History > 2006 > USA > Louisiana > Mississippi

Rebuilding (I)

Lee Celano for The New York Times

Photos show the Bartholomews' home after Hurricane Katrina.

More than 87,100 families whose houses were damaged

live in lightweight trailers.

Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf

NYT

16.3.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/nationalspecial/16trailers.html

Lee Celano for The New York Times

Marie and Mitchell Bartholomew had to abandon a trailer

during a recent storm because it was rocking violently.

"It rattles, it rolls," said Mr. Bartholomew.

"It is like telling you to get out."

Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf

NYT

16.3.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/nationalspecial/16trailers.html

Mrs. Cappiello's husband, Jimmy,

said he saw sheet metal, trash, wood planks and even the carport

from a nearby house flying during a recent storm.

Photograph:

Lee Celano for The New York Times

Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf

NYT

16.3.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/nationalspecial/16trailers.html

New Orleans levees repaired

Wed May 31, 2006 9:07 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

VIOLET, Louisiana (Reuters) - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has met its goal of fixing battered levees around New Orleans as the new hurricane season starts, but residents still face flood risks, senior officials said on Wednesday.

Standing on a clay and dirt levee in St. Bernard Parish, which was inundated by floodwater after Hurricane Katrina, Maj. Gen. Ronald Johnson said the Corps repaired 169 miles of the 350 mile system by its June 1 target.

"I think New Orleans can be confident in its hurricane protection system because it is better and it is stronger," Johnson said after a helicopter tour.

"We've spiraled in new information as we've learned some things, working with the technical experts to tell us what it is we need to do to build this system using the best materials, science, engineering and construction practices."

But it is not certain it will protect against all storms, officials said. Katrina came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane.

"There will always be a risk," said Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the Corps' director of civil works. "Another Katrina, on a different track, at a different speed, moving slower with more rainfall could do damage."

A series of levee breaches during the August 29 storm flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and left parishes like St. Bernard and lower Plaquemines with virtually no structure undamaged.

These areas still bear the scars, including gutted homes and residents living in government-supplied trailers as well as many damaged businesses that have yet to reopen.

BIG IMPROVEMENTS

Residents and some independent engineers sharply criticized the Corps for faulty design and poor maintenance of levees.

In its first phase of improvements, the Corps spent more than $800 million to repair levees to pre-Katrina strength or better. Billions of dollars of major improvements are also planned over the next six years, although Washington has yet to approve all the money.

"I've always been critical of the Corps, but I have to tell you the Corps has done an excellent job," said St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez.

"I would only hope that one thing doesn't happen -- that you don't restore this levee to the pre-Katrina condition because it's the best levee that's ever been in St. Bernard Parish"

The parish borders New Orleans to the East. Katrina's storm surge swamped towns like Chalmette and Meraux and killed 130 people. The hurricane killed 1,500 in Louisiana.

New Orleans-area residents were rattled this week by reports that a 400 foot (122 meter) stretch of levee near the town of Buras in southern Louisiana slumped. The Corps said the problem was one of weight and insufficient support at ground level, and that it had been fixed.

Temporary floodgates and pumps at mouths of two canals on the north side of New Orleans are also behind schedule, but officials said short-term fixes are in place if needed.

The state of the levees is an overriding worry as the 2006 hurricane season begins and the ravaged New Orleans region struggles to recover.

"One of the big concerns is that there could be a storm that surpasses Katrina in strength," said Sue Sturgis, author of a hurricane preparedness report by non-profit group Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch.

Moreover, big improvements in the defenses will require far more land, she said. "They can't build Category 4 or 5 protection on the footprint that exists."

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson)

    New Orleans levees repaired, R, 31.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-06-01T010541Z_01_N31265778_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-LEVEES.xml

New Orleans mourns Katrina's dead

with jazz funeral

Mon May 29, 2006 9:34 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Yvonne Wise recalled many customers of her clothes alteration business as she marched past smashed homes and rusting, overturned cars of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward to the joyous sounds of a brass band.

Moments before, in New Orleans jazz funeral tradition, the Treme Brass Band's renditions were somber as Wise and dozens of others stood where a levee gave way nine months earlier to the day, sending a torrent through the streets of the Lower Ninth.

There, residents of the neighborhood read the names of more than 1,000 Louisianians killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Wise, 58, recognized some of them.

"It went to the heart, you know? To lose that amount of people, and there are still people unaccounted for," she said as the parade wound around the predominantly black and poor community that remains largely a debris field. "I lost a son, not in Katrina but after Katrina. I think he just basically died of heartbreak."

The Memorial Day service and jazz funeral parade was to pay tribute to the more than 1,500 people killed in the disaster, along with U.S. military personnel killed over the years in battle. It was organized by the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association, formed by residents who aim to make sure their community gets rebuilt.

Jazz funerals end on a lively note with the band belting out signature tunes like "When the Saints go Marching In" and "Down by the Riverside." Monday's version was no exception.

'HISTORY'

"That's history, that's home, that's what we do," said Patricia Jones, president of the neighborhood group. The 31-year-old accountant also recognized some of the names read.

Several pastors were on hand to offer encouragement, and to lead a prayer for the newly repaired concrete floodwall three days before the start of the 2006 hurricane season.

Offering optimism is no small feat with destruction, empty homes and now, yards full of weeds, just steps away. Only a small area of the Lower Ninth has running water restored.

"What we should learn from all this is that we need to transcend or rise above what we can see with our own eyes, from our own perspective," the Rev. Oliver Duvernay of Central Missionary Baptist Church told Reuters. "We need to get up a little higher."

Post-Katrina New Orleans is a city of stark contrast. Some neighborhoods are slowly recovering, their streets lined with government-supplied trailers that are temporary homes for families who are renovating.

But not the Lower Ninth. City officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have warned residents here and in New Orleans East their communities face the greatest risk of flooding again in the event of another hurricane this season.

Attendees at the service were told it was not a time to point fingers over the disaster that struck the neighborhood where black families have owned homes for generations.

But residents could not hide their frustration with governments and the Corps, which have been accused by independent engineers of not adequately maintaining flood protection systems.

Across town, about 200 people gathered near the spot where the 17th Street canal breached, sending salty waters of Lake Pontchartrain through the Lakeview neighborhood. Mourners dropped 1,577 carnations into the canal's muddy water, one for each person who died in the storm last year.

A bagpipe played against the thump of a pile driver pounding supports for flood gates at the opening of the canal onto the lake. The gates are designed to stop a storm surge from swamping the canal.

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson)

    New Orleans mourns Katrina's dead with jazz funeral, R, 29.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-29T233542Z_01_N29284113_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-MEMORIAL.xml

In Big Uneasy,

Exit Planning Is Obsession

May 27, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 26 — It begins as a conversation, perhaps over dinner, at the end of the day: Where are you going this year? Then, on to the specifics. Which relative? Which hotel? How many suitcases?

As a symptom of the general uneasiness here, this year's hurricane evacuation talk ranks among the most acute. Within it are the immediate and long-term threats: the unnamed storm everyone may soon have to flee, and the grim likelihood that the next big one could be the knockout punch for this struggling city.

"Everybody I talk to asks, 'What and where is your escape pod?' " said Joseph Maselli Jr., a lawyer downtown. "The talk at lunchtime and in elevators is not, 'What route,' but, 'How soon are you going to leave, what's your plan, where are you going to go?' "

Never has a coming hurricane season generated as much anxiety, many here say. The official start to the season is Thursday but the unofficial worrying has long since begun.

On top of the ever-present reminders of last year's catastrophe — ruined neighborhoods, piles of debris, empty streets — the new threat is proving to be too much for some. Everyone here, it seems, knows someone who is picking up and leaving New Orleans for good.

Many who swear they will not abandon the city have at least set up an alternative home-place somewhere else. Mr. Maselli said he knew "dozens" of people who had already secured a getaway spot — an apartment or a modest second home.

"It's the fear of a second big shoe dropping this quickly," he said. "Everyone says, 'Please, God, don't hit us this year.' "

Mr. Maselli and his wife have been fixing up a family home in Natchez, Miss., up the river, as their hurricane getaway.

The fear may be particularly acute among those relatively unaffected by Hurricane Katrina — people living in the Uptown neighborhood, for instance. Will it be their turn next? Might the Mississippi River levees fail this time?

"Everyone I talk to is filled with a great deal of anxiety," said Anne Milling, who started Women of the Storm, a group that seeks to bring attention to continuing problems from Hurricane Katrina.

"I think it's going to be difficult this year," Mrs. Milling said. "Most all of our friends have made plans. It's remarkable to me: people who have never even thought about it have made plans. I think that now people are looking at a lot of things differently."

At a social gathering this week, "it was discussed tremendously," Mrs. Milling said. "I couldn't get over it. That was the conversation: 'Where are we going to go?' "

Such discussions often end with a vow not to return to the same place as last year, because it was not enough like New Orleans.

A recently completed survey by the University of New Orleans on attitudes after Hurricane Katrina detected unprecedented levels of anxiety about what lies ahead for this city, particularly compared with a similar sampling three years ago.

"I can't tell you how many people are devising an exit strategy," said the director of the survey, Susan Howell, a political scientist. "They don't see a future. Life is too stressful."

Strikingly, Dr. Howell said, the random survey of 470 people in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, conducted in March and April, was carried out among "people in the best conditions," those with relatively intact dwellings.

Though much of the political talk has focused on how to get people to return to the city, Dr. Howell said she noted a challenge that is perhaps equally serious, and that had gone largely unnoticed: "the steady drip out," particularly of middle-class people who see an economy years away from recovery.

The daily strain of life among the ruins is proving too much for many people.

Jay and Lin Kayser, a doctor and a teacher, respectively, live on one of the few unflooded blocks near Lake Pontchartrain — an island of relative normality. "Between my street and Freret Street," several miles to the south, Dr. Kayser said, "all of that was decimated. And that's our world." He and his wife are leaving New Orleans, after decades here.

"The thought of me being 57, waiting for it to be normal again — it's an emotional thing," Dr. Kayser said. "I just don't want to worry about hurricanes and flooding when I'm 70. I just decided I didn't have it in me to stay."

Another doctor who is departing for good, a resident of unflooded Uptown, spoke of doing volunteer cleanup work in one of the hard-hit areas.

"It was heartbreaking," said the doctor, Sam Money. "It was one of these things where, we live in a nice little cocoon, but so much of the city was devastated."

Still, for everyone leaving, or thinking of doing so, thousands more are preparing to hunker down, or at least get ready for another temporary exile.

At the hurricane-preparation stands of stores like Lowe's, and at sporting goods stores selling canoes, boats and boots, clerks report a steady though unpanicked business, so far.

When the first storms strike the Gulf of Mexico this year, Vera Triplett, a resident of the city's hard-hit Gentilly section, plans to be ready. "Our philosophy is, if we need to go, we go," Ms. Triplett said.

Her plans for evacuating are far more precise, "thought out," than they have ever been, said Ms. Triplett, vice president of her neighborhood's civic association. But planning has not dispelled worry.

"There is an underlying fear and anxiety," she said, "because most of the people around here are die-hard New Orleanians."

Some people plan to leave for the entire hurricane season — an approach that harks back to the 19th century, when yellow fever killed thousands here and many abandoned New Orleans for the months when it was likely to be dangerous.

Ann Strub and her husband, Dick, have bought a house in North Carolina. They are leaving New Orleans on Thursday, and they will not return until hurricane season ends.

"We've got lists of everything were going to take," Mrs. Strub said. "Mainly lots of papers."

A resident of Esplanade Avenue, the grand old Creole boulevard, she came through Hurricane Katrina relatively unscathed, but now, like many others here, she is prepared for the worst.

"If it floods in the French Quarter, we're done for," Mrs. Strub said.

"Our whole world is different," she continued. "We live differently. It's very scary."

    In Big Uneasy, Exit Planning Is Obsession, NYT, 27.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/us/27psyche.html


 

Levees Rebuilt Just in Time, but Doubts Remain

NYT

25.5.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/us/25flood.html

Levees Rebuilt Just in Time,

but Doubts Remain

May 25, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

NEW ORLEANS, May 22 — In a breathless finale that has been called one of this generation's greatest adventures in civil engineering, the Army Corps of Engineers has all but completed its repairs to this city's ruined levee system.

With just days to go before the beginning of the hurricane season, the corps' $800 million effort has even improved the system in many ways, engineering experts say, with tougher concrete flood walls, brawny new canal gates and more than 150 miles of new or repaired levees.

But even though all sides agree that the corps has largely achieved its goal, independent engineers say it is the goal that is the real problem. New Orleans is still very much at risk, they say, because the level of protection the corps has reached is still not as strong as the city needs.

Many experts view this hurricane season, which begins on June 1, with trepidation, and hope that the system is not put to a test like Hurricane Katrina before further improvements can be made.

"Some of these things were poorly designed and were almost pre-ordained to fail," said Wayne Clough, the head of a National Research Council team that formed at the request of the Department of Defense in order to assess the corps' investigation of the disaster. Parts that did not fail in Hurricane Katrina, he said, could still have been weakened by the stress of last year's storms. "Just because they've been restored to their condition pre-Katrina doesn't mean they are perfectly safe," he said.

Raymond Seed, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who is one of the corps' most consistent critics, said he did not doubt that the system was, to use the mantra of the corps, "better and stronger" in many ways. But, he asked, "Better enough?"

Professor Seed and other experts who have studied the crazy quilt of levees, flood walls, pumps and gates that have been in the process of being built for more than 40 years now say that they were never adequate to protect hundreds of thousands of people in an urban setting and that the levees themselves are now known to be fundamentally flawed.

Corps officials say that repairing the damage of the last storm while preparing for new ones is a challenge that their organization is up to. But Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley, the director of civil works for the corps, said he could not guarantee that the system would not fail again.

"You don't know what kind of storm you'll get," he said in a recent interview, emphasizing the need for good evacuation planning.

Gen. Robert Crear, the head of the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, said, "We know Katrina was not the worst possible case." What happens from here onward, General Crear said, "is a continuous program to improve" the system over time.

The corps' race to complete the $800 million in projects that it took on after last year's storms has been a 24/7 marathon rich with tension, apprehension, slipping deadlines and quick-and-dirty workarounds. The sheer scope of the work can only be fully appreciated from the air.

Where levees were breached and battered away by Hurricane Katrina's surge and waves, millions of cubic yards of new soil have been put into place along more than half the 350-mile levee system, from the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to the swamps at the southern tip of Louisiana.

Sturdy new gates stand at the mouths of the city's three major drainage canals. Storm-damaged pumps are being renewed, along with New Orleanians' capacity to hope.

In the city's ruined Lower Ninth Ward, 4,000 feet of new levee stands, the old weak I-shaped flood wall replaced with stronger walls that resemble an inverted T. For long stretches of the renewed system, the ground behind the flood walls is now armored with a white span of concrete intended to keep any water that makes it over the top from scouring away the earth.

To the east of the city, at the line of defense facing Lake Borgne, a long fat ribbon of freshly compacted earth, is a levee that will end up being 20 feet high and 11 miles long. Along its seemingly endless stretch of brown soil are yellowish sections, where local soil has been supplemented with tough Mississippi clay.

Along Lake Pontchartrain, at the mouths of the drainage canals that cut deep into New Orleans, enormous new floodgates are nearing completion, intended to keep the storm surge from putting the strain on the faulty flood walls that breached in three places and caused much of the flooding in the central city. That ambitious project has slipped behind schedule. Pumps to drain the canal waters when the gates are closed are late at the 17th Street Canal, and the gates are behind schedule at the London Avenue Canal.

But Col. Lewis F. Setliff III, the commander of the task force that has been rebuilding the system, said he was confident that the projects would be completed within weeks and that until then, an unseasonably early storm surge could be blocked, if necessary, with sheet pilings driven across the canals. Portable diesel-powered pumps would draw water over to the lake side.

It is far from a perfect solution. More powerful, permanent pumping stations are still years away and would have to be approved by Congress. Until then, the level of water in the canals must be kept low, and pumping capacity from the neighborhood pumping stations will have to be reduced — a prospect that greatly raises the risk of street flooding, but avoids catastrophic breaching.

Getting this far required tough talk with the contractors who carry out the corps' plans and 12-hour days at the Federal Reserve Bank Building downtown where Colonel Setliff's task force set up shop.

At the beginning of the work on the western end of the levee, in St. Bernard Parish, the contractor, Granite Construction, fell well behind schedule. The corps had what some workers called a "come-to-Jesus" meeting with Granite about the schedule, and even shook the company by publishing a request for new bids. By some estimates, Granite increased its pace by an estimated 40-fold, and is completing its part of the levee system on schedule.

Some problems remain. The rebuilt eastern wall of the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, which breached and destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward, is now higher than a long stretch of the old wall on the western side of the canal that did not fail during Hurricane Katrina.

In case of a storm with high waters, the western side would overflow first, sending floodwaters into the city.

The corps has asked Congress to approve financing for new gates that could be closed to block surges in that large canal, also known as the Industrial Canal. But that additional level of protection is years away.

Although the corps will continue to raise and toughen the flood walls after the June 1 deadline, it has begun to study the larger question of how to improve the overall protection level. An interim report will come out next month, but the study will not be completed until December 2007. And any new initiatives would have to be approved by Congress.

It was in 1965, after Hurricane Betsy flooded New Orleans, that Congress first approved the city's hurricane protection system, authorizing a system based on what the corps would call "the most severe storm that is considered reasonably characteristic of a region." The corps built the system to protect against a hurricane with wind speeds of what is now considered a Category 2 storm, or up to 110 miles an hour. In many ways, though, that standard fell far short of the region's most severe storms like Hurricane Camille in 1969 or the storm that devastated Galveston, Tex., in 1900.

Over the years, experts and federal agencies have urged the corps to build to higher standards, but corps officials did not change course. Corps officials say that they build what Congress authorizes them to build and that shifting large projects is difficult once they are under way.

"The impression that we get is that the corps, once it's locked on a track, will not take input from outside groups," said Ivor van Heerden, a founder of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center.

Now, Mr. van Heerden said, "It seems like Louisiana is now having to pay for not getting it right the first time."

He said the system at this point could only fully protect against a Category 2 storm.

The degree of vulnerability was underscored on Monday, when an independent team of researchers led by engineering professors at the University of California, Berkeley, and supported by the National Science Foundation released a report that found the hurricane protection system riddled with errors in design, construction and maintenance — a pattern of inattention to safety that caused the system to crumble in a hurricane that should have, for the most part, caused little more than wind damage and a day or so of street flooding.

"The overall New Orleans flood protection system," Professor Seed said in a briefing last weekend, "must be considered suspect."

    Levees Rebuilt Just in Time, but Doubts Remain, NYT, 25.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/us/25flood.html?hp&ex=1148616000&en=9fbfe1275d526c4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A storm of trouble

Posted 5/24/2006 12:15 AM ET
USA Today
By Marilyn Adams

MIAMI — As coastal residents nervously await the start of a new hurricane season in June, they're confronting another fright: the exorbitant price and short supply of insurance for wind damage.

Huge losses from Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 have sent the homeowners insurance industry into a panicked retreat from the USA's coastline. In Florida, which was hit by eight major hurricanes in two years, insurers are refusing to renew hundreds of thousands of homeowners policies to reduce exposure to claims.

Residents, many of whom are still patching up last year's hurricane damage, now face breathtaking insurance rate increases.

In Key West, homeowner Teri Johnston's wind storm premium has more than doubled from last year. The cost this year to insure her 1,500-square-foot home against fire, wind and flood: $14,742.

Ida Franklin, 89, has lived in her little North Miami house for 39 years. She's paying $5,100 a year in premiums for homeowners insurance, up $1,000 from last year. Her insurance company paid $10,000 to settle a 2005 hurricane claim. But she had to spend $10,000 of her own money to fix damage that her bare-bones policy didn't cover. Just as worrisome: a critical shortage of contractors and roofing materials. Seven months after Hurricane Wilma ripped off Franklin's roof shingles, work finally began this week.

Franklin, a widow, shares the house and expenses with her daughter and son-in-law, Ellen and Clifford Wurtz. "If my kids hadn't moved in with me, I couldn't afford to stay here," she says.

As rates go higher and coverage is terminated, homeowners with mortgages have no choice but to find coverage at whatever price. Lenders require it.

Several states along the East and Gulf coasts, including Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Massachusetts, offer state-run insurance programs for coastal homeowners who can't get private insurance. Florida's program has grown so big, it's poised to become the largest insurer of homes in the state. But public programs are no bargain; most offer bare-bones coverage at a high price.

Many coastal residents are trading higher deductibles for premiums slightly lower than they'd otherwise be. Homeowners who have paid for their homes don't have to carry wind storm insurance, and some owners are opting to take the risk and do without.

A coastal wave

The insurance upheaval is not limited to Florida or other Southeastern states typically rattled by hurricanes. Alarmed by forecasts of more major hurricanes in coming years, insurance companies are canceling policies and refusing to issue new ones as far north as New York and Massachusetts and as far west as Texas.

Edward Liddy, CEO of Allstate, the USA's second-largest property insurer, says the scope of losses from Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes last year — nearly $58 billion — surprised the insurance industry.

"That told the entire industry that we need to do something differently," he says. Allstate paid $5 billion in claims for 2005 hurricane damage.

Liddy's company recently announced it won't write new policies in metropolitan New York City and won't renew nearly 30,000 policies in that region.

It has been nearly 70 years since a major hurricane struck the New York area. Today, the insured value of coastal real estate in that area is almost as high as that along the entire Florida coast. Allstate is most exposed among the insurers, with a 25% market share in the New York metropolitan area.

Retired New York City police officer Owen Reiter of Staten Island couldn't believe it when he recently got a letter from Allstate.

It said his homeowners policy, in force for 21 years, would not be renewed because of last year's hurricanes in the Southeast. In the letter, Allstate said it believes hurricanes "are possible all along the East Coast in coming years."

When Reiter called another insurance company, he was told his premium would be $975 a year, 80% more than he was paying Allstate. He's still shopping for coverage. "It's unfair," he says.

What's alarming insurance companies such as Allstate is not just the record insurance claims paid, but also the prospect of more frequent and more violent storms. The steamy tropical air and ocean waters that breed hurricanes off the coast of Africa are more conducive to hurricane formation than usual, the National Hurricane Center says. Government hurricane scientists here Monday predicted 2006 will be a "very active" hurricane season, with eight to 10 hurricanes forming in the Atlantic.

The scientists also have said hurricanes could pound the Atlantic and Gulf coasts with more frequency and intensity for a decade or more to come.

Scientists say the water in areas of the Atlantic Ocean where hurricanes form is running 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal. Also, crisscrossing winds that normally help prevent tropical disturbances from organizing into spiraling hurricanes are absent.

Meanwhile, more Americans now live along the coast than ever before, and the value of their homes has skyrocketed.

Not-so-sunny outlook

No place has been hit harder by the insurance industry's retreat than Florida, which has 2,100 miles of coastline and nearly 18 million residents. This is not Florida's first homeowners insurance crisis. That came after Hurricane Andrew demolished or damaged more than 100,000 homes near Miami in August 1992. Eleven small insurers failed.

But, since 2004, insurers have paid $30 billion in Florida hurricane claims, wiping out years of profits here.

State Farm, the state's largest private property insurer, has requested a 70% average rate increase statewide, and a 95% rate increase for mobile homes. It won't renew 39,000 wind storm insurance policies, and is canceling all its condominium building policies, about 1,500 statewide.

"We're taking these steps so we can stay in Florida," says State Farm spokesman Chris Neal.

Meanwhile, Allstate, in addition to the New York pullback, announced it will not renew 120,000 Florida policies when they come up for renewal later this year. That's on top of 95,000 Florida policies Allstate decided not to renew last year. In Louisiana, many insurers are declining to write new policies in coastal areas south of Interstate 10.

Robert Hunter, insurance director for the Consumer Federation of America and a former insurance regulator, calls the insurers' pullback in Florida and elsewhere "bizarre."

"Insurance companies are supposed to bring stability to a situation, not instability," he says.

He thinks Florida should join other hurricane-prone states such as Louisiana and Texas to form a regional wind storm insurance program to spread the risk.

The scramble by Allstate, State Farm, Nationwide and other companies doesn't mean big insurers are losing money. Despite hurricane-related losses in several states, the property-casualty insurance industry posted a record $43 billion in profits in 2005. But the same year, homeowners insurers paid out $7.3 billion more in claims than they collected in premiums, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Liddy, of Allstate, says the pullback in homeowners coverage is justified.

"If you look at the East Coast from Maine to Florida, there's a lot of exposure there," he says.

Insurance companies' hurricane losses have reverberated through the reinsurance market, where insurance companies go to insure themselves against huge, unanticipated losses. If insurers can buy reinsurance now, it's at least twice as expensive as a year ago, the Insurance Information Institute says. That's helping drive homeowners' rate increases.

High, higher ...

After years of extraordinary insurance rate increases, Johnston, the Key West homeowner, can't bear the thought of another.

"People think we live in million-dollar mansions," says Johnston, president of a homeowners group pushing for lower rates. "I'm living in a little concrete block house."

Johnston, who still has a mortgage, says her wind policy alone costs $11,856, more than double last year's premium. It's almost four times what she paid in 2004. Her deductible is $18,000, meaning she couldn't file a claim unless wind damage were to exceed that. She has never filed a wind damage claim.

Her wind storm policy is issued by Citizens Property Insurance, Florida's state-run insurer of last resort and the only company writing wind insurance in the Florida Keys.

Because of the retreat by private companies, Citizens is about to become the largest property insurer statewide, surpassing State Farm. Citizens is on the verge of inheriting as many as 300,000 policies from Poe Financial, a Tampa insurer forced this month to liquidate under the weight of last year's claims. If all those go to Citizens, it will swell to 1.1 million policies.

"If Citizens did not exist, there would be chaos here," says its chairman, Bruce Douglas, a Jacksonville businessman.

Citizens has requested a 45% average statewide rate increase for wind storm policies in coastal areas. In some parts of South Florida near Miami and Fort Lauderdale, rates could jump more than 60%. Fearing an unraveling of homeowners' insurance safety net, Gov. Jeb Bush last week signed sweeping insurance reform legislation. The new law allocates $1.2 billion for Citizens and for preparedness programs. Citizens was left with a $1.7 billion deficit after last year's claims.

The new law sets up matching grants to help lure new insurers to Florida. It requires the entire state to meet stronger building codes.

It also provides funds to help homeowners harden their houses against hurricanes with metal shutters over windows, tie-downs for roofs, stronger garage doors and other defenses.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, the state's former insurance regulator, advocates a federal catastrophe insurance plan financed by homeowners insurance premiums everywhere.

It would establish a fund to help pay for losses resulting from natural disasters whose damage exceeds a state's financial ability to recover, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards and ice storms.

"This is a national problem," says Gallagher, a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor. "We need national answers."

    A storm of trouble, NYT, 24.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2006-05-23-hurricane-insurance-usat_x.htm

Judge Steps In

for Poor Inmates Without Justice

Since Hurricane

May 23, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE EATON

NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Katrina took his house, his courtroom and, Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr. says, his faith in the way his city treats poor people facing criminal charges.

Nine months after the storm, more than a thousand jailed defendants have had no access to lawyers, the judge says, because the public defender system is desperately short of money and staffing, without a computer system or files or even a list of clients.

And so Judge Hunter, 46, a former New Orleans police officer, is moving to let some of the defendants without lawyers out of jail. He has suspended prosecutions in most cases involving public defenders. And, alone among a dozen criminal court judges, he has granted a petition to free a prisoner facing serious charges without counsel, and is considering others.

It is, he said in an interview, his duty under the Constitution. "Something needs to be done, it's that simple," he said. "I'm the lightning rod, yes."

The district attorney's office opposes letting defendants back out on the street, saying the court should find them lawyers. But Judge Hunter said he has had little luck finding private firms willing to take on most indigents' cases, and there appears to be no money to pay their expenses.

The public defenders' office, run not by City Hall but by a parish board, is basically broke. Louisiana, alone among the states, relies mainly on local court fees — mostly surcharges on traffic tickets — to finance its public defenders, according to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

It is a financing system that Judge Hunter and Calvin Johnson, the chief judge of the criminal court in New Orleans, have recently found to be unconstitutional because it forces poor people to pay for the system. The Louisiana attorney general's office says it plans to appeal those decisions.

In Orleans Parish, the traffic and the tickets both evaporated after Hurricane Katrina. Most of the office's 42 part-time public defenders were laid off. And they were, by many accounts, inadequate to begin with; a new study sponsored by the federal Justice Department says that the office probably needs 70 full-time lawyers, a computer system for case management, support staff and a reliable source of financing.

The study calls for scrapping the current system, which an appeals court decision recently described as "overburdened, underfunded and perhaps unconstitutional." The public defenders' office in New Orleans is slated to receive a $2.8 million federal grant on May 31 — but the study says it needs more than $10 million to get up and running and operate for a year.

The criminal justice system in New Orleans was notoriously troubled long before the storms, and if anything, it is now worse. Officials hope to resume jury trials soon for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, but still do not know if they will have enough courtrooms, jurors or witnesses to proceed.

On a recent Friday morning, in a borrowed courtroom in the Federal Building downtown, Judge Hunter listened to testimony from Ronald Dunn, 43, who was arrested on Aug. 19, 10 days before Hurricane Katrina hit, on a charge of possessing crack cocaine. Like the vast majority of the defendants in criminal court here, he cannot afford to hire a lawyer, and so would normally be represented by a public defender.

Handcuffed, shackled and wearing jailhouse orange, Mr. Dunn told the court that as the water rose, he spent four frightening days without food in the House of Detention, and was then moved from prison to prison, losing touch with his family.

In the nine months since the hurricane, he said, he has never even spoken to a lawyer. "I don't have a lawyer," Mr. Dunn said. "I never been to court." Without a lawyer a defendant cannot even plead guilty.

Pamela R. Metzger, the director of the Criminal Court Clinic at Tulane Law School, has petitioned the court to release Mr. Dunn and more than a dozen other poor prisoners in similar circumstances. Releasing them would not hamper the prosecution, she argued, and would give them an opportunity to try to gather evidence in their own defense. And, she said later, "to be free from imprisonment and punishment without due process of law."

But David S. Pipes, an assistant district attorney, argued against releasing Mr. Dunn, whom he described as a five-time felon. (Court documents show that Mr. Dunn has been arrested 10 times since 1990 and has pleaded guilty to previous drug and theft charges.)

More broadly, Mr. Pipes said: "The proper solution for someone who does not have an attorney is to get them an attorney. Releasing them does not cure anything and does not protect their rights."

Of course, everyone in the courtroom could describe a life turned upside down by Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Pipes is working out of an office in an old nightclub because the district attorney's office flooded. Professor Metzger is commuting to New Orleans from Atlanta.

And Judge Hunter is driving back and forth to Tampa, Fla., where his family fled, or Baton Rouge, where he has bought a house where he plans to live with his wife and teenage son, a cousin and a widowed aunt.

Over the years, the district attorney and others have accused Judge Hunter of being too soft on defendants, and of having too high an acquittal rate in nonjury trials. (He says he is simply fair.) But even longtime critics like the independent Metropolitan Crime Commission say that when it comes to the public defenders' office, he is doing the right thing.

"I don't have any problem with what he's trying to do there," said Rafael C. Goyeneche III, president of the commission. "He's demanding that it function properly."

The battle over indigent defendants is proceeding on several levels. Last month, Judge Hunter granted a petition for release filed by Professor Metzger on behalf of Donald Crockett, a mentally ill man accused of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He has been in jail since October 2003.

The district attorney's office appealed, and an appellate court found that additional procedural steps were required. Though it reversed the judge's decision, the court suggested such releases might be possible once the program completely runs out of money. Professor Metzger said she planned to appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has submitted a budget that would double, to $20 million, the appropriation for defenders around the state, and a legislative task force set up before Hurricane Katrina continues to work on the issue.

The Louisiana State Bar Association has made fixing the public defender system a priority and has paid for both another study and for the salaries of three defenders for a year, said Frank X. Neuner, president of the bar association. In Orleans Parish, the criminal court judges have appointed new directors (including Professor Metzger) to oversee the public defenders' program.

Judge Johnson, who runs the criminal court and is a former public defender himself, has been working to build a consensus for changing the system, something he said he has supported for years. He was the first judge after Hurricane Katrina to order an investigation into whether the public defenders could adequately represent the poor.

But having Judge Hunter halt prosecutions and consider freeing inmates has helped focus attention on the issue, Judge Johnson said.

"You have to have some guy out there rattling the saber, absolutely," Judge Johnson said. "I think the message was loud, clear and necessary."

Judge Steps In for Poor Inmates Without Justice Since Hurricane, NYT, 23.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/us/23court.html


 

The Vote in New Orleans        NYT        May 21, 2006

    An Incumbent Proves Resilient in New Orleans        NYT        22.5.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/us/22orleans.html

An Incumbent Proves Resilient

in New Orleans

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

NEW ORLEANS, May 21 — The extraordinary circumstances stacked against Mayor C. Ray Nagin by Hurricane Katrina — a displaced electorate, an emptied city treasury, a punishing leadership test — could not finally trump a constant force of New Orleans politics, the power of incumbency.

By a margin of four percentage points, voters re-elected Mr. Nagin on Saturday to guide the city through the next four years, having rejected the temptation to change leaders in the midst of a crisis.

Mr. Nagin drew the vast majority of the votes of black residents, many of whom said they wanted to retain a black incumbent rather than see City Hall in the hands of a white mayor for the first time since 1978. At the same time, enough voters in the city's whitest precincts decided they were comfortable with the unscripted personality of a mayor who has dominated headlines, nearly tripling his support in those precincts from last month's primary. Those were areas in which Mr. Nagin's challenger, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, needed virtually unanimous support to win.

Anthony Young, a black evacuee living in Jackson, Miss., who returned to the city on Saturday to vote for Mr. Nagin, spoke for many voters in explaining his support.

"He's the only one that stayed through the storm," Mr. Young said. "He's got the experience. He's got a better idea of how to carry people through it."

Pres Kabacoff, a white real estate developer and Landrieu supporter, said that the way Mr. Nagin conducted himself after the primary restored much of his credibility and attracted conservative whites leery of Mr. Landrieu's liberal reputation.

"He showed the style and charisma and sort of the glib way of handling himself that caused those people on the fence to just say, 'I'll stick with him,' " Mr. Kabacoff said.

Despite the advantages of holding office, however, Mr. Nagin was no ordinary incumbent. His off-the-cuff style in the national spotlight earned him blistering criticism and outright mockery. He was far outspent by Mr. Landrieu, whose name recognition rivaled the mayor's. In a crowded primary last month, the mayor failed to win 40 percent of the vote, prompting many people to declare his campaign moribund, if not dead.

The candidates split the absentee vote cast by . thousands of voters displaced from the city by Hurricane Katrina, who were expected to be far more supportive of the mayor.

At a victory news conference on Sunday, Mr. Nagin compared himself to David facing Goliath, saying he had learned that "a well-placed slingshot is very effective." Asked what he would say to those who were surprised at his re-election, he replied, "They don't get the uniqueness of New Orleans, they don't really get what really happened during Katrina — all they saw was those awful images — and they really don't get Ray Nagin." Then he added, "Sometimes I don't get Ray Nagin, so it's all right."

Some political analysts here said the victory was a triumph of political acumen and charisma; others said it came down to simple demographics in a city whose electorate is predominantly black. A preliminary examination of the results showed that the mayor won nearly 80 percent of the black vote, while his white opponent won about the same percentage of the white vote, said Greg Rigamer, an elections analyst who has worked for the Louisiana secretary of state.

"This was a case of, My core constituency is bigger than your core constituency," Mr. Rigamer said.

Still, a crossover vote of more than 20 percent is considered high, said Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans, especially since only 5 percent of whites voted for Mr. Nagin in the primary.

One factor was a series of forums that exposed voters to the contrast in the candidates' personalities. Mr. Landrieu was scripted, careful and short on specifics that might have attracted white voters who were dissatisfied with the mayor's leadership, while Mr. Nagin's knowledge of the intricacies of the rebuilding effort allowed him to speak with authority and in detail.

"But that's not the usual incumbency advantage," Dr. Howell said. "The usual incumbency advantage is money, and that in a crisis you like the way this person is performing."

Mr. Nagin also received the endorsement of the only significant Republican candidate in the primary, Rob Couhig, and of Virginia Boulet, a corporate lawyer who also a candidate. Mr. Couhig and Ms. Boulet are white. "They can't really just deliver their voters, but they can give a cue that Nagin is acceptable to business," Dr. Howell said. Mr. Nagin said Sunday that he intended to give the two candidates a role in his administration.

Voting along racial lines may be a tradition here, but it is not how Mr. Nagin was elected the first time. In 2002, his first step into politics, he was supported by New Orleans businesses and won more than 80 percent of the white vote but only about 40 percent of the black vote. This time around, the trials of Hurricane Katrina, and the criticism heaped upon him by outsiders, garnered sympathy among blacks.

"New Orleans has a pretty significant poor and undereducated population who for a long time dealt with adversity," Mr. Rigamer said. "With respect to his performance, a lot of the people who were most severely affected were a little more tolerant."

Turnout in the run-off was 38 percent of registered voters, an increase of about 5,000 votes over the primary, when 36 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

It was not clear how many evacuees had voted, or how they had split, because many evacuees had returned to the city on Saturday to vote. But the number of absentee ballots cast was up by more than 2,300. (That number includes votes cast early in New Orleans, but does not include evacuees who traveled to New Orleans to vote on Election Day.) The absentee votes split almost 50-50 between the two candidates, with Mr. Nagin leading by less than 200 votes.

It is not clear why the absentee electorate did not follow the larger pattern. But one study of voting in the primary showed that evacuees living closer to New Orleans were more likely to be white, and also more likely to vote. That was in part a matter of access — there were satellite early voting stations throughout Louisiana, but none in Houston or other cities with heavy concentrations of black evacuees.

The business leaders who supported Mr. Nagin's first run for office deserted him this time in part because of what they perceived as his lack of credibility with Baton Rouge and Washington, where officials have enormous influence over the city's efforts to rebuild.

But Mr. Nagin played down concerns that businesses would leave the city because of his re-election, saying many companies had expressed an interest in opportunities .

"Once they get over the shock of me winning this election," he said with a laugh, "I think we're going to be O.K."

    An Incumbent Proves Resilient in New Orleans, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/us/22orleans.html?hp&ex=1148356800&en=c45d2b5c611430b1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Man in the News

New Start for Familiar Face:

Clarence Ray Nagin

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 21 — As he delivered his victory speech on Saturday night, Mayor C. Ray Nagin was interrupted by an overexuberant supporter.

"Ladies and gentleman, somebody put a muzzle on this brother to my right," Mr. Nagin said coolly, breaking into his own speech. He went right on into a quick litany of thank-yous, wisecracks, self-mocking reproaches and appeals for peace.

Mr. Nagin was as unruffled in his upset victory as he had been facing defeat, better-financed opponents, a cataclysmic flood, the defection of onetime supporters, the partial destruction of his city and skeptical reporters.

"I'm on my boogie board," he said on Sunday after Mass at the historic St. Peter Claver Church in the Tremé neighborhood. "I'm just going to keep on riding."

Mr. Nagin is a mayor who has elevated being cool to a policy as well as a style. He improvises on the stump and — some former staff members say — in his second-floor suite at City Hall as well. Critics say this has served him and his city only intermittently well during his first four years, as some promises failed to materialize, crucial staff members frequently left or were forced out, and the road through Hurricane Katrina and after proved rough.

On Sunday, Mr. Nagin promised a new beginning, a different staff and an economic boom once federal reconstruction money started flowing, perhaps by late summer.

"We now have the economic stimulus that will happen at unprecedented levels in the city, for us to expand the economic pie and for everyone to get a piece of that pie," Mr. Nagin said at a news conference. "This is our shot. This is our time."

Though he did not address during the campaign the central issue of whether some ruined neighborhoods should be abandoned, he hinted on Sunday for the first time that this might happen by default. The difficulties of reconstruction in some areas could make rebuilding an enormous task, he suggested.

"Reality is setting in, in a lot of neighborhoods," Mr. Nagin said. "People are going back and saying 'Wow, that's pretty awesome. I'm not sure whether I can rebuild in this area.' "

For all the post-election exuberance, however, Mr. Nagin's own complicated trajectory — before, during and since the hurricane — offers only ambiguous confirmation of his brighter vision for the city and his administration of it.

On August 28, 2005 — the day before Hurricane Katrina hit — Mr. Nagin's most notable accomplishments to date were to have run an administration largely free of scandal and to have removed politics from municipal contracting.

In a city with a small economy, where the budget had for years represented an irresistible temptation to City Hall's friends, relatives and hangers-on, this was considered no small thing, and Mr. Nagin seemed a safe bet for re-election the next year.

Less passive accomplishments were harder to identify, however. He came into office in 2002 a political unknown, the highly paid head of Cox Cable in New Orleans whose long ascent from humble beginnings in the Sixth Ward had not carried him into the intersecting inner circles of cash and politics in the city.

He was divorced from the alphabet soup of black political organizations that dominated politics for years in this city. And he set himself up as a dragon-slayer, going after what was widely perceived — and partly confirmed by subsequent investigations — as a municipality for sale.

Political professionals at first considered him a longshot, just as they did this year when his post-hurricane gaffes had apparently sunk him low. But Mr. Nagin astonished the professionals and everyone else in 2002 when he came in first. And now he has astonished them again.

Clarence Ray Nagin was born on June 11, 1956, at Charity Hospital, to a father who cut fabric in a clothing factory and a mother who ran a lunch counter. Mr. Nagin attended an integrated high school but went to college at Tuskegee University in Alabama, one of the most venerable of the nation's historically black institutions and one with a distinctive ethic of personal success.

Still today, Mr. Nagin's rhetoric is infused with a worshipful regard for business acumen and the private sector, an attitude that initially endeared him to the white executives who mostly deserted him after Hurricane Katrina.

But some of Mr. Nagin's grand, market-oriented ideas, like selling the airport or developing the riverfront, stalled. A drive to crack down on municipal corruption that was Mr. Nagin's calling-card in 2002 resulted in little more than the arrest of some cab drivers and city employees accused of abusing the permit system for taxis.

His staff choices have generally been reckoned unsuccessful, ranging from a chief administrative officer fired early in his administration, Kimberly Williamson Butler, who wound up in jail this spring after defying state judges, to the police chief, Edwin P. Compass III, who gained international notoriety during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for exaggerating the extent of the city's anarchy. He, too, was let go.

Many of these difficulties, insiders and observers say, stem from a businessman's habit of going it alone and not consulting others. Mr. Nagin seemed to half acknowledge this difficulty at the Sunday news conference, though he minimized it. "It's just my style that gets people to calling me a lone wolf," he said.

Those close to Mr. Nagin, while acknowledging some of his political faults, say that now, with unprecedented offers of help pouring into New Orleans, the mayor has a renewed chance at helping his city.

"Pre-Katrina it was hard to get good people in government service," said John Georges, a longtime friend who runs a food distribution business. "He never really attracted a good team. I think he's got a huge opportunity to bring in the right team. More people than ever are willing to serve."

Still, for all his conciliatory talk on Sunday, Mr. Nagin proved again that he had not lost his ability to throw verbal bombs.

Responding to a provocative suggestion that businessmen might now leave New Orleans because of his re-election, Mr. Nagin showed a rare flash of anger.

"In breaking down the corrupt, bankrupt political system in New Orleans, I had to do it in a systematic way," he said. "The first piece was the political community. The next piece was kind of the religious community. The next piece was the business community. And the business community now has to make a decision, if they want to participate in a new paradigm, a paradigm that says, 'We're not going to be like the New Orleans of old. We're going forward.' "

Mr. Nagin added: "If they opt out of that, where are they going to go? Where are they going to find a New Orleans of 1840?"

    New Start for Familiar Face: Clarence Ray Nagin, NYT, 22.5.2006,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/us/22nagin.html

Voters Re-elect Nagin

as Mayor in New Orleans

May 21, 2006
The New yorkTimes
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 20 — C. Ray Nagin, the unpredictable mayor who charted a sometimes erratic course for his city through Hurricane Katrina and after, won a narrow re-election victory here Saturday.

Mr. Nagin, who will now lead the city through four crucial rebuilding years, fended off a strong challenge from Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the scion of one of Louisiana's leading political families, in a vote that see-sawed all night. With all of the city's 442 precincts reporting, Mr. Nagin had 52 percent of the vote, while Mr. Landrieu received 48 percent.

Mr. Nagin, an African-American, won about 21 percent of the votes of whites, as well as over 80 percent of the black vote, according to a local elections analyst and political consultant, Greg Rigamer. Mr. Landrieu appeared to have lost black votes that he picked up in last month's primary, Mr. Rigamer said in an interview.

In claiming victory before his supporters tonight, Mr. Nagin said it was time to end the arguments over how to rebuild the city and to begin the arduous task. "It's time for this community to start the healing process," Mr. Nagin said, adding that he intended to continue working with his opponent.

Mr. Landrieu, who is white, called on residents in his concession speech to unite behind the mayor in rebuilding a city that has barely begun to recover from the flooding.

"I want to congratulate Mayor Nagin," Mr. Landrieu said. "This was a hard-fought campaign. The people of New Orleans conducted themselves in a dignified and thoughtful way."

Mr. Nagin raised far less money than Mr. Landrieu did and had little of the business and establishment support that helped him take office four years ago. But he appeared to benefit from a surge of votes cast by those displaced from the city by the hurricane, who were encouraged to vote with absentee ballots and at satellite polling stations set up around Louisiana.

Mr. Nagin retained the strong allegiance of black residents here, who are still in the majority, albeit more narrowly than before the hurricane. They did not blame him for missteps during the storm and afterwards, and many said they simply wanted the man who led the city during the last hurricane to continue leading it through future ones.

For months, Mr. Nagin played on that underlying loyalty and remade his political persona, going from a candidate originally favored by whites to one making an overt appeal to black unity and pride.

A speech in January in which he vowed that New Orleans would once again be a "chocolate city" outraged whites, but brought a smile to many black voters.

In addition, conservative whites who have long mistrusted the Landrieu family have consistently found Mr. Nagin's business background —he was a cable television company executive here — appealing.

Other white voters, in interviews, unfavorably contrasted Mr. Landrieu's stiff delivery with the mayor's resonant New Orleans colloquialisms. And during Mr. Nagin's administration, in notable contrast to those of his predecessors, there have been no patronage or other scandals.

In his victory speech, Mr. Nagin pointedly thanked President Bush, of whom he had previously spoken critically.

"To President Bush, yeah, I want to thank you, Mr. President," Mr. Nagin said. "You and I have probably been the most vilified politicians in the country. But I want to thank you for moving that promise in Jackson Square forward. You are delivering on your promise, and I want to thank you for delivering for the citizens of New Orleans."

Mr. Nagin came out on top in an April primary, but opponents collectively received a majority of the votes.

With Mr. Landrieu and Mr. Nagin taking the same muted position on the central issue facing this city — both refused to rule out rebuilding in any area, no matter how badly damaged by flooding — the race was about who was most competent to lead New Orleans out of its current predicament.

Mostly unspoken was the larger reality: that the federal money destined for the city, as much as $10 billion that would perhaps arrive by late summer, would have far more influence on its recovery than the actions of any mayor.

Mr. Landrieu accused Mr. Nagin of botching the recovery. He said he had failed to put into place a rebuilding plan and to get ruined cars, garbage and debris off the streets.

"This race only comes down to leadership, competence and performance," he said Thursday. "The rebuild's got to start sometime, and it's not happening."

Mr. Landrieu repeatedly suggested that the city's finances were in disorder and that New Orleans might need to declare bankruptcy, as some civic groups here have suggested.

Then, earlier this week, Mr. Nagin announced a $150 million loan from a consortium of banks, two French and two American, to keep the city going through next year — a deal that turned out not to have been fully completed.

Throughout the race, Mr. Nagin used his opponent's connections against him, suggesting that the election of Mr. Landrieu would perpetuate a family "dynasty." (Mr. Landrieu's father, Moon Landrieu, was the city's last white mayor, and his sister Mary is the senior United States senator from Louisiana.) He characterized Mr. Landrieu's record as sketchy, after 16 years in the Legislature and two as lieutenant governor.

"I think Mitch is a good guy," Mr. Nagin said Friday. "I love him to death. But he's not really an implementer."

The choice was not clear-cut, though, and residents often expressed confusion over it in the days leading up to the election. Above all, the election sometimes seemed merely a distraction in the context of a city still facing questions over its survival.

Still, as the election neared and increasingly began to seem like a referendum on the city's future, attention began to focus on it.

Saturday was a clear, hot day, and in the areas that did not flood during the hurricane, volunteers stood at street corners waving signs, while flatbed trucks and even a fire engine passed by packed with cheering supporters. In the flooded areas, piles of debris stood outside empty houses still showing last August's water line, and there was little life. The medians of the broad, silent boulevards in Mid-City were crowded with signs for the candidates.

Among voters on Saturday there was unease, dissatisfaction over the recovery, and — for those who had been displaced — a longing to return. Still, African-Americans voters for the most part said they were standing by Mr. Nagin.

"The city is starting to show a little progress, but only a little progress," said Idoshia Gordon, reciting the list of family members — cousins, siblings, aunts — who had lost houses to the hurricane.

Despite these reservations, she said was going to vote for Mr. Nagin. "I want to see him carry it through," she said. "I want him to finish it out."

Many whites were openly angry at the mayor.

"We've got to change the situation," said David Castillo after voting at Jesuit High School in Mid-City, where construction workers were busy on a building that was badly flooded. "It's a bad situation."

Others were more forgiving of the mayor, who voted at the school.

"You did everything you could, my darlin', " said Theresa Graffin, embracing Mr. Nagin, who buttonholed as many people as he could and appeared cool and collected.

Less than half of the city's population of 455,000 has returned, by most counts.

    Voters Re-elect Nagin as Mayor in New Orleans, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/us/21election.html?hp&ex=1148270400&en=cf4b5960d60f0659&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In the Lower Ninth Ward,

a Day of Voting and Reunions

May 21, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAYNA RUDD

NEW ORLEANS, May 20 — Veronica Williams and Michael Vaughn raced across the parking lot of the New Pilgrim Baptist Church on Saturday morning, not to cast ballots in the voting booths inside, but to share a hug long enough to make up for all those missed over the last nine months.

"Seeing you feels like home," said Mr. Vaughn, 50, who was rescued from the roof of his house here after Hurricane Katrina wiped it from its foundation. "You know, I have stopped crying. I can't cry no more. But I'm so glad to see you."

For these childhood friends and hundreds of other former residents of the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, Election Day was like a family reunion, with gospel music blaring in the parking lot as voters lingered to swap stories of the storm.

Ms. Williams, who said she spent 10 weeks in a shelter before settling in with relatives in San Antonio, was the first in line when the polls opened at 6 a.m. for the mayoral runoff race between the incumbent, C. Ray Nagin, and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

Ms. Williams had driven 10 hours the day before to vote at New Pilgrim, and after casting her ballot she waited for more than an hour in her black sedan, as though the true purpose of the long trip was outside.

"I knew that I would see him here," Ms. Williams said of Mr. Vaughn. "I didn't know if he was dead or alive. But somehow, I just knew he wasn't."

By breakfast time, the lot was dotted with huddles of long-losts laughing and crying and talking over old times. They reminisced about Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and how their community had stuck together. They shared their individual experiences of Hurricane Katrina, and how their community had fared since.

"We made it then, and we'll make it now," said Leon Vaughn, who is not related to Mr. Vaughn. "We've just got to find everybody so we can build it back up."

They found one another at the church, which recently reopened and on Saturday served as the central polling place for the Lower Ninth, an African-American neighborhood all but vacant after suffering the worst of the disaster. The marquee in front of the large white-brick building read, "The church where the Holy Ghost has his way, We're back!"

Across the street sat a vacant house, all the windows blown out, the front spray-painted TFW, the rescuers' code for Total Family Withdrawal. Paint-stripped cars filled with trash bags lined the street, as they have for months. The only business open nearby, a convenience store four blocks away, was selling two slices of white bread in plastic wrap for 25 cents.

Michael Vaughn, who spent days that "ran into each other" in the Convention Center before evacuating to Texas, said he had yet to find any relatives except his 96-year-old mother. "I need therapy," said Mr. Vaughn, who has returned to New Orleans but not to the Lower Ninth. "I slept next to dead bodies. I heard women getting raped in the night.

"The worse of it was I felt alone," he added. "I didn't have my family to help me through it."

As this group dispersed, laughter leaped from a cluster of three men in their 20's surrounding their former high school guidance counselor, Dorothy Boyd, updating her on the condition of their community.

"I remember when these two boys were little," Ms. Boyd said. "I'm glad to see that they aren't lost."

Brandon Anthony, who left the city a few hours before the storm demolished his home, spoke numbly about what is there now.

"It looks like an open field," he told his buddies. "There might be six houses left, and they are ruined."

Jamar Francoise added: "All we have left is the spirit of this community. All of our material things are gone. But I know now it's not about that, it never was."

In a corner of the parking lot was a white Jeep Cherokee, spilling a soundtrack. "I believe he'll save me," came the gospel lyrics. "I believe he'll heal me, I believe he'll hold me, Oh yes he will."

Carole Pierce, whose mother died on a roof awaiting rescue, was one of dozens of neighborhood residents working inside monitoring the polls.

"People think this is the end for us," she said, her voice a mix of hope and anger. "It's just the beginning."

    In the Lower Ninth Ward, a Day of Voting and Reunions, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/us/21church.html

In New Orleans,

Suspense but No Drama

as Race Ends

May 20, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 19 — At rallies, in grocery store aisles and at church pulpits, the two candidates for mayor sought last-minute votes on Friday, the day before the election, under a blanket of muggy late-spring heat. But with the city's future on the line, the relaxed rhythms of New Orleans made an odd contrast to the tensions of the race.

Over the last weeks, voters have been treated to a series of tepid debates and halfhearted campaign appearances, which, far from defining the path the battered city should take, have only obscured it.

There are leisurely gaps between campaign events, with the two candidates, Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, apparently deciding to forgo traditional stumping. It is also difficult to accomplish, with so many voters still out of town.

Neither of the candidates have publicly confronted the most important issue facing the city: whether damaged neighborhoods, vulnerable to future flooding, can or should be brought back. They acknowledge that their goals are virtually identical, arguing instead over who is more competent to accomplish them.

As a result, voters here appear confused. Some say they still have not made up their minds; others express anger at the pace of change without apparently knowing where such change should lead; and still others doggedly stick with Mr. Nagin, even while acknowledging the battering he has taken from critics who cite his loose rhetoric and erratic management of the recovery.

There is hunger for action, but few could say what it should be.

"Mitch Landrieu, I think he's the better candidate to get things done," said Ashley Hansen, walking her dog in the Uptown section. Though previously a Nagin supporter, she said the mayor had "sort of let me down in some of the things he's said."

There is great suspense over the result, because the large number of evacuees, voting with absentee ballots and at satellite polls, have made surveys unreliable. With more than 12,000 absentee ballots already received and more expected, they may well decide the outcome late Saturday night.

"What people are not understanding are the out-of-town voters, and how significant that could be," Mr. Nagin told reporters outside the Whole Foods market on Magazine Street, where he greeted shoppers.

But the instinct of everyone here — candidates, voters and pundits — is that the contest will be close.

Mr. Nagin, struggling against months of damaging publicity about his handling of the sluggish recovery, constant changes in City Hall policy and uncertainty about the city's financial condition, is seeking a mandate to speak authoritatively for his city against skeptics in Baton Rouge and Washington. Mr. Landrieu, who would become the city's first white mayor in 30 years if he wins, argues that a new voice and a fresh approach are needed to lead the recovery, which has barely begun.

Race, as always, is the city's barely spoken divide. In interviews on Friday, black voters again said they were sticking with Mr. Nagin.

"One thing about that mayor, he stayed here during the hurricane," said Louis Scott, a retired longshoreman near the wharves on Tchoupitoulas Street. "He did everything he could for the people. He stayed, and he's got the experience."

Whites, with some exceptions, said they were fed up with the city's limping reconstruction, and would opt for Mr. Landrieu. Mr. Nagin, for his part, promised voters better days while campaigning in his trademark casual style at the market, cooing at a baby by the poultry counter, hugging sales clerks at the flower stand and urging an outdoor diner to get rich: "Make all you can stand, man," he said.

He received barely 6 percent of whites' votes in the primary, but asserted Friday that they were coming back to his camp. There was some evidence of it.

"He's a true New Orleanian. He shoots from the hip," said Bruce Pennington, who is white, shopping at the market. "He may say some stupid things, but as a New Orleanian, I understand his stupidity."

Mr. Landrieu earnestly pleaded for unity — a nod to the 24 percent of black voters who supported him in the primary — and for change, at a noontime rally for campaign workers and supporters, well-attended by leading local businessmen and political figures, at his headquarters on St. Charles Avenue.

"This great city has one chance," Mr. Landrieu said. "It's going to be coming from all of you, holding hands." The familiar faces in the crowd were testimony to his success in rounding up this city's establishment figures, who have largely deserted Mr. Nagin. Mr. Landrieu has raised nearly $4 million, according to his campaign treasurer. Mr. Nagin is known to have raised far less — his list of contributors is far shorter — though his treasurer did not return calls Friday.

There has been relatively little street-level campaigning. Both candidates are extremely well-known — Mr. Landrieu has been in public life for 18 years here, and his family has played a leading political role for nearly five decades. And many neighborhoods are still uninhabited, so a plethora of televised debates has largely substituted for heavy advertising and pavement-pounding.

"The last thing they need is media attention, because there's been so much already," said Ed Renwick, director of the Institute of Politics at Loyola University. Besides, "people refer to Mitch like he's a member of the family. They never say Landrieu. They know them both so well."

Mr. Landrieu's television advertisements have spotlighted individual residents, in neighborhood settings, complaining about the pace of recovery. The lieutenant governor appears in several spots, in one complaining about the continuing presence of flooded-out, ruined cars under the elevated highways, a ghostly presence that has emerged as a symbol of the city's stagnation.

Mr. Nagin has had far less of a campaign presence, on television or otherwise. On Friday, he exhibited no worry at all about being unseated, which would be a rarity in this city's political history.

Instead, Mr. Nagin, a former cable television executive who entered politics only four years ago, once again displayed some astonishment at his current position.

"This is the biggest reality TV show ever, and I'm right in the middle of it," he said.

    In New Orleans, Suspense but No Drama as Race Ends, NYT, 20.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/us/20elect.html?hp&ex=1148184000&en=fd59a605c9f5239f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

New Orleans' aquarium

reflects tourism's woes

Updated 5/19/2006 2:59 AM ET
USA Today
By Elliot Blair Smith

NEW ORLEANS — The penguins survived.

The sharks did not.

For almost nine months, the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas has been closed to the public after Hurricane Katrina swept through this storm-tossed city in August.

The aquarium is New Orleans' crown jewel of visitor attractions along the Mississippi River, where the central business district eases into the French Quarter. It is Louisiana's most popular destination, hosting 730,042 visitors last year, more people than attend Mardi Gras.

But the late-August sun converted the aquarium's glass-canopied interior into a 140-degree tropical inferno. Storm-related power outages starved its giant fish tanks of oxygen.

Days after the storm, rescuers found the aquarium's macaws, parrots, penguins and sea otters panting in stifling heat. Its silver tarpon fish survived by gulping air from the surface of the 132,000-gallon Caribbean Reef tank. But most of its aquatic life, including the sharks, perished. Among the survivors: Spots, the white alligator; King Mydas, the giant green sea turtle; and Patience, the 27-year-old matriarch of a colony of African black-footed penguins.

Today, the non-profit Audubon Nature Institute, which operates the city zoo and aquarium, is under immense financial pressure. The challenges it faces are symptomatic of struggles throughout the state's $9.9 billion hospitality industry, nowhere more than in New Orleans, which historically counted on visitors for $5.5 billion in annual revenue and 85,000 jobs. Tourism is New Orleans' biggest business and the state's second-largest after oil and gas. It generates $600 million a year in state and local taxes.

Angle Davis, Louisiana's secretary of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, estimates the hurricane cost Louisiana $2 billion in visitor spending. Davis says the damage does not end there. In a survey of key visitor markets, her department found that 34% of prospective visitors are less interested in visiting the state than before Katrina; 62% believe the state is less scenic; and only one in five leisure travelers were willing to schedule a trip during hurricane season, which begins June 1.

