Hey Louisiana! Hey Mississippi!

Yeah baby, time to start re-buildin'!! New Orleans will rise again, to the tune of $200 Billion. I love it!

 

Looks like some areas of the Big Easy will officially be opening soon,

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/16/katrina.impact/



snowbound

 

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH


Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit
Federal audits found dubious expenditures by the state's emergency preparedness agency, which will administer FEMA hurricane aid.

By Ken Silverstein and Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — Senior officials in Louisiana's emergency planning agency already were awaiting trial over allegations stemming from a federal investigation into waste, mismanagement and missing funds when Hurricane Katrina struck.

And federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were funneled to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency dating back to 1998.


In March, FEMA demanded that Louisiana repay $30.4 million to the federal government.

The problems are particularly worrisome, federal officials said, because they involve the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, the agency that will administer much of the billions in federal aid anticipated for victims of Katrina.

Earlier this week, federal Homeland Security officials announced they would send 30 investigators and auditors to the Gulf Coast to ensure relief funds were properly spent.

Details of the ongoing criminal investigations come from two reports by the inspector general's office in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, as well as in state audits, and interviews this week with federal and state officials.

The reports were prepared by the federal agency's field office in Denton, Texas, and cover 1998 to 2003. Improper expenditures previously identified by auditors include a parka, a briefcase and a trip to Germany.

Much of the FEMA money that was unaccounted for was sent to Louisiana under the Hazard Mitigation Grant program, intended to help states retrofit property and improve flood control facilities, for example.

The $30.4 million FEMA is demanding back was money paid into that program and others, including a program to buy out flood-prone homeowners. As much as $30 million in additional unaccounted for spending also is under review in audits that have not yet been released, according to a FEMA official.

One 2003 federal investigation of allegedly misspent funds in Ouachita Parish, a district in northern Louisiana, grew into a probe that sprawled into more than 20 other parishes.

Mark Smith, a spokesman for the Louisiana emergency office, said the agency had responded to calls for reform, and that "we now have the policy and personnel in place to ensure that past problems aren't repeated."

He said earlier problems were largely administrative mistakes, not due to corruption.

But federal officials disagreed. They said FEMA for years expressed concerns over patterns of improper management and lax oversight throughout the state agency, and said most problems had not been corrected.

They point to criminal indictments of three state workers as evidence the problem was more than management missteps. Two other state emergency officials also were identified in court documents as unindicted co-conspirators.

"The charges were made after some very extensive reviews by FEMA investigators and other authorities, who identified issues they felt were of the severity and magnitude to refer them to the U.S. attorney's office," said David Passey, the spokesman for FEMA's regional office in Texas.

Passey, while acknowledging that the state had made some administrative changes, said it had not completed the kind of overhaul FEMA said was needed.

"It concerns us a lot. We are devoted to the mission of helping people prepare for, prevent and recover from disasters and we want these federal funds — this taxpayer money — to be spent and used well and in accordance with the rules," he said.

Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington watchdog group, said recent Louisiana history showed that FEMA "money earmarked for saving lives and homes'' was instead squandered in "a cesspool of wasteful spending."

Louisiana's emergency office receives money directly from FEMA. It passes on much of the funding to local governments that apply for assistance.

The audit reports said state operating procedures increased the likelihood of fraud and corruption going undetected.

 

Money Earmarked for Evacuation Redirected
Sep 17 2:36 PM US/Eastern


By RITA BEAMISH

As far back as eight years ago, Congress ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan for evacuating New Orleans during a massive hurricane, but the money instead went to studying the causeway bridge that spans the city's Lake Pontchartrain, officials say.

The outcome provides one more example of the government's failure to prepare for a massive but foreseeable catastrophe, said the lawmaker who helped secure the money for FEMA to develop the evacuation plan.

"They never used it for the intended purpose," said former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La. "The whole intent was to give them resources so they could plan an evacuation of New Orleans that anticipated that a very large number of people would never leave."

In Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, attention has focused on the inability of local and federal officials to evacuate or prepare for the large number of poor people, many of them minorities, who had no access to transportation and remained behind.

That possibility was one of the concerns that led Congress in 1997 to set aside $500,000 for FEMA to create "a comprehensive analysis and plan of all evacuation alternatives for the New Orleans metropolitan area."

read more here
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/17/D8CM64J80.html

 

76-Year-Old Man Trapped in Big Easy for 18 Days
By DAVID CRARY and ROSE HANSON, AP
http://cdn.news.aol.com/aolnews_photos/05/00/20050917184209990015

CNN Survivor Gerald Martin "was weak, very tired, but he was able to speak," FEMA spokesman Louie Fernandez said.

NEW ORLEANS (Sept. 18 ) - Day after day, for more than two weeks, the 76-year-old man sat trapped and alone in his attic, sipping from a dwindling supply of water until it ran out. No food. No way out of a house ringed by foul floodwaters.

Without ever leaving home, Gerald Martin lived out one of the most remarkable survival stories of Hurricane Katrina. Rescuers who found him Friday, as they searched his neighborhood by boat, were astounded at his good spirits and resiliency after 18 days without food or human contact.

"It's an incredible story of survival," said Louie Fernandez, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency search unit that carried out the rescue.

In recent days, search crews have been finding corpses by the dozens in the still-flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans, but not trapped survivors. The FEMA search-and-rescue boat navigating through the Eighth Ward didn't expect to find anyone alive at 6010 Painters St., but they planned to search the premises of a one-story wood house.

As the motor idled and the boat glided forward, they heard a voice.

"Hey, over here."

Using a sledgehammer, a FEMA rescuer broke down the front door and went inside with another team member, struggling through a living room jumbled with overturned, sodden furniture.

They found Martin sitting in a chair in the sludge-covered kitchen, partially undressed in an effort to keep cool. After 16 days in his attic, he had descended to the ground floor two days earlier when the floodwaters — once up to the ceiling — finally drained, even though the house remained surrounded by several feet of water.

Incredibly, Martin — who ran out of his gallon-and-a-half water supply on Thursday — was able to walk out of the house with just a bit of assistance.

"He was weak, very tired, but he was able to speak, able to stand," Fernandez said. "He was very relieved. He was very thirsty. He was in good spirits."

Martin was given water to drink, then taken to Ochsner Foundation Hospital, where nurse Jinny Resor said he was treated for dehydration. She said Martin had taken medication while he was trapped, but she wasn't sure what it was for.

In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press late Friday night, Martin said he was feeling fine.

"So far, so good," he said.

As for his ordeal, his description was concise: "I was living in the attic for 16 days, and I was living off water."

The two rescuers who retrieved him are firefighters with a California-based FEMA team — J.D. Madden of Santa Clara and Eric Mijangos of Menlo Park.

"I don't know how much longer he could have went on without water," said Madden, 29.

Martin's family left before the storm, but he stayed to attend church, later took a nap and woke up to find that his home was filling with water, Madden said.

Martin only had time to grab some water and get to his attic, which he described as feeling like an oven during day-after-day of mid-90-degree heat that followed the storm. Madden said the heat in the attic might have been even worse, perhaps fatal, except for shade provided by a fallen tree.

Staff Sgt. Jason Randor, a military police officer with the Massachusetts National Guard, watched the rescue from another boat that was helping provide security for the search team. He recalled jubilant yells from the firefighters when they realized someone alive was inside.

Martin emerged, wearing jeans and a shirt.

"While they were putting him in the chopper, he asked if they could stop on the way at Taco Bell to get something to eat," Randor said.

Fernandez, of FEMA, was on scene when Martin arrived at a FEMA base camp before going to the hospital.

"He had lost a lot of weight," Fernandez said. "He definitely had to hold his pants up with his hands."

Martin was the first trapped person found alive by Madden's California Task Force Three team in its 12 days of calling out to homes from the boat and peering into windows.

"We've been in the rescue mode the whole time and haven't given up hope that there was someone out there alive," he said.

But officials overseeing the search effort said the discovery of corpses and the dwindling number of rescues has been taking an emotional toll on search units.

"Our squad members are getting access to trauma and grief counselors," said FEMA rescue squad liaison Charles Hood. "It's becoming a very difficult task."

Fernandez said Saturday that Martin's rescue was a welcome morale boost for his colleagues.

"Little victories like we saw yesterday help motivate people, who are facing one of the toughest jobs they've ever faced," he said.

 

Visitors Told to Flee Parts of Fla. Keys
Sep 18 1:16 PM US/Eastern


By JOHN PAIN
Associated Press Writer



Tourists were told to evacuate the lower Florida Keys on Sunday as a new tropical depression strengthened over the Bahamas and moved toward the vulnerable, low-lying island chain.

A hurricane watch was posted for the entire Florida Keys.

"It does look like that there is the potential for it to become a hurricane, near or just before it reaches the Florida Keys," said Daniel Brown, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center.

The watch means that hurricane conditions with sustained wind of at least 74 mph are possible by late Monday, according to the Miami-based hurricane center.

Long-term forecasts show the system heading generally toward the west in the Gulf of Mexico toward Texas or Mexico later in the week, but such forecasts are subject to large errors. That means that areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina could potentially be in the storm's path.

"Once it reaches the Gulf, really everybody should pay attention at that point," Brown said.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/18/D8CMQ1Q08.html



graphics and warning...

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT18/refresh/AL1805W5 gif/025617W_sm.gif

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT3 shtml/181440.shtml

 

And now the ugly side....scumbags.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/09/19/katrina.scam.ap/index.html


snowbound

 

Imagine $200,000,000,000 of aid ultimately flowing from government (read ultimately citizens' wallets)in connection with the rebuilding.

Rob

 

http://www.lapolitics.com/column.php

NEEDED: SPIRIT OF CANADAVILLE, NOT NIMBY

Of the many angels to emerge from the post-hurricane rescue and recovery efforts, none has flown higher than Frank Stronach. He's a billionaire Canadian auto parts manufacturer with no links to Louisiana other than the vision and compassion that moved him to a major act of philantrophy.

First he took in over 100 evacuees at a racetrack he owns in Florida. Then, thinking big and long-term, he began developing a mobile home park in Simmesport, in Avoyelles Parish, for 120 displaced families to live for up to five years.

He purchased the land and housing units and has readied the first two dozen homes, complete with front and back porches. Most of the occupants of the community nicknamed "Canadaville" will be 92 evacuees now living in an ag school dormitory in Bunkie.

Stronach also has broached the idea of locating a small manufacturing facility nearby for his company, Magna Corp. Given the promises he has already delivered on, nobody is discounting his job creation offer as empty.

Indeed, folks around Simmesport, who, like in many other places, might object to a trailer park for New Orleans refugees in their midst, are so bowled over by Stronach's generosity that they have muted their concerns.

Good show Frank. Along with all the others trying to make a difference amongst the devastation.


snowbound