FEMA Approves More For Charity Hospital
Let me see if I have this right. The state of Louisiana had asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for $492 million to rebuild Charity Hospital. FEMA said basically, “well how does $23 million sound?” As you might expect the State was not happy. So years after Katrina hit FEMA has said they’ll give the state $150 million. Now I am no expert at negotiations, but who, you would have think the State could have least got something like half, or $247 million of what they asked for.
After years of haggling with state officials, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced late Friday that it has approved $150 million for hurricane-related damage to Charity Hospital. The amount is far less than the $492 million that the state claims the damage is worth but considerably more than the $23 million that FEMA previously had said it was willing to pay.Rather than bring the long-running dispute to an end, FEMA’s announcement merely moves the issue to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
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One other dimension to consider here — FEMA’s assessment might actually reflect that LSU and the state have refused to repair Charity Hospital. Also, FEMA had actually granted DHH $352 million right after Katrina — but when it was meant to reopen Charity Hospital, DHH returned all but the $8 million it spent for the Office of Mental Health. FEMA might actually be right on this one.
See the plan to Renew, Restore and Reopen Charity Hospital: http://www.FHL.org
Sorry it took a few seconds for your comment to appear Brad. I don’t regulate what folks write, but I just upgrade my WordPress software and I see it has reset all my settings for comments (and other things) to the default, which is comments have to be approved by me.
Now with that said, the article I linked to said, “The state’s $492 million figure is the designated “replacement cost” to build a new hospital, which is what the federal government would owe if Charity Hospital was found to be more than 50 percent damaged by Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed.