Katrina: two years on, and the tragedy is still unfolding

Two years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the gulf coast, nearly 67,000 families displaced by the storms are still stuck in FEMA trailers throughout the region. Alabama and Texas have small FEMA-trailer populations, and Mississippi has about 16,500 of the trailers still in use; but Louisiana, hardest hit by the storm, has the greatest number of displaced people in Katrinaville trailer parks. In Louisiana, nearly 48,000 of the trailers are still in service.

Now, the cities where people landed have come to the end of their patience and hospitality. Residents are being told to "move forward or get out."

Gulf Coast communities are moving to banish the FEMA issued trailers. They are shutting down the impromptu settlements, and telling homeowners who are living in the trailers on their own property while they fight insurance companies and struggle to rebuild and repair storm-damaged homes that they must be making tangible progress toward the restoration of their homes or get rid of the white travel trailers that dot homesteads from Texas to Alabama.

The Mayor of Pascagoula, Miss., Matthew Avara says "It's an act of tough love. We don't want to put any unneeded hardship on any of our people, but at the same time, we've got to move forward, and the way to move forward is to close down these parks."

Attorneys representing the displaced said the local ordinances leave the occupants with few, if any, alternatives. Affordable housing is in short supply in the areas hardest hit by the storms. "Throwing people out when they have no place else to live is not a long-term solution for a community," says Davida Finger, a lawyer with Loyola University's Law Clinic, which has represented trailer occupants fighting attempts to remove them. "Some of my clients have been made homeless." Ms. Filger could not say how many of the trailers had been removed under the hodgepodge of local restrictions.



The FEMA trailer is the most ubiquitous symbol of the bungled post-Katrina recovery effort. Small and cramped, unsound, and contaminated with formaldehyde. Some of the tiny little travel-trailers are home to six, eight, even ten people.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA spent $1.8 Billion on the trailers to provide temporary shelter. In the past, when hurricanes have hit Florida and the Carolinas, the trailers were a good option. They provided shelter while homes and lives were rebuilt. The storms that hit New Orleans hit a different population. Many of the displaced didn't own their homes, so the land their homes sat on was not theirs to park a trailer on, nor was the home theirs to repair. These people were shunted into temporary trailer parks, like the ironically-named Renaisance Village in Baker, LA (pictured above). For the people in the FEMA trailer parks, minutes pass like hours, and hours pass like days.

Local officials wanting to get rid of the Katrinaville trailer parks cite complaints of crime in the trailer parks as a reason, but also point out that the trailers are not structurally sound, that they are unsafe in bad weather. They also maintain that the trailers stand in the way of recovery. "In time, we have to get normalcy back, and what we were concerned with was the amount of trailers and the people who were planning to stay in trailers for the rest of their life," says D.J. Mumphrey, who has handled trailer removal issues for Jefferson Parish, LA - just outside New Orleans. Jefferson Parish (which is not home to a Katrinaville) will be sending inspectors to the trailers still sheltering residents of the parish in November, to verify that trailer occupants are on their own land and making progress toward repairing and restoring their homes. The parish claims it will grant extensions for people still fighting their insurance companies or waiting on rebuilding aid.

And that last bit there sets me off all over again. What the hell? Two years on and people are still at odds with insurance companies??? I see a need for congressional hearings about that.

Katrina is the metaphor for the failures of the Bush administration. A president who partied while an American city drowned. Her people abandoned to their own devices. The state's National Guard deployed; and their deep-water vehicles in Iraq.

Now many of those people who were abandoned to the storm, people who lost everything and have no way of regaining any of it, are facing homelessness as the localities where they were settled legislate the only shelter they have access to out of existence.

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“Katrina” alert?

Tropical Storm Dean is projected to be a Category 1 hurricane by Friday, Category 3 by Sunday. Plus, current storm track computer models show it is likely to go across the western tip of Cuba, then into the Gulf of Mexico.

Let’s hope that FEMA actually is looking at tropical weather information from our weather satellites.

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You have got to be kidding: FEMA sends unsafe trailers to Greensburg, Kansas

Unfortunately, this is not a joke. FEMA has provided the residents of devastated Greensburg, Kansas, with trailers contaminated with unsafe levels of formaldehyde.

Even more amazing is FEMA's solution. FEMA's fix? Keep the windows open.

I wish I could say I'm making this up.

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FEMA Trailers in Hope, Arkansas

Here's some of the Hurricane Katrina relief George Bush promised.


(Photo from Google Earth of the airport in Hope, Arkansas)

[mortar-board tip to Granny Geek]

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Greetings from Florida

Well, it's been quite a day here in Central Florida. As you know, we were hit by a series of tornados that cut a path across our state. The devastation is pretty complete in some areas. I was about 1 mile north of the path and have been up since about 3:00 this morning following the news and then the clean up.

This afternoon I donated blood and blogged about it for our local paper. It is really sad that, in the face of such devastation, people will do nothing.

Our governor, Republican Charlie Crist, held his on-the-ground news conference in Volusia county. He was joined by Democratic US Senator Bill Nelson and Democratic Florida CFO Alex Sink plus Republican State Attorney General Bill McCollum and Rep. John Mica (FL-07) who is also a Republican.

In a decidely Democratic county, Charlie and crew delivered the most non-partisan press conference I have ever seen. He could have been in either Lake or Sumter, which are really red, but I think he wanted to send a specific message - "We are in this together."

You would think that's the way it should always be in a disaster such as this. Unfortunately, we know all too well that in the age of Bush (both of them), that has not been the case. At least today, that changed.

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Homeland Security and KY Train Wrecks

The Department of Homeland Security, formed in response to the 9-11 attacks, has concentrated almost exclusively on the sexier aspects of its mandate -- terrorism and border protection -- while giving short shrift to the more mundane aspects of general disaster preparation. The two train derailments in Kentucky in the last two days show the cost of such short-sightedness.

Yesterday's wreck involved butyl acetate, which is a potent solvent. Today's wreck, 20 miles south of Louisville has thus far resulted in the following actions:

• A free-burning rail tanker car containing approx 30,000 gallons of propane, and 12-15 additional rail cars -- all burning -- containing a wide assortment of hazardous materials
• A mile-wide "no fly" zone established by the FAA (which is a very unusual response to a localized haz-mat incident)
• A one-mile evacuation of homes and businesses
• The decision by authorities to allow the fire to burn itself out (instead of mounting an aggressive suppression attack to extinguish it)
• Implementation of a state-wide emergency response plan on the part of state, county, and local governmental agencies and NGO's
• Several dozen civilians and responders hospitalized with respiratory complaints
• Release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of assorted hazardous materials into the atmosphere and/or groundwater
• The admission that the combination of materials may result in unanticipated short- and long-term complications
• Potentially significant financial losses (destroyed rail cars, fire damage to homes and infrastructure, business interruption, response and mitigation costs, etc.)

During an update on the news, various emergency response officials have said there was currently no idea how long the train cars would burn, nor how the hazardous materials involved would interact and the impact those interactions would have on subsequent mitigation efforts.

Safety and security professionals have been screaming for years about the sorry state of preparedness in the transportation sector. Yes, it is quite possible that al Qaeda might try to smuggle a "dirty bomb" into the United States in a shipping container, but -- once again -- we have seen that accidents are much more likely to happen and may create an equally large response need.

Yet the administration and DHS refuse to put sufficient time, effort, and resources into planning for the inevitable; rather, all effort is being directed to the relatively small chance of another major terror attack.

For example, the FY '07 budget for Rail and Transit Security grants has increased to $175 million, compared to the $770 million (up from $725 million in FY '04) for the High-Threat, High-Density Urban Area grant program (which is primarily terror-related). Preparedness funding was reduced by $14 million.

Other significant funding changes, with the first figure FY '04 and the second, FY '07:

• Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention: 500 M, 375 M
• Buffer Zone Protection: 91 M ('05, did not exist in '04), 50 M
• Trucking Security: 22 M, 12 M
• Metropolitan Medical Response System: 50 M, 33 M
• Technical Assistance: 30 M, 18 M
• Citizen Corps: 40 M, 15 M
• Assistance to Firefighters: 750 M, 662 M

Overall, funding for preparedness programs in general were reduced from $4.44 billion to $3.39 billion.

Although the administration attempted to further reduce funding for both Emergency Management Performance Grants and Firefighter Assistance Grants, both were quickly defended by Congress, in large part because of the "all-hazards" nature of the programs.

The FY '07 budget leaves FEMA within DHS. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "The bill wisely reinforces DHS' ability to operate as a comprehensive all hazards agency.... DHS can thereby enhance FEMA's ability to coordinate response and recovery efforts." Unfortunately, we've seen with Katrina just how effectively DHS -- with their emphasis on planning for the last attack -- was in enhancing response and recovery.

Yes, preparing for, and responding to, terrorism are important aspects of an overall homeland security program, but when will the administration realize that terrorism is not the only threat to the homeland?

It should be obvious that one of the priorities of the 110th Congress should be to take efficient, cost-effective steps to safeguard the American population, based on generally-accepted risk-assessment procedures.

After all, what if the Zoneton derailment had occurred twenty miles further north... in the middle of Lousiville?

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