Poll: Katrina Aftershock Equals Preparedness Paralysis

12/9/2005 1:14:00 PM


Contact: Sarah Howe of the Council for Excellence in Government, 202-530-3270, showe@excelgov.org

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In the wake of the worst natural disaster to hit the United States in recent times, the public shows little indication that it is better prepared for an emergency today than it was before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

That is the key finding of a new poll released today by the Council for Excellence in Government and the American Red Cross. The survey-conducted by bipartisan pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff -shows that a plurality of Americans (38 percent) were not motivated at all by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to prepare for an emergency. Only 12 percent say they've done a great deal to prepare for a natural disaster, terrorist attack or other major emergency.

The percentage of Americans who said they hadn't prepared because they didn't know what to do actually increased by nine percentage points after Katrina. Despite the televised pleas of family members separated by Katrina, most Americans still have no plan on how to communicate with family members during or after a disaster. Just 36 percent report that they have prepared a communications plan to contact loved ones in an emergency if they get separated. Only one-quarter have established a specific meeting place in the event that they or their family are evacuated or cannot return home. Only one in three have stored extra food or bottled water for emergencies. And only one in ten have stocked up on first aid kits or emergency supplies since Katrina.

More than half of Americans say that one reason they have not done more to prepare is because they do not think another disaster is likely to happen to them.

"It is surprising that people across the country were moved to open their hearts and wallets to help the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita," said Patricia McGinnis, president and CEO of the Council for Excellence in Government when releasing the report. "But they were not moved to prepare themselves and their families for a natural disaster, terrorist attack or other major emergency. We're worried about our leaders being better prepared next time. What about us?"

The poll, which was originally conducted before and during Hurricane Katrina (Aug. 26-31) and then replicated two months later (Oct. 26-30), provides a unique freeze-frame of public attitudes before and then after the flood waters and headlines receded. Other findings include:

-- More than half of Southerners say that the hurricanes gave them motivation to prepare for a disaster. But just 35 percent of people in the West, 31 percent of people in the East and only 21 percent of Midwesterners have been motivated to prepare.

-- Only 18 percent of Americans are familiar with their city or town's emergency plan. Even fewer (16 percent) are aware of their state's plan. Knowledge of workplace plans (45 percent) and local schools (28 percent) is better, but not where we need to be.

-- The percentage of Americans who have actually prepared a disaster supply kit has not increased since the hurricanes (43 percent in October v. 42 percent in August).

-- When asked about emergency alert systems within their community, the public prefers old-fashioned technologies. Fully three-quarters (76 percent) think that a siren system would be a good investment for their communities. A majority also expresses interest in receiving alerts in case of an emergency through a landline telephone (59 percent), followed by cell phones (43 percent), email (39 percent), and cell phone text messages (33 percent).

"We are our own best first responders, and it is up to each of us to create a family communication plan, put together emergency supplies and practice evacuation plans," McGinnis added. "This report makes clear that we are not as nearly prepared as we should be."

The poll -- conducted by Peter Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies -- comprised two samples: the first among 1008 randomly selected adults in the United States, conducted from August 28 to 31, 2005, the days immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast but before the full devastation in New Orleans was widely known; the second among 1000 randomly selected adults in the United States conducted from Oct. 26 to 30, 2005. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percent.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

Poll: Katrina Aftershock Equals Preparedness Paralysis; Midwest Least Prepared for Disaster

12/9/2005 1:17:00 PM

Contact: Sarah Howe of the Council for Excellence in Government, 202-530-3270 or showe@excelgov.org

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In the wake of the worst natural disaster to hit the United States in recent times, the public shows little indication that it is better prepared for an emergency today than it was before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

That is the key finding of a new poll released today by the Council for Excellence in Government and the American Red Cross. The survey -- conducted by bipartisan pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff -- shows that a plurality of Americans (38 percent) were not motivated at all by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to prepare for an emergency. Only 12 percent say they've done a great deal to prepare for a natural disaster, terrorist attack or other major emergency.

The percentage of Americans who said they hadn't prepared because they didn't know what to do actually increased by nine percentage points after Katrina. Despite the televised pleas of family members separated by Katrina, most Americans still have no plan on how to communicate with family members during or after a disaster. Just 36 percent report that they have prepared a communications plan to contact loved ones in an emergency if they get separated. Only one-quarter have established a specific meeting place in the event that they or their family are evacuated or cannot return home. Only one in three have stored extra food or bottled water for emergencies. And only one in ten have stocked up on first aid kits or emergency supplies since Katrina.

More than half of Americans say that one reason they have not done more to prepare is because they do not think another disaster is likely to happen to them.

"It is surprising that people across the country were moved to open their hearts and wallets to help the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita," said Patricia McGinnis, President and CEO of the Council for Excellence in Government when releasing the report. "But they were not moved to prepare themselves and their families for a natural disaster, terrorist attack or other major emergency. We're worried about our leaders being better prepared next time. What about us?"

The poll, which was originally conducted before and during Hurricane Katrina (Aug. 26-31) and then replicated two months later (Oct. 26-30), provides a unique freeze-frame of public attitudes before and then after the flood waters and headlines receded. Other findings include:

-- More than half of Southerners say that the hurricanes gave them motivation to prepare for a disaster. But just 35 percent of people in the West, 31 percent of people in the East and only 21 percent of Midwesterners have been motivated to prepare.

-- Only 18 percent of Americans are familiar with their city or town's emergency plan. Even fewer (16 percent) are aware of their state's plan. Knowledge of workplace plans (45 percent) and local schools (28 percent) is better, but not where we need to be.

-- The percentage of Americans who have actually prepared a disaster supply kit has not increased since the hurricanes (43 percent in October v. 42 percent in August).

-- When asked about emergency alert systems within their community, the public prefers old-fashioned technologies. Fully three-quarters (76 percent) think that a siren system would be a good investment for their communities. A majority also expresses interest in receiving alerts in case of an emergency through a landline telephone (59 percent), followed by cell phones (43 percent), email (39 percent), and cell phone text messages (33 percent).

"We are our own best first responders, and it is up to each of us to create a family communication plan, put together emergency supplies and practice evacuation plans," McGinnis added. "This report makes clear that we are not as nearly prepared as we should be."

The poll -- conducted by Peter Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies --comprised two samples: the first among 1008 randomly selected adults in the United States, conducted from Aug. 28 to 31, 2005, the days immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast but before the full devastation in New Orleans was widely known; the second among 1000 randomly selected adults in the United States conducted from Oct. 26 to 30, 2005. The margin of error is +3.2 percent.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

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December 11, 2005
Editorial
Death of an American City
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.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a major American city.

"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.

Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.

The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.

If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.

Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina Resettle Along a Racial Divide
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Hurricane Katrina may have emptied whole sections of New Orleans, but it hasn't set in motion the great national diaspora that was widely foreseen. Instead, the vast majority of displaced households are staying close to their former homes.

By Tomas Alex Tizon and Doug Smith
Times Staff Writers

December 12 2005

Hurricane Katrina may have emptied whole sections of New Orleans, but it hasn't set in motion the great national diaspora that was widely foreseen. Instead, the vast majority of displaced households are staying close to their former homes, postal records show.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

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December 15, 2005
Federal Loans to Homeowners Along Gulf Lag
By LESLIE EATON and RON NIXON
Hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast families, hoping to rebuild their homes after the hurricanes using low-interest government loans, are facing high rejection rates and widespread delays at the federal agency that administers the disaster loan program.

The Small Business Administration, which runs the federal government's main disaster recovery program for both businesses and homeowners, has processed only a third of the 276,000 home loan applications it has received.

And it has rejected 82 percent of those it has reviewed, a higher percentage than in most previous disasters, saying that many would-be borrowers did not have incomes high enough, or credit ratings good enough, to qualify. The rejections came even though the Federal Emergency Management Agency has referred more than two million people, many of them with low incomes, to the S.B.A. to get the loans.

