.
In the second special session since the upheaval caused by two major
hurricanes, lawmakers passed bills designed to make it easier for
displaced New Orleanians to vote in the April 22 city elections and
reshuffled the state bureaucracy by making the Louisiana Recovery
Authority a permanent state agency.
Study shows landfill reopening
could threaten levee
By James Varney
Staff writer
The pressure from a monstrous pile of debris put into the Old Gentilly
Landfill since Hurricane Katrina could push mushy soil under the
Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet levee, weakening another piece of New
Orleans’ already shaky flood protection system, according to an
investigative study of the site.
That finding was the most explosive in a final draft of the study
commisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and released
Tuesday.
State environmental officials disputed the findings in the report and
characterized its methodology as “haphazard.”
Levee bill passes with separate
east, west bank boards
By Robert Travis Scott Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE — In a major turnaround, a unanimous Senate passed the
governor’s bills to overhaul the New Orleans area levee boards Tuesday
after supporters of the proposal yielded to West Bank lawmakers who want
separate authorities on either side of the Mississippi River.
The centerpiece legislation of the current special session, Senate
Bills 8 and 9 by Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi, still must pass the House
before the session ends Friday to become law. Several challenges to the
bills remain, including attempts that will be made to pull St. Bernard
Parish out of the new proposed consolidated authority and to give West
Bank officials more say in who will sit on their governing board and
when the new law will take effect.
Public weighs in on plans for
Category 5 levees
Congress awaiting coastal strategy draft
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
By Mark Schleifstein Staff writer
LAFAYETTE -- A group of public officials and business and
environmental leaders began an effort Monday to develop a plan to
protect coastal Louisiana from the storm surge of a Category 5 hurricane
while also protecting the coast's fragile ecosystem. Advertisement
The Army Corps of Engineers must send a first draft of the plan,
dubbed the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Plan, to
Congress by June 1, with a final version due a year later.
Several hundred people gathered Monday at the Cajundome to propose
alternate routes for a series of levees and gate structures aimed at
providing enhanced storm protection in the aftermath of Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita. The meeting kicked off public participation in the
drafting process.
BUYOUT IN WORKS
Five parish leaders agree to make thousands whole
First phase of voluntary program focuses on owner-occupied homes
By Gordon Russell, Frank Donze and Laura Maggi Staff writers
In a major development that could at last provide definitive options
to New Orleans-area homeowners sitting in limbo, the leaders of the five
metropolitan parishes hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina have signed on to
a plan to offer owners of flood-damaged houses the choice of a buyout at
full, pre-storm market value or a renovation grant to cover most
repairs.
The program, which New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has cheekily titled
the "Failed Levees Homeowner Recovery Program," is the most detailed
blueprint for making homeowners whole since the apparent death of
legislation by U.S. Rep. Richard Baker that would have allowed owners of
flood-ravaged homes to recoup 60 percent of their equity.
New Orleanians wrestle
bureaucracy, fear of abandonment
2/12/2006, 1:56 p.m. CT
By MICHELLE ROBERTS The Associated Press
METAIRIE, La. (AP) — For months, Earline Stelljes kept a brave face,
scrubbing the black mold from her floor and eying the drywall sagging
precariously from her bathroom ceiling.
Stelljes needs to repair her house, left damaged and without heat by
Hurricane Katrina. But first, she needs a trailer to live in with her
12-year-old granddaughter. Polite as the folks at Federal Emergency
Management Agency have been, no one can say when one might come.
When another neighbor recently got a trailer and she was left waiting
— again — she lost it.
"I cried. I really cried," Stelljes said, standing on the front step
of her home on a block full of travel trailers. "When I saw they were
getting a trailer, I thought, 'What's wrong with me? Why me, God?'"
Change is mantra of citizen
group
'Now we see a way forward' for N.O.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
By Bruce Nolan Staff writer
As candidates line up for mayor and City Council races of historic
importance in post-Katrina New Orleans, a new coalition of leaders from
business, churches and non-profits continues to grow, hoping to emerge
as a permanent force that politicians henceforth must reckon with.
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But that is hardly the half of it.
Dozens of members of the new Common Good Initiative, as it has begun
calling itself, hope to create a new corps of broad-based, private civic
leadership that New Orleans historically has lacked. They hope to push
forward some version of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission's
reconstruction plan -- and most ambitiously, detoxify the city's bitter
racial politics by forging interracial bonds among community groups in
which the city's deep racial divisions can be freshly addressed.
Mardi Gras revelers find solace
in satire
2/12/2006, 5:55 a.m. CT
By MICHELLE ROBERTS The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The first Mardi Gras parade since Hurricane
Katrina marched through the French Quarter pulling carts with blue
tarps, effigies of Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco and floats
with themes such as "Give Me That Mold Time Religion."
The Krewe du Vieux lampooned Katrina and public officials blamed for
the bungled response to the catastrophe in their parade Saturday themed
"C'est Levee," a play on the French phrase meaning "that's life."
Mardi Gras has long been an occasion for the city to laugh at tragedy
and aim barbs at authorities. Given all the pain New Orleans has
suffered in the past year, the irreverence should reach new heights this
season.
Race could define mayor election
Nagin already facing roster of white rivals
Sunday, February 12, 2006
By Gordon Russell and Frank Donze Staff writers
The first New Orleans mayor's race after the horrors of Hurricane
Katrina has an intriguing racial undercurrent: How will a black mayor
elected with strong white support fare against numerous white
challengers while much of the city's black electorate is displaced?
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And in a city that has historically voted along racial lines -- but
whose very future now hangs in the balance -- will candidates be able to
persuade voters to look beyond race in casting their ballots?
The script that is ultimately written will hinge on how the
electorate -- the segment living in New Orleans as well as the tens of
thousands scattered across the nation -- judges Mayor Ray Nagin, the
embattled incumbent who in many ways still sits in the eye of the storm.
HAVEN and HELL
First, they lost everything. Then many New Orleanians seeking refuge
landed in Houston's deadliest neighborhoods. Now they live in fear and
find themselves scapegoats for a crime wave that was rising even before
Katrina
Sunday, February 12, 2006
By Trymaine Lee Staff writer
HOUSTON -- The 15-year-old girl told police the men who raped her had
New Orleans accents. No mistaking it. She said she recognized it the
moment one of them jammed a gun in her face that day in mid-January and
barked an order: Get in the van. She told police they drove her to a
secluded area in southeast Houston and raped her until the sun came up.
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Her story seemed to burst like a napalm bomb over a city already
seething with months of tension since more than 150,000 Hurricane
Katrina evacuees arrived.
Radio and television programs were jammed with angry callers
lambasting evacuees. Police tore through neighborhoods filled with New
Orleanians, questioning innocent Katrina survivors while looking for the
men the girl had described -- one with dreadlocks and three teardrop
tattoos under his left eye, the other with a single braid stemming from
his goatee. Thousands of fliers featured police sketches and a reward.
Hurricane Katrina stokes Mardi
Gras satire
2/11/2006, 12:08 p.m. CT
By MICHELLE ROBERTS The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mardi Gras has long been an occasion for the city
to laugh at tragedy and aim barbs at authorities, and given all the pain
New Orleans has suffered in the past year the irreverence should reach
new heights this season.
Armed with sharp tongues and images such as the blue tarps that still
protect broken roofs across the city, the clubs that stage Mardi Gras
parades are targeting Hurricane Katrina and the politicians they blame
for the chaotic response to the catastrophe.
"It is hard living here now. We need to have our opportunity to
release," said Keith Twitchell, one of the organizers of Saturday's
Krewe du Vieux parade. "If you don't laugh, you're dead. There's a lot
to cry about here."
The Inquiry White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush
administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they
were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing
floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness
account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the
Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the
day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first
heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon,
Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the
breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He
then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which
notified the Homeland Security Department.
Democrats: Katrina papers show
levee breaches reported early Analysis comes as ex-FEMA chief prepares
to testify
From Mike Ahlers CNN
Friday, February 10, 2006; Posted: 3:08 a.m. EST (08:08 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Democrats investigating FEMA's response to
Hurricane Katrina say they have documented nearly 30 instances in which
federal and local government officials gave early reports on Aug. 29
that levees had broken and that New Orleans was flooding, including one
report at 8:30 a.m. the day of the storm.
That information is likely to raise fresh questions about why
President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff were
evidently unaware of the flooding until the day after the storm.
"The first communication came at 8:30 a.m. (Monday). So, it is
inexplicable to me how those responsible for the federal response could
have woken up Tuesday morning unaware of this obviously catastrophic
situation," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Connecticut, said.
Levee bill faces multitude of
threats
Senate panel gives OK, but its chances still iffy
Thursday, February 09, 2006
By Robert Travis Scott Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- The governor's bill for levee board consolidation won
approval from a Senate committee Wednesday but remained under a cloud of
doubt as legislators from all corners of the proposed new levee zone
aimed potentially lethal criticism at it.
In a day of sometimes emotionally charged testimony, officials from
the parishes of St. Bernard, Livingston, St. Charles and the west bank
of Jefferson raised a storm of objections that led one committee member
to predict the measure lacked enough votes to pass.
"The bill's not going to pass in its current fashion," said Sen.
Robert Adley, D-Benton. "There's just no way."
Blanco's 'housing trust'
conflicts with Nagin's plan
By Laura Maggi
Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE — A state housing trust would be in charge of doling out
money for buyouts or reconstruction of flood-damaged homes, under a plan
by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, setting up a possible conflict with a proposal
by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s recovery commission.
