The future of recovery

The Gambit Weekly just ran a long interview with New Orleans Recovery Director Ed Blakely.
Perhaps the most interesting parts are about changing state and local bureaucracies. While Blakely seems to have had some successes, I wonder if the passing months and approaching elections will dim these prospects. With time people often lack the same sense of urgency and elections bring out the worst of bureaucratic power games. Of course, demonstrable successes coming from the new procedures Blakely has promoted might be the kind of wedge needed to open a new front in these battles.

The waters keep rising

If you didn't have a chance to hear Alix Spiegel's two-part report on the misery of life in a post-Katrina trailer park and the cavern of depression into which most residents have fallen, you need to do so. Some of these folks were hurting before Katrina, but even the strongest have been beset by nearly insurmountable obstacles to rebuilding their lives, getting out of the park, and making a new start. At least in New Orleans, bad as it is, we have community, friends, and helping hands.

When I travel, especially to poorer parts of the world, people ask me how the U.S., the richest and most powerful country on earth, can permit such a travesty. I can't ever seem to come up with a satisfying answer.

Kudos to Daniel Schorr

In his review of the week's events with Scott Simon, Schorr made the link that the press needs to keep hammering at: our national infrastructure receives substandard upkeep and unnecessary disasters, like the post-Katrina flooding of New Orleans, are going to continue to happen. Wake up people! Next time it's going to be you

Third World and Sad

There's a tongue-in-cheek bumper sticker you see on some cars around here that at once proclaimed the distinct and independent spirit of New Orleans while also displaying the racism that undergirds so many of the euphemisms here. It read: "New Orleans: Third World and Proud."

Well, today on an airplane trip into New Orleans I was reminded of how much truer that bumper sticker has become. Our plane was filled the brim with kids in a Christian youth mission. They've come down here to save us (they're t-shirts said something like "Rebuild, Renew, Blah, Blah, Blah). Now don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see folks coming to New Orleans: to see what happened, to help, to spend their money, to tell their friends and family and congresspeople and president about what they've seen and what they haven't seen. But I fear, like much of this kind of mission tourism, that their sense of their own good works excuses the larger forces at play and the reasons why their efforts are needed. The U.S. federal government should be sending down people (and employing locals): workers, builders, bureaucrats, the whole nine yards. They broke the city, they should pay for it. And that's the problem with so much of the mission work is happening in New Orleans and in the rest of the world: it obscures the larger social, economic, and political story behind a much more palatable one about charity.

So to the missions: Thanks. We need the help. But don't forget to let the dirt bags know what's what. To go home and ignore what has happened and just tell folks, "Oh those poor people; but at least we helped" is actually just turning a blind eye. Keep your eyes open.

So thick, you can't cut it with a knife

What is it? Red tape! And we're so tied up in it here along the Gulf Coast that we can barely move. It's as if the good folks in Congress and the White House never thought through what a real disaster would be like: overwhelming destruction, otherworldly costs, and almost no local funding. How is New Orleans supposed to put up 10% matching costs toward rebuilding when we tax revenue was a trickle? How are we supposed to do the audits and unbelievable paperwork required for rebuilding projects when we've had to cut back on city staff and budgets?

Accountability is a good thing and should be built into the rebuilding projects, but we need help at every level and we need help navigating the labyrinthine bowels of FEMA and other federal agencies.

(And if I hear one more FEMA official say, "Oh, well, we can work around [insert bureaucratic problem]. All you had to do was ask," I'm gonna smack 'em. People down here have been busting their butts to improve things. If FEMA would just remember that it's their responsibility to help us out of something the federal government got us into, things would get moving in the right direction.)

The kids are all right

Whoda thunkit, but MTV News just published one of the most cogent presentations of New Orleans's difficulties and promise to be found in the mainstream media. Still, the kids have shown themselves to be pretty apathetic at the ballot box (and forget the barricades), so I'm not holding my breath that this will change much. But it's still nice to see someone's giving the story a proper perspective.

Apparently New Orleans got the wrong kind of surge

An AP story by Andrew Taylor reports that "The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollar." $12 billion a month! For a failed war based on fabrications and incompetence. Take note, Louisiana politicians, if you really want to learn the game of lying and corruption, this is how the big boys do it.

Get out of the way

Katy Reckdahl has another great story in the Times-Picayune, this time on the disparity between rebuilding of public and parochial schools in Lakeview. Private institutions are generally more nimble than government ones, but still the state-run Recovery School District and FEMA have taken a bad situation and allowed it to get worse. Sadder still is that hard-working, caring parents have been turned away from volunteering. Once again, local folks show their ability to lead, to imagine and to create, only to be stymied by politicians and bureaucrats. Hopefully new Superintendent Paul Vallas will do the right thing.