To a large degree, that high rejection rate appears to reflect a mismatch between existing government aid programs and the large number of low-income people affected by this year's hurricanes. Despite the widespread poverty in the most damaged regions, the Small Business Administration has not adjusted its creditworthiness standards, which are roughly comparable to a bank's.

In fact, the loans that have been approved appear to be flowing to wealthy neighborhoods in New Orleans but not to poor ones, according to a list of loans released by the government and mapped by The New York Times.

Under the disaster loan program, homeowners can borrow up to $200,000 at low interest rates to repair houses. Owners and renters can borrow up to $40,000 to replace damaged furnishings.

As of Tuesday, the agency had approved 17,463 home loans, for almost $1.2 billion, although only $62 million had been disbursed to homeowners, who must be ready to start repairs to get the money. More than 77,000 applications have been rejected.

The high rejection rate and the slow processing of applications are causing concern among government officials, academic experts and homeowners. Many say the problem undermines government pledges of aid, embodied by President Bush's promise in September to "do what it takes" to help citizens rebuild.

One such homeowner is Albertha Hastens, 55, a member of the school board in White Castle, La., which is between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Strong winds damaged the roof and tore siding off her house, Ms. Hastens said, but the Small Business Administration turned her down for a loan, citing her low income. (She receives a small stipend from the school board along with her Social Security payments.)

"It makes you tired and disgusted," Ms. Hastens said of her experience with the agency. "For poor working people, you don't know what to do."

Agency officials say they are doing their best under difficult circumstances, noting that they recently approved $44 million in home and business loans in a single day.

They lay the blame for any problems on the huge size of the disaster and the small size of the agency, which has hired thousands of temporary workers to help process hurricane-related requests.

"We don't have tens of thousands of people waiting for a disaster," said Hector V. Barreto, the agency administrator. "We had 800 people. Now we have 4,200 people working, most brand new."

As for the rejection rate, agency officials say the Small Business Administration's loan program could not risk taxpayer money by lending it to people with low incomes or poor credit. "We're just dealing with the demographics in the area," said Herbert L. Mitchell, the associate administrator who runs the agency's disaster assistance program.

Both agency officials and some critics of the federal government say that many applicants do not really want loans, but must go through the agency's loan process - and be rejected - in order to be eligible for certain grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (FEMA does not dispute this but says it cannot give these grants to people who have enough money to take out loans. It gives other grants for home repair in certain circumstances, but only for up to $15,600.)

The slow pace of the agency's response to the hurricanes is a reason Representative Nydia M. Velázquez of New York, who is the senior Democrat on the House Small Business Committee, called on Mr. Barreto yesterday to resign.

"We have reached a point where we need to get someone who can run the office in an effective way," Ms. Velázquez said. "He doesn't have what it takes at a moment of crisis."

In addition to the problems with the homeowners program, Ms. Velázquez cited the even slower pace of loans to businesses in the Gulf Coast States. The Small Business Administration has also allowed large corporations to get $2 billion in federal contracts under the guise of being small businesses, she said, and morale at the agency is low.

Responding to the criticism, Raul E. Cisneros, the agency's director of communications, said in a statement: "Unfortunately, the current political environment in Washington, D.C., is not lacking for individuals who are anxious to throw stones. This administration is focused on helping the people of the Gulf Coast rebuild after these devastating hurricanes."

Mr. Cisneros said the agency had passed the billion-dollar loan approval mark five weeks faster than after the hurricanes in Florida last year.

But Republicans have also been critical of the agency's response. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the Maine Republican who is chairwoman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has sharply questioned agency officials at two hearings.

Ms. Snowe also sent members of her staff to investigate the situation at the agency's loan-processing office in Fort Worth, where they found that workers have been putting in long hours but have been hampered by management missteps and a new - and, by some accounts, balky - computer system.

To get Small Business Administration loans, homeowners must submit applications and give the agency access to tax returns so loan officers can see if applicants have enough income available to cover the debt.

The agency also sends out inspectors to check the damaged homes, and makes sure that the loans are not used for costs already covered by insurance. The agency checks applicants' credit histories and, for loans over $10,000, also requires collateral, just as home mortgage lenders would.

For borrowers who could not borrow elsewhere, the interest rate is about 2.7 percent on loans that can extend for 30 years; those who do have access to other credit have to pay about 5.4 percent.

For weeks, small business organizations and government officials have been criticizing the pace of similar loans the agency makes to companies; fewer than 3,000 such loans have been approved, and roughly 800 checks have been sent out, for less than $11 million.

Housing is a crucial issue in the Gulf Coast States, where hundreds of thousands of houses were damaged and close to 170,000 were destroyed, according to the American Red Cross.

Historically, insurance proceeds, not government programs - and certainly not the Small Business Administration - contributed most of the money to rebuild houses, said Mary C. Comerio, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a 1998 book on disaster recovery. But, Ms. Comerio added, "There is still this expectation that the government is going to do something to make people whole."

Indeed, less than 20 percent of Louisianans think that insurance should cover the costs of rebuilding, while more than 50 percent say that the federal government has the primary responsibility to pay for it, according to a survey of 653 state residents released in late November by the Public Policy Research Lab at Louisiana State University.

But for even the most fortunate victims of the hurricanes, it may take both insurance proceeds and a Small Business Administration loan to give them even a chance of rebuilding.

Craig S. Sciambra, 34, describes himself as blessed, even though his two-year-old house in the Lakeview section of New Orleans had five feet of water inside and has been declared a total loss. He still has his job as an engineer, his wife still has her job as a certified public accountant, and they had a lot of flood insurance.

Mr. Sciambra has also been approved for an S.B.A. loan and mortgage refinance. "It would be really hard to make ends meet without it," he said.

Many of Mr. Sciambra's neighbors have also been approved for such loans, according to a list of loans released by the agency and mapped by The New York Times. Well-off neighborhoods like Lakeview have received 47 percent of the loan approvals, while poverty-stricken ones have gotten 7 percent.

Middle-class black neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city have lower loan rates, too, the data suggest, at least so far.

Some residents, like Diane Fleming, 57, are in limbo. A schoolteacher who lost her home of 26 years in New Orleans East, along with most of her possessions, Ms. Fleming has been shuttling between Houston and a friend's house in New Orleans.

FEMA referred her to the Small Business Administration, which said it would not make a decision about her application until she heard from her insurance company, Ms. Fleming said.

"Meanwhile," she said, "I have no place to live."



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House Panel Subpoenas Rumsfeld on Katrina

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON -- A House committee investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina issued a subpoena Wednesday to force Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to turn over documents but stopped short of sending a similar legal demand to the White House.

The subpoena commands Rumsfeld to produce internal records and communications about the Pentagon's response to the Aug. 29 storm, including efforts to send supplies to victims, stabilize public safety and mobilize active duty forces in the Gulf Coast. It requires the Pentagon to deliver the documents, spanning from Aug. 23 to Sept. 15, from Rumsfeld and eight other top military officials by Dec. 30.

Separately, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it would comply with a judge's ruling that FEMA keep paying for hotel rooms for hurricane evacuees until Feb. 7. The agency also agreed to extend the program for eligible storm victims who have not been helped by that deadline.

The subpoenas were one focus of a House hearing that was marked by angry barbs between Gov. Kathleen Blanco, D-La., and Republicans who challenged her about why a mandatory evacuation for New Orleans was not ordered until the morning before Katrina hit. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for coastal parishes south and east of New Orleans before then.

"We had mandatory evacuations," Blanco said. "We got 1.2 million people out. We ended up saving another 100,000 people and we lost 1,100. That's the whole story. We got people out."

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said Blanco's explanation was "a story that's not acceptable because 1,100 people is one half of the men and women we have lost in Operation Iraqi Freedom."

"You lost that many on one day," Miller said.

Shot back Blanco: "Then it's not acceptable for us to lose ... soldiers, either."

Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., asked Blanco why New Orleans' emergency management and evacuation plans were not followed.

"It's detailed," Rogers said of the plan. "All it needed was for the mayor and/or the governor to say 'Let's go.'"

