Project Katrina

Folks just can’t seem to catch much of a break:

With the closure of another FEMA trailer park where Hurricane Katrina victims had been living, there are new concerns over a lack of available housing.

While some of the people who were living in FEMA trailers have found rental apartments, or been able to renovate their storm-ravaged homes and move back into them, many people have not found another place to live. Some of them have moved to motels, but many disabled people are in danger of becoming homeless, local charities officials say.

Some of the problem was caused when FEMA had to close some trailer parks earlier than it had planned, after dangerously high levels of formaldehyde were found.

But other problems came because FEMA hasn’t provided adequate support to victims.

That lack of support included an early, and continuing, failure to distribute supplies to Katrina victims. Instead, the agency paid to store cleaning supplies, blankets and home furnishings in warehouses for years before selling them as surplus.

After Katrina hit and the levees failed more than 378,000 people were displaced. Based on U.S. Postal Service data collected by the Brookings Institution and reported in USA Today:

The re-population of New Orleans three years after Hurricane Katrina slowed drastically last year and may be hitting a plateau, a study released today finds.

The city’s population grew 3% from 2007 to 2008, compared with a 19% increase from 2006 to 2007, according to the report by the Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. Overall, the city is at about 72% of its pre-Katrina population of 450,000.

After Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in August 2005 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) purchased more than $85M worth of basic supplies for storm victims. For more than two years, until last month FEMA let the supplies sit in warehouses at a cost of $1M/year.

During that two year period local government officials and non-profit relief organizations in Louisiana and Mississippi made repeated public pleas for donations of the exact sort of items FEMA had already purchased and were even stored locally.

That these supplies people have needed for years just sat in warehouses until mid-June of this year is bad enough, but FEMA was able to find a way to make this story even more sad and depressing the way only George Bush’s administration can.

The supplies (GSA now says it is only $18.5M—we can’t count) called Living Kits included towels, shirts, pants, shoes, coffee makers, pillowcases, dinnerware, blankets, pots and pans, buckets, and cleaning supplies. You know the stuff people need to live when they have lost everything and are living in trailers.

So FEMA kept all its stuff under lock and key because as a spokesperson told CNN:

We were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property.

Really, no great need! You have got to be fucking joking. I guess somebody needed to put together a Bush-style post-Katrina DVD for our national emergency agency so they were aware close to 250,000 folks are still living in FEMA provided trailers and housing.

So in June of this year with a single stroke of a pen, FEMA officials declared all the goods purchased for Katrina victims surplus and developed a plan to distribute them to other federal and state government agencies (including prisons).

But before they shipped off all the supplies (121 truckloads) they of course sent a representative out to state and local agencies, non-profit aid organizations, and churches just to double check that there wasn’t a need.

Well not really, I just made that up! That would be logical. Not only didn’t they sent anybody out for a face-to-face meeting, they didn’t even place one phone call or send a single e-mail on this topic.

Just for a little context.

This is a FEMA warehouse less than two months ago with the said supplies.

This is a warehouse, sorry abandoned church used by UNITY of Greater New Orleans as we speak. Yeah, no need here at all.

When the Congressional delegations from Louisiana and Mississippi found out this shocking information from a CNN investigative story they went ballistic (video of the story here). Of course FEMA officials expressed, as you might expect, outrage, cause after nearly three years of rank incompetence and untold billions in waste and fraud how could something like this happen on their watch?

And since the Bush Administration officials have fake outrage down to an art form they of course promised a full investigation, meaning they will wait until the scandal disappears from the headlines before throwing some low-level bureaucrat under the bus.

But that was not enough for Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. They requested FEMA:

Come and tell the committee how such a debacle could occur, and in the process, what are they going to do to assure Congress and the taxpaying public that it will never happen again.

Last Thursday in a pretty rare joint congressional hearing of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees officials from FEMA and the General Services Administration (GSA) got it from both sides of the aisle (some of the audio is here).

During the hearing Eric Smith, FEMA’s assistant administrator for logistics management kept to the same tired talking points when pressed on why the supplies were not distributed to folks that needed them:

They were returned to us after they were not used from different areas—Mississippi, Louisiana.

Landrieu said to Smith:

FEMA never told state officials or relief agencies involved in recovery efforts that the Living Kits meant to resettle hurricane survivors were still available. How can people ask for something they don’t know exists?

Smith’s response was mind-numbing:

They have to have a need. If they have bona fide need, it’s their responsibility to pass that need on.

Where have we heard this before? Maybe on Monday, August 29th 2005 when Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco called Bush, as more than 1,100 Americans were literally starting to drown and said:

Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got!

But days, weeks, and even months later she’d be blamed by the White House cause she didn’t say exactly what she wanted/needed. I guess in almost three years we still have not got this not so little problem figured out.

You see Mr. Smith when you have pictures like the above, and there are hundreds more like it, even one where a family wrote in duct tape on their roof:

We are Americans, please help, some can’t swim.

When you endure something like what happened as the lead agency that is supposed to ensure it doesn’t in fact happen, more fucking lame excuses almost three years after the fact just don’t cut it.

But thankfully Landrieu also would have none of his BS:

It’s like if a house was on fire. If the fire department operated the same way FEMA does, we would have to call the fire department and specifically request the hose, the pressurized water, the truck, the firefighters and the ladder, all before FEMA would acknowledge that they should send this equipment to help.

After the Congressional hearing a CNN reporter caught up with Smith and asked what mistakes were made? His response:

We did not really make any mistakes. Could things have been done better? Yes of course, but we followed our procedures.

To date only a couple truck loads of the supplies have been returned to Louisiana. None to Mississippi. But rest assured, FEMA told the committee they are still cataloguing what supplies it has left and they’ll report back to the committee. But they do admit at least 90,000 of the Living Kits have already been distributed (they don’t like to say, “given away”).

I’ve already used enough words and I just don’t really know what else to say other than I am ashamed as an America this has all happened as I was a taxpaying adult. What have we become?

I just want to end with a little quote from a BBC show I love called Top Gear. I’ve been watching it since 2005 and I can’t ever recall them ever making a single political statement. They just drive the fastest cars in the world really, really fast.

They’ve only been to the US for one show. A challenge to drive from Miami to New Orleans. They got off the road right before they hit New Orleans in 2006 and had this to say (extended video here):

Finally though we made it. And my word were we in for a shock. We’d seen on the news what Hurricane Katrina had done. But seeing the devastation for real was truly astonishing.

Every house, I’ve been driving now for what 15 miles, and there isn’t a pavement there isn’t a building there isn’t anything that isn’t smashed. It is such a vast scale of destruction.

It had been a year since Katrina had blown through and we sort of assumed that the wealthiest nation on earth would have fixed it.

But we were wrong.

How can the rest of America sleep at night knowing this is here?

Some nights I don’t sleep well. I just wonder what they’d say today almost three years later!

I am all for folks willing to take a stand for something they believe in, even if it is just symbolic. But this is just laugh out loud funny. It makes the Republican look both stupid and petty at the same time. I mean why didn’t they do something like this to protest the lack of body armor for our troops in Iraq. Or the billions in cash lost by the Iraqi government. I mean heck, how about the tens of thousands of their fellow citizens that are still living in trailers all across Louisiana and Mississippi. Where is the outrage about these issues?

I don’t know, maybe all the money the oil industry gives out could be the reason.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m. and are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz..) was speaking, the lights went back on, and the microphones were turned on shortly afterward.

But C-SPAN, which has no control over the cameras in the chamber, has stopped broadcasting the House floor, meaning no one is witnessing this except the assembled Republicans, their aides, and one Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has now left.

Well this is fairly good news. In a new bill being promoted by Senate Democrats:

A new $24 billion economic stimulus and disaster assistance package unveiled Thursday by Senate Democrats would provide $3 billion for continued Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, financing that was left out of the emergency spending bill enacted in June.

