Project Katrina

I guess the below story shouldn’t really surprise anybody following the aftermath of Katrina.

The cost of restoring levee protection in the New Orleans area to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels will be about $6 billion, twice as much as the Bush administration and Congress have appropriated to date, Donald Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, told members of the state’s congressional delegation Wednesday.

Powell also told the delegation that he would not commit to a financing source or whether the Bush administration would seek the traditional 35 percent local share for the work. He said that “will be part of the deliberations” in coming weeks. Can these people not do anything right?

President Bush, in an effort to look like he cares, visted New Orleans today for yet another photo-op.

Facing renewed criticism of his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush came to this storm-ravaged city on Thursday promising to make federal rebuilding efforts "as efficient as possible" while signaling that his administration was listening to its critics.

"All of us in positions of responsibility appreciate those who are working to help us to understand how to do our jobs better," Mr. Bush said on a visit to the heavily damaged Lower Ninth Ward.

Mr. Bush’s trip was planned to highlight the progress of rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast and, this being National Volunteer Week, the role volunteers have played in them. But it came on a day that a panel of senators, in a bipartisan report, called the Federal Emergency Management Agency the living "symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy."

Well there you have it, Ray Nagin and Mitch Landrieu will compete in a runoff next month to be the next mayor of New Orleans. With more then 90 percent of precincts reporting Nagin topped all candidates with 38 percent or 30,260 votes but fell short of the majority he would have needed to win a second term and avoid the May 20 runoff. Landrieu had 28 percent, or 22,073 votes. Nonprofit executive Ron Forman followed with 17 percent, 13,334 votes, and 19 other candidates trailed far behind.

A joint organization made-up of numerious government agencies, headed by Donald Powell, Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding has just released advisory flood data for New Orleans and the majority of the surrounding area. The flood advisories inform residents how to reduce or mitigate flood risks as they begin reconstruction, and will provide guidance to communities for better and stronger rebuilding.

News stories like this are just hard to comprehend. Before you read the below quote ponder these stats for a few moments please. Before Katrina hit New Orleans there were 16 acute-care hospitals. Now there are nine. There were about 63 nursing homes pre-Katrina and today, there are 34. Ninety clinics used to provide safety-net care, now there are 19. And the only Level 1 trauma center is in Shreveport, some 350 miles away.

Peter DeBlieux always pictured himself working in a tent one day. It
just "wasn’t in this country." A veteran emergency-room physician,
DeBlieux is inside a tent pitched in an abandoned Lord & Taylor
store just a few blocks from where he once ran one of the busiest ERs
in the United States. That would be New Orleans’s Charity Hospital,
but, thanks to Hurricane Katrina, DeBlieux can’t go back there. The
flood that followed Katrina knocked out Charity’s electricity and
water. Patients and staff spent five grueling days trapped in the
hospital in 100-degree heat, rationing drinking water, and
hand-squeezing "ambu" bags to keep ventilator patients alive.

That was the easy part, some now say. Seven months later, New
Orleans’s healthcare system is floundering, and the fact that the
city’s once biggest hospital exists in a 30-bed tent is just one of the
most obvious symptoms. When Charity started offering emergency care in
a military tent on the convention center parking lot last September,
DeBlieux thought he’d be practicing medicine this way for a month,
tops. "Seven months out? It’s not OK," he says. "This is the United
States of America. This is not a Third World country."

It makes me ask, so we live in a third world country? Where is our government? Where is the Red Cross. Where is international help?

Below are some charts created by Claritas highlighting shifts in demographics (consumers being relocated, moving away or being otherwise displaced) cause by Katrina. You can view the entire report (including more charts) right here.

The initial demographic impact (again, October 2005 data) can be seen in this thematic map. Note the green areas.

The updated impact is depicted below. Claritas defines the “updated population impact” as “the overall impact […] comparing non-hurricane-adjusted population estimates for 2006 to those accounting for the storm’s impact.”

If you dig through the number a few interesting things rise to the surface. People displaced by Katrina were sent to 132 different counties. Plus, Orleans Parish lost 79% of their population while St. Bernard Parish lost 95.9%. Those are staggering numbers to say the least.

I’m all for finding any housing solution for people displaced by Katrina. But this story in the Washington Post seems a little strange to say the least.

Vendors at this week’s homeland security convention have the answer for any catastrophe. They will sell you body armor, vehicle barriers, nuclear detectors, manhole-cover locks, unmanned helicopters–and Kyrgyz yurts.

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of homes, the good people of Kyrgyzstan saw a business opportunity. So the embassy rented a booth at the Washington Convention Center and got Kyrgyz officials on the program as speakers and hosts of the Homeland and Global Security Summit. This allowed the embassy to erect a yurt, the traditional nomadic tent of Central Asia, and offer it as a housing solution for the Gulf Coast.

"After Katrina, people really need some temporary houses," explained the Kyrgyz Embassy’s Saltanat Tashmatova, at the front door of the yurt. A brochure says the 14-foot-high structure, made from sheep’s wool and "cool in summer," sells for $10,000–but the floor model can be had for $7,000. Any sales yet? "We just started," Tashmatova said with a shrug.

Give it time, Kyrgyzstan: There’s enough money for everybody in the homeland security budget. The host of the convention, Equity International, boasts that "more than $150 billion" will be spent this year to thwart terrorism and respond to natural disasters. Equity International promises attendees "valuable networking opportunities" and "the right contacts" to get a piece of the action.

I guess the below would be good news, if buried in the article there wasn’t this quote from Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association. “To be honest, we haven’t seen the hard proof yet of what is actually taking place.We’re hearing about these things, but we haven’t seen any new policy or organizational changes, or new procedures being announced for states to be prepared to implement.”

Systems to track supplies, aid victims and deliver quick information to all levels of government during a disaster will be ready by the June 1 start of the hurricane season, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday.

The changes are among 11 top emergency response priorities identified by the White House after last year’s plodding federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

Chertoff said all 11 reforms will be in place by the hurricane season’s start. But he noted that much of the success or failure in responding to disasters will depend on how well state and local officials work with Washington and have their own emergency plans in place.

“This is a case where we … all hang together or we hang separately,” Chertoff told The Associated Press. “We’ve got to be operating jointly, we’ve got to be in partnership.”

Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management has found inflated prices were a result of poor planning as well as a lack of proper oversight. Wow I am amazed. I never would have guess there were any problems with our government’s procurement process.

In the case of debris-removal contracts, awarded to four firms, the Auditor General of the Army found that the four subcontracted their work to multiple tiers of subcontractors, resulting in markups between 17 percent to 47 percent. Similar price hikes were found in other services, including the placing of blue covers on damaged houses and the installation of temporary housing trailers.

Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal said the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid $175 per square foot for the blue tarps placed on roofs. But multiple contracting levels later, Louisiana contractors reported they were being paid as little as $2 a square foot.

This story has to be filed under you have to be joking. Media outlets are reporting that Michael Brown, disgraced FEMA director, is negotiating a consulting contract with St. Bernard Parish, the area in New Orleans hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Parish leaders expressed confidence in Brown’s ability to help them compete more effectively with large communities for federal funding and speed a recovery they say has been mired in bureaucratic red tape.

"He’s going to be the answer to the problems we’ve been having," Henry "Junior" Rodriguez, president of St. Bernard Parish, said Thursday.

Brown said he could "counsel them as far as why certain things happen and don’t happen within the federal bureaucracy."

"I can help make sure they don’t get overlooked," he said. "It’s a very complicated process and I can help them navigate their way through it."

Ok, let me see if I have this right. The man most responsible for the failed government response is going to be paid to advise  St. Bernard Parish. One of two things must be happening here. (1) They’re just saying they want his advice so he fly into  St. Bernard Parish so they can tar and feather him. (2) They’re going to listen to what he has to say and then do the exact opposite.