In uptown New Orleans, where National Guard troops camped after the hurricane, the Audubon Zoo reopened at Thanksgiving. But it loses money, including $3.9 million last year. The aquarium and its Entergy Imax theater downtown typically turn enough profit — $4.9 million in 2005 — to support the city's animal exhibits and its nature center in the eastern part of the city, which was destroyed.

Now, Audubon management must restock aquarium exhibits, rehire staff — after laying off 82% of its 267 workers Oct. 1 — and support debt service on $42 million in general-obligation bonds held by Wall Street investors without the benefit of a single paying customer. It also is hastening to finish $3.5 million in storm-related repairs.

A happy ending?

There might be a happy ending to this story yet. Children's voices are rising again in the French Quarter at a Catholic school whose students visit the aquarium each year.

Before Easter, they raised $600 in a coin-collection drive for the aquarium. Children, parents and teachers around the USA collected thousands of dollars more through bake sales, car washes and concerts. And several leading aquariums contributed their own gifts, including new sharks, stingrays and a school of blue runner.

What's more, penguins do fly. Next week, the Aquarium of the Americas' 19 penguins and two sea otters — rescued days after the storm, hungry and hot, and evacuated to California's Monterey Bay Aquarium for safekeeping — are arriving home on a specially equipped jet, courtesy of FedEx.

The New Orleans aquarium is scheduled to reopen May 26 amid signs that tourists and conventioneers are ready again to look to this city as a destination rather than as a point of escape.

Mardi Gras festivities in February and the Jazz Fest in April surpassed organizers' expectations though not past years' results. In June, the city convention center will host the first major conference since the storm. In September, the Superdome returns to action, hosting an ESPN Monday Night Football game.

"Visitors will come back to New Orleans," says Stephen Perry, chief executive of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. "The real question is, what will be the pace at which people return?" It is a big question. The answer will make all the difference to the local hospitality industry's ability to survive, and lead the state's recovery from Katrina.

The governor-appointed Louisiana Recovery Authority, which is marshalling state comeback efforts, plans to spend about 10% of an expected $332 million in federal economic aid to promote tourism.

Past tourism campaigns returned $16 for each $1 spent, says Davis, the state tourism secretary. The state also is spending about $7 million on a print and TV advertising campaign it calls "Fall in Love with Louisiana All Over Again," featuring endorsements by such celebrities as John Goodman, Wynton Marsalis and Allen Toussaint.

After the storm

New Orleans' central business district looks much as it did before the storm. Banks, brokerages, restaurants and stores bustle during the day. Night life in the French Quarter burns almost till dawn. But Katrina's scars are everywhere:

•Only 41% of New Orleans' world-renowned restaurants are open, according to Tom Weatherly, a spokesman for the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

"It is mostly the independent restaurateurs that have been able to get up and running, and basically the ones that had to. This is their only market," Weatherly says.

•The convention bureau expects to host one-third the number of major shows and only half its normal number of attendees this year, says Fitch Ratings public finance analyst Steve Murray.

•With up to three-quarters of the Big Easy's rooms available, hotel occupancy rates rose as high as 80% in the winter. But government contractors who filled those rooms are getting ready to leave, meaning occupancy rates will fall again.

Historically, business travelers represented only 10% of the city's hospitality business. Since Katrina, they have constituted 90% of the visitor market, according to visitors bureau CEO Perry.

•And though Mardi Gras was hailed widely as a triumph for a city that so recently confronted tragedy, this year's crowds were two-thirds of pre-Katrina levels, reducing direct visitor spending by one-half to $200 million. Many hotels and restaurants have trouble even finding workers.

Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, La., an hour's drive west of New Orleans, was on pace to host a record 250,000 visitors last year but ended up with 181,000, says proprietor Zeb Mayhew Jr. Attendance at the plantation this year is one-quarter of pre-storm levels. "It is definitely survival mode," he says.

Mayhew believes New Orleans is in better shape than most visitors perceive and that the tourism industry is rebounding "slower than it needs to." Says Mayhew: "On the one hand, you can't paint a rosy picture because you really do have problems. On the other, the part of the city that tourists would come to is fine, and something they can enjoy. ... Somehow there's got to be a separation of those two realities."

The reopened aquarium will bring back some of the tourists necessary to support what Perry calls "the working middle-class of New Orleans: the chefs in the restaurants, the doormen at hotels, the jazz musicians, really the entirety of the cultural economy."

But it will be a more embattled aquarium than before. One of the Audubon Nature Institute's chief concerns is how to pay its investor debt, which Fitch Ratings has downgraded to non-investment-grade junk status. A default on its bonds, which the state-chartered New Orleans Board of Liquidation issued on the city's behalf, would badly impair the ability of the city and state to borrow on Wall Street.

Dale Stastny, the institute's chief operating officer, says the aquarium has about $2 million in cash and a $25 million endowment, which it doesn't want to touch, to meet its immediate obligations. It also will receive a share of city property tax receipts, though this year's tax bills haven't been issued.

"All we need before October is a little less than 20% of the normal (property tax) collections to come in, and we'll have enough to cover debt service," Stastny says. He says the aquarium probably will have to restructure its debt to rebuild its cash cushion and make up for what is expected to be a large, ongoing deficit in city tax receipts.

That's where the children are pitching in. In the Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, the Cathedral Academy — which has educated children since 1718 — was the city's first school to reopen, on Oct. 17.

Sister Mary Rose Bingham, the principal, says she did not know how many children to expect. But the school's registered rolls doubled the pre-storm total to 237 students, swelled by the children of law enforcement workers temporarily living aboard a cruise ship on the Mississippi River. At last count, students from 28 schools across the metropolitan area were enrolled at the academy.

Each day, Bingham and the children walk around the French Quarter. She says she has watched the city struggle to regain its footing.

"The adults that live here who are running small businesses and large businesses really need tourists to come back," Bingham says. "I tell my friends and family: If you want to donate, get on a plane and come down to New Orleans and spend money. Because then you're helping not only this school but the hotels, the restaurants and all the tourist attractions."

To aid the aquarium, the school's students from kindergartners to eighth-graders began to bring in coins they collected in jars and plastic bags. Some children donated their money for snacks.

It swiftly added up.

"Everyone can do something, and that's what I wanted our children to know. Even though you might not have a home, or anything, we all can do something," Bingham says. "We were hoping that perhaps some others would hear about what these children had done, and maybe they would help."

Help from kids across USA

Across the USA, children were helping, according to aquarium spokeswoman Melissa Lee:

•In Kansas, Wichita High School East and Robinson Middle School held a concert, raffle and silent auction that raised $5,000 for the aquarium and zoo.

•In Plano, Texas, the parents of 12-year-old Nick Epstein, a penguin lover who died of a stroke, directed gifts to the Dallas World Aquarium, which forwarded the money to New Orleans. Total: $1,753.

•In Culver City, Calif., the second-grade class at Willows Community School created hand-drawn note cards that they sold as gifts, raising $1,600.

•In Montgomery, Ala., 6-year-old twins Wylie and Spangler Edwards had their friends donate to help New Orleans animals and fish life rather than buy them birthday presents. Total donated: $805.

•In Trumbull, Conn., third-graders at the Nichols United Methodist Church school raised $410 with a bake sale and lemonade stand.

And in New Orleans, a dozen young mothers whose children play together donated $400. Leila Garnard, one of the mothers, says, "It just broke my heart" to know that her daughter Whitney "though she's 1 year old — and doesn't know the aquarium or the zoo — she might never get to know it."

With the return to New Orleans of Patience and the aquarium's other temporarily displaced exhibits, the city is getting back a part of its life, as it did when the first children returned in October. Bingham says, "Even old men would come up to us on the sidewalk and say, 'Thank you for bringing the children back. It's been so quiet without them.' "

The penguins add their own waddle and feistiness.

Christina Slager, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's curator, who formerly worked in New Orleans and has known Patience for nearly 20 years, says, "They recognize human beings. They recognize individuals. And they form opinions. They like some of their caregivers. They don't like others so much. I'm sure they will remember the people they are returning to in New Orleans. It will be a nice homecoming."

    New Orleans' aquarium reflects tourism's woes, UT, 19.5.2006,
    http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-05-18-aquarium-usat_x.htm

 

Politics Stalls Plan to Bolster Flood Insurance        NYT

15.5.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/us/15flood.html

Politics Stalls

Plan to Bolster Flood Insurance

May 15, 2006
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
and JOSEPH B. TREASTER

If ever there was a moment for the obscure federal flood insurance program to ride to the rescue, it would seem to have been in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Its premiums were supposed to insure homeowners in flood-prone areas and also protect taxpayers from spending billions to bail out flood victims. But with Hurricane Katrina, the program failed on both counts.

Nearly half the victims did not even have flood insurance. Claims from homeowners who were insured, $25 billion worth, bankrupted the program. And the government has had to commit $15 billion in additional taxpayer money for rebuilding in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Now, an effort to rescue the insurance program that grew in Hurricane Katrina's wake is faltering, too. Though experts foresee a generation of fiercer and more frequent storms, Congress seems unlikely to make more than modest changes when it takes up the program in the coming weeks.

The drive to restructure the perennially underfinanced program has been blocked by real estate interests, who worry that requiring millions more people to buy flood insurance would stifle development, and by lawmakers from areas that rarely flood who see their constituents as supporting those who are frequently flooded, particularly in the South.

"You've got people living in dry areas paying for people who want to keep living in wet ones," said Representative Candice S. Miller, Republican of Michigan. "They're sticking it to us, and I don't like to be stuck."

The inability over decades to work out who pays the bill for flooding is at the heart of the weaknesses in the insurance program so blatantly laid bare by Hurricane Katrina.

A close examination of the program shows how those same lobbying pressures and regional rivalries have helped create an insurance plan that has consistently defied the central rule of how to succeed in the insurance trade: have enough policyholders paying enough in premiums to spread out the risk and build a financial cushion against disaster.

Since its beginning in the late 1960's, the flood program has struggled against a basic handicap: Most people, except those in the clearest path of danger, believe they do not need it.

So, in an effort to make the insurance affordable and attractive to reluctant homeowners, the government has kept premiums artificially low — typically $300 to $400 a year for coverage up to $250,000. At the same time, though, it has limited the size of the program's flood zones — the only areas in which many people are required to buy the policies.

A result, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is an insurance plan in serious danger, groping for a politically palatable way to grow.

Testifying before Congress this year, the flood program's acting director, David I. Maurstad, acknowledged that it faced "numerous challenges on a variety of fronts." But insurance officials also say the program, which takes in only $2.2 billion in fees each year, was never meant to handle a devastating storm like Hurricane Katrina.

Even so, many of the program's critics in Congress and elsewhere argue that it can and should be rebuilt as a stronger hedge against a less-catastrophic run of storms.

"It hasn't come close to its promise of insuring everyone who's in danger of being flooded, reducing the cost of disasters for the federal government or making sure the program ultimately pays its own way," said J. Robert Hunter, who once ran the program and is director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America.

"It's like a trip through the looking glass," he added. "Everything is backwards."

Asking Beneficiaries to Pay

The idea of federal flood insurance began in the early 1950's with President Harry S. Truman, after big floods in his home state, Missouri. Private insurers would not provide the coverage, arguing that only those most likely to be flooded would buy it, and that an avalanche of claims would bring big financial losses.

But what finally brought the idea to fruition nearly two decades later was a desire to do something about the rising cost of federal disaster relief. In particular, Congress felt it was important that the beneficiaries helped pay the bill.

Under the program, the Federal Emergency Management Agency maps areas along coasts, lakes and rivers with significant flood risk — a 1 percent chance of flooding in any year — and tries to sell insurance to people in or near them. Though more than 4.8 million people have the policies, that includes only about half the households in the flood zones.

To attract buyers, the government discounted the premiums, some to a fraction of what a private company would have charged. But initially, no one was required to buy flood insurance, and hardly anyone did.

"People would just say, 'It won't happen to me,' " George K. Bernstein, the program's first administrator, said in an interview.

Gilbert F. White, a retired professor whose research in the mid-1960's laid the foundation for the program, said the government originally considered larger flood zones but pulled back under pressure from homebuilders and real estate developers.

The program also linked the availability of insurance to agreements by local governments to enact new building codes intended to reduce flood damage, mainly by raising houses above expected flood levels. But the real estate interests persuaded many communities to stay out of the program, Mr. Bernstein said.

A Program Overwhelmed

In the summer of 1972, Hurricane Agnes caused $400 million in flood damage along the Eastern Seaboard; only $5 million was covered by insurance. Soon after, Congress made the insurance mandatory for people in the flood zones with federally regulated mortgages.

These measures let the program expand just enough to limp along. Over the years, it paid out almost $15 billion in claims, borrowing from the Treasury in bad years and paying the money back, with interest, in quieter times. But by early last year, the fund had slipped into the red again, drained by $2 billion in claims from the hurricanes in Florida in 2004.

Then came Hurricane Katrina.

Along the Mississippi coast, waves up to 30 feet high surged past the flood-zone boundaries. Federal figures show that two-thirds of the 46,000 flooded homes and apartments in Mississippi were outside the zones. One problem was the flood maps, which had not been updated in more than a decade and no longer reflected the true danger.

In New Orleans, the program stumbled on another assumption: though experts had long warned that a terrible hurricane could top the levees and inundate the low-lying city, that possibility was never factored into the hazard calculations. Instead, the mapmakers focused solely on the impact of heavy rains.

Luckily for New Orleans, which often floods in bad rains, the bulk of the city was in the flood zones. So 65 percent of the 54,000 flooded homeowners had at least some insurance.

But a few areas that flooded badly from the levee breaks, like much of the Lower Ninth Ward, were outside the zones. Relatively few people there, or among the city's large population of renters, had insurance. And many others had only enough to cover their mortgages, leaving little cash to rebuild.

Joy Fortune, a retired bank executive, and her 86-year-old mother, Hazel Castanel, had a $73,000 flood policy on their beige brick home. But after the house sat in six feet of water for two weeks, an adjuster estimated the damage at $124,000, leaving them $51,000 short.

At first, it looked as if they would not be able to rebuild. But then the Bush administration and Congress came up with $15 billion in grants to make up for gaps in insurance. "We want to go back," Ms. Fortune said. "It's my home and it's our life."

Even with the gaps, the program was swamped by $25 billion in claims from Hurricane Katrina and two other hurricanes last fall, and it will need to borrow all that money from the government to pay them. What is more, insurance officials say they doubt they will be able to pay much of it back, leaving taxpayers with the bill just as if there were no insurance program.

It was with that huge bill in mind that two influential congressmen — Michael G. Oxley, an Ohio Republican who heads the Financial Services Committee, and Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat — drafted legislation that would have greatly expanded the flood zones to draw millions more homeowners into the program. The new zones would have encompassed areas considered only one-fifth as susceptible to flooding in any given year.

'A Unique Opportunity'

Flood experts, consumer advocates, environmentalists and some insurance experts welcomed the move. But lobbyists for homebuilders, real estate agents and mortgage lenders cautioned lawmakers that the extra cost of flood insurance could hurt housing sales and slow the economy. The program "may need a tune-up, but I don't think it needs radical change," David L. Pressly Jr., president of the National Association of Home Builders, said in an interview.

In mid-November, a senior Republican on the Financial Services Committee, Richard H. Baker of Louisiana, proposed a compromise — keeping the current flood zones but requiring coverage for everyone in those areas and in areas adjacent to levees, like those that flooded in New Orleans.

But the committee narrowly adopted an amendment from Rep. Gary G. Miller, a Republican and a former homebuilder from California, which mandated a study of the situation while FEMA put together a clearer picture of the expanded zones.

In a recent interview, Mr. Miller said he had no problem with requiring people in areas like New Orleans to buy the insurance, and perhaps having them pay more for it. But expanding the flood zones, he said, amounted to going to people in, say, Los Angeles and telling them: "We need to raise revenue, so we're going to make you buy into a program that you really are never going to need and never benefit from anyway."

The bill, which the House is expected to take up in the next two weeks, now calls for updating the nation's flood maps, increasing premiums, and reducing subsidies on small businesses and second homes. It would also raise the maximum coverage on a house to $337,000 from $250,000. In all, these changes could bring in perhaps $500 million more a year.

Mr. Frank of Massachusetts said there was "not as much improvement as we'd like, but it's the best we're able to get right now." Lobbyists and legislative aides said they expected no major strengthening of the legislation when the Senate takes it up in coming weeks.

Around the country, opposition to expanding the program seems to be growing. In Michigan, Representative Miller said she was so angry about the program's inequities that she was considering urging that the state withdraw from it. People in her rarely flooded district, she said, had paid four times more in premiums than they had received in claims in the past 10 years.

By contrast, even before Hurricane Katrina, homeowners in just three hurricane-prone states — Florida, Louisiana and Texas — had received nearly half the money paid by the program since 1978, federal figures show.

Some experts say the program needs to shift from its "one size fits all" approach, which uses the same standards to set rates and the size of flood zones around the nation, to one that takes into account the degree of risk in each area, much as a private insurance plan would. But program officials say they do not believe they have enough history of claims in many areas to make reliable distinctions.

Robert P. Hartwig, the chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group, said the shock of Hurricane Katrina had provided "a unique opportunity for quantum reform" of the flood program. But he said the steps now being contemplated "will do relatively little to protect people who live in flood zones and to protect taxpayers around the country."

Looming over the debate are the warnings from meteorologists. Christopher W. Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center, says warmer ocean temperatures and less disruptive wind currents could make the next two or three decades much more active for hurricanes.

And scientists at Colorado State University recently predicted that there could be as many as five intense hurricanes this year. The chance of one striking the Gulf Coast is nearly 50 percent.

    Politics Stalls Plan to Bolster Flood Insurance, NYT, 15.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/us/15flood.html?hp&ex=1147752000&en=642a0e94055e1126&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A New Landfill in New Orleans

Sets Off a Battle

May 8, 2006
By LESLIE EATON
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS — Block after block, neighborhood after neighborhood, tens of thousands of hurricane-ravaged houses here rot in the sun, still waiting to be gutted or bulldozed. Now officials have decided where several million tons of their remains will be dumped: in man-made pits at the swampy eastern edge of town, out by the coffee-roasting plant and the space-shuttle factory and the big wildlife refuge.

But more than a thousand Vietnamese-American families live less than two miles from the edge of the new landfill. And they are far from pleased at having the moldering remains of a national disaster plunked down nearby, alongside the canal that flooded their neighborhood when Hurricane Katrina surged through last year.

Environmental groups are also angry, accusing local and federal officials of ignoring or circumventing their own regulations, long after the immediate emergency has ended. The same thing happened after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, they warn, and that dump ended up becoming a Superfund site.

The new landfill, known as Chef Menteur after the highway that borders it, sits across a canal from Bayou Sauvage, the largest urban wildlife refuge in the country, with 23,000 acres of marshland, canals and lagoons that are home to herons, egrets, alligators and, in the fall, tens of thousands of migratory ducks.

Nonetheless, the landfill lacks some of the safeguards that existing dumps do, like special clay liners. The government says they are not needed because demolition debris is cleaner than other rubbish.

Residents and environmentalists think otherwise, because after Hurricane Katrina the state expanded the definition of construction and demolition debris to include most of a house's contents, down to the moldy mattresses and soggy sofas.

"It's essentially the guts of your house, all your personal possessions," said Joel Waltzer, a lawyer representing landfill opponents. "Electronics, personal-care products, cleaning solutions, pesticides, fertilizers, bleach."

State officials say that the new landfill is safe and that they are simply moving quickly to protect public health and the environment, using techniques that did not exist 40 years ago. The new site was chosen to speed up the cleanup, they say, because the debris will not have to be hauled far. The state estimates that 7.2 million tons of hurricane debris remains to be cleaned up; the Chef Menteur landfill will take 2.6 million tons.

"You cannot rebuild until you clean up," said Chuck Carr Brown, an assistant secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, which provided a permit for the landfill. "I'm still in the eye of the storm."

The state has agreed to do some extra monitoring of groundwater, Dr. Brown said. But it has determined "there's nothing toxic, nothing hazardous," he continued. "There will be no impact" on the community, which is sometimes called Versailles.

Like so many disputes that have erupted since the hurricane, this one involves some highly charged issues: politics, money, history and race. Not to mention a highly developed distrust of government that almost all Louisianians now seem to share.

Unlike most residents of eastern New Orleans, the Vietnamese have returned, rebuilt and drawn up elaborate plans for their 30-year-old community's future. Now they feel unwelcome, said the Rev. Vien thé Nguyen, the pastor of Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church and a leader in the fight against the landfill, which opened on April 26.

"They're threatening our very existence," Father Vien said of the government agencies that approved the dump site, which residents fear will tower 80 feet or more above their neighborhood, dwarfing the new church they are planning to build, once the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers are gone from the site.

Father Vien said he was particularly worried about the quality of water in the canal and the lagoon that run through the neighborhood of tidy brick houses. Residents use that water on the tiny waterside gardens that supply the community with sugar cane and bitter melon and Vietnamese varieties of vegetables, he said.

He and his parishioners are particularly angry at Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who in February used emergency powers to waive zoning regulations for the landfill.

"Maybe we're not the right kind of people he wanted to return," Father Vien said. Neither the mayor nor his staff responded to requests for response to the priest's comments.

The state and the Army Corps of Engineers, which is handling cleanup in the city, say that without the dump, the cleanup would take much longer. The existing dumps would not be able to process all the debris fast enough, officials say, and are too far from the blighted buildings.

And the need for the new dump will only increase, they say, as the cleanup progresses. Maurice Falk, the corps official in charge of the cleanup, said at a federal court hearing last week that only 115 houses have been demolished so far.

Given that slow pace, critics question why the landfill had to be opened so quickly, before environmental studies were prepared and the community was consulted. The community would be willing to negotiate a compromise and do its part in the cleanup of the city, said Kelly H. Tran, who lives in the Vietnamese enclave and with her husband runs a construction company that has been fixing damaged houses.

But, she continued, "It's not fair for us to have no voice in this big decision, this critical decision."

State officials said they had reviewed the site for a landfill in the past, when political opposition had blocked it, and now simply could not wait two or three months to get through the public comment period. But on April 28, after the opposition was in full cry, the state and the corps put out a notice soliciting public comment on the landfill.

If residents or opponents "have something we missed, we'll address it," said Mike D. McDaniel, the secretary of the State Department of Environmental Quality. As for those who argue that there is no emergency involved, he disagrees. "Some people can't seem to understand this is not business as usual," he said.

Environmental groups are not happy. Adam Babich, director of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, said government agencies in the region had never been vigilant about complying with environmental regulations but had been especially lax since the storm. This attitude is most apparent, he said, when it comes to landfills. In nearby Plaquemines Parish, a longtime dispute over a landfill has flared up because the dump is taking in Hurricane Katrina debris.

And sparring continues over the Old Gentilly landfill, an old-fashioned, unlined dump that the state closed in 1986 but reopened after the hurricane. It is now accepting a limited amount of debris after a suit was filed by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, one of the groups represented by Mr. Waltzer, and it was criticized in a report commissioned by FEMA.

The fight over the new landfill is by no means over, Father Vien said. On April 27 he was showing visitors the site — and admiring the alligators gliding through the adjacent Maxent Canal — when he got the news from Mr. Waltzer that a federal judge had refused to issue a temporary injunction against the dump.

At first he seemed stunned. "I cannot believe that," he repeated several times.

Then he rallied.

"The game is not over," he said. "It just started, actually."

    A New Landfill in New Orleans Sets Off a Battle, NYT, 8.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/us/08landfill.html

Political Memo

Conservative White Voters

Hold Sway

in an Altered New Orleans

Electoral Landscape

May 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 6 — The city's changed demographics made themselves felt all week as a tight race for mayor headed toward the May 20 runoff.

Black officials have run City Hall for decades, but with the population dispersal caused by Hurricane Katrina, white voters — especially conservatives — hold the keys to the drab 1950's building downtown. Both the incumbent, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, and his challenger, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, need this group, and both are now flirting with it, flaunting endorsements from conservative white also-rans in the April 22 primary.

But the electoral dance has to be delicate in a city with long memories and short fuses. Hurricane season is bearing down, last year's catastrophe is ever present, and decades' worth of decline has not gone away. The challenges: do not scare a traumatized electorate, but do not lull it either; and distance yourself from prior black mayors — deemed corrupt by whites — but not too much.

This week Mr. Nagin, who is black, scored an endorsement from a conservative white Republican lawyer, Rob Couhig, who got 10 percent in the primary, but he also showed up at a tribute to the city's first black mayor, Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial. Mr. Nagin talked up a new hurricane plan, but suggested off-handedly that he might pull the trigger far more quickly on a mandatory evacuation in the event of another hurricane.

"Our planning efforts have been nonstop," the mayor said casually, at an urgently called city hall news conference, for which he was late, to announce his evacuation plan.

Mr. Landrieu fired back with endorsements from a raft of local law-enforcement officials, some not even from New Orleans, and denounced the continued shuttering of the flood-damaged criminal courts building.

"The judges can't get back into their own building," Mr. Landrieu said at a debate between the two candidates on Monday. "The judges can't judge unless they're in their own building." Jury trials have been suspended in the absence of a forum. Mr. Landrieu was also endorsed Friday by Louisiana's leading black minister, Bishop Paul S. Morton.

In a city of family allegiances, the candidates are shadowed by the legacies of two powerful political families that ran affairs here for decades — that of Mr. Landrieu, whose father was mayor, whose sister is a United States senator and whose aunt is the president of the school board; and the Morial clan, which produced father-and-son mayors. Though both families are Democratic and are disdained by white conservatives, any association with the Morials, especially, is currently regarded as politically toxic, given the changed electorate.

While the candidates spar, under the highway overpasses sit block after block of flooded-out, stripped, abandoned cars from which trash spills out in a filthy wasteland inhabited by a handful of homeless people. Ruined neighborhoods wait for the federal checks, not due until late summer.

That backdrop of stasis might seem to work for the challenger. But Mr. Landrieu, who got 29 percent in the primary, must persuade conservatives to overcome their old antipathies. But he cannot go back on the family's commitment to civil rights, inaugurated by his father, Moon Landrieu, the city's last white mayor. Mr. Nagin, too, is courting whites — having gotten only 6 percent of their votes in the primary. He took 38 percent overall — but he cannot afford to alienate blacks, 24 percent of whom voted for Mr. Landrieu.

Conservative whites, initially enchanted by Mr. Nagin's scandal-free administration, now question his competence after policy flip-flops and hesitations.

"The real question is, if you've been in New Orleans, can the mayor pull it off?" said Scott Wheaton, a lawyer who supported Mr. Couhig.

"Nagin, I haven't been able to see him do much, post-Katrina," Mr. Wheaton said. "Just take something as simple as getting the cars off the streets. The other question is, what's Landrieu ever run? Has he been an executive?" He noted that the lieutenant governor's career was built on politics, unlike that of Mr. Nagin, a former businessman.

"I think most people are looking for someone to get the job done," Mr. Wheaton said, adding: "I haven't made up my mind."

Mr. Nagin's dilemma was summed up in an awkward moment Monday at the ancient St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, at the edge of the French Quarter. Hesitantly, the mayor joined a gathering of black political pioneers here around the Morial family tomb, above ground and whitewashed like the others in this below-sea level town.

The reception was frigid, and Mr. Nagin quickly left. The reasons were readily apparent to anyone following this city's byzantine politics: his political career was made, partly, by damning the legacy of the patriarch's son, former Mayor Marc Morial, whose administration, beset by indictments and guilty pleas, is seen by many here as having been shot through with patronage and favoritism.

A federal investigation into the Morial administration's contracting practices has netted more than 12 indictments and guilty pleas so far. Yet the younger Mr. Morial still gets a rapturous reception from black audiences here on trips back from his current job as head of the National Urban League in New York.

That Monday night at the debate, Mr. Nagin made a veiled reference to what is at the back of some whites' minds here: the Landrieu and Morial clans are too close to each other. "I don't come from a political family or organization," he said. "Do we want to go back to the politics of the past?" The old Morial political organization has endorsed Mr. Landrieu.

"From what I've heard, the family has had a relationship with the Morials," said Rand Voorhies, a neurosurgeon standing outside his columned, Italianate mansion in the Garden District.

Still, he was fastening Landrieu signs to his elegant wrought-iron fence.

"I've been told that won't happen, though," said Mr. Voorhies of a formal alliance between the Landrieu and Morial factions. In the primary, Mr. Voorhies supported the conservatives' darling, Ron Forman, a zoo executive, in the primary. Now, the doctor is going with the lieutenant governor, endorsed last week by Mr. Forman.

If he is elected, Mr. Voorhies said, "what it might convey is, the electorate is serious about changing things, so some voter in Dayton, Ohio, won't be worried about pouring money down a rat hole," referring to the federal money that will soon be flowing here. "Because in the final analysis, it's the rest of the country we're going to be depending on."

    Conservative White Voters Hold Sway in an Altered New Orleans Electoral Landscape, NYT, 7.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/us/07orleans.html

Critic's Notebook

At Jazzfest in New Orleans,

the Party Must Go On

May 2, 2006
By JON PARELES
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS, May 1 — The first weekend of the 37th annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival ended on Sunday night with a rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In." When the familiar chorus arrived, the white handkerchiefs New Orleanians seem to keep handy on all occasions were waved high.

Yet it wasn't the jaunty, clichéd jazz version. Bruce Springsteen played "Saints" as nothing less than a hymn, and he sang a rarely noticed final verse: "Some say this world of trouble is the only world we'll ever see/ But I'm waiting for that morning when the new world is revealed."

It was a fitting wrap-up for a weekend that found hope, and solace, in the continuity of tradition. Jazzfest, as everyone calls it, is itself a tradition after nearly four decades, and like Mardi Gras, it is not only a tourist magnet but also a defining event for the city. "It's bigger than just the music," said George Wein, the chief executive of Festival Productions and the executive producer of Jazzfest. "This is people's lives."

Music in New Orleans has always been entertaining, but never just entertainment. It held on to cultural memories, negotiated between Old and New World aesthetics, and bound together families, neighborhoods and communities. It's party music, but it's also a secular ritual. And while the city has spawned far more than its share of gifted musicians, its music was not created from the top down.

It bubbled up out of the neighborhoods, including some that are now just wreckage. Its roots, constantly renewed in pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, were in street parades and barroom jam sessions, full of nonprofessionals who knew how to shake a tambourine.

After the hurricane New Orleans music could no longer be taken for granted, in or out of the city. There was an immediate and worldwide surge of interest. Musicians who had gotten by on regular local club dates now work a larger touring circuit — sometimes between their old home and their new one — and performers from New Orleans will be all over the summer jazz festivals in the United States and abroad.

Even with much of the city's population displaced and scattered, New Orleanians are determined not to let the music and its public celebrations disappear. At Jazzfest, Mardi Gras Indians, who usually take the whole year to hand-sew their elaborate feathered and beaded suits, were resplendent. Social aid and pleasure clubs, the neighborhood associations that sponsor parades and funerals, might not have had their old neighborhoods to return to, but they showed up at Jazzfest to parade in brand-new suits. Gospel choirs exiled from their home churches regrouped to sing about unswerving faith.

Although Jazzfest does not compile final figures until after the festival ends, it was clearly well attended, with more than 100,000 tickets sold in advance for its six days. Sets by headliners had sprawling and tightly packed audiences. The first weekend included stars from outside New Orleans, like Mr. Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock and Elvis Costello, along with New Orleans's own multimillion-selling rapper, Juvenile.

Paul Simon, Jimmy Buffett, Lionel Richie and the country hit maker Keith Urban are booked for the second half, Friday through Sunday. Some stars were working for nothing more than expenses, to show support for the festival and for New Orleans.

Mr. Springsteen led his large but never unwieldy Seeger Sessions Band — with horns, fiddles, banjo and more — in a set featuring folk songs from Pete Seeger's repertory. The arrangements gleefully veered toward south Louisiana Cajun music and New Orleans traditional jazz. Mr. Springsteen had written new verses about New Orleans for Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," and he dedicated it to "President Bystander." Introducing the song, he said, "This is what happens when people play political games with other people's lives."

Mr. Costello was there because in November he had recorded an album with Allen Toussaint, an archetypal New Orleans songwriter. That album, "The River in Reverse," is scheduled for June release, and the songs from it that they performed together touched on mourning, anger and resolute optimism. But the heart of the festival wasn't in the visiting stars: not in Mr. Springsteen's set, or Etta James's soulful and sassy rhythm and blues, or in having the Edge, U2's guitarist, jamming with the Dave Matthews Band, as he did on Saturday.

This Jazzfest, with the world's attention on New Orleans, was even more concentrated on the city's own music than it has been in decades. About 92 percent of the performers were from Louisiana and from New Orleans in particular, though at the moment they may be living elsewhere.

Jazzfest's essence was in the gathering of a 50-woman choir from the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, which sustained $9 million in damage and now holds services for parts of its congregation in Houston and Baton Rouge as well as New Orleans. Some choir members had not seen one another since the hurricane. They, and other performers at the festival, kept saying, "It's like a reunion."

The Mahogany Brass Band was playing for the first time since the storm, and it was the first time all its members, dispersed as far as Phoenix and San Francisco, had seen one another. Brice Miller, the band's leader, started a strikingly emotional "St. James Infirmary" alone as a tearful solo trumpet dirge; when he sang the lyrics — about seeing a lover's dead body — he interjected, "My baby's New Orleans."

Musicians aren't the only ones who have reconvened for the festival. Vaucresson's Sausage Company, founded in New Orleans in 1899, has served its Cajun sausages at every Jazzfest, and it wasn't about to miss this one. Its factory was lost in the hurricane. To serve food at this year's festival, it restarted production in nearby Kenner, La., while rebuilding its old place. Vendors reported some of their best Jazzfest sales ever. It seemed everyone wanted a piece of New Orleans.

There were songs about the hurricane and songs that had been transfigured by it. The accordionist Dwayne Dopsie and his band, the Zydeco Hellraisers, performed a song he had written and recorded before Katrina — "My Name Is Hurricane" — as a frenzied two-step that had become prophetic. Gospel performers like Yolanda Adams sang about getting through storms. Juvenile's "Get Ya Hustle On" had a verse about using checks from Federal Emergency Management Agency to buy drugs.

The good times in the music were more treasured at this Jazzfest, and rightly so. Making happy music after so much sorrow was a defiant and beautiful laugh in the face of tribulation. Behind the scenes every New Orleans band at Jazzfest had to recreate itself after the city was evacuated: to find its place in New Orleans or to reconstitute it somewhere else. The New Birth Brass Band, originally from New Orleans, wore its latest T-shirts depicting both Louisiana and Texas.

New Orleans music hasn't stopped putting pleasure first. Jazzfest is, as always, a festival of good-time dance music, whether it's traditional jazz, bayou zydeco, brass-band struts, Mardi Gras Indian chants or fiercely complex electric funk. A superb jazz pianist, Jonathan Batiste, grounded his jubilant, splashy harmonies in Caribbean and New Orleans rhythms. Brass bands like Rebirth, New Birth and the Soul Rebels spanned classic second-line swing and hip-hop-influenced funk, with the Soul Rebels also pushing toward Latin beats. And there was plenty of straightforward funk from New Orleans elders like the Meters and Dr. John, as well as next-generation funk bands like Galactic and Papa Grows Funk.

The destruction in New Orleans is bound to change the city's culture. (For one thing, an influx of Mexican labor for construction could add yet another ingredient to New Orleans music.) And whether a majority of the city's population can ever return will be decided by large political and economic decisions, not by who's appearing in the clubs.

But this Jazzfest was a symbol of how eager the city is to rebuild itself, and how resourceful its inhabitants — current and former — can be. If the New Orleans of deep local traditions cannot renew itself, it won't be for lack of desire.

The triumph of this year's festival is that on the surface it is a normal Jazzfest: crowded, sweaty, ebullient and full of homegrown New Orleans spirit. "Normal is an incredible word to use down here," said Quint Davis, the producer and director of Jazzfest. "Normalcy is a nonexistent term."

    At Jazzfest in New Orleans, the Party Must Go On, NYT, 2.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/arts/music/02jazz.html

Qatar Grants Millions

in Aid to New Orleans

May 2, 2006
By STEPHANIE STROM
The New York Times

The nation of Qatar plans to announce today roughly $60 million in grants to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina, including $17.5 million to Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black Catholic university in the United States.

Other beneficiaries are Tulane University, Children's Hospital in New Orleans, Habitat for Humanity, Louisiana State University and the March of Dimes.

Nasser Bin Hamad M. al-Khalifa, Qatar's ambassador to the United States, said the remainder of the $100 million his country had pledged would be assigned in the coming months.

"Hurricane Katrina was so devastating that everyone in Qatar and the rest of the world felt a responsibility to really act," Mr. Khalifa said. More than 50 countries donated money, expertise and materials, according to a tally by Foreign Policy, a magazine published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Qatar was one of several Persian Gulf nations to donate tens of millions of dollars. Saudi Arabia, for instance, gave more than $100 million, and the United Arab Emirates pledged $100 million.

Poor nations also donated. Less than a year after the Indian Ocean tsunami engulfed it, Sri Lanka gave $25,000 to the American Red Cross. Bangladesh gave $1 million, Cyprus $50,000, Ghana $15,000 and the Dominican Republic $50,000.

European countries tended to offer expertise, supplies and equipment instead of money. Denmark, for example, donated blankets, water purification units and first aid kits.

Many donor countries funneled their gifts through the State Department or other government agencies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, for instance, used $66 million of foreign assistance to underwrite Katrina Aid Today, a consortium of nine religion-based and secular relief organizations led by the United Methodist Committee on Relief that is using the money to offer case management services to 100,000 families for two years.

The Department of Education now controls $60 million donated by foreign governments that it said it would disburse to organizations to rebuild classrooms and libraries, buy books and maybe even pay teachers' salaries.

"We want to give the money where it will have the greatest impact so the foreign governments can see how their funds are being used," said Valerie Smith, an Education Department spokeswoman.

Countries also gave money to the American Red Cross and to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, the charity set up by former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton.

Qatar elected to distribute its money directly, rather than rely on an intermediary.

Ambassador Khalifa said the country wanted to insure transparency and accountability.

"Our past experience is that while you can give to any organization or to a government," he said, "you have no control over the money and then you discover the people most affected have not benefited."

To identify projects Qatar might want to support, the ambassador and his representatives talked to relief organizations, educators, members of Congress and other experts, and some embassy staff members traveled to the region.

Mr. Khalifa also drafted former Secretary of State James A. Baker; Laura D'Andrea Tyson, dean of the business school at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former economic adviser to President Clinton; Lee Raymond, former chief executive of the Exxon Mobil Corporation; and John J. DeGioia, the president of Georgetown University, to serve as an advisory board.

Qatar is giving Xavier, which is in New Orleans, $12.5 million to add 60,000 square feet to its College of Pharmacy so it can increase enrollment. The gift has additional benefits, the ambassador said, because it will provide construction jobs and because students from the university work in community clinics.

Xavier will also get $5 million for scholarships for students affected by the disaster.

"It's going to allow us to help those students to finish their educations," said Norman C. Francis, Xavier's president. "That's important because Xavier is the No. 1 producer of African-American graduates in the natural sciences, and those students then go on to get admitted to medical school."

Tulane will receive $10 million to help undergraduate students from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama who were affected by Hurricane Katrina, as well as students from those states entering the university next fall.

"The money will follow those students all the way through to graduation," said Scott S. Cowen, the university's president. "We anticipate over four years it will support roughly 300 students."

Qatar's $5.3 million gift was the biggest Children's Hospital has ever received, said Steve Worley, its president. The hospital will use $5 million to establish the Qatar Cares Fund, which it will use to underwrite medical care for needy children whose families were affected by the hurricane. The remaining $351,000 will go toward restoring the two of the hospital's five primary care clinics that were left standing after the storm.

"It's hard to know how to express our gratitude," Mr. Worley said.

    Qatar Grants Millions in Aid to New Orleans, NYT, 2.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/us/02charity.html

Bush visits New Orleans

as FEMA criticized

Thu Apr 27, 2006 4:05 PM ET
Reuters
By Matt Spetalnick

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - President George W. Bush promised a better U.S. response to any catastrophic storm this season but his administration rebuffed a new call to shut down the agency most blamed for mishandling Hurricane Katrina.

Bush made his pledge on Thursday during his 11th trip to the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast, where his motorcade passed badly damaged houses, boarded up from top to bottom and awaiting rehabilitation. Later, he donned work gloves and a carpenter's apron to pound nails into a house frame.

"We pray that there is no hurricane this coming year, but we're working together to make sure the response will be as efficient as possible," Bush said.

Bush's trip came as he is struggling to pull up public approval ratings that have hit a record low. His effort to refocus attention on post-Katrina rebuilding, backed by $100 billion in aid he has helped push through Congress, was overshadowed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's conclusion that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is beyond repair.

In a report on Thursday, the panel recommended it be replaced with a beefed-up national preparedness agency that would be better able to respond to disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

The White House said it was opposed.

"As we're heading into this hurricane season, now is not the time to really look at moving organizational boxes," Fran Townsend, homeland security adviser to Bush, told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,300 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless when it shattered New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1.

LOOKING TO NOVEMBER

Continuing political fallout from the disaster has been high on a list of troubles that have shaken public confidence in Bush, raising election-year concerns among his fellow Republicans that they are in danger of losing control of Congress.

Democrats have left little doubt they hope to use the stark symbolism of New Orleans' wrecked, boarded-up neighborhoods to seek electoral advantage in the November congressional elections.

"This report confirms in stark terms what the people of Louisiana have known for many months," Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, said.

"The handling of Hurricane Katrina by the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA was an organizational nightmare of immense proportions and that tragic administrative bumbling caused untold hardship for the people of Louisiana," she said.

Bush's popularity has also been hit by growing public disenchantment with the Iraq war and gasoline prices that have topped $3 a gallon in parts of the United States.

His approval rating fell to 32 percent in a CNN poll released this week and to 36 percent in a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll Wednesday. Both were all-time lows for each poll.

The White House officially billed Bush's trip to New Orleans and the Mississippi coast as paying tribute to thousands of volunteers assisting in reconstruction. But he also wants to reassure residents the administration is following through on its promise to help them rebuild.

Sakura Kone, spokesman for the grass-roots aid group Common Ground Relief, said Bush's trip sent the false impression that the government has put New Orleans back on track, while thousands still struggle with ruined homes.

(Additional reporting by Joanne Kenen in Washington and Jeffrey Jones in New Orleans)

    Bush visits New Orleans as FEMA criticized, R, 27.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-04-27T200454Z_01_N26423267_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-BUSH.xml

In Rebuilding as in the Disaster,

Wealth and Class Help Define

New Orleans

April 25, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS — Floodwaters were still sloshing around inside the houses of Eastover, a gated subdivision that was home to some of this city's wealthiest black residents, when the neighborhood association decided to hire a boat for a rescue operation last September.

The rescuers were not searching for someone stranded, but rather trying to retrieve a roster of residents from the association's offices so it could start learning who planned to move back.

The group was so well organized and financed that it recently retained a professional planner to help respond to the city's requirement that devastated neighborhoods devise their own revival blueprints.

Elsewhere, in the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly black working-class community where some of New Orleans's poorest people lived, displaced residents voice that same steely resolve to rebuild. But they had no neighborhood association, at least until mid-February, when Charmaine L. Marchand, the area's state representative, took it upon herself to create one. "No one else was organizing," Ms. Marchand said, "so I felt it fell upon me as the only elected official from the Lower Ninth to do something."

So while other neighborhood organizations were trying to assemble enough residents to justify the deployment of precious city services, those behind the newly minted Lower Ninth Ward Homeowners Association were busy writing bylaws and selecting officers well into March.

Just as disparities between rich and poor were exposed in the days after Hurricane Katrina, class and wealth seem to be playing a significant role as elected officials struggle to determine which neighborhoods will be rebuilt and which should revert to swampland, if not bulldozed and sold en masse to a developer. While Eastover is full of the sound of saws ripping wood and the pneumatic punch of nail guns, the sound of the Lower Ninth Ward is mainly silence.

On one level, the rebuilding plan approved in March by Mayor C. Ray Nagin appears to put every neighborhood on the same footing. That plan places responsibility on residents to determine who is moving back to their communities and to decide collectively on a vision for their neighborhood.

But not every community has the same resources to track down former neighbors and draft a plan that can provide for things as diverse as a local elementary school and a grocery store.

"Some communities are more able than others," said Steven Ringo, a retired Air Force sergeant who not long before the storm had returned to the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was born, to start a janitorial services business. "People don't have the same training and background and schooling and experience at working the system."

More than half the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward own their home, according to census figures, and yet before the hurricane only one small corner of the ward, the Holy Cross neighborhood, an enclave of historically significant homes, had established a homeowners association.

The Lower Ninth had been a tightknit community, but the lack of a strong organization meant that there was no board of directors to take charge immediately after the storm, as the Eastover Property Owners Association did. There was also no central database of residents' names and e-mail addresses.

As a result, while the Eastover group had contacted virtually all the subdivision's 350 households by early January, the Lower Ninth Ward Homeowners Association, Ms. Marchand said, had tracked down only a small fraction of its residents. The city has said that a neighborhood's ability to draw back a "critical mass" of its people will be a crucial indicator of whether it can be redeveloped and receive city services.

