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We present here the latest Hurricane Katrina news articles of note, and include a brief synopsis and quotes from each below its link, so you need not go any further unless you want to delve deeper into a particular subject. This is not a site not of outdated, archived news items. These pieces include breaking news, the latest hurricane information, Hurricane Katrina stories, highlighting the ongoing debates, resources to better understand the hurricane—what we can do about both healing its wounds and preventing a future disaster—as well as resources for those still in need. Sadly, Hurricane Katrina's devastation is far from over.
Katrina made landfall just before dawn on August 29, 2005, seventy miles south of New Orleans. Largely because the wetlands that make up Louisiana’s coast had been eroded, the storm surge pushed unabated into southern Louisiana, breaching New Orleans' levees at multiple points, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country. Many have yet to return. The devastation to Mississippi and Louisiana by hurricanes Katrina and Rita has been called the greatest disaster in our nation's history.
The images of anguish and anger from Hurricane Katrina have been forever burned into the hearts and minds of all Americans. They must be the catalyst for change. Prevention of a future disaster of similar proportions is both possible and practical. But the United States must act now to restore the wetlands.
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THE LATEST NEWS
Hurricane
Katrina book is named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award
- Heart
Like Water by Joshua Clark is
so far the most acclaimed of all Hurricane Katrina books, and the only memoir
from a resident who never left New Orleans, one that contains hundreds of Hurricane
Katrina survivor stories.
"In the growing constellation of Katrina stories, Joshua Clark's masterful tale shines brightest. The Apocalypse destroyed a city and ripped to shreds lives, but the legibility of its profound inner impact had to wait for this book, which is a love story. Clark's book is our 'Love in a Time of Cholera,' but, even more than Marquez' novel, it is immediate and wrenching and true, while its rhythms, like Marquez', are nothing short of majestic. Josh Clark has written the great non-fiction New Orleans novel, a book that's here to stay." --Andrei Codrescu
Heart
Like Water author Joshua Clark also recently wrote a very personal feature
for Consumer Affairs on Louisiana's disappearing wetlands called The
End of the World.
The Local Role in Disaster Response: Lessons from Katrina and the California Wildfires (June 9, 2008) - The October 2007 wildfires in California provide a revealing glimpse into the continued federalization of disasters. Trumpeted as proof that Washington is ready for the next Hurricane Katrina, California’s response really demonstrates that well-organized state and local efforts are far more critical than federal ones. Rather than encourage more Washington-centric solu°©tions, Congress and the White House should focus on lessening the federal role in day-to-day state-level emergencies and emphasize a greater responsibility among state and local communities for preparing and developing response plans for local disasters.
Ruling
clears way for Katrina lawsuit
(May 5, 2008) -The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can be sued for alleged Mississippi
River channel defects that contributed to Hurricane Katrina's devastation, a judge
says.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled Friday that the corps will face a trial to settle allegations that engineering and maintenance defects caused the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet to serve as a funnel for flood waters during the 2005 hurricane, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported Saturday. The lawsuit alleges that by not properly maintaining the outlet, the corps caused thousands of New Orleans homes to be flooded during the natural disaster. The suit was filed by California attorney Pierce O'Donnell on behalf of a group of plaintiffs. The corps had argued the suit should be dismissed under federal law it says protects the agency from being sued for damage allegedly caused by its projects. Duval rejected that claim but did caution both sides in the case that his ruling did not mean the agency was liable for the Katrina damages, The Times-Picayune reported.
We can't take it on trust (April 8, 2008) - Louisiana officials have every reason to want a lemon law for levees: After the catastrophic failure of the federally built hurricane protection system during Hurricane Katrina, the state can hardly be expected to blindly accept work done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That's why state officials have been pushing for assurances that the system being designed to protect this area from a 100-year storm will be up to the job. They've focused on outside peer review as one way to make sure of that. But those efforts are running into resistance from the corps, and that's a disturbing development for a community whose recovery hinges on people's faith in their flood protection.
Katrina-hit areas top Census list of fastest growing counties (March 25, 2008) - New Orleans and nearby St. Bernard Parish, areas that suffered huge population losses after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, are regaining residents so fast that they topped the U.S. Census Bureau's list of fastest-growing counties last year.
Gasoline prices pass key milestone (March 25, 2008) - The average price of unleaded gasoline was $3.405 in Erie and Niagara counties as of Monday morning, according to a report from the American Automobile Association. That was within striking distance of the region's highest price ever, $3.44 on Sept. 7, 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
REBUILDING THE 'HOOD (March 11, 2008) - The U.S. government must do more to return affordable housing to New Orleans, where low-income neighborhoods were washed out by Hurricane Katrina three years ago, a United Nations treaty commission ruled Friday.
A
good start would be for the feds to give displaced residents a say in the plans
for poor communities, said the U.N. committee, the International Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
FEMA
Trailers for Katrina Victims Tainted by Toxic Chemical
(February 16, 2008) - Tens of Thousands Will Need to Evacuate Contaminated Mobile
Homes. Today, the government finally admitted that FEMA trailers, used by Hurricane
Katrina survivors, contain a toxic carcinogen, formaldehyde, and now, those hurricane
evacuees must leave their trailers.
Steve Huckabee and his family survived Hurricane Katrina, only to live through a second disaster — their FEMA mobile home. "I was wondering why my family was sick, and we finally realized, oh, it's formaldehyde," Huckabee said.
Some
Katrina Survivors Still Homeless In Austin
(February 8, 2008) - It's a bittersweet time for thousands of Katrina survivors
still living in Austin. More than two years after Hurricane Katrina hit, many
who fled to Austin from New Orleans are still struggling to get back on their
feet, some still homeless.
"All hell just broke loose," said Albert Hardy, a Hurricane Katrina survivor. Hardy lost everything when the levees broke. "I'm still in hell," said Hardy. Hardy said he lost his clothing store, his home and his friends. But not his spirit. "I seen them die, I seen them float, I'm a survivor," said Hardy.
Global warming top conference concern - Experts debate Katrina's role as indicator (January 29, 2008) - For the average armchair weather-watcher, Hurricane Katrina was the smoking gun that showed global warming was the real deal. Not so for members of the American Meteorological Society, meeting here for the society's 88th annual meeting.
Although
weather experts generally agree that the planet is warming, they hardly express
consensus on what that may mean for future hurricanes.Holland is among those scientists
who say there's a link between global warming and an upswing in catastrophic storms.
He said other factors far outweigh the influence of wind shear on how a storm
will behave.
Hurricane
Katrina is being blamed on US oil companies
(January 23, 2008) -
A network of 10,000 miles of service canals dug to tap oil and natural gas around
the Mississippi Delta led to a loss of marshland which would have formed a first
barrier to the hurricane, say some experts.
Other factors have been blamed
for the shrinking marshland, including bad farming practices, unstable geology
human and the water plant-eating habits of the coypu (or nutria), an aquatic rodent.
But critics of the oil companies argue that their drilling in the marshland caused
half the land loss, equal to around 1,000 square miles.
UN official: US neglects Katrina victims (January 22, 2008) - Kalin said his mission was to encourage American officials to abide by a set of UN principles on "internally displaced persons" that say "you must start with the most needy, you have to find ways to reconstruct housing that is affordable."
Hundreds
fast to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims
- Over 400 participants
fasted from sunrise to sundown on Saturday at the annual Muslim Student Association
Fast-a-Thon to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina, concluding with an end-of-fast
banquet held in Houston Hall.
"We'll be donating all of the $1,100 raised to a health clinic in Biloxi, Miss.," that recently replaced the clinic wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, she added. According to MSA figures, 350 out of the 400 people who attended this year's banquet were non-Muslim. "I did it because it was for a good cause, and it was a new experience," said participant Fernanda Dobal. "It was a chance to experience the practices of another religion."
Bet
on Biloxi: Casino resorts power recovery after Katrina's KO
- Hurricane Katrina clawed through casino resorts here, sucking everything from
slot machines to wall art into the Gulf of Mexico and Biloxi Bay. Only hours later,
plans were being made to rebuild, refit and reopen the casinos that pumped economic
lifeblood into the area.
By law, the casinos were required to be on water,
and Katrina took advantage.When wind and water calmed, Rick Carter, now co-owner
of Island View Casino Resort in nearby Gulfport, Miss., found his Copa Casino
barge a wreck "on top of the Chiquita Banana building." The multistory
barge at Palace Casino Resort was left partially submerged. Most others washed
away. Only the barges at Beau Rivage Resort & Casino and at IP Casino, Resort
& Spa on the inland side of Biloxi's land bar floated on the 35-foot storm
surge and stayed in place. "All the way around us was complete devastation,"
recalls Rich Westfall, director of community development at the Isle of Capri
Casino Resort.
2
Years On, Rita's Effects Linger in La.
- This southwestern
Louisiana town may have dried out and cleaned up since getting flattened by Hurricane
Rita, but its recovery is moving in slow motion: Nearly everyone still lives in
temporary housing.
The
post office operates out of a trailer. The town's only bank works out of a trailer.
Darlene Dyson sells shrimp from a trailer, then picks up her 7-year-old son and
takes him to their home — a trailer. "It's not like it was before the
storm, that's for sure," Dyson said.
Rita's 120-mph wind and 9-foot
storm surge ruined every structure in Johnson Bayou and Holly Beach, and caused
similar destruction in southeastern Texas. About 100 died in Texas, including
23 senior citizens whose bus exploded during evacuations. The storm caused no
fatalities in Louisiana, but plenty of property damage in Cameron and Vermilion
parishes. In all, there were $5.8 billion in property insurance claims in Texas
and Louisiana, according to a Texas insurance group.
Blanco
touted the Louisiana Recovery Authority's new recruiting and job training program,
paid for with a $38 million federal grant, aimed at filling a shortage of skilled
workers, a problem exacerbated by housing shortages and other post-Katrina and
Rita troubles.
Using
Crayons to Exorcise Katrina -
One of the most common images in children’s art is the house: a square, topped
by a pointy roof, outfitted with doors and windows.
The works by children
at a FEMA trailer park in Baker, La., shows that the trauma of the hurricane has
influenced thoughts of home and safety. So Karla Leopold, an art therapist from
California, was intrigued when she noticed that for many of the young victims
of Hurricane Katrina, the house had morphed into a triangle. “At first we
thought it was a fluke, but we saw it repeatedly in children of all ages,”
said Ms. Leopold, who with a team of therapists has made nine visits to Renaissance
Village here, the largest trailer park for Katrina evacuees, to work with children.
“Then we realized the internal schema of these children had changed. They
weren’t drawing the house as a place of safety, they were drawing the roof.”
Even now the children’s drawings are populated by alligators, dead birds, helicopters and rescue boats. At a session in May one 8-year-old, Brittney Barbarin, drew a swimming pool full of squiggly black lines. Asked who was in the pool, she replied, “Snakes.”
Katrina's effect on the international economy still being noted... Remember kids, the only things that protect our oil platforms and pipelines are the wetlands... Petrol prices set to reach £1 a litre after oil rises - (September 15, 2007) The prospect of petrol reaching £1 a litre returned today after crude oil prices broke through $80 a barrel for the first time since the 1980s. UK petrol prices surpassed £1 a litre most recently in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina restricted supplies of fuel to Britain.
AAA: Md. motorists catching a break at the pump -The levels come in contrast to the record highs two years ago after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
Katrina
greatly changed New Orleans’ racial composition
- New Orleans’ black population dropped 57 percent one year after Hurricane
Katrina, while the white population declined 36 percent, three demographers who
analyzed new U.S. Census data said Tuesday.
The
analysis confirms the disaster’s disproportionate effect on the city’s
racial composition. Billed as the “first full picture” of the mass migration
after the hurricane, the analysis also found that New Orleanians displaced to
Houston and other cities were more likely to be black, uneducated and poor. By
contrast, those who relocated to the city’s suburbs were more likely to be
white, educated and well-off.
While many city leaders had lamented the uneven toll on black citizens, demographer William H. Grey of the Brookings Institution, one of the study’s authors, said it was still surprising to see the data show it in such stark terms. The analysis painted a picture of post-Katrina New Orleans as a city notably whiter, older and less populous than it had been in the 2000 census, with fewer children, fewer renters and a more educated citizenry. However, it also noted that the city was still a “majority minority” city, with blacks making up about 58 percent of the population when the federal government’s data snapshot was taken last summer.
We must prepare nationally, locally for post-Katrina disasters - Katrina brought many issues to the forefront, including two key ones related to the accessibility and affordability of insurance: building codes and the National Flood Insurance Program.
As
more Americans move closer to our coastlines, the risks placed on individuals,
businesses and government agencies increase. Today it is estimated that nearly
50 percent of the United States' population lives on or near coastlines. The total
value of insurance coastal exposure nationwide is more than $7 trillion.
All
homeowners should consider if flood insurance is right for them. The National
Flood Insurance Program paid policyholders more than $16 billion in Hurricane
Katrina-related losses alone - more than what it had disbursed over the three
previous decades combined. Prior to Katrina, fewer than 20 percent of Mississippi
Gulf Coast residents participated in the national program. The numbers are increasing,
but more needs to be done to let others know of the benefits.
Flooding can be an issue almost anywhere - as evidenced by recent events in the Midwest.
Short Shrift for Hurricane Katrina Victims - According to the Pentagon, the cost of the Iraq war now tops $3 billion a week. (If a similar amount was going to Louisiana, we'd have enough in two months to fix our wetlands and prevent another $150+ billion dollar disaster.)
During the same week and on the same day that news of the supplemental war funding broke, President George W. Bush made his 15th visit to the Gulf Coast to mark the two-year anniversary of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history - Hurricane Katrina - which killed more than 1,600 people and devastated the Gulf’s infrastructure and built environment. About $114 billion has been spent in Katrina’s aftermath but most of it has been for disaster relief and not long-term recovery, or less than 20 percent of what has been spent or is projected to be spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re the most heavily armed country in the world, and yet we cannot protect our own.
New Orleans band able to find strength - Katrina can't sink Iguanas
“Now
that the people are back,” Cabral says, “there are even less schools
and less young people being educated. So they turn to what they perceive to be
a quick road to happiness and riches. And that includes crime.”
The plight of the city has altered the band’s role as ambassadors for it, Cabral says. Not that Cabral has taken to lecturing from the dais. But he knows bands like the Iguanas, that take what’s good about New Orleans and spread it around the world (Johnny Zydecoseed), need to be particularly good cultivators these days so people don’t file the city away. “We can step up and say, ‘Hi everybody. We’re from New Orleans. To those of you who’ve been helping us, thank you very much. We’re happy to be here. Please come visit us in New Orleans and have some fun tonight.’
“What didn’t kill us made us stronger,” he says. “Yeah, in some sense the hurricane took everything I had. But I’m a musician. I play music. That’s what I do. That’s been my life since I was 13. So, in another sense, I’ve still got everything.”
Two
Years Later, Katrina Victims Wait for Insurance
- A
report released last week by the American Association of Justice shows that two
years after Hurricane Katrina, insurance companies continue to engage in unfair
conduct deliberately designed to avoid and delay the payment of legitimate claims.
The comprehensive report shows that the insurance companies who have denied hurricane related casualty claims have, during the preceding two years, reaped more than $100 billion in profits. Hurricane Katrina created the largest number of insurance claims in the history of the insurance industry, and thousands of lawsuits against insurance companies have been filed in the States of Louisiana and Mississippi.
"While the insurance industry is enjoying record profits, thousands of people continue to live in FEMA trailers and other temporary housing, waiting for their policies to be honored," said John Haber, CEO of AAJ. "It is a sad and shocking fact that after every natural disaster insurance companies adopt a pattern of delaying and denying the payment of just and fair claims. We urge state governors and insurance commissioners to investigate this outrageous behavior and take lega action against it."
Lessons from Hurricane Katrina Will Benefit Future Hurricane Victims -Tragically, many people thought they were beyond the reach of Katrina's wrath. They chose to stay and some of them lost their lives. People from my parent's neighborhood were trapped on the roofs of their homes waiting for help. A neighbor relayed her fear through tears. "We were upstairs in our house and could hear the water coming in. We had inflatable toys wrapped around our son and we were saying good-bye. We thought we were going to die." All the while water is washing away all of their furniture, appliances...walls! Down the road the houses were completely gone. Only bare slabs lay where families used to reside.
I
can't stress enough, if there is an evacuation in your area, board up your windows
and LEAVE! The traffic will be bad and irritating. The gas lines will be long.
The benefit of being alive outweighs all of the above annoyances.
Please don't forget about your pets. Many animals were lost due to drowning because their owners left them in the houses that they left behind. They figured they would be right back home; things didn't quite work out that way and pets perished.
Katrina - Two years in the life of a child - Any two-year period can seem to be a lifetime for a child and can have a lifetime effect on his or her development.
There is little semblance between the President's pledge and actions taken over the past two years. Depressed, even suicidal parents and children are still packed like sardines in cramped, flimsy, often unsafe trailers in camps next to nowhere. The education infrastructure is far from being repaired, with many school-age children not in school. Only 55 public schools in New Orleans were open in December 2006, 43 percent of the pre-Katrina number. Thousands of children did not attend school for months after the hurricane hit. During this past spring semester, 300 students attempting to enroll in school were waitlisted. It has been reported that the New Orleans school system currently faces a shortfall of at least 500 teachers as it prepares for the coming school year. There aren't enough textbooks and supplies to go around. While the government fails to fulfill its promises, untold numbers of children are falling farther and farther behind.
Please
don’t feel guilty about surviving Katrina
- (September 5, 2007)
I used to think survivor guilt was a little silly. You’d
see it in Army movies after soldiers went through hellish firefights and came
back in one piece but not unscathed.
Back in civilian life, among people unaware of the nightmares they’d witnessed, some veterans would slowly go to pieces wondering why they survived when the guys formerly by their side did not. Hey, I used to think, what’s wrong with you? Count yourself lucky. Head to the nearest casino because you are on a roll. While many of your friends lost their lives, you clung to yours in one of the world’s worst crapshoots. Don’t you realize how much you have to live for still? Why are you blowing your good fortune by torturing yourself with impossible to answer questions? Then came Hurricane Katrina and I finally got it.
Help
NWF restore wildlife habitat in coastal Louisiana!
- Coastal Louisiana
Habitat Restoration Initiative
Click on link to volunteer. The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is developing projects in public lands and seeking volunteers for its Coastal Louisiana Habitat Restoration Initiative. NWF will recruit and deploy 2,500 volunteers to contribute 65,000 hours to habitat restoration on more than 13 sites in areas impacted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The initiative will continue through April 2008 and could extend for an additional six months.
Disaster is only one marsh away - On Katrina's second anniversary, we must revisit New Orleans, yes, but it is the regions south of the city that hold the key to its survival, as well as the economic and ecological well-being of the whole country. None are perhaps so vital as Plaquemines Parish, the county that begins five miles down the Mississippi River from the city and runs into the Gulf of Mexico. Just as Plaquemines was ground zero for Katrina, it is too for wetlands erosion. It is the fastest-disappearing landmass on the face of the earth, a national crisis that America can avoid.
Fact Sheet: The Two-Year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina - The Federal Government (claims it) Is Fulfilling Its Commitment And Helps Hurricane Katrina Victims Of The Gulf Coast Rebuild
The
Lower Ninth is rising from Katrina's awful ashes - Two years
after the hurricane devastated New Orleans, an influx of volunteers is fortifying
an inspirational regeneration.
The word "will" comes up constantly in the Lower Ninth Ward. "We Will Rebuild" is spray-painted on empty houses. "It will happen," one organiser told me. Will itself may achieve the ambitious objective of bringing this destroyed inner-city African-American neighbourhood back to life, and for many New Orleans citizens a ferocious determination seems the only alternative to being overwhelmed and becalmed. But the fate of the neighbourhood is still up in the air, from the question of whether enough people can and will make it back, to the nagging questions of how viable a city they will be part of. The majority of houses in this isolated area are still empty, about a tenth of the residents are back - some already living in rehabilitated houses, some camped in stark white trailers, some living elsewhere while getting their houses ready.
The place has come a long
way already. Even seven months after the storm it was spookily unpopulated and
almost untouched since the catastrophe. Cars that had been flipped and tossed
by the waters still stood up against buildings, hung over fences and laid on their
backs. Houses that had been shoved by the force of the water into the middle of
the street or that had been smashed into splinters looked untouched, except by
sardonic graffiti: "Thanks for Nothing Fema", was the message to the
national emergency agency on one dislodged building; a simple "Baghdad"
was emblazoned on another. Debris was everywhere.
Today, two years after Hurricane Katrina, the wrecked cars, smashed houses and debris are gone, for the most part, and a lot of the remaining houses look pretty good. People have made their own street signs, further evidence of social strength and institutional weakness. Nena, the Neighbourhood empowerment network association of the Lower Ninth, keeps a map in its office with a green pin for every returnee. The green dots are scattered everywhere, though they represent only a small percentage of homes and residents.
Unlike
mostly middle-class, white Lakeview, or New Orleans East, home to many Vietnamese-Americans,
the Lower Ninth is not a new neighbourhood nor one on exceptionally low ground,
and its ecological precariousness is relatively recent. There were inhabitants
here in the early 19th century, long before the Industrial canal cut off the Lower
Ninth along its western edge from the rest of the city. This canal, dug in the
1920s to provide a direct waterway between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi
river, which forms the neighbourhood's southern border, is penned in by levees
that had failed catastrophically before, in Hurricane Betsy in 1965.
Another watery border, this time in the bayou to the north, was gouged out in the 1960s and named the Mississippi river Gulf Outlet canal, or MR-GO. It created a shorter route for shipping traffic - and for storm surges, salinisation and the loss of some 27,000 acres of wetlands, making yet another unnatural edge of vulnerability for the place. Breaches of the MR-GO canal's levees were responsible for much of the flooding of the Lower Ninth in 2005, and water that surged up this "hurricane highway" may have been responsible for the even more devastating breaches of the Industrial canal. It is a murderous piece of engineering, and even its builders, the US army corps of engineers, agreed that it should be closed.
Restoring the wetlands at the Lower Ninth's northern edge is a challenge that has been taken up by a local neighbourhood association, with the University of Wisconsin's water resources management doing the research. One of the first facts that emerged is that a forest had died there, in Bayou Bienvenue. The cypress forest that could still be seen in photographs from the 1950s died of the salinity from the MR-GO canal, and with it went one layer of protection against storm surges. A forest buffers a storm surge, and trees would help hold the wetlands as land rather than open water.
Two
Years Later: Katrina's Economic Impact - The near total loss
of New Orleans and the counties surrounding the grand Creole city was not a regional
tragedy, it was a national one, with long-term economic costs to every American.
In
the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, oil and gasoline prices spiked, as nearly a
third of the nation's refineries and the entire domestic oil production of the
Gulf of Mexico were shut down. Retail gas prices rocketed up 46 cents in a single
week to a new nominal record high. Almost immediately, the American consumer started
cutting back. Economists say that the storm likely took a full percentage point
out of the U.S. gross domestic product in the quarter immediately after the storm.
Federal
Official Defends Katrina Effort - Barely half the money set
aside for recovery and rebuilding has flowed from the state to the local level,
Powell said. He also referred to the Road Home program, which has disbursed more
than $3 billion to help homeowners rebuild or relocate, but faces a projected
multibillion-dollar shortfall and has been criticized for being been too slow
to give out grants. Local leaders must have plans and priorities and act, not
just in rebuilding but also in reforming such areas as health care and the criminal
justice system, Powell said.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I still believe that when we write the book on Hurricane Katrina history, it's not merely going to be a story of tragedy," he said. "It's going to be a story of renewal, rebirth and redemption. But this kind of transformation will not happen without leadership without local leadership. Heroic leadership."
Surviving Katrina - An article from Malaysia... at least they haven't forgotten about our neighbors on the Gulf Coast
A
survivor of Hurricane Katrina, who lost almost everything of value in the 2005
floods, returns to his newly-repaired home a different man. The catastrophe was
hard on the body, but even harder on the spirit. On Aug 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina
left a trail of destruction in Biloxi, Mississippi, the United States. When the
waters subsided, the seaside casino city was submerged by piles of debris.
Life
is different now for Richer, even though he moved back into his newly repaired
house four months ago. “What’s normal?” he asked. For one, he no
longer collects antiques, stamps and books because Katrina swept all his stuff
away. “I don’t feel like collecting anymore. People matter more than
things. Your value system becomes clearer.”
Two Years After Katrina, Revisiting New Orleans, and Its Struggles - Listen or read the transcript from Voices of America
Progress continues, but concerns are raised about the physical as well as the mental recovery from the floods. 'There's no way you can tell me to get over it,' says one man.
Pay Heed to New Orleans' Plight - A great American city is withering. The people with power must be made to care. And you should care - that it could be your hometown that is abandoned when the crisis is yours.
Beyond
the happy mayhem of the French Quarter, entire neighborhoods are in ruins and
the business district sags from the shattered economy. Thousands of people are
homeless and squatting in vacant properties suffering from Hurricane Katrina damages,
some just a few blocks from City Hall. More than 160,000 residents never returned.
For those who did dare to come back home, little resembles normalcy.
President
Bush, the city's self-declared savior, has been here 10 times since Katrina, half
the visits in the first six weeks after the storm. In the past year, as the true
scope of the failure of the recovery unfolded, Bush visited only twice. The city
didn't even get a mention in his State of the Union address last January.
Many
of the 270,000 people now living in New Orleans wonder how the nation can spend
a half-trillion dollars in Iraq while this city remains wrecked. ``I can't believe
this is the United States and after so long, so much is still not fixed,'' said
Melanie Ehrlich, a Tulane University researcher. ``It's scandalous, unforgivable.''
It's worse than that. Not far from the Ehrlich home, the 6000 block of Paris Avenue
is deserted. Weeds obscure gutted houses. Gruesome gang-like symbols painted on
their doors tell cryptic tales of what rescuers found when they pushed through
Katrina's floodwater. ``It's like looking at the rapture,'' said the Rev. Jeremy
Evans, 31, as he gazed out from the nearby Edgewater Baptist Church. Like the
biblical call of the faithful to Heaven, people seem to have vanished.
Hurricane
Katrina just won't go away
- Rebuilding hard, scattered in New Orleans (August
26, 2007)
As Hurricane Katrina unleashed
floodwaters that swirled and rose around his Lower Ninth Ward home, Robert Green,
his three granddaughters, his mother and two other family members clung to their
roof as it floated for blocks. His mother, already ailing, died on that roof.
His 3-year-old granddaughter fell from it and disappeared under the water.
"It's
really important to me to have what was," said Green, sitting in the tiny
FEMA trailer parked where his home once stood. His trailer, and the neighboring
one that houses his 62-year-old mentally handicapped cousin, are among a handful
of inhabited dwellings amid the overgrown weeds, empty lots and rubble of lives
past. That's fine, Green said. "It may seem like it's lonely, but sometimes
I get tired of the company coming by," he said. "I'm not afraid to be
down here. I'm home."
Two years have passed since Aug. 29, 2005, when
Katrina devastated the gulf coast, making a mockery of the human engineering designed
to keep the city of New Orleans safe. Rebuilding has been slow -- even now, visitors
who see the devastated city for the first time say it seems as if nothing has
changed.
Interested in Hosting a House Party to Help Restore Louisiana's Coast? The second anniversary of Katrina's devastating landfall is August 29, yet the people of Louisiana are still in hot water. The extensive levee system protecting southern Louisiana is slowly being repaired, but levees are just one aspect of complete storm protection. The Gulf Coast's wetlands and cypress forest are an essential buffer zone between powerful storms and the humans and wildlife which reside along the Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, these natural defenses are disappearing at an alarming rate due to oil and gas activity, logging and even some of the levees which also protect us.
The Next Energy Crisis - More than a quarter of America's oil flows through southern Louisiana. Too bad the land is slowly sinking into the sea.
Without Port Fourchon and its fleet of vessels bringing food, supplies, equipment, and reinforcements to platforms in the gulf, the U.S. would lose access to nearly a fifth of all the oil and gas it uses.....Some 25 square miles of Louisiana have been collapsing into the gulf each year for three-quarters of a century. A total of 1,900 square miles, roughly the area of Delaware, disappeared between the 1930s and 2005, and another 217 square miles were pulverized into liquid by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And that land loss poses a growing threat not only to the people who live here but also to the U.S. energy supply.
Show us the money - Billions have been spent to rebuild New Orleans, but not enough is reaching the local economy. Residents wonder where the funds are being spent.
Bank deposits have skyrocketed, indicating that the insured haven't decided whether to reinvest in their community. Just 22 percent of the funds Washington has set aside for rebuilding Louisiana have been spent. For example, the program that compensates uninsured homeowners for their losses took more than a year to establish and only recently has begun distributing checks in significant quantities.....The population of Greater New Orleans is roughly 200,000 below its pre-Katrina level, which has triggered a labor shortage. Private-sector investors, in turn, have scaled back or postponed development plans, furthering a vicious circle of inaction.
Army Corps not planning Category 5 protection for New Orleans area ...be sure to look at the comments beneath the article... wow!
The Army Corps of Engineers has backed away from using a worst-case Category 5 hurricane as the design standard for long-term flood control projects, instead designing projects to protect against a "Katrina-like event" -- a hurricane with a 1-in-400 chance of hitting Louisiana in a given year....The difference, in many ways, involves mere semantics. The corps and most scientists rejected using the numerical categories of the Saffir-Simpson Scale -- which measures only wind speed -- to describe the effects of hurricane storm surge on the New Orleans area because it fails to account for the complicated combination of water depths, wetlands and levee heights. Katrina provides the best example: Though it hit land as a Category 3 storm, its destructive surge and waves -- churned up while the massive storm reached Category 5 strength in the Gulf -- caused far more damage than, for instance, Hurricane Camille, a more compact storm that hit land with Category 5 wind speeds.
Louisiana
elected officials react to Bush's threat to veto the WRDA bill - Louisiana
congressional delegation members are criticizing President Bush over his threat
to veto a massive $21 billion water resources bill that would authorize more than
$3 billion in projects throughout the state.
A Bush rejection of the Water Resources Development Act would wipe out $1.8 billion support for coastal restoration and an $886 million storm protection system in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. U.S. Sen. David Vitter said Thursday he will help squash any presidential veto. Vitter, who sat on the committee that drafted the bill and the conference committee that negotiated it, said he was stunned by the White House stance. “I will enthusiastically work to override his veto,” Vitter, R-La., said in a statement. A possible override appears to be an option for members of Congress, who have projects in their districts affected. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the WRDA conference bill late Wednesday by a vote of 381-40, well within the two-thirds majority needed to reject a Bush veto.
First Hurricane Katrina Report on Migration Patterns Across South
* Orleans parish had the largest out-migration in total numbers.
222,359 (49%) moved away by 2006 because of the storms.
* Migrants from Orleans
parish tended to be dispersed further away with about two-thirds of the out-migrants
moving beyond the surveyed parishes or out of state.
* Percentage-wise, St
Bernard had an even greater loss with about three-fourths of its pre-Katrina population
leaving the parish. About one-third of those displaced out of parish went to St
Tammany parish and approximately another third went outside of the survey area
or out of state.
* The more rural parishes of Plaquemines and Cameron also
had significant losses. However, in these parishes a higher percentage was able
to relocate within the same parish and more were able to relocate elsewhere in
Louisiana.
* There were a high number of migrations within each parish; an
estimated 46,000 Orleans parish residents moved elsewhere in Orleans due to Katrina;
Plaquemines and St Bernard both had about 5,000 residents each move within the
parish boundaries. Cameron parish had about 2,000 residents move within the parish;
compared to 2,600 residents that relocated outside the parish due to the hurricanes.
* Jefferson parish ranked second in overall storm-related out-migrations with
about 70,000. Like Orleans, Jefferson parish evacuees were generally dispersed
further. In addition, they had significant challenges with 35,000 displacements
within parish while picking up approximately 51,000 in-migrants from other devastated
parishes such as Orleans, St Bernard and Plaquemines.
* Despite losing an
estimated 10,000 residents due to the storms, St Tammany parish actually experienced
a population gain with an influx of about 15,000 from the southern impacted parishes.
A larger number of these in-migrants came from St Bernard parish than the much
larger Orleans parish.
* Simultaneously they had over 15,000 residents move
within parish due to the storms and they picked up another 5,000 or so residents
not related to the storms.
August 2007 National Geographic article on Hurricane Katrina - (ed's note: Though it provides some interesting background and viewpoints, this is a flawed article that gives the false impression that New Orleans is far below sea level, that Katrina’s surge was not as strong as that of a Category-5 storm, and that Katrina was a “natural” disaster.)
With seas rising, storms getting stronger, and ground subsiding, another disaster like Katrina seems inevitable. Yet some residents would rather run that risk than leave the place they call home.
Torbjörn Törnqvist, a Dutch coastal geologist now at Tulane, is a rare scientist who is bullish about the future, seeing New Orleans' struggles with rising seas and stronger storms as a preview of what other coastal cities will soon face. He envisions a new urban landscape perfectly adapted to climate change, with restored wetlands, high-tech floodgates similar to those in the Netherlands, and a cleaner, greener, denser city. The entire pre-Katrina population, he contends, could live quite comfortably in the parts of the city that did not flood, transforming warehouses and blighted districts into new walkable, sustainable neighborhoods on the high ground. "The situation here is a huge opportunity for the city and the nation," says Törnqvist, who says he can't imagine Holland turning its back on Amsterdam, or Italy giving up on Venice. "If we walk away, we'll miss a fantastic opportunity to learn things that will be useful in Miami, or Boston, or New York in 50 years."
TIME magazine Katrina Anniversary series - The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics.
New Orleans wasn't always a city in a bowl. The French founded it in 1718 on high ground along the Mississippi, a "natural levee" of sediment deposited by the river. That's why tourists in the French Quarter stayed dry during Katrina. And that's how all of south Louisiana was built—by the Mississippi River mutinying its banks and rambling around its floodplain like an unruly teenager, dropping mud around its delta and creating roughly 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) of wetlands between New Orleans and the Gulf. So while the French built an earthen levee 1 mile long and 3 ft. high (1.6 km long, 1 m high) to block the river's annual tantrums, they didn't bother trying to block the occasional hurricanes that swept up the Gulf. "They didn't need hurricane levees," says Kerry St. Pe, a marine biologist whose ancestors arrived in 1760. "They had wetlands to protect them." New Orleans wasn't on the coast, and hurricanes wilt over land.
Podcasting New Orleans -Download into iTunes exclusive interviews and footage, hilarious and horrific alike, during Katrina's immediate aftermath from Ride Hamilton.
NPR: New Memoir Tells Stories of Katrina Survival Author Joshua Clark rode out Hurricane Katrina in his home in the French Quarter, and became our eyes and ears in New Orleans. On the night of the storm, he nailed down the shutters, took some sleeping pills, and watched Silence of the Lambs. In the morning, he realized he was one of the few hundred people left in the waste and silence of the Quarter. Clark discusses his memoir, Heart Like Water, and his life the in the aftermath of the storm.
HURRICANE KATRINA INFORMATION CENTRAL:
HURRICANE
FACTS
Who, What, Where, Why and When
Katrina's path from the National Hurricane Center
Katrina Timeline - A comprehensive hour-by-hour play-by-play of who was doing what when
The Slow Drowning of New Orleans - Comprehensive article from October 2005 about EXACTLY what was done (how little), when and why to protect New Olreans from a hurricane.
Two
months before Hurricane Katrina, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) gave a chilling preview
of its rampage. "This isn't a simulation of World War III, or 'The Day After
Tomorrow,' or Atlantis -- but one day, it may be Atlantis," Vitter warned
at a hearing. Then he displayed a computer model of a Category 4 hurricane smashing
New Orleans and flooding the city under 18 feet of water. "It's not a question
of if," Vitter said. "It's a question of when." Vitter accused
the federal government of neglecting the city's man-made and natural protections
-- by underfunding levees that were designed only for a Category 3 storm and stalling
a massive plan to restore Louisiana's tattered web of coastal marshes. "Instead
of spending millions now, we are going to spend billions later," he said.
The drowning of New Orleans was caused by complex factors of weather, geography, history, politics and engineering, but it was at heart a tragedy of priorities -- not just Vitter's, but America's. For years, it was common knowledge in Louisiana and Washington that New Orleans could be destroyed by a hurricane. But decision makers turned away from the long-term investments that might have averted a catastrophe, pursuing instead projects with more immediate payoffs. Some of those projects made the city more vulnerable. Saving New Orleans from the inevitable storm was a priority. But it was rarely the top priority. "I don't think anybody threatened to hold their breath until they turned blue about it," recalled lobbyist Jan Schoonmaker, an aide to former representative Lindy Boggs (D-La.). The story of how New Orleans ended up underwater begins with its founding nearly 300 years ago, at the liquid crossroads of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. But that precarious geography was not destiny. A review of several decades of decisions by officials responsible for defending New Orleans -- especially the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Congress -- shows that the nation's dysfunctional system for selecting, funding and designing water projects helped seal the city's fate.
Study
busts myth that New Orleans is sunken city - A yearlong topographic
and demographic study of New Orleans arrives this month like the latest installment
of the television series "MythBusters" -- and may forever change the
notion of the Big Easy as a below-sea-level city.
"Contrary to popular perceptions, half of New Orleans is at or above sea level," according to the study by Tulane and Xavier universities' Center for Bioenvironmental Research. Only 49% of New Orleans is below sea level, with the more densely populated areas generally on higher ground. The mean (average) elevation of the city is currently between 1 and 2 feet below sea level, with some portions of the city as high as +16 feet and others as low as -10 feet.
New
Orleans is not a city ten feet below sea level - Three weeks
ago Utah Senator Bob Bennett, who has yet to visit New Orleans or the any of the
Gulf Coast, made the following public statement concerning the rebuilding of the
city: "Building a city ten feet below sea level does not strike me as inherently,
basically a good idea ... "
THE TRUTH: The majority of the City of New Orleans and its immediate Southshore suburbs are built within a few feet above sea level, at sea level, or below sea level. However, the only areas ten feet below sea level in the New Orleans area--despite what Senator Bennett blindly assumes--are limited to drainage canal embankments, roadway underpasses of bulwarked railroad corridors (I-10, Canal Boulevard, Orleans Avenue, etc.), and retention lakes and ponds (primarily in New Orleans East).
The
White house report on what was learned during the Federal Response to Hurricane
Katrina - The magnitude of Hurricane Katrina does not excuse
our inadequate preparedness and response, but rather it must serve as a catalyst
for far-reaching reform and transformation. To do this, we must understand Hurricane
Katrina in its proper context.
Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. The overall destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which was both a large and powerful hurricane as well as a catastrophic flood, vastly exceeded that of any other major disaster, such as the Chicago Fire of 1871, the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, and Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Katrina was anything but a “normal” hurricane. First, Katrina was larger than most. Hurricane Camille, a Category 5 storm that devastated the Gulf Coast in 1969, had top wind speeds that exceeded those of Katrina upon landfall, but Camille’s hurricane force winds only extended seventy-five miles from its center, whereas Katrina’s extended 103 miles from its center. As a result, Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge affected a larger area than did Hurricane Camille’s. In all, Hurricane Katrina impacted nearly 93,000 square miles across 138 parishes and counties. The extreme intensity that Hurricane Katrina reached before landfall on the Gulf Coast, as well as its size, meant that its storm surge was consistent with a more powerful storm. In fact, the National Hurricane Center concluded that the height of Hurricane Katrina and Camille’s respective storm surges were comparable to each other. Hurricane Katrina’s winds and a storm surge that crested up to twenty-seven feet high dealt a ferocious blow to homes, businesses, and property on the coast and for many miles inland. This storm surge overwhelmed levees all along the lowest reaches of the Mississippi River and the edges of Lake Pontchartrain. The consequences for New Orleans were dire. Significant levee failures occurred on the 17th Street Canal, the Industrial Canal, and the London Avenue Canal. Approximately 80 percent of the city was flooded.
2005 hurricanes will cost federal government billions in years to come - The federal government has already given $116 billion to the states affected by the 2005 hurricanes and it will have to continue spending money for years to pay for Gulf Coast states' recovery from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, experts testified at a House Budget Committee hearing Thursday.
Learn how the country could prevent making the same mistake again by paying the relatively small sum to rebuild the Louisiana coast....
WETLANDS
The reason Katrina was not a natural disaster for Louisiana
In 75 years the United States has undone 2500 years of land-building by the Mississippi River. Many experts agree we have a decade to restore the coast before it is too late. Learn why Louisiana is the fastest disappearing landmass on the face of the Earth, and how stopping wetlands erosions is the key to New Orleans' survival...
The fight to save a disappearing coast - Experts agree we have 10 years to act before the problem is too big to solve.
The basics on Wetlands from the EPA - What are Wetlands? Why Protect Wetlands? How are Wetlands Protected? What You Can Do to Protect our Vital Resource.
Generally, wetlands are lands where saturation with water is the dominant factor determining the nature of soil development and the types of plant and animal communities living in the soil and on its surface (Cowardin, December 1979). Wetlands vary widely because of regional and local differences in soils, topography, climate, hydrology, water chemistry, vegetation, and other factors, including human disturbance. Indeed, wetlands are found from the tundra to the tropics and on every continent except Antarctica. For regulatory purposes under the Clean Water Act, the term wetlands means "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas."
Good interview with two experts on the fundamentals and necessity of wetlands - There are a number of engineering plans on the drawing board that aim to give New Orleans and the Gulf Coast the level of protection they need to fend off hurricanes. This interview examines the feasibility, practicality, and cost to implement some of the major proposals.
"What we know is that a wetland reduces the storm surge because of the frictional effects as the surge moves through it. This is especially true when the surge is going through a Cyprus swamp because now you have trees that are at least 60 feet high, very well rooted, very well packed. So you imagine trying to push water through that forest, it slows down dramatically."
Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana - Citizens working to save America's Wetland.
America's Wetland - Great non-profit resource for all things Wetland.
Integrated Ecosystem Restoration and Hurricane Protection: Louisiana's Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast - The Louisiana Legislature approved this master plan for coastal restoration and hurricane protection on May 30, 2007. The plan is the first document to completely incorporate hurricane protection projects with projects aimed at rebuilding Louisiana's rapidly eroding coastal wetlands. It reflects more than 18 months of research, stakeholder and scientific review and writing. It will be the guide for all coastal restoration and hurricane protection efforts in Louisiana over the next several decades.
Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program 2007 Calendar of Volunteer Events -Time to get your hands dirty! Come out and make a difference.
Gulf Restoration Network - United for a Healthy Gulf.
Oyster
harvesters sue over the Caernarvon Diversion - The complications:
When it comes to wetlands restoration, there are ecological, conservation, policy,
and legal issues intertwined with each other. The unfortunate reality is
that some face short term losses for Louisiana's long-term gain. For example,
river diversions are one way to bring new sediment into eroded wetland areas.
The bayou communities in particular need these to survive, and yet it's a hard
sell when a river diversion runs though their land or their oyster beds.
Levees.org - Information about levees and flood protection in New Orleans and nationwide.
LouisianaRebuilds.info - Information to help rebuild.
Hurricane Katrina Recovery Resources from the American Lung Association - Information on Asbestos, Biological Pollutants, Carbon Monoxide, various lung diseases (asthma, COPD, tuberculosis), Lead, Lung Health Risks from the Hurricane Katrina Emergencies (water-borne, emergency power risks), Pesticides, and treatment options
Army Corps of Engineers DECISION-MAKING CHRONOLOGY FOR THE LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN & VICINITY HURRICANE PROTECTION PROJECT - The specifics, if you want to wade through them.
GOVERNMENT RESOURCES
Disaster Recovery Unit - The Disaster Recovery Unit is a new section within the Division of Administration's Office of Community Development created by the Commissioner of Administration to administer the CDBG Disaster Recovery funds allocated to Louisiana after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. On December 23, 2005, Congress approved a $29 billion package of Gulf Coast Hurricane Katrina relief before adjourning for the year. That aid package included $6.2 billion of CDBG funds for Louisiana. On June 15th, 2006, Congress approved an additional $4.2 billion for housing in Louisiana, fully funding The Road Home program. The Disaster Recovery Unit and the Louisiana Recovery Authority are tasked with developing programs through which to administer these funds.
Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness
Parish Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness Contact Numbers
Louisiana
Emergency Communications Systems
FEMA
Contact
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
Contact Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco
Emergency
phone numbers:
Louisiana
State Emergency Number: 1-800-469-4828
Department of Health and Hospital Triage Phone Numbers:
Alexandria:
800-841-5778
Baton
Rouge: 225-2190821
Houma/Thibodaux:
800-228-9409
Lafayette:
800-901-3210
Lake
Charles: 866-280-2711
New
Orleans: 504-658-2500
Monroe:
866-280-7287
Shreveport:
800-841-5776
Slidell/Hammond: 866-280-7724
TO
HELP
Hurricane Katrina Charities
Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana
New Orleans Literary Institute KARES- Working with Light of New Orleans Publishing, the Institute is raising funds to support the rebirth of New Orleans' rich literary community.
MuttShack - Volunteers from across the United States rescued 3,000 pets in New Orleans in the first eight months after Hurricane Katrina. Even two years after Hurricane Katrina, they are still rescuing, caring for, and checking up on animals left behind. Now MuttShack has been assigned the vital task job of pet rescue for all of Louisiana's and New Orleans' natural disasters. However, they must still fund most of it themselves. Please donate to MuttShack and support animal rescue. (Watch the video here. Directed by Ride Hamilton.)
American
Red Cross -- 800-435-7669 / 800-HELP-NOW / 800-257-7575 (Spanish) / hotline 800-GET-INFO
/ RedCross.org
Habitat for Humanity -- (866) 720-2800
Salvation
Army -- (800) SAL-ARMY
The United Way -- (800) 272-4630
President Bush's September 15, 2005 speech from Jackson Square
Mayor Nagin's September 2, 2005 interview with Garland Robinette
Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico
Credit:
GOES 12 Satellite, NASA, NOAA
Hurricane
tracks...The original caption, taken from NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the
Day" for August 29, 2005 read:
Where will Hurricane Katrina go? One
of the stronger storm systems of modern times appears headed for landfall somewhere
in the southern USA sometime today. Katrina was designated yesterday a rare Category
5 Hurricane, the strongest designation for a storm on Earth, and one that indicates
sustained winds greater than 250 kilometers per hour. Pictured above is a digitally
processed image from the orbiting GOES-12 weather satellite that shows the massive
storm system yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico. Starting as a slight pressure difference,
hurricanes grow into large spiraling storm systems of low pressure, complete with
high winds and driving rain. A hurricane is powered by evaporating ocean water,
and so typically gains strength over warm water and loses strength over land.
Much remains unknown about hurricanes and cyclones, including how they are formed
and the exact they will take.