While state officials insist that local planning processes will
determine where people can rebuild, the governor’s legislation makes it
clear that she wants the state to retain the authority to dispense
whatever grants or loans will be available to homeowners.
That is at odds with Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which
has proposed that a city-controlled entity be created to oversee the
spending of federal dollars used to buy, sell and redevelop houses and
neighborhoods.
Levee board consolidation bill
passes out of committee while Senators maintain its death
BATON ROUGE — A bill to consolidate several southeast Louisiana levee
boards into a single state-controlled agency passed out of a Senate
committee Wednesday even as two lawmakers on the panel warned that the
legislation is ultimately doomed in its current form.
Senate Bill 8 by Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi, cleared the Senate
Transporation, Highways and Public Works without objection and now heads
to the full Senate. Similar legislation was killed in the House during a
November special session and faces an uphill battle again without
compromises.
The bill is one of the top priorities of Gov. Kathleen Blanco for the
special session that began Monday and runs through Feb. 17.
Lawmakers introduce a range of
options for levee board reform
2/7/2006, 2:53 p.m. CT
By DOUG SIMPSON The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco's plan to dissolve
southeast Louisiana levee boards faces a slew of competing ideas, with
several lawmakers arguing that some of the boards should remain because
they perform well.
Blanco wants to do away with all the local boards and has the backing
of outspoken business and community groups from the New Orleans area.
Although levee construction was largely a federal project, local levee
boards oversee the maintenance of the levees. Critics argue that
nepotism, corruption and incompetence on the boards, which are made up
of political appointees, contributed to the breaches. Blanco said
displaced residents of New Orleans and other flooded areas won't return
home until the levees get new caretakers.
Police reports conceal looting
New code could obscure level of crime in Katrina's aftermath
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
By Michael Perlstein Staff writer
Just as ubiquitous as the debris mounds and ruined cars littering
Katrina-ravaged New Orleans are the looting stories: homeowners hit two
or three times, businesses ransacked, construction workers sneaking off
with people's valuables. Yet the problem, while acknowledged by police,
is not reflected in official crime statistics compiled by the New
Orleans Police Department. Advertisement
Five months after the storm, police are still recording more than
half of the city's looting complaints under a special code, 21K,
developed shortly after the hurricane, internal police statistics show.
The K stands for Katrina, and the 21 signifies "lost or stolen," a
standard prestorm designation used mostly in cases in which criminal
activity is not clear-cut, such as when there's no forced entry or a
victim can't recall when he or she last saw the missing property. More
significantly, "lost or stolen" cases do not show up in publicly
released crime reports.
By DOUG SIMPSON
The Associated Press
Sunday, February 5, 2006; 2:19 PM
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco is facing rebellious lawmakers
as she opens the second special legislative session she has called to
address Louisiana's recovery from last year's hurricane season.
Blanco planned to kick off the session Monday by taking legislators on a
bus trip to New Orleans so they can see the hurricane damage, but a
number of them said they've already seen the destruction and wouldn't
take the trip. Others found the idea offensive, saying the emphasis five
months after Hurricane Katrina should be law making, not sightseeing.
It's also unclear how many legislators would even attend the governor's
opening day speech, to be delivered Monday evening at the New Orleans
convention center instead of the traditional setting at the state
Capitol.
Address changes offer insight
into city
But don't read too much into it
Sunday, February 05, 2006
By Gordon Russell Staff writer
The number of New Orleans mail customers who registered new addresses
outside the metropolitan area jumped by more than 37,000 during the last
two months of 2005, with the Houston area firmly establishing itself as
the most popular destination for residents displaced by Hurricane
Katrina, according to new figures released by the U.S. Postal Service.
Thousands of suburban residents also filed change of address forms in
the last two months of 2005 for locations outside the metro area,
although in much smaller numbers than city residents, the figures
indicate.
The statistics, which include change-of-address filings through Dec.
31, show that residents continued to register addresses elsewhere well
after the storm's initial impact. Demographers and political analysts
said the increase seems to indicate that many evacuees are settling into
their post-storm homes in ways that they weren't prepared to do
immediately after Katrina. But at the same time, they say, it would be a
mistake to interpret the filing of a change-of-address form as evidence
of a desire to settle elsewhere for good.
Katrina fuels calls for levee
board mergers
Agencies waste money and are awash in patronage, critics say
Sunday, February 05, 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt and Robert Travis Scott
Staff Writers
It was a typical morning for Lt. Vincent Yetta, a 25-year veteran of
the East Jefferson Levee District Police Department.
While patrolling the 30 miles of levees that ring the low-lying
suburb, Yetta found two cars illegally parked near a bike path, scolded
a resident for failing to keep his dogs on a leash and responded to a
minor burglary at a warehouse on the batture near the Mississippi River.
Though Yetta believed the burglary was an inside job by someone who
had robbed the business twice in the past month, he decided not to
pursue the case himself. Instead, he turned it over to the Jefferson
Parish Sheriff's Office, which has both crime scene technicians and a
burglary unit.
Local mail delivery slowly
improving
But no magazines go to ZIP code 701
Sunday, February 05, 2006
By Michelle Hunter East Jefferson bureau
Lisa Barbiero, a displaced New Orleanian living in Houston, opened
her mailbox there on Jan. 23 to find a letter from the American Medical
Association. Forwarded around its original Crescent City destination, it
bore a postmark of Aug. 31.
"It makes me wonder where that little purple letter has been all this
time," Barbiero said.
Five months after Hurricane Katrina paralyzed mail delivery in
southeast Louisiana, New Orleans area residents find the Postal Service
still in rehab. Tardy letters, delayed billing statements, invitations
to long-ago holiday parties, AWOL insurance checks and the continued ban
of magazines and other periodicals for the ZIP codes beginning with 701
are among the common symptoms.
E.R. TRAUMA
With just a handful of hospitals open, a crisis is unfolding in local
emergency rooms bursting at the seams with patients needing critical
care.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
By Bruce Hamilton West Bank bureau
John LeBlanc's father had been waiting in the East Jefferson General
Hospital emergency room for seven hours when his son asked an admissions
clerk how much longer. She couldn't tell him. Advertisement
Family members had rushed the 63-year-old Metairie man to the medical
center suffering from congestive heart failure.
Becoming increasingly upset, the younger LeBlanc turned to the
nurses. Although they didn't know either, he said they were sympathetic,
adding that someone had waited 19 ½ hours the night before.
Levees loom as contentious
post-Katrina issue for lawmakers
10:44 AM CST on Saturday, February 4, 2006
By DOUG SIMPSON / Associated Press
The failure of the levee system was the root cause of the flooding and
chaos triggered by Hurricane Katrina. But figuring out how to better
manage those levees has sparked a hot debate.
The levee boards that now manage the flood-protection structures are
made up of political appointees, caricatured since the storm by critics
who say the board members are mere beneficiaries of their family and
business relationships with members of the state House and Senate.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who opens her second post-Katrina special
legislative session on Monday, now supports a plan to dissolve those
boards and let the state oversee the levees in southeast Louisiana.
Critics of the boards — including groups of New Orleans residents and
business leaders — also support the idea.
Rebuilding New Orleans, One
Appeal at a Time
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 4 — Every day the line snakes down a spartan corridor
on the eighth floor of City Hall here, as hundreds of people clutch a
piece of paper inscribed with a fateful percentage that could force them
to abandon their home.
The number is always over 50, and it means a house was so damaged in the
flooding after Hurricane Katrina — more than half-ruined — that it faces
demolition, unless the owner can come up with tens of thousands of
dollars to raise it several feet above the ground and any future
floodwaters.
But there is a way out, and that is why so many people stand in line
every day, collectively transforming this half-ruined city. "What you
need to do is talk to a building inspector and get that lowered below 50
percent," a city worker calls out to the crowd. And at the end of the
line, in a large open room down the hall, that is exactly what happens,
nearly 90 percent of the time, New Orleans officials say.
Clerical error may have doomed
levee
By Bob Marshall Staff writer
A difference in soil boring data transferred from one chart to another
may have played a key role in engineering decisions that led to the
breach on the 17th Street Canal floodwall that flooded much of New
Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, National Science Foundation
investigators say.
A cross-section drawing in the project design documents shows a weak
layer of peaty soils running between 11 feet and 16 feet below sea level
in the area that failed during the storm. But information in the
individual soil borings that were used to draw the cross section show
the peaty layer extending as deep as 30 feet below sea level.
Building repairs ranked by
urgency
State lawmakers criticize list's order
Friday, February 03, 2006
By Jan Moller Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Prisons outrank charity hospitals, and repairing the
Superdome is more urgent than fixing university buildings, according to
a list that ranks the state's priorities for repairing government
property damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Advertisement
Despite complaints from some lawmakers, the Joint Legislative
Committee on the Budget unanimously approved the priority list, allowing
the state to embark on what promises to be a multiyear effort to repair
the hurricane damage.
State facilities manager Jerry Jones said the list will allow the
state to tell the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will
shoulder the lion's share of the repair costs, which buildings should
get their top attention.