"We did that, sir. Don't pretend that we didn't do that," Blanco responded tersely.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers said they were frustrated by the administration's failures to provide the House investigation with internal memos, e-mails and other documents before and after the storm hit.

Pentagon spokesman Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz said the panel's requests for information have been "very far-reaching and very broad, and we're doing everything we can to answer them as quickly as we can.

"We're going to provide the documents as fast as we can," Swiergosz said. "No one has been dragging their feet on these things."

The chairman of the special House committee rejected, for now, legal action against the White House, but left open the possibility of a future subpoena. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., asked lawmakers to wait until after a private briefing Thursday at the White House before deciding whether to go ahead with a subpoena.

"We cannot do our job if we don't get these documents, and we won't get these documents if we don't subpoena them," said Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La.

The committee, which plans to issue its findings on Feb. 15, has requested hundreds of thousands of documents more than two months ago from the administration and Gulf Coast state and local officials.

Louisiana has handed over more than 100,000 documents to the committee. Though the White House said it has provided 450,000 documents, lawmakers said it has claimed executive privilege to refuse e-mails sent to and from White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said lawmakers would be briefed by a high-level administration official and that he did not immediately anticipate a subpoena against the White House.

"I'm not expecting anything of that nature at this point," McClellan said. "What we have done is work to make sure that they get the information they need to do their job. We've worked in good faith."

The hearing came as FEMA pledged to continue paying for hotel rooms for evacuees still unable to find apartments, trailers or other stable housing by Feb. 7, a month beyond the agency's cutoff date.

A federal judge in New Orleans this week set the February deadline in a ruling to give victims more time in hotels as FEMA processes aid applications.

FEMA's acting director, R. David Paulison, did not cite an end-date for the hotel payments, but said "it won't be indefinite." He said FEMA will pay hotel bills for up to two weeks after evacuees receive temporary housing assistance because "sometimes it's tough to find an apartment."

An estimated 40,000 families still are living in hotels, compared with a peak of 85,000 two months weeks ago.

"We are going to be flexible, we will make changes to our plan as we move along," Paulison said. "And we are going to continuously work to make sure nobody falls through the cracks. And if they do fall through the cracks, we are going to find them, locate them and get them back into our system."

___

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldour contributed to this report.


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Feds Seek $1.5B for New Orleans Levee Fix By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago



President Bush is requesting $1.5 billion more to help make the levee system in New Orleans stronger than it was before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

At a news briefing at the White House, officials dodged the question of whether the levees would be built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, using broader language instead to promise that the city's citizens would be safe and the levees would be "stronger and better."

"The federal government is committed to building the best levee system known in the world," Donald Powell, the top U.S. official for reconstruction, told reporters. "It's a complicated issue."

The money the president is requesting is in addition to the $1.6 billion he has already committed to repair the breeches in the levees, correct the design and construction flaws and bring the levee to a height that was authorized before the hurricane, a Category 4 storm, hit on Aug. 29, killing more than 1,300 people.

"That work is being done as we speak," Powell said.

The additional $1.5 billion that the president is requesting would pay to armor the levee system with concrete and stone, close three interior canals and provide state-of-the art pumping systems so that the water would flow out of the canals into Lake Pontchartrain, Powell said.

Officials said the levee system would be rebuilt to its previous level of protection before the hurricane season next year, and that the process of strengthening them further would take two years.

The announcement came after Bush met in the Oval Office with Powell, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Louisiana officials say that bringing the levees to Category 5 level is crucial to the future of New Orleans, as it would be hard otherwise to entice the many people displaced by the storm to come back.

"We understand that the people of New Orleans need to be assured that they will safe when they get back home — that their city has an infrastructure that is capable of sustaining a possible storm next season or in the seasons afterwards," Chertoff said.

Bush's public schedule in recent weeks has been almost completely bare of references to Katrina or appearances related to the disaster. But Chertoff said the attention at the federal level has not faded.

"Not a day goes by that we don't think about what's going on in New Orleans and what we can do to promote the process of reconstruction and recovery for the people who have been afflicted all over the Gulf Coast," Chertoff said. "We continue to do everything we can to help communities get back on their feet."

Nagin thanked Americans for the money to rebuild New Orleans and told former residents of the city to come home.

"It's time for you to come back to the Big Easy," he said. "This action today says come home to New Orleans."

Nagin said the levee system will be stronger than ever. Officials said the levee system would be rebuilt to its previous level of protection before the hurricane season next year, and that the process of strengthening them further would take two years.

"These levees will be as high as 17 feet in some areas. We've never had that," he said. "We will have the holy trinity of recovery — levees, housing and incentives."

Nagin acknowledged that the most heavily devastated areas of the city — Lakeview and the Lower Ninth Ward — were not ready for returning residents, but he promised they would be eventually. He suggested that officials may need to find housing elsewhere in the city in the meantime.

"At the end of the day, our entire city will be rebuilt," he said.

On Capitol Hill, meantime, Senate tax-writers embraced the casinos, golf courses and liquor stores as part of a roughly $7 billion program of tax incentives to rebuild Gulf Coast businesses damaged or destroyed by hurricanes.

The Senate could act as soon as Thursday on a package of tax breaks and other assistance that fulfills Bush's call for a special business zone in the Gulf Coast. Lawmakers hurried to finish the bill before taking a holiday break. The House earlier had denied including the casino and other businesses in the tax relief.

The House last week passed its own package of aid. Its key benefits matched the Senate and included increased write-offs for small business investments and an additional write-offs for other businesses purchasing equipment and new property.



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December 16, 2005
White House to Double Spending on New Orleans Flood Protection
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - The Bush administration agreed on Thursday to double what it would spend on flood protection for New Orleans, promising a system that it said would make the city safe from catastrophic flooding from a storm as powerful as Hurricane Katrina.

At a briefing at the White House, the coordinator of the federal response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Donald E. Powell, said the government would add $1.5 billion to the $1.6 billion already promised for the levees.

The protection, Mr. Powell said, would "be better and stronger" than ever and would encourage homeowners and businesses to return.

"I'm convinced that what we're doing here today, if there is another Katrina that hits New Orleans, that we would not see the catastrophic results that we saw during Katrina," he said.

He added that there could still be "manageable type" flooding.

The plan, to be completed within two years, fell far short of the protection against Category 5 hurricanes that Louisiana leaders have said is vital to rebuild New Orleans, which could cost more than $30 billion. Outside engineering experts said the plan might protect against storms of Hurricane Katrina's strength, but not necessarily bigger ones.

Hurricane Katrina had been a Category 5 in the gulf but was at Category 4 at most when it landed southeast of New Orleans near Buras, La.

The administration commitment was welcomed as an important first step by elected officials from Louisiana, including Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans, who was at the White House, and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who was here to push for billions in storm relief. The two officials said the announcement would provide a psychological comfort level to residents worried about the next storm.

"I want to say to all New Orleanians, to all businesses, 'It's time for you to come home,' " Mr. Nagin said. "We now have the commitment and the funding for hurricane protection at a level that we have never had before."

Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said it was "just the first step of about 10 that we need to take."

Ms. Blanco called it a "down payment" and said the plan would upgrade the levees to a "true Category 3 level."

The administration has come under mounting criticism that federal agencies have been slow to respond to the plight of people along the gulf and that Washington has been slow to make good on President Bush's promise to oversee ambitious rebuilding.

The levee announcement was issued as the White House was negotiating with lawmakers from the Gulf Coast and Republican Congressional leaders on a $35 billion package to aid devastated homeowners, businesses, schools, local governments and farmers. The levee reconstruction would be part of that package, which negotiators are trying to attach to a Defense Department appropriations bill that Congress has to vote before adjourning in a few days.

Even before the announcement, the White House had put forth a plan to allocate $17 billion for Gulf Coast reconstruction. The administration has balked at a plan by Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, to double that sum.

Mississippi and Louisiana have been seeking additional aid for businesses and homeowners without flood insurance, as well as for schools that have enrolled large numbers of evacuated students.

Louisiana has also asked Congress to waive $3.7 billion it is expected to owe the Federal Emergency Management Agency for disaster response and to cover 100 percent of its Medicaid costs for displaced people.