The legislation would give Louisiana 30 years, instead of three, to repay more than $1.7 billion as its share of levee upgrades in metro New Orleans; $350 million to help hospitals in Louisiana and Mississippi deal with cash-flow issues and other post-hurricane problems; and $75 million to help fight increased violent crime and rebuild police fire and criminal justice facilities.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., praised Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., for including Katrina needs in the new emergency supplemental/stimulus spending bill he unveiled Thursday.

As I’ve written about before (and here) Republicans and White House officials keep lying about the fact that there were no oil spills caused by Hurricane Katrina and Rita in an effort to convince the American public that more off-shore drilling is both a good idea and environmentally safe. Now we have Samuel Bodman, the head of the Department of Energy (DoE), the one man in the United States that should know the facts, lying to our faces that no oil spills or rigs were damaged by Katrina and Rita. It boggles the mind.

Details are starting to emerge on how New Orleans are going to mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Mayor Ray Nagin plans to mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a low-key bell-ringing at the time of the first levee breach and, later in the day, a candlelight vigil at Jackson Square.

[….]

Mr. Nagin said he doesn’t want to overdo it this year. However, he said the city would invite presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, congressional representatives and celebrities he didn’t identify.

The bell-ringing “is about the sadness of the event,” Mr. Nagin said, “but the afternoon is kind of like, ‘We got through it, celebrate our recovery and let’s point to the future.’ And that’s how I kind of see the day going.”

Ms. Quiett said the Jackson Square vigil is meant to remind people of the promise President Bush made in his September 2005 address: to do what it takes to help hurricane-affected citizens rebuild their communities and lives.

This is almost too sad for words:

For almost three years they have lain in a refrigerated warehouse in New Orleans—unclaimed, unwanted and, in some cases, unidentified.

Only now, as the city prepares to mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, are the last of the victims set to be laid to rest in what is expected to be the world’s biggest jazz funeral.

After delays caused by funding problems, bureaucracy and a remarkable scientific operation to put names to the remains, the 85 dead will be fêted on their final journey by brass bands and dancers before being interred at a new $1.5 million (£750,000) Hurricane Katrina memorial.

Playing his trumpet at the head of the parade—which will take place on August 29, three years to the day since the storm devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast—will be Frank Minyard, the coroner who led the effort to identify the bulk of Katrina’s 1,800-plus fatalities.

He has taken personal responsibility for the corpses that remain after relatives either declined to take custody themselves or could not be traced. Of the 85 bodies, as many as 50 are unidentified. “It’s sad. We don’t know their names or their stories. But these people deserve their rest,” Dr Minyard told The Times. “The music is to show that our dear departed friend or relative is now going on to a more great and glorious reward in Heaven.”

In an effort to garner some positive press coverage while Obama tours the world, the McCain campaign came up with the idea for a photo-op by having him give a speech from an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, right off the Louisiana coast.

But just an hour after the photo-op was finalized and the media was alerted, the event was canceled. The reason the campaign cited was bad weather caused by Hurricane Dolly.

But was the weather the real reason for the cancellation? Maybe the McCain “mind trust” didn’t want to visit the rig if the reporters on hand might notice the smell of diesel wafting through the French Quarter.

The Coast Guard closed 29 miles of the Mississippi River at New Orleans after a 600-foot tanker and a barge loaded with fuel oil collided Wednesday, breaking the barge in half.

Nobody was injured, but more than 419,000 gallons of heavy, almost tar-like fuel oil spilled from the barge, forming a slick 12 miles long, said Lt. Cdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. […]

The double-hulled tanker Tintomara was loaded with about 4.2 million gallons of biodiesel and nearly 1.3 million gallons of styrene, but was not leaking, said Michael Wilson, president of ship management company Laurin Maritime (America) Inc. in Houston.

The collision occurred about 1:30 a.m. CDT just upriver from the Crescent City Connection, a pair of bridges between New Orleans’ east and west banks. A smell which many people thought was diesel was noticeable in the French Quarter and parts of New Orleans’ central business district.

This maybe the only smart decision the McCain camp make this week. Nothing says we can “drill safely” like an oil spill that closes 29 miles of the Mississippi River.