La. leaders, White House clash
Administration ups fund request -- and resistance to Baker bill
Friday, February 03, 2006
By Bruce Alpert and Laura Maggi Staff writers
WASHINGTON -- The debate over how to rebuild homes and communities
destroyed by Hurricane Katrina erupted into public warfare between
Louisiana and the White House on Thursday as the Bush administration
sharply denounced the state's preferred solution and the author of the
Louisiana plan accused the administration of misleading the public in an
effort to kill the proposal. Advertisement
In the wake of criticism that President Bush didn't say enough in
Tuesday's State of the Union address about federal help to redevelop the
Gulf Coast, the administration's hurricane recovery coordinator launched
a media blitz Thursday that included appearances on national TV news
shows and an op-ed column in The Washington Post. He also held a news
conference in which he announced that the president will request an
additional $18 billion in emergency spending for hurricane recovery
efforts.
EDITORIAL: What Mr. Powell
doesn't get
Friday, February 03, 2006
When President Bush appointed Donald Powell as the federal
government's post-Katrina reconstruction czar, greater New Orleans had
reason to hope that the plain-spoken Texas banker would take up our case
in Washington. And at least at first, Mr. Powell seemed to grasp the
severity of the crisis facing our area. Advertisement
But even if he did, that understanding has not shaken loose the
federal help that our region needs and deserves. Last week, the White
House came out against U.S. Rep. Richard Baker's plan for federally
backed buyouts of thousands of severely damaged homes. And Mr. Powell
defended the White House's position on the Baker bill in an opinion
piece in Thursday's Washington Post.
Corps says insects didn't contribute to wall failure
Friday, February 03, 2006
By Mark Schleifstein Staff writer
A termite expert is questioning whether tiny, voracious Formosan
termites played a role in the failure of levee walls in New Orleans
during Hurricane Katrina.
Louisiana State University entomologist Gregg Henderson said there
are clear signs that the destructive insects were present, and he wants
the opportunity to dig into the levees beneath the walls to find out if
termite nests contributed to their weakening. Army Corps of Engineers
officials, however, say no evidence has been found to indicate that
termites undermined the integrity of the levees. Henderson, a
world-renowned expert on termites, found evidence of insects -- both
Formosan termites and fire ants -- in the joints between wall panels on
both the London Avenue and 17th Street canals. Fire ants, an enemy of
termites, tend to invade the channels created by the wood-destroying
insects. The termites are apparently attracted to a paperlike material
made of bagasse, the remains of cane stalks after the sugar is removed,
that is used in making the concrete form for the wall joints. The
material remained in the joints, along with plastic spacers, as the wall
was built. Bagasse contains ascorbic acid, which also is used in
commercial termite baits containing pesticides, Henderson said.
February 3, 2006 U.S. Plans $18 Billion More for Gulf, but Local
Officials Are Skeptical
By JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — The Bush administration announced Thursday that it
would ask Congress to provide $18 billion more for Gulf Coast
reconstruction this year, on top of $67 billion appropriated last year.
But it provided no details about how the money would be spent, and made
clear that it did not plan to request additional aid for the region in
its 2007 federal budget.
Congressional officials said they expected the $18 billion plan, details
of which will be released over the coming month, to call for rebuilding
a damaged Veterans Administration hospital in New Orleans, strengthening
levees and replenishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency's
disaster relief fund.
But there was bipartisan concern among Gulf Coast lawmakers that the
plan would not leave enough money for rebuilding permanent housing,
widely considered the region's most pressing need.
February 3, 2006 New Orleans Facing Election and New Order
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 2 — In great confusion and peculiar circumstances,
this city has suddenly found itself in the midst of an unexpected
mayoral election campaign. The result may once again upend this city's
old order: a white man might be elected mayor in a city that was, until
a few months ago, mostly black.
That outcome would have been undreamed of before the hurricane, but the
high probability of one of Louisiana's most potent political families
entering a race that almost didn't happen could further transform a
political calculus that has prevailed here for nearly three decades.
Mitch Landrieu, the state's lieutenant governor and son of the city's
last white mayor — Moon Landrieu, who left office in 1978 — is expected
to announce any day his entry into a race that will help define a
radically reshaped city.
A City Fears for Its Soul
New Orleans Worries That Its Unique Culture May Be Lost
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 3, 2006; A01
NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans, the theme park?
Frightening as it sounds, the prospect of this sultry, eclectic city
rising from the muck of Hurricane Katrina as a sterile imitation of
itself is becoming an abiding preoccupation. Even as the city's
riverfront high ground -- now dubbed the "Isle of Denial" by one scholar
-- gamely revives, miles of culturally vibrant neighborhoods that once
smelled of simmering red beans and hosted funky second-line parades lie
dark and empty, their futures in doubt.
A quiet but increasingly urgent conversation about that culture's
survival consumes this city, both on its street corners and in its
institutions. In the Lower Ninth Ward, a woman who stables horses on the
Mississippi River levee frets about "a land grab" that could bulldoze
her home to make a "playground for the rich." In the Bywater
neighborhood, an acclaimed photographer longs for the sound of teenagers
blowing horns from porches. At Loyola University, authors and academics
convene a panel to ponder whether New Orleans culture can be saved.
By Donald E. Powell
Thursday, February 2, 2006; A21
President Bush made a commitment that the federal government would be a
full partner in the recovery and rebuilding of the areas devastated by
Hurricane Katrina, and he is keeping that commitment. The federal
government has already set aside $85 billion for the recovery effort,
and more is on the way.
But the president also established important principles that will guide
the federal role in the response: State and local leaders -- not those
in Washington -- must develop the recovery plan; taxpayer dollars must
be spent wisely, with strong congressional oversight and accountability
mechanisms in place; and, finally, markets must be able to work properly
without interference from the government.
HANO calls on residents of the
Iberville housing development to come back home
11:10 PM CST on Wednesday, February 1, 2006
Ben Lemoine / WWL-TV News Reporter
When every public housing development on the east bank of New Orleans
was damaged during Hurricane Katrina, federal housing authorities
promised a new way of rebuilding them, but the old buildings have
currently been renovated and many residents of the Iberville development
have been told by HANO to come back home.
The worst part of evacuating for Kim Aburime and her family was just
being away from home. Aburime fled her Iberville housing development
apartment when the water was five feet high. Even though FEMA has been
paying for a place for her to live in Baton Rouge, Aburime said she’d
rather pay her $172 a month rent to come back home.
February 2, 2006 Investigators Criticize Response to Hurricane
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — No one from the federal government was clearly in
charge of the response to Hurricane Katrina, Congressional investigators
said Wednesday, and in the absence of clear leadership the general
federal approach was "to wait for affected states to request
assistance."
In a preliminary report, the Government Accountability Office, the
nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, criticized Michael Chertoff,
the homeland security secretary, for waiting until Tuesday, the day
after the storm hit, to designate Hurricane Katrina an "incident of
national significance," a status that more clearly put his department in
charge.
February 2, 2006 White House, Chertoff Faulted Over Katrina
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:10 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House and Homeland Security chief Michael
Chertoff failed to provide decisive action when Hurricane Katrina
struck, congressional investigators said Wednesday in a stinging
assessment of slow federal relief efforts.
The White House had no clear chain of command in place, investigators
with the Government Accountability Office said, laying much of the blame
on President Bush for not designating a single official to coordinate
federal decision-making for the Aug. 29 storm. Bush has accepted
responsibility for the government's halting response, but for the most
part then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, who quit days after the hurricane
hit, has been the public face of the failures.
Bucktown to be replaced by floodgate
By Sheila Grissett
East Jefferson bureau
The remnants of Bucktown’s venerable old fishing fleet and the site of
Sid Mar’s historic waterfront restaurant, as well as the popular Coconut
Beach Volleyball Complex at West End, are among the local landmarks and
institutions being sacrificed to construction of a temporary floodgate
in the 17th Street Canal, according to the latest design plan federal
engineers were finalizing this week.
“Sid Mar’s will have to relocate, and the fishing boats won’t ever be
able to come back,” said Janet Cruppi, a real estate division supervisor
with the Corps of Engineers, which will build and operate the new
floodgate and some additional levees on both sides of the big outfall
canal. “It’s such a shame that landowners are finding out before we can
even get in touch with them, but that’s the nature of the emergency.”
Residents of greater New Orleans have been holding out hope that
President Bush will make our region's recovery from Hurricane Katrina a
top priority this year.
Because of the failure of a flood-protection system built by the
federal government, more than 1,000 people in our metro area lost their
lives. Hundreds of thousands have yet to return home. Surely the
catastrophe that befell this community should weigh on the president --
and on Congress, and on a nation that eats our seafood, warms itself
with our oil and gas and uses all the products that pass through our
ports.
Blanco:
No offshore signoffs unless La. gets royalty share
Money could finance hurricane protection
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
By Jan Moller and Pam Radtke Russell
Staff writers
Gov. Kathleen Blanco warned this week that the state would not
support future offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico unless
Louisiana gets a share of the federal royalties generated by oil
production there.
"It is abundantly clear that allowing development to occur where
inadequate provisions are made for the protection of that development is
irresponsible," Blanco wrote to the Mineral Management Service. "The
amount of oil and gas activity off our coast means little if we have no
coastal communities to take advantage of this activity."
WASHINGTON -- Louisiana congressional members expressed
disappointment late Tuesday that President Bush didn't offer any new
initiatives or plans to help the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricane
Katrina in his State of the Union Address.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said she doesn't sense that the president
grasps the magnitude of the problems on the Gulf Coast by devoting only
one short paragraph to Katrina recovery.
"Unfortunately, we didn't get what we were hoping for -- or
expecting, but we are going to press on because we need this president
to be our champion, not our critic," Landrieu said.
Nagin to testify on Katrina
response today
Lack of supplies at Convention Center at issue
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
By Bruce Alpert
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is expected to face
questioning from a Senate committee today on why he was unable to get
food and water to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center for 48 hours
after he opened it to Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
Documents released Tuesday night by the Senate Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs show that the city opened the
Convention Center a day after the hurricane slammed the city Aug. 29 and
that the Superdome became more and more uncomfortable because of failing
sanitation and no air conditioning. Thousands of people from flooded New
Orleans neighborhoods and downtown hotels looking for shelter eventually
made their way to the Convention Center.
SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- When the fights between Texas and Louisiana students
worsened at White Middle School, its remedy was a field trip to a nearby
strip mall for a lesson in peace and understanding.
Two blocks from campus in a former pizza parlor, the students were
brought together to brainstorm ideas, practice tolerance and freely
mingle at a workshop that Principal Rick Canales hoped would ease
tensions that have troubled the school since 32 Hurricane Katrina
refugees arrived in September.
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 31, 2006; A07
Louisiana officials did virtually nothing to prepare to evacuate poor,
sick or elderly people as required under a state emergency plan adopted
months before Hurricane Katrina hit, according to newly released
documents.
State Transportation and Development Secretary Johnny B. Bradberry told
Senate investigators that he was assigned the task in April, months
before the Aug. 29 storm. But his department had no buses or drivers to
execute the mission.
"We have done nothing to fulfill this responsibility," Bradberry said,
according to a transcript of a Dec. 21 deposition obtained by The
Washington Post. "We put no plans in place to do any of this."
City enacts laws to cut red tape
Any electrician can now do inspections
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
By Bruce Eggler
Staff writer
New Orleans' handful of city electrical inspectors, perhaps the most
in-demand people in town for the past four months, could be about to
find out how the Maytag repairman, "the loneliest guy in town," felt in
all those TV ads.
The city has suspended requirements that city inspectors must sign
off on all electrical work done by contractors, whether on permanent
buildings or on temporary housing such as trailers.
Mayor Ray Nagin also has agreed to suspend the requirement that the
city's Housing Conservation District Review Committee review the
proposed demolition of many buildings in older neighborhoods.
Squabbles hindered rescue
efforts
FEMA denied request for rubber boats
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- A day before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf
Coast, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries fired off an
urgent request for 300 rubber rafts to rescue people from what was
expected to be high water in New Orleans.
Marked "Red-High" priority, the plea went to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency headquarters in Denton, Texas, where a team of
disaster experts considered it. As Katrina lashed southeast Louisiana
and ruptured New Orleans' levees Aug. 29, FEMA gave its answer: "Request
denied."
Landrieu to announce he'll run
against Nagin
Forman considers joining the fray
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
By Frank Donze
Staff writer
Handing New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin perhaps his most formidable
political challenge to date, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu has decided to
place his name on the April ballot, a key Landrieu supporter said
Monday.
Landrieu could not be reached for comment.
But an ally who requested anonymity said Landrieu informed key
supporters across the city and state during the weekend of his intention
to run for mayor.
New Orleans waits. While some heroic efforts at rebuilding are taking
place, hundreds of thousands of residents have put their lives on hold
until they know what the government's next steps will be, leaving the
shells of their houses as placeholders. But the Bush administration has
now rejected the most broadly supported plan for rebuilding communities
while offering nothing to take its place.
It has been five months since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast
and for many the norm is still the claustrophobic new reality of tiny
trailers and multiple families crammed into single apartments. Louisiana
is trying. You can hear jackhammers pounding and buzz saws whirring on
Canal Street in New Orleans. Dedicated workers endure a grinding daily
commute from points north, like Baton Rouge, as they try to make the
city and the region whole again. But the mission is far from complete
and the challenge is beyond the scope of a broken city and a poor state.
January 30, 2006 Entergy Fights to Recover From Hurricanes
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:07 p.m. ET
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Faced with staggering damages from the worst natural
disaster in U.S. history, Entergy Corp. is maneuvering through a maze of
challenges, including the loss of much of its New Orleans power market.
The question of federal aid for the utility holding company is up in the
air. Its Entergy New Orleans unit has sought bankruptcy protection. To
increase customer bills -- one way to pay for $1.5 billion in damage to
its transmission systems from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Texas -- it must go through often-skeptical utility
regulators.
Entergy is hoping for federal help, similar to the $250 million
ConEdison Co. received following the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.
It hasn't placed a dollar amount on how much help it would like, or
expects, but the company has warned that without assistance, customers
in New Orleans could face rate increases of up to 140 percent -- a
charge that economic developers say would stymie, if not kill, the
city's recovery.
Suspect: jury system unfair with
fewer blacks in Orleans area
08:01 PM CST on Monday, January 30, 2006
Associated Press
A suspect in a federal drug case failed to persuade a judge that the
post-Katrina jury pool violates his rights because too many black people
have left the region.
Mervin Spencer, 40, of New Orleans faces allegations that he twice sold
crack cocaine to undercover state troopers in May 2004.
Houston Examines
Post-Katrina Spike in Violent Crime
Morning Edition, January 30, 2006 ·
Police in Houston late last year noticed an increase in
homicides. At the time, they downplayed the potential role of Hurricane
Katrina evacuees. Now, the Houston Police Department says hurricane
survivors were at least partly responsible for the spike in violence.
Levees must be armored, corps
says
Fabric, rock layers would add strength, slow erosion
Monday, January 30, 2006
By Bob Marshall
Staff writer
During nearly 300 years of living in one of nation's most flood-prone
spots, New Orleanians have spent a lot of time talking about levees --
How high? How strong? How safe? -- while hardly ever mentioning the word
"armoring."
Hurricane Katrina changed that.
As state and federal agencies race to fix almost 170 miles of local
levees damaged by the storm before the next hurricane season begins June
1, armoring -- protecting the surface of levees with concrete, rocks or
synthetic fabric to prevent erosion and scouring -- has become a
constant in discussions about the effort.
Is New Orleans Ready for
Tourists?
And More Important, Are They Ready For New Orleans?
By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 29, 2006; P01
On a recent January Thursday night at the Gumbo Shop, a stalwart
dispenser of Creole comfort food in the French Quarter, the line for a
table crossed an important threshold: It went out the front door.
"I haven't seen that before," said Jennifer, a harried waitress eyeing a
queue that spilled onto the sidewalk of St. Peter Street for one of the
first times since the restaurant reopened in early December. Some of
those waiting were obviously college students. (Tulane and Loyola
universities had just resumed classes, and the restaurant's $6.95 bowl
of gumbo has long drawn the kind of hungry twentysomethings who were
noisily getting reacquainted by the hostess stand.) Others seemed like
local people or relief workers, and a few -- including one couple
flipping through a Zagat guide -- were obviously tourists. "Everyone's
talking about how busy it's been getting," Jennifer said.
Five months after Katrina, law enforcement officials are still working
to stop looters in New Orleans area neighborhoods. In response to a
growing number of lootings, the N.O.P.D. and Criminal Sheriff's office
plan to put extra patrols in recovering neighborhoods.
In the past four and a half months, Dennis Areaux of Lake Vista said he
has been the victim of looters three times.
Post-Katrina Promises
Unfulfilled
On the Gulf Coast, Federal Recovery Effort Makes Halting Progress
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 28, 2006; A01
Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans,
President Bush's lofty promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast have been
frustrated by bureaucratic failures and competing priorities, a review
of events since the hurricane shows.
While the administration can claim some clear progress, Bush's ringing
call from New Orleans's Jackson Square on Sept. 15 to "do what it takes"
to make the city rise from the waters has not been matched by action,
critics at multiple levels of government say, resulting in a record that
is largely incomplete as Bush heads into next week's State of the Union
address.
The problems include the slow federal cleanup of debris in Mississippi
and Louisiana; a lack of authority for Bush's handpicked recovery
coordinator, Donald E. Powell; the shortage and poor quality of housing
for evacuees; and federal restrictions on reconstruction money and where
coastal communities can rebuild.
New Orleans Feels Cast Adrift
Perception of Washington Indifference Compounds Despair
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 28, 2006; A10
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 27 -- It has been an especially disheartening week for
the people of New Orleans as they struggle to rebuild.
President Bush announced he would not support a popular plan for a
government buyout of damaged houses. Word leaked that the White House
had ignored e-mail warnings of Hurricane Katrina's potential danger in
the 48 hours before the storm, including predictions of breached levees
and massive flooding. Administration officials said they would not
provide information to a Senate inquiry into the government's response
to the hurricane.
Even Laura Bush raised ire during a visit to the area when she had this
to say to local reporters about governmental relief: "I know it's very,
very slow. That's how government works."
Katrina Evacuees in Texas
Held in Killings
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:45 a.m. ET
HOUSTON (AP) -- At least 23 people who evacuated to Houston during
Hurricane Katrina were either the victim or the suspect in killings here
between September and December, police say.
Now, eight members of rival New Orleans gangs have been arrested in
connection with the slayings of 11 fellow refugees and other violent
crimes in the city, police spokesman Alvin Wright said Friday.
''They were doing the same thing in New Orleans,'' Wright said. ''The
hurricane brought those rivalries to Houston.''
Stress After Katrina 'Recipe
for Suicide'
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:09 p.m. ET
With a newborn daughter, an autistic child and a fledgling music
business, life was chaotic enough for Jerome ''Slim Rome'' Spears and
fiancee Rachel Harris.
Then Hurricane Katrina hit, chasing them from New Orleans, throwing both
out of work and putting Spears' plans to ''dominate'' the hip-hop scene
on indefinite hold.