The administration sidestepped questions about whether the improvements would allow the levees to deal with the most severe hurricanes, Categories 4 and 5. Mr. Powell said that the plan would substantially improve the levees by raising them in places to compensate for subsidence and fortifying them with stone and concrete.

"Once this is complete," he said, "the levee system will be better, much better, and stronger than it ever has been in the history of new Orleans."

The program calls for closing three canals that contributed to the flooding and installing a more powerful pumping system along Lake Pontchartrain. Experts in flood control have long argued that the canals, dug more than a century ago through marshland, now introduce miles of vulnerability deep into city neighborhoods.

Installing concrete and stone at the bases of the levees will protect the surrounding soil from being scoured away if water washes over the floodwalls. The scouring can undermine the levees from underneath, leading to collapse, the phenomenon caused by water from Lake Borgne that destroyed miles of the eastern levee systems in Hurricane Katrina.

A system fortified against scouring can have water flow over the top without being breached, so that the protected areas are just briefly flooded and drainage can occur.

Thomas F. Wolff, associate dean for undergraduate studies at the college of engineering at Michigan State University, who has helped investigate the levee failures, said that the added $1.5 billion had "significantly improved" the disaster response to the disaster and that closing the canals was long overdue.

"I would still have some questions as to whether that is a complete solution and provides Category 5 protection," Mr. Wolff added.

Louis Capozzoli, a consulting engineer on the Louisiana team that is investigating the levees, said the sum being discussed was too little.

"I think they're off by an order of magnitude," he said. "That's not going to come close to protecting New Orleans, let alone the other areas" in southern Louisiana.

Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, said he received assurances on Thursday from Karl Rove, President Bush's closest political adviser, that the administration was prepared to pay for the levee improvements even if the cost exceeded $3.1 billion.

Asked whether they were satisfied with the safety level under the program, Louisiana officials noted that the budget included for a study on whether more needs to be done.

"Currently, there's no science to go higher than what they're doing today," Mr. Nagin said.

Mr. Vitter and Ms. Landrieu also said they would continue to push for legislation to give Louisiana as much as $3 billion a year in revenues from offshore oil drilling that currently goes to the federal government. The senators have proposed that the money be dedicated to restoring coastal wetlands and constructing Category 5 hurricane protection, projects that could cost more than $30 billion.

On Thursday, a White House official provided a two-hour closed door briefing to members of a select House committee that is investigating the preparations and response for Hurricane Katrina. Republicans said they considered the briefing, by Mr. Bush's deputy domestic security adviser, Ken Rapuano, candid and helpful.

Democrats said the briefing failed to answer major questions about the handling of the disaster, and they renewed their call for the committee to subpoena records from Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, and other senior officials. The Republican majority has already rebuffed that call once.

John Schwartz in New Orleans contributed reporting for this article.



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More than three months later, New Orleans still in harm's way Centre Daily Times
Sitting at his computer recently in a messy office at Louisiana State University, civil engineer Hassan Mashriqui tapped out a few commands on his keyboard and his screen came alive with tiny swirling arrows and flowing fields of color. Within seconds the arrows organized themselves into the unmistakable spiral of a raging hurricane plowing into a virtual version of the southeastern Louisiana coast. "We can create the hurricane," Mashriqui said, describing how computer simulations are making it much easier for scientists to figure out how to protect New Orleans.
Louisiana's Deadly Storm Took Both the Strong and the Helpless New York Times
Katrina Killed Across Class Lines Los Angeles Times
Indianapolis Star - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette - Ottawa Citizen - The Ledger - all 40 related »

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December 19, 2005
Leaders in Congress Agree on Aid for Gulf Recovery
By ERIC LIPTON
GULFPORT, Miss., Dec. 18 - Since Hurricane Katrina hit, billions of dollars in federal aid has poured into the devastated areas of Mississippi and Louisiana, primarily for the most critical emergency needs: providing temporary housing, restarting governments and cleaning up the mountains of debris.

On Sunday, leaders in the House and Senate moved to switch from a relief effort to recovery, agreeing to appropriate large chunks of money to rebuild the region and, at least in part, to bail out some of the tens of thousands of people who were financially devastated by the storm.

The recovery package allocates $11.5 billion in new grant money, mostly for Mississippi and Louisiana. State officials have indicated they intend to use much of it to compensate some of the estimated 110,000 families whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Katrina but who did not have flood insurance.

The deal also includes $2.68 billion to strengthen the levees, protect the watershed and take other flood-control measures around New Orleans and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. There is $2.75 billion to reimburse states for highway repairs.

An additional $1.6 billion is for education aid, including reimbursement of schools that took in students displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And $125 million is designated for helping state and local police departments replace lost or damaged equipment and vehicles.

The $29 billion package, which still must be approved by the full House and Senate, comes on top of action on Friday by Congress that created about $8 billion in tax breaks and incentives to stimulate the Gulf Coast economy.

The new aid is intended to not add to the deficit because it involves the reallocation of money from the original $62 billion in relief that Congress approved this summer as well as cuts elsewhere in federal spending.

To elected officials from the Gulf Coast region, the agreement Sunday was a sign that Washington was making good on the promise that President Bush made in a Sept. 15 speech in Jackson Square in New Orleans, where he vowed "to help the citizens of the Gulf Coast to overcome this disaster, put their lives back together and rebuild their communities."

In a statement Sunday, Representative Chip Pickering, Republican of Mississippi, said, "When these funds make it to Mississippi, individuals and families will be able to rebuild their homes, restore their communities, reopen their schools and hospitals, and boost the Gulf Coast economy to create and retain jobs."

News of the recovery package brought relief in such cities as Gulfport, Pascagoula and Biloxi, where Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters affected thousands of residents in areas not defined by official federal maps as susceptible to flooding.

Typically, only homeowners in areas defined as within the so-called 100-year flood zone are required to buy federal flood insurance. Yet standard homeowners' insurance offered by private companies includes a provision that excludes water damage caused by "flood, surface water, waves, tidal water, overflow of a body of water, or spray from any of these, whether or not driven by wind."

Because there is a $26,200 cap on federal disaster aid to families, many people faced the possibility of taking out a second mortgage to rebuild their homes or perhaps even filing for bankruptcy.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, Bob Frederic, 51, of Pascagoula had just invested $70,000 on renovations to his home, putting in a new kitchen and living room. His neighborhood is about a mile from the beach and there are no streams, ponds or other bodies of water in the area, so it had never occurred to area residents that their homes might be flooded, Mr. Frederic and several neighbors said.

"I hate to get a handout, but then again, this is something that has never happened before," said Mr. Frederic, adding that Hurricane Katrina brought whitecaps into his backyard.

James Kirby, 74, of Gulfport had made payments for 28 years on his 30-year mortgage when Hurricane Katrina flooded his house, leaving it nearly worthless. "You work all your life on something," he said. "And then it is nothing."

Approval of the additional assistance was credited in part to two important Republican allies from Mississippi, Senator Thad Cochran, who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Washington lobbyist and chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Louisiana officials said they too welcomed the aid, though it was probably far short of what is needed to compensate the estimated 70,000 households that were flooded but did not have flood insurance. While the new package includes enough money to rebuild the levee system in New Orleans, it is far short of what is needed to protect the city from a Category 5 storm.

"This is a shot in the arm to the recovery that will make a big difference," said Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the body set up to help lead the rebuilding effort.

So far, the federal government has committed to $19.53 billion for Hurricane Katrina relief, including $3.1 billion for trailers and mobile homes, $3.5 billion for emergency housing, $2.2 billion for state and local governments and $4.35 billion to other federal agencies, particularly the Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the debris-removal work.



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December 27, 2005
One Parish
With Coastline in Ruins, Cajuns Face Prospect of Uprooted Towns
By JERE LONGMAN
GRAND CHENIER, La. - Cameron Parish, where generations of Cajuns have hunted ducks and pulled up redfish, lost about 400 people to Hurricane Audrey in 1957. Last fall, when Hurricane Rita destroyed thousands of structures and flattened the coastline, some state officials began to question whether life there was still worth the risk.