Road kill

The Road Home program has been a disaster from the beginning. Governor Kathleen Blanco deserves a lot of the blame, but ICF, the organization that's been contracted to run it has really screwed it up, and screwed New Orleanians trying to rebuild their homes and their lives. It would be one thing, however, if they were just incompetent. But as events from last Saturday (June 30) suggest to disrespect and willful neglect. As the Times-Picayune reported, Road Home tried to do a mass closing at a hotel, but left people in long lines, out in the boiling midday sun. Worse, however, was that ICF officials only bothered to bring the lines of people into the hotel when media photographers showed up. Until then, nobody seemed to care.

For some follow-up, check out today's T-P editorial and the op-ed piece by staff photographer, John McCusker, who photographed the lines outside the hotel and was so sadly reminded of the lines at the Superdome.

Living on Earth takes up race and flood repairs

"Living on Earth" just aired a conversation ("New Orleans Flood Risk and Racial Disparity") with Nathalie Walker of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, in New Orleans, and Colonel David Berszeck of the Army Corps of Engineers on where the ACE has puts is most significant efforts against future flooding and their unfortunate coincidence with race in New Orleans. NDBP blogged about this last week and it's nice to see that it's getting play.

Feel like greenin' it up!

It's important to remember that not all the news is bad news. There are, in fact, numerous creative, engaged, and inspiring people and communities in New Orleans. Unfortunately they keep hitting road blocks from the city, the state and the feds. If government and insurance would get around to doing the right thing, I have no doubt New Orleans would rise like a phoenix. Check out Ariane Wiltse's great story in last week's Gambit Weekly on the efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward to rebuild green and rebuild for the 21st century. The work of Charles Allen III (the new president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association and also the assistant director of the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier universities) and the resident of Holy Cross is moving.

From Day 1 after the federally-constructed and managed levees failed I wondered why we couldn't rebuild a New Orleans that preserved its character while giving it a 21st-century infrastructure. New Orleans should be a showcase of building best practices: efficient, adaptive, fair, and green. Anything less tells is a disgrace.

We need more than band-aids

According to a widely reported-on analysis ("Excess Mortality in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: A Preliminary Report," Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 1(1) 2007: 15-20), the New Orleans mortality rate has climbed nearly 50% since Katrina. Less frequently cited is the editor's note at the end of the article:

Our disaster medicine colleagues who respond to catastrophic public health emergencies worldwide have educated us on the nuances of the prolonged effect that such disasters have on the community. Following the prototypical wars that destroyed their countries’ public health infrastructure, the decay factors that cause preventable deaths continued for many years after the shooting had stopped. Years later, retrospective studies recorded many more deaths from indirect causes, and those that suffer the most typically are women, children, old people, and people with disabilities. Ninety percent of excess deaths were preventable.

The US is not a developing country, but the uncomfortable reality of the public health impact and management of Katrina is painfully similar. The authors’ study has exposed that glaring deficiency—that an attentive and proactive surveillance and response mechanism is justifiably obligated from state and federal agencies.

We couldn't agree more. If the deaths are preventable and the agencies and officials don't do anything, aren't they responsible?

Clearing up road blocks?

Our roads were never too hot to begin with, but they have been buckling and sinking in unimaginable ways since billions of gallons of water flooded across them after the federally-constructed and mismanaged levees broke. The City of New Orleans needed lots of money and help to repair them and FEMA initially balked, claiming (like the sewer damage) that they'd need proof of actual flood damage for each and every repair. Now FEMA claims to be chomping at the bit to do the repairs and is blaming the city for not getting off its duff to get them the list.

It's another round of he-said-she-said. While I know Mayor Nagin has been a terrible steward of the post-disaster recovery, it's important to remember that the city has very limited resources (more repairs than we can handle, a smaller tax base, an exodus of professionals) and that we faced a disaster of unprecedented proportions. The mantra may get old for some folks, but it's still true: "The federal government broke the city, the federal government should pay for the repairs."


Photo by Chris Granger from the Times-Picayune (Friday June 22, 2007). A car slows down to go over a crater hole in the middle of the 6300 block of Argonne Blvd. in Lakeview.

Who's getting soaked?

The Times-Picayune published copies of new flood maps from the Army Corps of Engineers, along with a long analysis of what has and has not been done since the levees broke. Apparently if you're rich and white, you get flood protection first.

It took a little work, but I pulled together a comparative map of flood risk pre-Katrina and today (based on the ACE's maps: the bluer the area, the greater the flood risk) and layered it on top of the 2000 census map of percentage of African-American households (the greener the map area, the higher the percentage). Look carefully at the two maps and you'll see what I mean. Perhaps more shocking than the fact that Gentilly, New Orleans East and the Ninth Ward haven't gotten any flood protection relief is that the protection afforded to the Broadmoor and Mid-City areas is greatest in the areas with the smallest African-American populations.

Map 1 (pre-Katrina)

Map 2 (post-Katrina)

FEMA: Helping us to get back on our knees

WDSU is reporting that FEMA has agreed to help repair the New Orleans sewer system, sort of. The city's pipes were overwhelmed by the water running through them and crushing them from above after the federally-designed levee system collapsed. Post-levee-collapse, 100 million gallons a day were pouring out of our destroyed system. But FEMA refused to help, claiming that the damage wasn't hurricane related. So out of our own overly taxed budgets, the local Sewerage and Water Board has worked to repair the system and it now leaks just 50 million gallons a day.

Now FEMA has changed its mind, but only a bit. FEMA is not going to repair what the government destroyed. Instead they've agreed to get us back to the crappy system we used to have, which used to leak 36 million gallons a day. Even if this were fair, how do you do this? Repair just a certain percent of the pipes? Repair just certain parts of the city? Repair at random until we reach the 36 million gallons figure? We await their Solominic wisdom.

UPDATE: The Times-Picayune has a fuller analysis of the issue. If only FEMA had come to its senses earlier, we might have been able to make greater progress on infrastructure by now.

The road to tell is paved with good intentions

FEMA rightly felt that insurance payouts needed to start flowing to homeowners sooner than later. And one way to do that was to cut the red tape for flood insurance claims. Unfortunately they cut so close to the quick that we're all bleeding money as the insurance agencies take us and the rest of America to the cleaners.

Why do we get bubkis?

California estimated that the rebuilding of the on ramp to San Francisco's Bay Bridge would take 50 days. C.C. Myers Inc. did it in just 17 days. The contract built in incentives to hasten completion and California worked to assure both quality and reduced bureaucracy. As an article in the New York Times explains: "Within 24 hours of the devastating crash and fire, the federal government approved some emergency reconstruction money; not long after, the state settled on a design plan."

So why hasn't New Orleans seen anything like this? Why does school reconstruction lag so terribly? Why did garbage fill the streets for more than a year? Why did flood protection work take so long and still not work?! Why are there still street lights on the fritz? Why does our sewer system continue to spill water into the ground?

The world watched as New Orleanians were treated like trash after the levees broke. Americans were ashamed. Well, guess what? You should still be ashamed. New Orleans certainly shares some of the blame, but unimaginative and overly-bureaucratic state and federal government agencies and officials have turned a blind eye to the misery caused by the worst catastrophe in American history. A disaster caused by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Out of sight, out of mind.

It's your fault. No, it's your fault. Your fault! Your fault!!!

Can we stop with all the institutional whining? FEMA, Road Home, President Bush, Governor Blanco: get off your collective asses and help New Orleanians! It certainly wasn't our fault that the federal government installed faulty flood protections and failed to maintain them. You owe us!

Looks like Katrina soaked the Feds, too

Ouch! Looks like we're not the only ones to get suckered by Allstate. An investigative piece by Rebecca Mowbray in the Times-Picayune seems to indicate that Allstate has been inflating claims covered by federally-subsidized flood insurance and slashing payments for wind damage that Allstate has to pay out of its own pockets.

Let's get this party started!

Hooray! The AP is reporting that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which runs the National Weather Service) is throwing itself a $4 million party to celebrate its 200th anniversary. Looks like the Gulf Coast might not be invited, however, since the NOAA is also cutting $700,000 for hurricane research at the same time. I wonder if that's why the director and deputy director of the National Weather Service are resigning? I guess they'll be missing the party.

When it rains, it pours

An editorial in the New York Times gives a sober and evenhanded statement of things as they are in the Big Difficult. There are signs of hope, albeit mostly from local residents, local neighborhood associations, and community organizations. Given FEMA's horrendous performance, the fact that it is slowly, but surely, getting out of the picture can only be a good thing. Still, with each dribble of good news seems to come a flood of bad: the Army Corps of Engineers' new levees are apparently as crappy as the old ones. Give 'em points for consistency.

Someone's getting paid

Steve Kelley, New Orleans Times-Picayune, 9 May 2007

Thanks to Times-Picayune political cartoonist Steve Kelley for making me laugh a little when I really wanted to hit someone. IFC, which runs (mismanages is more like it) Lousiana's Road Home Program--meant to provide funds to those whose houses were damaged or destroyed after the levees failed--handed out hefty bonuses to their executives despite their pathetic efforts since Day 1.

Surprise! Road Home Program not good at math

The Road Home Program is broke: they've got a shortfall of $2.9 billion and it could grow to $4 billion. This is money that's supposed to help New Orleanians come home and rebuild their homes. But, wooops, they hadn't calculated that insurance rates would rise after the disaster or that rebuilding costs would rise in the face of massive need and competition. What do they teach the MBAs who run these things?

It was bad enough that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers destroyed 200,000 homes because of its willful negligence in constructing storm defenses in New Orleans. To then have the Road Home Program be such a disaster is just more salt in the wounds.