This week, in an Atlanta-area rental home hundreds of miles from the Big
Easy, Spears shot his fiancee to death, severely wounded her 4-year-old
son with a bullet to the back of the head, and then killed himself. The
couple's 5-month-old daughter, born amid the Katrina chaos, was unharmed
but is now an orphan.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — New Orleans could lose as much as 80 percent
of its black population if its most damaged neighborhoods are not
rebuilt and if there is not significant government assistance to
help poor people return, a detailed analysis by Brown University has
concluded.
Combining data from the 2000 census with federal damage
assessment maps, the study provides a new level of specificity about
Hurricane Katrina's effect on the city's worst-flooded areas, which
were heavily populated by low-income black people.
Of the 354,000 people who lived in New Orleans neighborhoods
where the subsequent damage was moderate to severe, 75 percent were
black, 29 percent lived below the poverty line, more than 10 percent
were unemployed, and more than half were renters, the study found.
Jindal emphasizes state role
in recovery
U.S. focus on levees, jobs, housing urged
Friday, January 27, 2006
By Kate Moran
East Jefferson Bureau
The federal government has a responsibility to rebuild levees and
restore the degraded coastline, but Louisiana must invest in its own
recovery instead of leaning on federal largesse, especially in the areas
of health care, education and public housing, U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal
said in a speech Thursday night.
Speaking to a packed audience at Loyola University, the freshman
congressman painted hurricane recovery as a joint venture by the federal
and state governments, which must make separate but equally important
commitments to the rebuilding effort. He outlined three responsibilities
that each should tackle.
Ball now in La. court, Bush
says
State needs a plan for recovery, he says
Friday, January 27, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- Responding to complaints that his administration is
short-changing Louisiana's hurricane recovery, President Bush on
Thursday said the federal government has already made a "significant
commitment" and suggested that more money is unlikely until the state
produces a detailed recovery plan.
At other points during a White House news conference, Bush sounded
more accommodating, calling the passage of three hurricane-related
spending bills and two tax-relief packages since September "a good
start, a strong start" and indicating he would address the increasingly
controversial pace of Gulf Coast recovery in his State of the Union
speech Tuesday night.
Study profiles victims of
Katrina
Those who suffered most are black, poor
Thursday, January 26, 2006
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer
African-Americans and the poor living along the Gulf Coast were
disproportionately victimized by Hurricane Katrina, according to a study
by Brown University due for release today.
While the 16-page report surveys the entire region, most of it is
devoted to New Orleans, culminating in the prediction that the city is
at risk of losing more than 80 percent of its black population, and 50
percent of its white residents, if people cannot return to their
flood-damaged neighborhoods.
In the city, 75 percent of residents of damaged areas were black, while
in undamaged areas the majority of residents were white, the study
found. Also in damaged areas, 53 percent of residents were renters, more
than 10 percent were unemployed, and 29 percent were poor.
AP Interview: Blanco outlines
levee consolidation plans
1/25/2006, 4:42 p.m. CT
By MELINDA DESLATTE
The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco's push for consolidating
Louisiana levee districts envisions the state taking over the districts'
investment properties — like the airport and marinas operated by the New
Orleans levee board.
Also, lawmakers would no longer nominate members for the boards, under
Blanco's plan.
"We're going to try to get more professionally oriented boards focused
on flood control," Blanco said in an interview with The Associated Press
in which she outlined some of her levee consolidation plans.
Blanco intends the proposal, pitched as a way to strengthen Louisiana's
hurricane protection, to be the centerpiece of a special hurricane
recovery legislative session that begins Feb. 6, but she has been
guarded on specifics so far.
White House deals blow to
Baker "buy-out" plan
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — In a severe blow to state and local plans for rebuilding
hurricane-devastated areas, the Bush administration Tuesday came out
against a homeowner bailout proposal that many in Louisiana saw as the
key to economic recovery and the rebirth of a redesigned New Orleans.
Donald Powell, President Bush’s choice to oversee the Gulf Coast
recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said that grant money already
appropriated by Congress — as much as $6.2 billion for Louisiana — would
be “sufficient” to take care of homeowners who suffered the most in the
storm.
Senators slam White House
over storm alert
1/24/2006, 2:40 p.m. CT
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators lambasted the Bush administration on Tuesday
for failing to heed devastating predictions from a hurricane
preparedness test that began a year before Hurricane Katrina slammed
into the Gulf Coast.
The top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee also accused the White House of trying to block or
delay the panel's inquiry into the government's sluggish response to
Katrina.
The preparedness exercise that began in July 2004, dubbed Hurricane Pam,
warned that a Category 3 storm would overwhelm the New Orleans area with
flood waters, killing up to 60,000 people and destroying buildings and
roads. State and federal officials were concluding Pam's findings when
Katrina, an actual Category 4 storm, roared ashore on Aug. 29.
Federal report predicted
cataclysm
White House had research before Katrina hit land
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- As Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast,
President Bush's top disaster agency warned of the likelihood of levee
breaches that could leave New Orleans submerged "for weeks or months," a
communications blackout that would hamper rescue efforts and "at least
100,000 poverty-stricken people" stranded in the city.
Those remarkably accurate predictions were in a 40-page "Fast Analysis
Report" compiled by the Department of Homeland Security on Aug. 28.
Documents show that the report was sent by e-mail to the White House
Situation Room at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the deadly storm
made landfall.
January 22, 2006 Competing Plans to Repair New Orleans Flood Protection
BY JOHN SCHWARTZ
At the halfway mark between the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina last year
and the beginning of the 2006 hurricane season on June 1, the Army Corps
of Engineers has completed only 16 percent of its planned repairs to New
Orleans's battered flood protection system, according to corps
representatives.
The corps says its work is on track for restoring the system to its
pre-hurricane strength by the June 1 deadline, but in the meantime many
groups that have studied the disaster are coming up with proposals of
their own that they say could be cheaper, faster or stronger.
By now, you've probably heard or seen a tape of New Orleans Mayor Ray
Nagin's idiotic comments about God wanting the Big Easy to be a
"chocolate city."
Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray. At least he figured out he needed to apologize.
Hot Air in the Big Easy
The mayor's racial comments mar his re-election bid.
By Arian Campo-Flores
Newsweek
Jan. 30, 2006 issue - Peggy Wilson couldn't believe what she was hearing
on the radio. Addressing a crowd on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Mayor
Ray Nagin was claiming that God wanted New Orleans to remain majority
black. "This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," he said. "I
don't care what people are saying Uptown," referring to a mostly white
area of New Orleans. Nagin also suggested that God unleashed last year's
hurricanes because he was "mad at America"—and particularly at the black
community, for failing to take better care of itself.
The Nation In New Orleans, Smaller May Mean Whiter
By JAMES DAO
MAYOR C. RAY NAGIN of New Orleans was greeted with yowls of protest last
week when he declared that it was God's will for New Orleans to be a
"chocolate" city. Whites shouted racism; tourist groups threatened to
cancel bookings; even his friends rolled their eyes at Mr. Nagin's
penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment.
But one group, the displaced black residents of New Orleans, might have
welcomed Mr. Nagin's message. The city, nearly 70 percent
African-American before Hurricane Katrina, had lost some of its largest
black neighborhoods to the deluge, and many fear it will never be a
predominantly black city again, as it has been since the 1970's.
Indeed, race has become a subtext for just about every contentious
decision the city faces: where to put FEMA trailers; which neighborhoods
to rebuild; how the troubled school system should be reorganized; when
elections should be held.
[From The Times-Picayune]
Sunday, January 22, 2006
By Michael Perlstein
and Trymaine Lee Staff writers
Knowing their two-story, Katrina-damaged home in Lakeview was a sitting
duck for looters, Scott and Jill Cabes took every precaution. They lined
up contractors quickly, gutting the first floor within weeks of the
storm. They removed obvious hot-market items like TVs and stereos and
sentimental valuables like jewelry. They dropped by the property
frequently.
But sitting on Vicksburg Street, surrounded by miles of desolation and
darkness, the Cabes' stately colonial-style home proved too tempting and
too easy for criminals eager to take advantage of the disaster.
Nagin Explains 'Chocolate City' Remarks in Lakeview
and on CNN with Anderson Cooper
By Gwen Filosa
Times-Picayune staff writer
A contrite Mayor Ray Nagin said Saturday that emotional stress from
witnessing Hurricane Katrina and a history of accusations that he
doesn’t care about black people led to his gaffe-filled Martin Luther
King Jr. Day speech in which he said New Orleans will be a “chocolate
city” again.
At an outdoor meeting of several hundred Lakeview residents, Nagin said
that when he was elected, “I took great pains to bring in every segment
of the community. I got attacked. I was called ‘Ray Reagan,’ and that
white man in black skin stuff. I had a stigma that Ray Nagin does not
care about black people.”
Well, Katrina claimed more than 1,000 lives. And with new reports
that more than 3,200 people are still missing, the final death toll
could be much higher. But tonight, I want to tell you about the other
victims of the storm. They survived the hurricane but they could not
survive the misery that followed. CNN's Drew Griffin has more on the
disturbing suicides out of New Orleans.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This story of Dr. James
Kent Treadway is closely woven to the state of his city. These pictures
of debris, disaster and despair are New Orleans closing in on five
months after Katrina. In many areas, it looks like the storm hit
yesterday.
Planning leaders see chance
for a better city
By Gordon Russell
and Frank Donze
Staff writers
Like many cities, New Orleans has evolved at varying speeds, growing
steadily into one of the most powerful and wealthy cities in America by
the turn of the 20th century, eventually swelling to a metropolis of
630,000, and then beginning a slow decline in population and influence.
The way Tulane University School of Architecture Dean Reed Kroloff sees
it, Hurricane Katrina sent the clock into overdrive, knocking New
Orleans over the precipice toward which the city had long been headed.
But with the tragedy came opportunity, according to Kroloff and
architect Ray Manning, who have been drafted by Mayor Ray Nagin’s
rebuilding commission to oversee a planning process that could reshape
the city.
Nagin speech piques hunger
Potential mayoral candidates awaken
Saturday, January 21, 2006
By Bruce Eggler and Frank Donze
Staff writers
Mayor Ray Nagin's now-infamous "chocolate city" address was barely over
Monday when political consultants' and kingmakers' cell phones started
ringing, igniting a flurry of behind-the-scenes activity in what had
been a largely dormant mayor's race.
As potential challengers weighed how Nagin's words would affect his
chances of winning re-election, the general conclusion was that he had
shot himself in the foot, if not higher, and the ballot was about to get
more crowded.
Combined with the news this week that the postponed mayoral primary is
likely to be April 22, with qualifying taking place March 1-3, less than
six weeks away, Nagin's remarks appeared to launch the 2006 campaign in
earnest.
Looters violate a home, wound
a spirit
Friday, January 20, 2006
Rhonda Nabonne
They can't imagine the pain they have caused. Nor do they care.
Looters.
They invaded my home. Twice.
Scarred by the howling winds of Hurricane Katrina and the mucky,
corrosive floodwaters that followed, my house has become the gravesite
of my life. Looters preyed on the remains of my home.
Gone is the crystal cruise ship I bought in Grand Cayman to celebrate my
years of travel. My crystal Christmas Nutcracker soldier and the
gemstone globe were swiped, too. My leather briefcase was locked, so the
burglars tore it open.
The burglars must have a fetish for my furnishings and collectibles
trimmed with antique map print. They pounced on a cabinet jam-packed
with CDs that would be the envy of any music lover -- jazz, New Age,
rhythm and blues, classical, you name it.
Insurance panel OKs rate
increase
It's likely to be first of many after storm
Thursday, January 19, 2006
By Rebecca Mowbray
Business writer
BATON ROUGE -- The Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission reluctantly
approved its first post-Katrina increase in homeowners insurance rates
Wednesday, beginning what is likely to be a painful stream of rate
increase requests over the next few months.
"We do have a little indigestion," commission member Christine Berry
said. "My concern is we are setting a precedent here."
After an hour and a half of debate, the commission voted 4 to 1 to allow
ANPAC Louisiana Insurance Co. to increase homeowners insurance rates by
an average of 23.3 percent statewide. New Orleans area homeowners likely
will bare the brunt of that increase and see their rates rise much more
than the average 23 percent.
The approved increase comes on top of a 9.9 percent increase the company
didn't have to take to the commission, plus another increase of about 9
percent to replenish reserves of the state's insurance company of last
resort.
Impact of Nagin's gaffe still
being weighed
By Jeff Duncan
Staff writer
The impact of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s controversial Martin Luther
King Day comments landed squarely on the shoulders of tourism officials
Wednesday, one day after the mayor and his staff launched a major damage
control effort to temper the firestorm.
As pundits and talk-show hosts parodied Nagin coast to coast, local
tourism officials spent the day trying to soothe angry, disillusioned
clients while political observers weighed the potential impact the
mayor’s comments might have in Washington.
Whether the damage caused to the city and mayor was a temporary setback
or a critical blow remains to be seen, business, civic and political
leaders said. Nagin spent Tuesday repeatedly apologizing to anyone
offended by his remarks, with critics saying he offended just about
everyone.
January 18, 2006 Plan Shifts Power to New Orleans Schools
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 17 - Vowing to further change an education system
already transformed by Hurricane Katrina, a mayoral committee set out a
plan on Tuesday to decentralize this city's troubled schools.
The plan, one of a series proposing to change various aspects of life in
posthurricane New Orleans, recommends shifting power to individual
schools from the much-discredited central school administration. Control
over budgets and hiring and firing would shift to principals.
The proposal was made by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission,
appointed by Mayor C. Ray Nagin last year to develop a blueprint for
reconstruction. To be enacted, the plan would require the approval of
the mayor, the governor and top state education officials.
Houston says 20 percent of
homicides linked to evacuees
06:00 PM CST on Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Associated Press
HOUSTON -- The number of Hurricane Katrina evacuees linked to homicides
in Houston more than doubled Wednesday after police double-checked
records and updated numbers.
The latest figures show that at least 23 evacuees were either the victim
or suspect in killings between September and December, when the city
absorbed more than 150,000 displaced residents who have remained in the
area since the hurricane.
Does anybody happen to have an Everlasting
Gobstopper handy? Mayor Wonka and the Chocolate City
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Chris Rose
I wake up in the Chocolate City mad as hell.
It's like this: I'm supposed to be on vacation this week, cooling my
heels, and then our mayor, Willy Wonka, loses his grip in public again
and that's hardly headline news in and of itself, but this time he
really lets one go.
I mean, he really gasses the place up, if you know what I mean. Now, how
am I supposed to sit this one out?
First thing I do, I follow the mayor's lead and call Martin Luther King
Jr. Of course, it takes a while to get through because he died in 1968
so he still has one of those avocado green rotary dial phones on his
kitchen counter and no call-waiting.
As you might imagine, his line was pretty tied up Tuesday morning.
As the recovery steps up, is the New Orleans
area moving backward or forward? SENSE OF DIRECTION
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
By Coleman Warner
Staff writer
Urban historian Arnold Hirsch has studied New Orleans' cultural
evolution, the intricate layers of its past. But he can't fathom what
the city's future holds.
Many neighborhoods remain dark at night, working-class people are
largely absent and too much trash remains on the street, he said. The
University of New Orleans professor is dismayed at what he sees as race-
and class-based resistance to FEMA trailer parks. And when Carnival
arrives, those joining the scaled-down celebration may have wildly
varying motives -- showing faith in the city or simply escaping its hard
realities, he said.
"It's such an unprecedented situation -- we're really kind of feeling
our way," Hirsch said. "We're groping in the dark."
The Army Corps of Engineers
promises that it will fix what Hurricane Katrina did to our levee system
by June 1, in time to protect us from the storms of another season.
Getting the job done on time
isn't enough to reassure metro area residents, though. Our faith in
levees was betrayed last August. We need to know -- for certain -- that
the quality of the repair job is beyond question, that these levees
won't crumble because of inferior materials or flawed design.
Col. Lewis Setliff III,
director of Task Force Guardian, says he understands that the corps is
rebuilding public confidence along with the levees. "We know the world
is watching us," he said. "There is no room for failure."
Senator: Federal government hasn't done enough
for Gulf Coast
1/16/2006, 1:25 p.m. CT
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government has not done enough to help large
swaths of the Gulf Coast recover and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, a
key Republican senator said in a push for Congress to retain its focus
on delivering aid in the new year.
Though lawmakers have approved $67 billion for Gulf Coast emergency
relief and long-term recovery programs, and President Bush has called
for an additional $1.5 billion to strengthen New Orleans levees,
hard-hit areas in Mississippi and Louisiana need more federal resources
and attention, said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
"I don't think the government has done enough," said Collins, who is
leading a delegation of senators on Tuesday to Gulfport, Miss., and St.
Bernard Parish in Louisiana — two areas that she said have been
overlooked compared to New Orleans. Both areas were nearly obliterated
by high wind during the Aug. 29 storm.
Debate heats up over public housing in New
Orleans
09:44 AM CST on Monday, January 16, 2006
Ben Lemoine / WWL-TV News Reporter
An overall lack of housing continues to haunt people in south Louisiana;
some have said a simple solution would be to reopen more public housing
developments that were shut down after Hurricane Katrina. But city
officials said it's not that simple.
At a ceremony honoring Martin Luther King on Sunday, some blamed
government officials for blocking off developments. Last year, Housing
and Urban Development President Alphonse Jackson said the buildings
would not be repaired, but instead redesigned into mixed-income units.
Jackson gave no timeframe on when that would take place.
"I mean, we have tens of thousands of people in public housing. You are
going to try to eliminate the poor in order to accommodate the rich,”
said housing activist Jomo Kenyatta-Bean. “You can't just shut them out
just like that. We are going to lose a large population of black people
in this city.”
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin gave this speech Monday during a program at
City Hall commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.
I greet you all in the spirit of peace this morning. I greet you all in
the spirit of love this morning, and more importantly, I greet you all
in the spirit of unity. Because if we're unified, there's nothing we
cannot do.
Now, I'm supposed to give some remarks this morning and talk about the
great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You know when I woke up early this
morning, and I was reflecting upon what I could say that could be
meaningful for this grand occasion. And then I decided to talk directly
to Dr. King.
Nagin:
"Knuckleheads" to blame for parade triple shooting
01:11 PM CST on Monday, January 16, 2006
Associated Press
"Knuckleheads" are to blame for the shootings that wounded three people
just after a parade organized to show unity and support for New Orleans'
rebuilding, Mayor Ray Nagin said Monday at a Martin Luther King Day
ceremony.
In the face of the devastation still remaining, four months after
Hurricane Katrina hit, people still came together to have a float-less
"second-line" parade and have a good time, Nagin said.