Now Louisiana planners are proposing an idea that would have been unimaginable here a few months ago: moving an entire string of seaside towns and villages - and the 4,000 longtime residents who live in them - 15 or 20 miles inland to higher and presumably safer ground.

"If we could get 100 percent participation, which admittedly is extraordinarily difficult, if possible at all, we could conceivably take the entire population of Cameron Parish largely out of harm's way for future events," said Drew Sachs, a consultant to the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He has been asked to develop bold suggestions for rebuilding the state's coastal region in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The idea, of course, is already encountering resistance, particularly among younger residents. The tightly knit group of Cajuns who have lived here in unincorporated villages like Cameron, Johnson Bayou, Holly Beach, Creole and Grand Chenier are fiercely independent and self-sufficient. They have resided for generations on inherited family property in the state's southwest corner, 160 miles to the west of New Orleans, living off the land and giving resonance to Louisiana's nickname as the Sportsman's Paradise.

"My grandfather would roll over in his grave if I sold our land," said Clifton Hebert, 44, operations chief of the parish emergency operations center. "He'd haunt me the rest of my life."

But others admit there may be some wisdom in a move, as painful as it would be. Wanita Harrison, a retired biology and chemistry teacher from Grand Chenier, loves the way the marsh fills with pelicans when a cold front pushes through. Her husband, Lee, relishes the splendid rural isolation and the ability to run off to Houston for a week without bothering to lock the house.

With their ruined belongings now piled along Highway 82, however - the piano is somewhere back in the woods - the Harrisons are actually considering the idea. Mrs. Harrison, in fact, says that if she goes north, it will be beyond Cameron Parish.

"It's a good idea to consider moving inland," said Mrs. Harrison, 70. "I love my area, but we have to face reality."

No one died in Hurricane Rita, which struck early on Sept. 24, thanks to a vigorous evacuation plan, but the storm destroyed or rendered structurally unsound about half of the 5,400 parish homes and commercial buildings examined by the Army Corps of Engineers, parish officials said. They caution that many more structures may also have to be condemned. In the lower part of the parish, as few as 20 of 1,000 residences may be inhabitable, according to the most dire estimates. Residents remain scattered.

There is a great fear here, residents say, that the hurricane destroyed not only property but a way of life. Many of the parish's 10,000 residents say they feel both neglected by the federal response and suspicious that outsiders will dictate their future with prohibitive building codes and flood insurance requirements. They worry that even if they want to return to lower portions of the parish, they may not be able to afford it.

What will it cost to elevate houses 11 or 14 or 20 feet off the ground? asked Kenton Bonsall, 35, an equipment operator for the State Wildlife and Fisheries Department, echoing the concerns of many about new elevation requirements being imposed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. How will aging parents and grandparents climb those stairs? Will anyone provide flood and homeowners' insurance? At what cost? What if the hospital is not rebuilt? Or the school? Or the convenience stores? Will he have to drive 50 miles for an aspirin and a gallon of milk and gas?

"I'm afraid that everything I've known to be true is going to change and be gone," Mr. Bonsall said, sitting in a convenience store amid a lightning storm.

Hurricane Rita's storm surge of 17 to 20 feet again made clear just how vulnerable this low-lying parish is to hurricanes. The marshy area below the Intracoastal Waterway has become a ghost land of structural skeletons. Many houses are gone entirely, except for a concrete slab. All that remains of the post office in the village of Cameron is a pile of bricks and a spray-painted address.

Homes and buildings that remain standing seem to have been hollowed like pumpkins by the force of the water. The Hibernia Bank in Cameron is nothing more than a frame and a vault. The gym at Cameron Elementary School has basketball goals with nets but no roof or cinderblock walls.

Referring to Cameron Parish's seven elected officials, known as police jurors, Representative Charles Boustany Jr., the Republican who represents this district in Congress, said: "You can see fatigue in their eyes and concerns about whether or not they will have a community in the future. At the same time, there is a grim determination to get things back together."

James Lee Witt, a director of FEMA in the Clinton administration who is advising Louisiana officials on recovery, has urged the state to think creatively in seeking to reduce the risk of wind damage and storm surge to its most exposed areas.

One possibility, Mr. Witt and his associates say, is that the federal government could buy out private and commercial properties - at pre-Rita market value - along Highway 82, which runs along the Gulf of Mexico in lower Cameron Parish. About 4,000 people live in this area, parish officials said. Conceivably, entire communities, with their churches, businesses, schools and hospitals, could then relocate to better-protected areas in the north-central part of the parish.

Financing would come from the $2.5 billion to $4 billion that Louisiana expects to receive from FEMA in "hazard mitigation" money. State recovery officials stressed that participation in any relocation effort would be voluntary and that oil and gas and fishing enterprises requiring access to the coast could remain in place. Land at the coast could still be used as it is now for farming, hunting and fishing, said Mr. Sachs, an associate of Mr. Witt's who specializes in storm risk reduction.

"We'd be able to keep the community largely intact," Mr. Sachs said in an interview in Baton Rouge. "But they would be located in a part of the state that would be of lesser risk."

There are some precedents for relocating entire communities. The village of Valmeyer, Ill., near St. Louis, was moved several miles from a flood plain to a bluff after it was inundated by the Mississippi River in 1993. The population has grown to 1,100 from 900, and Valmeyer now has a new school, new churches, more modern utilities and increasing property values, said Jeff Berry, a city councilman at the time of the relocation and now a consultant to the village.

"We had weekly meetings, and I think it made the citizens feel like they were part of building the new town," Mr. Berry said. "We knew we'd lose residents if we didn't build quickly, in three or four years. Time was a big element."

Cameron Parish must complete its recovery from Hurricane Rita before it can seriously consider long-term plans for rebuilding, parish officials said. Nearly three months after the hurricane, an evacuation order remains in effect. Only in the last two weeks did a federal program begin for debris removal from private property.

Much of the lower parish seems untouched since the hurricane and persists as a safety hazard, officials said. Houses remain shoved against the highway or tossed into the marsh. Containers of hazardous material wait to be recovered, as if in a toxic Easter egg hunt. Cars are hidden under crushed homes and fallen trees. Plastic is draped in trees like Spanish moss. About 50 of the 300 coffins that floated out of the ground remain unaccounted for, said Theos Duhon, the parish sheriff.

At a community meeting in Grand Lake, many residents said they wanted to be left alone to rebuild as they did after Hurricane Audrey. Many voiced a long-held belief, unconfirmed by anyone, that the federal government preferred to turn the parish into a wildlife refuge.

"The hurricane took a whole culture away," said Kevin Warner, 30, a water company employee from Oak Grove. "They say it's going to be bigger and better. I'll have to see it to believe it."

Others are not waiting around to be bought out by the government. Mona Theriot, 65, who said she floated on creosote posts for 11 hours before being rescued as a teenager during Hurricane Audrey, has sold her property in Hurricane Rita's aftermath. She plans to rebuild with her husband, Daniel, some 30 miles north in Lake Charles.

"We're tired of running," Mrs. Theriot said of frequent storm-related evacuations along the coast.

At Holly Beach, Alma and Raywood Landry sat with their two dogs and a box of fried chicken and surveyed the slab and pilings that remained of their home and several hundred other residences on this shattered beachfront. Their home had burned several years ago and was rebuilt, only to be demolished again by Hurricane Rita, said Mr. Landry, 74. Mrs. Landry, 71, said she would consider a government buyout to move inland.

"This is the second time I've lost everything," she said. "This is a beautiful and quiet place, but I've had enough."



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December 27, 2005
Mental Health
Hurricane Takes a Further Toll: Suicides Up in New Orleans
By ADAM NOSSITER
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 26 - Mental health professionals say this city appears to be experiencing a sharp increase in suicides in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and interviews and statistics suggest that the rate is now double or more the national and local averages.

At least seven people have killed themselves in the four months since the storm, officials say, here in a city whose population is now no more than 75,000 to 100,000. That compares with a national rate of 11 suicides per 100,000 for all of 2002, and a rate in New Orleans of about nine per 100,000 for all of 2004. There is broad agreement that the problem is likely to get worse.

Stevenson Palfi, 53, a well-known local filmmaker, was apparently the latest to take his own life. Mr. Palfi's house in the Mid-City section had taken eight feet of water, and he was in despair over losing years of files and photographs, a computer - in fact, all the contents of his office.

The aftermath of the storm pushed him "right off the cliff emotionally," said a friend, Mary Katherine Aldin.

"This just hit him so hard," she said. "It was a cumulative devastation to him emotionally."

Mr. Palfi sat down to write a suicide note and a will, then shot himself on the second floor of his Banks Street home in the early hours of Dec. 14, Ms. Aldin said.

The signs of despair are pervasive here: a woman, having returned to see her flooded-out house for the first time, runs screaming down Mirabeau Avenue in the Gentilly neighborhood, where the police find her babbling uncontrollably; in a Bourbon Street nightclub, a man draws a gun and shoots himself in the head, even as dancers sway to the music; from half-ruined houses, the police retrieve homeowners, weeping and distraught; psychiatrists report that previously stable patients are now preoccupied with death and suicide.

"I would call the scope of this disaster, the scale of mental health problems, unprecedented," said Charles G. Curie, the mental health administrator at the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Officials say that among those who have killed themselves was Dr. James Kent Treadway, a pediatrician who was a fixture in the Uptown neighborhood. Dr. Treadway, 58, committed suicide in his partly destroyed house on Nov. 16.

"He's got no practice, the house is flooded, his office was destroyed," said his brother-in-law, Michael Caire. "He just doesn't know how he's going to make it in the future."

Officials have also reported suicides among evacuees in cities like Houston, where large numbers of them have settled.

And in addition to those who have killed themselves here, about two dozen have tried to do so, a rate that is most likely, officials say, also far higher than normal.

Jeff Wellborn, administrator of the Police Department's mobile mental health squad, said members of his unit were being called in frequently when a homeowner, witnessing the extent of losses for the first time, broke down.

"They're coming into town, and they get so depressed they can't handle it anymore," Mr. Wellborn said. "Most of the time they are crying."

"These are not the same people we dealt with before the storm," he said. "They had no mental health history. We are seeing almost exclusively new patients."

Health professionals confronting this tide of despondency view it as one more sign that New Orleans, with its miles of ruined neighborhoods, moribund downtown and enclaves of semi-normality, is far from recovered. Nobody here can escape the persistent evidence of the city's devastation. First exchanges are often about how much damage your house has suffered, or whether your house still exists.

"There are a lot of people walking around with an endemic low-grade depression," said Dale F. Firestone, a local psychotherapist.

For an undetermined number, it is worse, experts said.

"I've had some very depressed people from Katrina," said Dr. Douglas W. Greve, a psychiatrist with a practice in the French Quarter. "These are profound depressions. In the past I would have hospitalized these patients."

"I'm beginning to get experiences with acute anxiety," Dr. Greve said. "Anxiety and depression, abuse of alcohol, that's gone way up." A handful of his patients have been suicidal, he said, adding, "I think it's going to get worse."

Children, too, are suffering, said Dr. Douglas S. Pool, a psychiatrist who treats the young.

"You actually get kids as young as 5 talk about not wanting to live, wanting to die," Dr. Pool said.

Dr. Denise L. Dorsey, president-elect of the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Center, said that for many, the devastation was beyond an ability to cope.

"Looking down a street where it's house after house, and the garbage and the innards of the houses, there's something about it that people in general can't grasp," Dr. Dorsey said. "It's not within the realm of any experience anyone's ever had. Your ordinary American doesn't have that in their repertoire of experience."



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New Orleans Police Shoot, Kill Man Forbes
Police shot and killed a man who allegedly threatened an officer with a knife, marking the first shooting involving an officer since the city reopened after Hurricane Katrina. Officers on Sunday repeatedly asked the man to drop the knife and used pepper spray to try to subdue him, but he was still able to walk toward an officer and threaten him, authorities said. "Evidently the pepper spray had no effect," police spokesman David Adams said. A businessman had called police after a confrontation with the 38-year-old victim in the Lower Garden District west of downtown.
New Orleans Police Shoot, Kill Man ABC News
Cops fatally shoot man on St. Charles Avenue Times Picayune
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Spherion temps indicted in fraud Miami Herald
Temporary workers who were assigned to Red Cross call centers by Spherion have been accused of giving away thousands of dollars intended for Hurricane Katrina. At least 17 workers placed at a Red Cross call center by Fort Lauderdale-based Spherion have been indicted on fraud charges, raising the issue of screening checks done by staffing agencies that supply temporary workers. The workers are accused of rerouting donations made for Hurricane Katrina victims to family and friends, according to investigators. They are among 49 people under investigation in connection with a scam run out of the American Red Cross call center in Bakersfield, Calif., which bilked thousands of dollars in hurricane relief funds. Spherion said it did not have time to check the employees' criminal histories. ''Given the special circumstances and the urgent need to provide assistance to hurricane victims, all background checks could not be completed before placing the candidates on assignment,'' company spokesman Kip Havel said. Havel also noted that Spherion hired more than 1,000 workers for the Red Cross. A confidentiality agreement barred Spherion from discussing the details of the background checks required, but Havel said the Red Cross was aware that not all the candidates had been screened. ''The Red Cross takes financial stewardship very seriously and has a robust system of checks and balances in place to uncover fraud as we did at the Bakersfield Call Center,'' the organization said in a statement. Staffing companies and temporary agencies do not automatically perform background checks, said Raul Botifoll, the manager of ManPower Miami, a competing staffing service. ''It's dictated by the client,'' he said. While about 70 percent of ManPower's retail customers don't require background checks, large corporations and government agencies often require intensive criminal checks and drug screening, he said. ''But it also depends on the urgency of some of these assignments,'' he said. "When there are natural disasters -- even if, let's say, a government contract does call for background and drug testing -- in some cases they may waive them.'' The incident comes at a time of rapid growth in the temporary worker industry. In the Miami-Palm Beach corridor, 227,000 people work in the labor market niche that includes temps -- which accounts for one in every 10 private-sector jobs. The category is growing at 8.8 percent a year, fueled in part by companies wanting to keep a lid on labor costs. Spherion is an industry giant with more than $2 billion in annual revenue. Still, profit margins in the industry have fallen recently as customers wring out costs. The indicted call center workers were allegedly providing pin numbers to their friends and family, who would then go to Western Union to collect the funds. The Red Cross contacted the FBI after an audit of the call center showed an unusually high number of claims paid out at Western Union outlets in the Bakersfield area. Red Cross officials emphasize that the amount stolen was a tiny fraction of their program. This report was supplemented with information from Miami Herald wire services.
A Red Cross Call Center Gets a Black Eye Destination CRM
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http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle....ISEN.xml&rpc=23

Hurricane insurance losses $57.6 bln: Advisen
Tue Dec 27, 2005 11:09 AM ET



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Advisen Ltd. on Tuesday estimated worldwide insurance and reinsurance losses related to the three major hurricanes that hit the United States this year would amount to $57.6 billion, making the cumulative catastrophe losses the largest on record.

By predicting unreported losses from State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the largest personal lines insurer, as well as unreported and unfiled losses elsewhere, Advisen projects pre-tax insured losses per hurricane to be $40.4 billion for Katrina, $6.4 billion for Rita, and $10.8 billion for Wilma.

The losses amount to more than twice the annual total for other U.S. natural disasters and one-and-a-half times the losses from the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Several variables could prompt Advisen's estimates to increase dramatically, the company warned. Flood losses could elevate Advisen's estimates by billions of dollars if lawsuits to force insurers to cover flood damage related to Hurricane Katrina are successful.

Also, hurricane-related pollution lawsuits could add hundreds to Advisen's totals, it said.

Advisen provides analytics and market information to the commercial insurance industry.



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New Orleans' old homes prove they were built to last
The city's architectural cornerstones will be among the easiest to
restore, possibly inspiring reconstruction. By Kris Axtman
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0104/p01s04-ussc.html?s=hns

January 12, 2006
Bush Notes Progress in New Orleans Cleanup
By MARIA NEWMAN
President Bush, in his first visit to New Orleans since October, said he was struck by the contrast in the city now compared to the days just after Hurricane Katrina, when flooding destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and forced the city to evacuate all of its residents.

"From when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to visit," the president said today at a roundtable discussion with 11 small business owners and community leaders. "It's a heck of a place to bring your family."

He went on to say: "For folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great city of New Orleans."


His comments were in contrast to those of the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, who on Wednesday said he had counseled the president to lower his expectations of what he would find as he toured New Orleans and Mississippi today to review recovery efforts from the devastating storm.

"I had to manage his expectations this morning, because while there has been great progress, there continues to be great need - indescribable need," Mr. Card told the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The Gulf Coast economy is struggling and only about half of the 90 million tons of debris from Hurricane Katrina in August has been cleared.

In New Orleans, about a quarter of residents who fled have returned, and many neighborhoods are still abandoned wastelands, with uninhabitable homes, no working street lights and sidewalks piled with moldy garbage. The levee system is as vulnerable as ever.

But Mr. Bush was more upbeat in his assessment to business owners and community leaders.

"I will tell you, the contrast between when I was last here and today is pretty dramatic," he said as he sat next to Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans.

The president said that the federal government has appropriated $85 billion to the Gulf Coast and $25 billion has been spent so far. He said that spending for the remaining $60 billion "is in the pipeline."

He also said he believed that Congress should restore the $1.4 billion that was removed late last year for rebuilding and reinforcement of the levees.

"There have to be strong levees to encourage investors to New Orleans," he said.

Later, in Bay St. Louis, Miss., Mr. Bush again said in a speech that he was struck by the progress, and in the contrast in "what was, and now what is, and I can see what's going to be too and it's going to be a better Gulf Coast, Mississippi."

In that community, according to The A.P., trees still lay snapped in two, debris is strewn across the landscape and people are living in tents and trailers set up in front of homes with missing roofs and shattered windows.

Many commercial buildings were destroyed. Some of those still operating among the wreckage displayed yard signs that said, "We are staying!"

Mr. Bush's message will be that while the recovery will be long and expensive, the federal government is in it for the long haul, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy, according to The A.P.

"The destruction down there looks like it just happened yesterday," Mr. Duffy said. "It's easy for people outside the region to forget the challenges they still face."

It is Mr. Bush's first visit to the region since Oct. 10 and 11. The president was criticized just after the August storm for not acting quickly enough to lend aid to an area along a wide swath of the Gulf Coast that suffered wide devastation. Then, he made six visits in eight weeks.

The president's visit comes on a day when Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, who criticized the slow pace of federal aid in the days just after the storm, is traveling to the Netherlands, much of which is below sea level, to see flood control systems. Her office was upset about the scheduling, but White House officials said they had made every effort to coordinate schedules.

"We reached out to all those officials and they had another commitment," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, told reporters on the trip, according to a pool report.

The recovery efforts in New Orleans are limping along. On Wednesday night, residents of the city's most devastated neighborhoods responded with anger when the city's rebuilding commission unveiled its most contentious proposal: giving neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to prove they should not be bulldozed.

The commission was created to draw up a master plan to remake a city that suffered what was widely described as the worst urban disaster in the country's history.

The floodwater that covered 80 percent of the city caused half its houses to sit in four feet or more of foul, murky water for weeks, according to a draft of the final report, and it destroyed much of the public works in the city. Rebuilding the city is sure to cost billions in federal money.

In his visit today, Mr. Bush met business and community leaders in the city's Lower Garden District, which was not flooded.

He said of New Orleans: "It's a great place to find some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."



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January 13, 2006
In New Orleans, Bush Speaks With Optimism but Sees Little of Ruin
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
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.

"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," the president told the local leaders at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, an independent group set up to attract business and tourism to the city.

Mr. Bush added that "for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans."

Mr. Bush, who appeared to be trying to spread optimism in a city that is years away from recovery, did not tell the group or the city's residents what many were hoping to hear: that he would commit the federal government to building the strongest possible levees, a Category 5 storm protection system.

Instead, on a day when the Bush administration revised the deficit upward to more than $400 billion and blamed it largely on Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush restated his support for spending $3.1 billion of federal money on building "stronger and better" levees.

Local engineers say those levees would protect against the 100-mile-an-hour winds of a Category 2 hurricane and the low barometric pressure of a Category 3 or weak Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina peaked as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico and hit land as a Category 3 storm.

The president ignored questions about the city's new rebuilding plan, introduced Wednesday night to enormous community criticism, and White House officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to offer opinions. The plan, which depends on nearly $17 billion more from the federal government, gives neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to attract sufficient numbers of residents or be bulldozed.

The federal government has so far authorized $85 billion in relief to the Gulf Coast, with $25 billion spent.

"We're not going to weigh in," Donald E. Powell, the president's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator, told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday morning. "It will be their plan."

In the meeting at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Mr. Bush sat between Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitchell J. Landrieu. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Democrat with whom Mr. Bush has a chilly relationship, was in The Netherlands looking at the country's flood-control system.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said that the president had not deliberately timed his visit on a day when Ms. Blanco was not in town, and that the White House had reached out to her but she had a scheduling conflict.

Ms. Blanco's press secretary, Denise Bottcher, said that Ms. Blanco would be returning to New Orleans on Thursday night, just hours after the president left the city, and that she was "disappointed" she had missed his visit.

From New Orleans, Mr. Bush traveled to Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Mississippi, where he viewed destruction along the Gulf Coast. He then headed for Palm Beach, Fla., for a closed-door $4 million fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee and Republican candidates at the home of Dwight Schar, a homebuilder and a co-owner of the Washington Redskins.



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2 Million Displaced By Storms

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 13, 2006; Page A03

The Federal Emergency Management Agency yesterday increased its count of people displaced from the Gulf Coast by hurricanes Katrina and Rita by nearly a third, to about 2 million people. A FEMA spokeswoman attributed the sharp rise to a reporting error.

According to a news release, FEMA is paying rental assistance to 685,635 families whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the Aug. 29 and Sept. 24 storms, an increase of 167,000, or 32 percent, over a month ago. FEMA officials generally estimate three people per household as a rule of thumb.

In December, the agency counted only recipients of a transitional housing assistance program created Sept. 23, FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said. Shortly before Christmas, FEMA discovered that it had not counted families receiving rental assistance under a traditional disaster aid program, she said.

"We've never had a situation where an entire American city was evacuated, and they weren't able to go home," she said. "These numbers represent that phenomenon."

The figure exceeds initial post-hurricane estimate of 300,000 displaced families and an October estimate by FEMA to Congress of 450,000 to 600,000 households.

The estimate of 2 million displaced also dwarfs the number of people forced from their homes by past U.S. natural disasters, such as hurricanes Andrew, Charley, Ivan or Hugo, as well as the Dust Bowl migration.

Also yesterday, a federal judge in New Orleans ordered FEMA to allow hurricane evacuees in that city to stay in subsidized hotel rooms until March 1, extending a Feb. 27 deadline FEMA set Monday. FEMA also was required to continue providing lodging for at least two weeks for occupants nationwide whose eligibility for rental housing assistance is determined after Jan. 30, whenever that occurs.