Framing his speech as a conversation in which he asked King's opinion
about what has happened to New Orleans, Nagin said he told the slain
civil rights leader: "And then knuckleheads pull out some guns and start
firing into the crowd. And they injured three people."
"He said, `I definitely wouldn't like that,"' Nagin said.
Three people were wounded by
gunfire Sunday afternoon on Orleans Avenue after a second-line parade
that attracted thousands of people, including hurricane-displaced
residents who were back in town for a day of celebration.
Police were busy Sunday night
trying to figure out what prompted the shootings, which broke out at
least twice between Claiborne Avenue and Broad Street, the end point of
a procession that started in front of the Backstreet Cultural Museum on
St. Claude Avenue. One onlooker said there were two gunmen.
The parade ended about 4 p.m.,
and shortly afterward police officers patrolling the parade route heard
gunfire. They first found a 34-year-old man with multiple wounds at
Orleans and Dorgenois Street, police spokesman Gary Flot said.
More than half the city's
stoplights are still broken, and for drivers, relief is at least six
months away
Sunday, January 15, 2006
By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer
More than four months after
Hurricane Katrina, fewer than half the 450 traffic lights in New Orleans
are working, creating herky-jerky commutes across a stop-sign-dotted
city and a daily reminder of the long wait for even basic services.
What's more, city and state
officials said, it will be at least another six months before all of the
city's traffic signals are back on. Just one of five state projects to
fix the damaged lights has been awarded to a private contractor, with
the other four still in the bidding process, according to state
Department of Transportation and Development officials.
The one project awarded, to
Toomer Electric of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, will fix 35 of the 170
most severely damaged traffic signals at a cost of $2.5 million. In all,
the repairs are expected to cost about $25 million, city public works
officials said.
Engineers race to fix levees five months before
storm season
11:10 AM CST on Saturday, January 14, 2006
By MATT CRENSON / Associated Press
In New Orleans, the apocalyptic clock is ticking — again.
Ravaged last year by one hurricane and slapped by the fringes of
another, the city faces a 2006 storm season that begins in less than
five months — not much time to repair the tattered ramparts that keep
New Orleans from being swallowed by the sea.
This year's hurricane season begins June 1. By that date, the U.S. Corps
of Engineers expects to have the Crescent City's levees restored to
pre-Katrina condition.
The job is massive. It will take about 4 million cubic yards of fill — a
nearly Superdome-sized pile — to repair the 170 miles of levee destroyed
or damaged by Katrina.
"So far we're on schedule and we're doing pretty good," said Col. Lewis
Setliff, the leader of the repair effort.
There are many who fear that may not be good enough.
15 jan 2006
New flood maps will likely
steer rebuilding
But FEMA says it's still
too soon to guess what they will look like
Sunday, January 15, 2006
By Gordon Russell and
James Varney
Staff writers
The new federal flood maps for
New Orleans scheduled to be released this year will provide critical
information for residents trying to decide whether -- or how high -- to
rebuild their damaged homes, members of Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New
Orleans Back commission say.
The maps also could drive new
building codes and standards that try to minimize future flood damage,
should city leaders decide to adopt them quickly.
For those reasons, one of the
key recommendations of the commission's land use panel was to urge the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, which draws the maps, to release
preliminary versions within 30 days.
But that's unlikely to occur,
something Joe Canizaro, chairman of the BNOB's land use committee,
conceded shortly after the panel issued its report Wednesday.
15 jan 2006
A responsible plan (Times-Picayune Editorial)
Hurricane Katrina ravaged New
Orleans' landscape in ways that would have been unimaginable to most of
us before the storm washed over the city.
With so many houses in ruins
and so many residents scattered across the country, it is unrealistic to
expect the city to be rebuilt exactly as it was. Not every resident will
come back. Not every home can be saved. That doesn't have to mean that
New Orleans becomes a lesser version of itself. The city can be rebuilt
with the same charm. It can retain the qualities that are so important
to its residents: devotion to neighborhood, connection to history,
reverence for tradition.
But that will not happen
spontaneously. Without a practical, clear-eyed plan, some homeowners
could find themselves alone amid blocks of rubble and blight.
It would be nice to believe that New Orleans could be made whole,
exactly as it was before Hurricane Katrina devastated it. But that
kind of wishful thinking, apparently prevalent among some New
Orleanians and encouraged by some city leaders, will only stymie the
reconstruction process. The nation cannot rebuild everywhere in New
Orleans, nor should it.
The city's rebuilding commission took an important step this week
when it recommended that only the areas that could muster sufficient
population should be rebuilt. Not surprisingly, that announcement
drew the ire of residents of some neighborhoods where generations
have lived on the same plots of land. While that is an ideal that
should be protected wherever possible, it cannot define the
rebuilding process.
14 jan 2006
Engineers Race to Fix New Orleans Levees
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:39 p.m. ET
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- In New Orleans,
the apocalyptic clock is ticking -- again. Ravaged last year by one
hurricane and slapped by the fringes of another, the city faces a
2006 storm season that begins in less than five months -- not much
time to repair the tattered ramparts that keep New Orleans from
being swallowed by the sea.
This year's hurricane season begins June 1. By that date, the
U.S. Corps of Engineers expects to have the Crescent City's levees
restored to pre-Katrina condition.
The job is massive. It will take about 4 million cubic yards of
fill -- a nearly Superdome-sized pile -- to repair the 170 miles of
levee destroyed or damaged by Katrina.
13 jan 2006
New Orleans Schoolgirls Have a Message for the President
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 12 - It was not exactly a protest, but it was
pretty pointed nonetheless. As President Bush hustled through town
Thursday morning, the proper young ladies of the Academy of the
Sacred Heart were in Jackson Square, wearing life jackets over their
plaid-skirt uniforms, and politely but firmly demanding better
levees.
"Do what it takes, do what it takes!" more than 200 of the
high school girls chanted, many holding aloft signs reading
"Category 5 Levees and Coastal Restoration" and "Party Affiliation:
Louisianian." Cars passing through the French Quarter honked in
support.
The girls of the academy, a stately, turn-of-the-century
institution in the Uptown neighborhood, do not normally forsake the
school's ornate high iron gates for the streets. And school
officials were at pains to emphasize that they were not protesting
anything, and that politics had nothing to do with it. Mr. Bush won
a mock election at the school handily, they said.
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 12 - President Bush made his first trip here in
three months on Thursday and declared that New Orleans was "a heck
of a place to bring your family" and that it had "some of the
greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."
Mr. Bush spent
his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on
the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely
untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little
devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to
Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the
Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees.
Mr. Bush's motorcade did pass some abandoned neighborhoods as it
traveled on Interstate 10 into the city.
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11 - The commission devising a blueprint to
reconstruct the city proposed today a complete reorganization of the
troubled school system, the elimination of a 76-mile shipping
channel that was a prime cause of flooding after Hurricane Katrina,
and the formation of a recovery corporation that would have the
power to buy and sell property for redevelopment.
At other public meetings this week, the commission also plans to
call on the city to create an economic development corporation
fashioned after the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which
New York created to oversee the downtown rebuilding effort after
Sept. 11, 2001.
"We believe the devastation is so great that you need a single
independent organization to help coordinate with all the entities
involved," Doug Ahlers, a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard who has been working with the commission's economic
development committee, said today.
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 7 - The city's official blueprint for
redevelopment after Hurricane Katrina, to be released on Wednesday,
will recommend that residents be allowed to return and rebuild
anywhere they like, no matter how damaged or vulnerable the
neighborhood, according to several members of the mayor's rebuilding
commission.
The proposal appears to put the city's rebuilding
panel on a collision course with its state counterpart, which will
control at least some of the flow of federal rebuilding money to the
city.
The primary author of the plan, Joseph C. Canizaro, said teams of
outside experts would try to help residents of each neighborhood
decide whether to rebuild or relocate. Those teams would help
increase the odds of success for those residents who decided to
return, Mr. Canizaro said.
The commission will propose that the city should discourage
homeowners from rebuilding in the hardest hit areas until a plan can
be hammered out, but will not forbid them from doing so.
5 jan 2006
A Big Government Fix-It Plan for New Orleans
By ADAM NOSSITER
BATON ROUGE, La. - Into the void of the post-Katrina policy
landscape, littered with half-ruined proposals, crumbling
prescriptions and washed-out initiatives, an obscure and very
conservative congressman has stepped in with the ultimate big
government solution.
Representative Richard H. Baker, a Republican
from suburban Baton Rouge who derides Democrats for not being
sufficiently free-market, is the unlikely champion of a housing
recovery plan that would make the federal government the biggest
landowner in New Orleans - for a while, at least. Mr. Baker's
proposed Louisiana Recovery Corporation would spend as much as $80
billion to pay off lenders, restore public works, buy huge ruined
chunks of the city, clean them up and then sell them back to
developers.
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 16 - It was the canals that betrayed this city,
but they never left the scene of the crime. The fingers of water
that overflowed sit there like open wounds, and many residents and
engineers would prefer never to see them again.
"Those canals are
like knife cuts into a person," Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of
the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University, said. "They're
just waiting to fester."
The Bush administration agreed last week to pay for gates to cut
off the three main drainage canals from Lake Pontchartrain, the
source of the storm water that pushed into the canals and then into
thousands of houses.
Many here say the gates will be inadequate as long as the canals
remain. Either way, it is clear that repairing the canals has become
a linchpin of any plan to move the city forward.
NEW ORLEANS - More than 100 of them drowned. Sixteen died trapped in
attics. More than 40 died of heart failure or respiratory problems,
including running out of oxygen. At least 65 died because help -
shelter, water or a simple dose of insulin - came too late.
A
study by The New York Times of more than 260 Louisianans who died
during Hurricane Katrina or its aftermath found that almost all
survived the height of the storm but died in the chaos and flooding
that followed.
Of those who failed to heed evacuation orders, many were offered
a ride or could have driven themselves out of danger - a finding
that contrasts with earlier reports that victims were trapped by a
lack of transportation. Most victims were 65 or older, but of those
below that age, more than a quarter were ill or disabled.
New Orleans Is Not Ready to Think Small, or Even
Medium
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
NEW ORLEANS
THREE more bodies were found here last week, hidden
away in forsaken homes where mold had crawled over the walls in a
Jackson Pollock splatter. One hundred days after the hurricane,
these belated discoveries seem to be one more sign of how far New
Orleans has fallen. Even the dead are not yet at peace.
But if the listless recovery has raised doubts about whether the
city can reclaim its former self anytime soon, the political culture
here won't listen to them. It has become almost taboo to discuss any
proposal more modest than an immediate and total rebuilding: for
example, directing the money and energy toward getting less-damaged
neighborhoods up and running.
We are about to lose New Orleans.
Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is
willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions,
the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving
nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.
We said this wouldn't happen.
President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square
and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans."
But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and
the city is in complete shambles.
As investigators and residents have
picked through the battered New Orleans levee system's breaches,
churned-up soil and bent sheet pile in the 100 days since Hurricane
Katrina struck, they have uncovered mounting evidence that human error
played a major role in the flood that devastated the city. Floodwall
breaches linked to design flaws inundated parts of the city that
otherwise would have stayed dry, turning neighborhoods into death traps
and causing massive damage. In other areas, poorly engineered gaps and
erosion of weak construction materials accelerated and deepened flooding
already under way, hampering rescue efforts in the wake of the storm.
These problems turned an already deadly
disaster into a wider man-made catastrophe and have made rebuilding and
resettlement into far tougher and more expensive challenges.
5 dec
2005
N.O. levee inspections fell short of federal mandate
Other engineers incredulous at
haphazard examinations
Monday, December 05, 2005
By Bob Marshall
Staff writer
Before Hurricane Katrina, levee
inspections in New Orleans were so superficial that one engineer who
used to work for the Army Corps of Engineers said he conducted more
diligent inspections on Florida levees that protected cattle.
Engineers familiar with proper levee
inspection routines across the country said the annual tours of New
Orleans' vital hurricane protection levees -- described by critics as
cursory drive-bys more about fellowship and lunch than looking for
problems -- sounded nothing like the serious geotechnical investigations
conducted in other places.
After Hurricane Hugo
ravaged Charleston, the historic city demonstrated that a city can
prosper if it takes care to keep its charm as it rebuilds
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
By Elizabeth Mullener
Staff writer
Jeffrey Rosenblum had a mess on
his hands after Hurricane Hugo tore through Charleston, S.C., in
September 1989. He had lost a lot of trees, including one that went
right through his roof, wreaking havoc inside.
But he got hold of a generator,
so he had air conditioning, television and a fridge. And he got a tarp
for his roof so he kept dry. He moved back in and went about his
business.
An architect, Rosenblum's
practice was hectic in the hurricane's aftermath and, in the fashion of
the cobbler's children, he put the repairs to his own house on hold.
When his insurance adjuster came by for the first time, Rosenblum told
him that he hadn't yet assessed the damage and the man said fine and
told him to contact the company when he had.
Public housing as New Orleans knew it
before Hurricane Katrina is over, the nation's top federal housing
official said Wednesday, promising that rebuilt developments will not
isolate the poor in the tall, brick complexes that were home to
thousands of families forced to evacuate as floodwater rose.
The Department of Housing and Urban
Development will spend more than $1.8 billion on public housing along
the Gulf Coast, particularly in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, starting
with the demolition of a long-troubled Central City complex, HUD
Secretary Alphonso Jackson said.
But what is rebuilt in its place will be
different, he said.
3
nov 2005
Levees' Construction Faulted In New Orleans Flood Inquiry
Contractors' Misdeeds May Have Led to Breaches, Panel Is Told
By Joby Warrick and Spencer S.
Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 3, 2005; A03
Investigators yesterday added a possible
new explanation for some of the flooding that devastated New Orleans
after Hurricane Katrina: contractors who may have skimped on
construction materials in building the city's floodwalls and levees.
Experts probing the cause of the
flooding have received at least a dozen allegations of major cheating by
builders and possibly others involved in levee construction, two
investigators said in testimony before a Senate panel. They said these
were potentially criminal acts that may well have contributed to the
collapse of the city's flood-control system on Aug. 29.
Katrina's debris-strewn streets
produce stray nails, flat tires and plenty of exasperation
Thursday, October 27, 2005
By Manuel Torres
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau
Certainties are few in post-Katrina
south Louisiana. But drive around and you may run into what seems to be
one of the few sure things left: Getting a flat tire.
With enough debris around town to fill
up 12 Superdomes, much of it is ending up lodged in tires, leaving
motorists fuming and keeping tire shops busy with repairs that more than
double pre-Katrina volumes.
No one disputes that Katrina will
reduce the population of the New Orleans area, but just how much is
unclear
Sunday, October 23, 2005
By Kate Moran
East Jefferson bureau
As residents stream back into New
Orleans and its suburbs, the question that rolls off every tongue --
right after "How'd you do in the storm?" -- is whether far-flung friends
and neighbors also will return or whether the region has been
permanently shrunk in the wash.
Mayor Ray Nagin predicted a month ago
that New Orleans would be reborn as a city of 250,000 people, about half
its pre-Hurricane Katrina population, and interviews with a dozen
scholars last week also paint a picture of a city considerably less
populous than in its antediluvian days.
When it came to choosing its
victims, Hurricane Katrina spared few neighborhoods. In fact,
Gentilly and the lakefront may have suffered as many deaths as the
Lower 9th.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
By Coleman Warner
and Robert Travis Scott Staff
Writers
Although Hurricane Katrina's deaths are
widely believed to have been concentrated in the Lower 9th Ward and
eastern New Orleans, new estimates show large numbers of bodies were
found in a swath from the Industrial Canal to the 17th Street Canal.
And more than a few people died in
Mid-City, Central City and Uptown.
Stores aim to serve areas rebounding
after Katrina
Sunday, October 23, 2005
By Ronette King
Business writer
If you didn't know better, the
Winn-Dixie store on Veterans Memorial Boulevard seems ordinary. There's
fall foliage in the floral department, piles of Granny Smith apples in
the produce coolers and a table piled high with Christmas toys.
But if you look again, you'll see these
are not ordinary times. There's a curiously high number of men in
workboots loading up on bottled water in the early morning. There's a
10-foot-high pile of rubbish at the end of West End Boulevard as
homeowners return to clear their flood-ravaged Lakeview homes. And
there's often a line of shoppers at every register.
NEW ORLEANS - Optimism is in short
supply here. And as people begin to sift through the wreckage left
by Hurricane Katrina, there is a creeping sense that the final blow
has yet to be struck - one that will irrevocably blot out the city's
past.
The first premonition arose when
Mayor C. Ray Nagin announced that the model for rebirth would be a
pseudo-suburban development in the Lower Garden District called
River Garden. The very suggestion alarmed preservationists, who
pictured the remaking of historic neighborhoods into soulless
subdivisions served by big-box stores.
14 oct
2005
Investigation into levee failure uncovers culprit
By John McQuaid
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON - Soil tests indicate that a soft, spongy layer of swamp peat
underneath the 17th Street canal floodwall was the weak point that
caused soil to move and the wall to breach during Hurricane Katrina, an
engineer who has studied the data says.
"The thing that is remarkable here is the very low strength of the soils
around the bottom of the sheet pile" base of the floodwall, said Robert
Bea, a geotechnical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley,
who examined the test results. Bea is a member of the National Science
Foundation team that is studying the levee system's performance during
Katrina.
In New Orleans, the Trashman
Will Have to Move Mountains
By JENNIFER MEDINA
NEW ORLEANS - On one front lawn, a
two-foot-high pile of garbage takes the place of a hedge. A rusting
mattress lies next to a bottle of cleaning fluid and a television
set. The stench of paint combined with weeks-old food is choking.
Flies hover over the whole thing, zeroing in on a handful of
chocolate eggs.
This is just one pile. There are
thousands upon thousands of others, totaling 22 million tons of
waste. They have baked in the swampy heat for weeks now, making this
city look and smell like a landfill.
9th Ward: History, Yes,
but a Future?
Race and Class Frame Debate on Rebuilding New Orleans District
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 3, 2005; A01
NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 2 -- No one here wants
to say it aloud, but one day soon the bulldozers will come, shoving away
big hunks of a neighborhood known for its poverty and its artists, its
bad luck and its bounce-back resilience.
It is likely to be the largest
demolition of a community in modern U.S. history -- destruction begun by
hurricanes Katrina and Rita and finished by heavy machinery. On
Saturday, firefighters put red tags on hundreds of homes deemed
"unsafe," the first step in a wrenching debate over whether the Lower
Ninth Ward should be rebuilt or whether, as some suggest, it should
revert to its natural state: swamp.
By Brian Thevenot
and Gordon Russell
Staff writers
After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable
living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col.
Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang
violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember
his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated
18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor
saying.