Red stickers, 30-day notices loom for New Orleans homeowners Houston Chronicle
Patricia Lucas knows that her home in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward is going to be demolished. "It moved across the street," said Lucas, 52, who now lives in a Dallas suburb. The pillars of her house are still in place, she said, but aside from that, "I can't salvage nothing. It's totally gone." Lucas has not been contacted by any city officials about the impending demolition, but the red sticker that inspectors placed on her house is enough to let her know its fate. A federal judge's ruling this week clears the way for New Orleans officials to begin demolishing parts of the city badly ravaged by Hurricane Katrina — but it also forces the city to notify property owners in advance. The settlement, which was approved on Tuesday, was in response to a lawsuit filed in late December by a group representing residents and other advocacy groups to stop the city from proceeding with its plans to tear down within weeks 2,500 buildings that posed an imminent threat to the public. Homeowners were outraged last month when a top official made the announcement. "We already knew (the city) was going to be doing this at some point" and were waiting for the opportunity to contest this, said Ishmael Muhammad, a lawyer working with the People's Hurricane Relief Fund legal group, which represented residents and other grassroots advocacy organizations in the case. "You can't just go and start demolishing people's homes without giving them notifications." Under the agreement, homeowners of about 120 properties that were seriously damaged or pose an immediate threat to the public will be given seven to 10 days notice. A 30-day notice will be given to the owners of about 1,900 other houses slated for demolition. Residents can challenge the demolitions. Albert Thibodeaux, a lawyer for New Orleans, said the decision "was give-and-take on both sides, but we are satisfied with the consent." The city will post in the Times-Picayune the addresses listed for demolition. The information also will be available on the city's Web site, and residents will be notified by mail. Muhammad said his group believes the city must establish a culture in which officials are connecting with the community about their decisions on demolition and reconstruction plans. They are concerned that the city will not do that. "The only thing we're confident about is the city is going to do what the order makes it do," Muhammad said. "Anything that the city cannot do it's not going to do. And we don't think it's in the city's interest to make sure people are notified because it means people may fight." Stephen Bradberry, head organizer for New Orleans Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, said he is not confident the steps taken to notify families is adequate. "How is someone in Utah supposed to get information?" he asked. "There is no system for people to adequately find out about what is going on in the city of New Orleans" besides the national news media or Internet, he said. There are many small but important issues — issues essential for residents to know as they try to decide their future — that don't make the national news, he said. "We're not getting any kind of communication from New Orleans," said Dorothy Stukes, spokeswoman for the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association now living in Houston. "We need to know what's going on. Some people haven't even had a chance to survey their property."
New Orleans to notify homeowners before razings Boston Globe
New Orleans Agrees to Give Demolition Notices Los Angeles Times
Times Picayune - Times Online - New York Times - San Diego Union Tribune - all 85 related »

Victims of Katrina Fall Through Cracks
By LYNN BREZOSKY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 20, 2:14 PM ET

After Hurricane Katrina socked the central Gulf Coast, Eldo and Julia Allen watched the news and waited in vain for word from their son in Biloxi, Miss.

They waited for nearly four months, not knowing the horrific truth: that their son and daughter-in-law died as the storm surge swallowed their Beach Boulevard apartment. That their bodies had long since been found and identified at the Harrison County, Miss., coroner's office. And that they were about to be "disposed of" after going so long unclaimed.

The agencies the Allens had been calling all those months hadn't contacted the coroner, and the coroner hadn't checked with the agencies.

"Nobody talked to nobody," Eldo Allen said, his voice wrapped in grief. "That's why we just was almost too late. If we'd been a little later they would have disposed of the bodies with 'next of kin unknown,' and that would have been ... "

He bowed his head over a dining room table laden with family photo albums, sympathy cards from the retirement community, and the black box holding his son's ashes, before completing his thought: "That would have been more than I could stand."

___

Some 18,000 people were reported lost in the wake of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes; more than 4,200 are still reported missing in some fashion. The unprecedented number of displaced people prompted the federal government to expand the definition of missing to just about anyone who had a relative who didn't know where they were.

But despite scores of people calling around on behalf of government and nonprofit agencies, some victims, like the Allens, just fell through the cracks.

John David Allen, a 48-year-old construction worker, lived with his wife, Susan, 53, in an apartment near the Biloxi waterfront.

His cell phone must have been on the blink before the storm, when his parents saw maps of the swirling mass called Katrina heading his way and tried to call him. "This number is not available," a recording said.

But after the storm, the parents insisted, John would have known they were worried. He would have found a way to call.

By the end of the second day after the Aug. 29 storm, Eldo Allen was on the phone with the Red Cross, which gave him a case number and told him to put his son and daughter-in-law's names on their online list of missing people.

With no leads weeks later, the Allens gave up on the Red Cross and tried the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA gave them a telephone number for finding missing family, which they called once or twice a week for months. The answer was always the same: No information.

By December, they were certain their son was dead. The telling clue came when a Social Security official told them John was earning money until the day before the storm; since then, there'd been nothing. The same worker was able to contact people John had worked for. No one had seen him.

By now, the Allens had had enough.

"Where did you take the bodies?" Eldo asked a FEMA representative. "Maybe I can come down and identify them myself."

The FEMA staffer told him to try the local coroner. That was Dec. 19.

A lady named Joy answered the phone at the Harrison County, Miss., coroner's office.

"She told me immediately, 'He did not survive the storm and neither did his wife Susan and we've known for over two months but couldn't find any of his family members,'" Eldo Allen said. "So they didn't check. They didn't talk with FEMA, FEMA didn't talk with them and the Red Cross didn't talk to either."

The bodies had already been cremated.

"The bodies were in such bad shape they said there was no other way," Julia Allen said.

Other frustrations with FEMA would be comic if they weren't so tragic. The Allens applied for burial assistance and got a letter denying an application for a small business loan. John's Social Security number, not Eldo's, ended up on the application. A lady called asking if they would be moving back to Mississippi.

"They are so swamped I guess that they're not getting much of anything right," Eldo said.

FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney said it is the local medical examiner's job to call the next of kin. And when the coroner can't find next of kin? He said there might be "some discussion in the future of insuring that the local coroner has the ability to do that."

"We grieve with this family," he said.

Tom Corl, director of international family tracing services for the American Red Cross, said the Red Cross had offered an online service to help loved ones locate one another — more than 340,000 people had signed on — but had never gotten involved with the storm's deaths.

"We tried not to let any information about deceased parties be posted simply because we didn't know if it was verifiable," he said.

The Harrison County coroner did not return repeated calls for comment.

___

They were free spirits, John and Susan. John liked to play guitar and write songs, Susan was known for her candor and the way she clapped her hands and exclaimed, "Yeah, baby!" when she was happy. She worked as a school custodian full time, with a part-time gig dealing blackjack at one of the casinos.

Once, when the topic of hurricanes came up, the elder Allens expressed fear that one would devastate the Texas coast. John told his father he should move to Biloxi — the city's stately old mansions were proof that hurricanes never hit there.

Eldo Allen hasn't been able to find out exactly how long his son's and daughter-in-law's bodies lay in the post-storm debris before they were found, only that it was "a whole lot of days."

He searched the Internet last week and found a New York Times story about the Biloxi devastation, and it mentioned that an apartment building had been hit by a gambling barge in the storm, burying eight people.

In the article, someone points to a foot and then a knee visible in the rubble. "That's J.D.," the person says. "And that's Sue."

No belongings were returned — no wedding rings or other jewelry, not the eagle necklace John always wore.

John was identified through his fingerprints, which matched prints taken decades earlier when he served in the Air Force. Then it was easy to identify Susan.

Susan was estranged from her family in Wisconsin, but the Allens say someone must care. Eldo yearned to tell them that she finally was cared for in death, that "She didn't just get 'disposed of.' That's such a terrible word, 'disposed of.'"

On Wednesday, friends joined the Allens as they buried a coffin containing two ash-filled urns: One for John, and one for Susan.



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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.

The Bring New Orleans Back Commission, the group formed by Mayor C. Ray Nagin to produce a blueprint for the city's recovery, issued a proposal on Wednesday to upgrade hurricane protection with measures beyond what the corps has called for. To prevent storm surges from pushing into the city's drainage canals, the commission proposed a series of jetties to stand in front of the three canals, which it says could be built quickly and cheaply and provide New Orleans with some much-needed peace of mind.

"There is, very much, a tension between things that can be done quickly versus those that might take a little longer," Lawrence Roth, deputy executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said in a telephone interview on Friday. His group has weighed in with far-reaching recommendations, and other groups are preparing proposals of their own.

The mayor's commiss