The Lower Ninth Ward has been further handicapped because so many of its residents are far from home and lack the means to participate in planning, said Muriel Lewis, director of the National Association of Katrina Evacuees, an advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of Gulf Coast evacuees scattered across 25 states. No other New Orleans neighborhood has as many residents dispersed around the country as the Lower Ninth, Ms. Lewis said.

"We're talking about people who don't have the money to just pick up and come here for a meeting, no matter what the stakes," she said.

Unlike Eastover, which did not exist until the mid-1980's, the Lower Ninth is a community rich in history, home to families whose roots date back generations. Yet it is also a community where the average home sells for $60,000 to $75,000, while in Eastover the homes start at around $400,000 and are more typically priced in the millions.

"You had doctors and lawyers and your successful entrepreneurs in Eastover," said Ruston Henry, who lived in the Lower Ninth Ward and ran a pharmacy there before the hurricane. "Here you had just hard-working people. You have your mechanics and waiters down here, people not used to working the system."

Even the architects of the city's reconstruction plan acknowledge that it favors better-off communities. From the outset, said Joseph C. Canizaro, the plan's primary author, its success has depended greatly on the availability of outside experts, including architects, planners and economic development professionals, who would help residents develop their blueprints.

"From the beginning, we've believed it was critical to provide communities, especially our poorer communities, the help they need in working out a plan," Mr. Canizaro said.

Yet obtaining the $7.5 million that Mr. Canizaro and other officials estimate New Orleans needs to pay for those experts has proved difficult. The city initially thought the federal government would provide the money, but when Washington declined, the City Council decided in late March that it had no choice but to devote $2.9 million in community development funds to hire outside planning experts.

"This helps, but we should've started two months ago," said Oliver M. Thomas Jr., president of the New Orleans City Council.

[Last week the Rockefeller Foundation pledged $3.5 million to the rebuilding effort. That money will be used to underwrite the cost of hiring urban planners, architects and other experts, and also to hold planning meetings in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Dallas and Houston, the four cities with the greatest number of displaced New Orleanians.]

"I'm sure people in the Lower Ninth Ward, once they have their hand on the pencil, will draw up something good," Mr. Thomas said. "But we need to provide organizers the support they need to help them create a new vision for their community."

The Lower Ninth is not entirely without resources. Mr. Thomas was born and raised there, and any number of outside groups — among them the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, an activist body better known by its acronym, Acorn — have been working to help the area recover.

Yet it is also a community that was harder hit than any other in New Orleans. Even today, nearly eight months after the storm, there are no FEMA trailers in the Lower Ninth Ward because the area is still without gas and drinkable water.

Eastover, on the other hand, had electricity and other utilities before most of its neighbors elsewhere in the battered eastern half of the city.

"The Lower Ninth Ward is dead compared to my area," said Ms. Lewis, of the evacuees association, who before the hurricane lived in a middle-class neighborhood in eastern New Orleans. "We have people working on their homes every day. There's nothing in the Lower Ninth Ward."

    In Rebuilding as in the Disaster, Wealth and Class Help Define New Orleans, NYT, 25.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/us/25class.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Levees not fully ready

for hurricane season

Updated 4/24/2006 9:53 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Anne Rochell Konigsmark

NEW ORLEANS — All day, every day and into the night, crews for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pour concrete into walls, pack dirt into hills and ram steel into the earth. They are scrambling to undo the damage Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the region's levee system.
Their task is urgent: Hurricane season begins June 1.

But even when the holes are plugged — a $2 billion endeavor — the entire 350-mile protection system remains flawed, the corps now admits. Flood walls are too weak in some places; earthen levees are too short in others. Locals say the only thing that will save the low-lying region from more flooding this summer is not getting hit with a strong storm.

"I think we can limp along through this hurricane season," says Julie Quinn, a state representative whose district includes the 17th Street Canal, which flooded the Lakeview neighborhood.

Then she laughs. "With some divine intervention, we'll be OK. I just can't imagine we're going to see another Katrina."

Corps officials are confident that by June, they will repair the breaches and other damage incurred along almost half the levee system. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the corps, announced April 12 that the agency wants to correct and strengthen the entire system to withstand storms stronger than Katrina, which was a Category 3 when it made landfall the morning of Aug. 29 in Plaquemines Parish.

Hurricanes are measured on a rising scale of intensity, from Category 1 (sustained winds of 74 mph or more) to Category 5 (156 mph or above).

By 2010, if Congress funds it, the corps will have made the system "better and stronger than it has ever been," Strock says.

That's years and at least $4 billion away. For this year's storm season, which lasts six months and promises to be active, the corps will not be able to upgrade the 181 miles of levees that remained intact during Katrina. An inspection of those undamaged areas began only last week, says Dan Hitchings, the corps' Director of Task Force Hope, which is overseeing levee repairs. Weaknesses, known and unknown, abound in those sections, the corps and other experts say.

"It's all a matter of reducing the risk as quickly as we can," says Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the corps' Director of Civil Works. "But a different storm (from Katrina) on a different track with a different speed could do different damage."

The difference between this year and last? Awareness, Hitchings says. Much of the levee system is the same as it was when Katrina hit, and that means it might fail again. "You're going to have what you had (before Katrina), and that's all you're going to get," Hitchings says. "The threat is the same."

The parts of the city that did not flood — well-known areas along the Mississippi River such as the French Quarter, the Garden District and the area around Tulane and Loyola universities — likely will remain safe, the corps says.

Strock says he is most concerned about the low-lying neighborhoods on the east side of the city, such as the 9th Ward, as well as St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Levees in those areas could be topped again. And some flood walls along Lake Pontchartrain, on the north side of the city, likely are as weak as those that broke in other places.

Half the system destroyed

The corps designed and built the levee system after Hurricane Betsy, a Category 3 storm, hit and flooded New Orleans in 1965. That was the last major hurricane to strike the city until Katrina.

It took decades to build the system: It took only hours to knock almost half of it down.

In the chaotic, post-Katrina world, no issue unites New Orleanians like the levees. Trusting in the corps is not easy. "I'm very hopeful we're going to be safer," says U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La. "But based on the corps track record, I have grave concerns."

On this, most residents agree: Hurricane Katrina did not destroy hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and kill more than 1,000 people. Failed levees did.

"Our city has been destroyed, and it was the federal government that did it," says Rhett Accardo, a former nurse at a now-closed hospital. "People are as mad as they would be if al-Qaeda had hit us."

More than half the city's 450,000 residents have not come home since flooding nearly emptied the city eight months ago, according to Mayor Ray Nagin's office, and many say their decision to return and rebuild hinges on levee safety.

"When people think about getting hit by a hurricane, they feel like those things are inevitable, and just a chance you take in life," says Bob Thomas, director of the Center for Environmental Communications at Loyola University. "But after repeatedly being told by the corps that we were safe, this is different.

"The break in the levees caused people to lose faith in the government's ability to protect them. I gotta tell you, I'm nervous, more because of the frailty of the infrastructure than the power of any storm. The corps is saying the levees will not break now, but that's what they said last year."

As the corps works to repair levees, it also wants to repair the agency's reputation. Meeting the June 1 deadline is part of that effort. Riley and others say work of this scale has never been undertaken under such a tight deadline.

"We have absolute confidence in the repair of the damaged portions," Riley says. "We've got a great system in place that will go a long way to protect New Orleans."

The corps has asked three separate groups of experts to investigate what went wrong with the levees and to ensure that the current work is correct. The agency has invited the most outspoken critics to tour here and offer advice. There are frequent news conferences at levees and alongside flood walls. And the corps has taken the blame for mistakes. The agency admits design flaws led to the collapse of flood walls along canals that cut through the city. "Everyone at the agency feels shocked and numb," Hitchings says. "That was not supposed to happen."

Critics are impressed with the corps' repair work. Floodgates, placed at the mouths of three canals that cut through the north end of New Orleans, will prevent storm surges from entering the city from Lake Pontchartrain.

"The gates are beautiful," says Bob Bea, a University of California-Berkeley engineer who has been investigating the levees with a National Science Foundation grant. He has been an outspoken critic of the corps.

After a recent tour of levees in St. Bernard Parish, another expert said the soils being used to rebuild the earthen hills were much better than what was originally there. "Our concerns have been pretty well addressed," says Raymond Seed, a Berkeley engineer working with Bea.

Paul Kemp, with the Hurricane Center at the University of Louisiana, said he is "astounded" by the recent progress. But he remains worried about earthen levees along the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, and along a shipping channel in St. Bernard Parish, saying they need to be reinforced or "armored" with concrete to prevent erosion. The corps plans to armor levees in coming years, but not for this hurricane season.

"Right now, these levees are not going to do well with a combination of wave and storm surge," Kemp says. "This is a work in progress, and we're going to have that progress perhaps interrupted by a hurricane."

About $1.5 billion in improvements to the levees, including armoring, is currently in a supplemental spending bill before Congress. President Bush has not yet asked for the $2.5 billion needed to provide protection from a "100-year storm" — that is, a storm that has a 1% chance of occurring in a given year. And the White House has announced it will not ask for the $1.6 billion needed to protect the lower part of Plaquemines Parish from such a flood.

Even at its best, the system would not withstand a Category 5 storm. That's why Louisiana's elected officials have been pushing the federal government to fund a complete makeover of the levees. The corps is studying what it would take to provide Category 5 protection; a report is due to Congress in December.

"This hurricane season makes me very uneasy," says Bea, who lived here in the 1960s and lost his home in Hurricane Betsy. "The corps is trying to do in a few months what it couldn't get done in 40 years. If I lived in New Orleans, I'd get a second-floor apartment and put my stuff in storage."

For some, the job is personal

Germaine and Shane Williams would like to see Category 5 protection before they feel truly safe. The two young brothers begin work every day at dawn, rebuilding a 4,000-foot section of the canal wall that collapsed and flooded the 9th Ward.

For the Williams brothers, the job is personal: They grew up here. Their mother's flood-ruined home, marked by the city as unsafe to enter, is walking distance from their work site. On both sides of the canal, the working-class neighborhood remains mostly uninhabited, a ghostly landscape of smashed houses and overturned cars.

"We're building it pretty strong," says Germaine, 23, about the steel-reinforced, concrete wall. "I feel better about it."

When asked if he would rebuild in this neighborhood, Germaine says: "I don't know about that. I wouldn't stay this close." Shane, 20, agrees: "It would take a higher wall."

Germaine now lives with his father in a travel trailer in St. Bernard Parish; Shane lives with friends in an area of the city called the West Bank.

Some residents who have chosen to rebuild in flooded areas say they're trusting the odds, not the corps.

"Katrina was once in 100 years," says Fred Yoder, who just moved back into his Lakeview home. "You can say we have to have Category 5 protection, but that's not going to happen right now. The levees won't be up to standard this year, but we just have to have faith."

    Levees not fully ready for hurricane season, UT, 24.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-23-levees_x.htm

Vote for Mayor Points

to Change in New Orleans

April 24, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, April 23 — Mayor C. Ray Nagin may have led Saturday's mayoral election, but he now faces a popular and better-financed opponent on a political landscape utterly changed by Hurricane Katrina, one in which the long-running dominance of the city's black vote has been significantly reduced.

Black residents, whose neighborhoods were the most devastated by the storm, voted in much smaller numbers than whites did on Saturday, even more so than usual. White turnout is usually higher than black turnout, but the gap was about double what it is normally, analysts said Sunday.

As a result, most of the votes here were cast against Mr. Nagin, who is black, even though he came out on top in a crowded field, with 38 percent of the vote. If that trend holds, New Orleans will elect its first white mayor in nearly 30 years on May 20, when Mr. Nagin will face Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who got 29 percent, in a runoff.

If Mr. Landrieu receives two-thirds of the 30 percent received by the white candidates who finished behind him, Mr. Nagin's days as mayor will be over. Adding to his difficulties, Mr. Nagin must mobilize the citizens who were displaced from the city by Hurricane Katrina and who failed to turn out for Saturday's voting.

Against a backdrop of perennial declines in black voter participation here, that could turn out to be a challenge too great for the mayor's not inconsiderable political skills.

"He has to expand the electorate, and that's a big hurdle," said Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans. "Blacks displaced by Katrina, these people are going to be horribly difficult to reach."

Over all, the turnout was surprisingly good given the difficult circumstances; about 80 percent of voters who took part in the 2002 election cast ballots. But the gap was largely, though not exclusively, made up of blacks displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The turnout of registered voters — though not necessarily habitual voters — in black neighborhoods was about half that in white neighborhoods.

Relying on black voters who are already back here, or who managed to participate in the early-voting system set up for evacuees, may not be enough for Mr. Nagin. In some black precincts, particularly in the Lower Ninth Ward, turnout was down by a quarter or more from the previous election. Areas that did not flood, where the turnout was highest, were precisely the ones where Mr. Nagin fared the worst.

Another hurdle for Mr. Nagin is Mr. Landrieu's strength among blacks, over 20 percent of whom voted for the lieutenant governor, analysts said. He and Mr. Nagin won similar amounts of the 21,351 absentee votes. But Mr. Nagin got less than 10 percent of the overall white vote, a huge drop from the previous election, when he carried all the majority-white precincts. He has also lost much of the white financial support that helped propel him.

For months, civil rights leaders have vigorously fought holding an election here at all this spring, with as many as two-thirds of the citizens displaced. At the least, they argued in court and elsewhere, satellite voting centers should have been set up in neighboring states in addition to the ones set up around Louisiana.

But though logistical hurdles played a role in preventing some evacuees from voting, even Mr. Nagin's strategists said that a larger trend might be at work.

Jim Carvin, the mayor's veteran campaign consultant and the engineer of every successful mayoral campaign here since 1970, predicted that in the end blacks would rally to Mr. Nagin, while white voters who supported him in 2002 would come back to him. But Mr. Carvin said that much of the New Orleans diaspora, predominantly black, might be lost to the city for good.

"The challenge is to get more voters out of New Orleans," he said, arguing that looking elsewhere could be futile. "We have a good shot at that, as African-Americans tend to vote for African-Americans."

Mr. Carvin said he was surprised at the low turnout among blacks displaced by the storm. "I think it was a serious underparticipation, which would seem to indicate that a lot of these people are not coming back, so therefore why vote," he said. "They have jobs and residences. We may have lost them as a population."

He said Mr. Nagin might partly make up for that loss by attracting the white conservatives who supported two losing candidates Saturday. Yet that may be difficult.

Even before Mr. Nagin angered many whites with a speech in January predicting that the city would be "chocolate" once again, his previous base of support in the largely white Uptown neighborhoods here had begun to wither — a fact the now-infamous declaration may merely have recognized, since it appeared to be a bid for black support.

Whites here have tended to focus their disenchantment at the slow recovery more on Mr. Nagin than have blacks. And there is a widespread perception that Mr. Nagin's unguarded language — his tirade immediately after the storm, for instance — has cost him credibility in Washington. He has repeatedly shifted position on important issues, like the location of trailer parks. And he ignored the central recommendation of his own recovery commission, to hold off rebuilding in the most severely damaged areas.

White business leaders who supported him enthusiastically four years ago deserted him entirely in this election, throwing their support mostly to an Uptown business executive, Ron Forman, who won 17 percent of the vote. Now, some Uptowners who contributed to Mr. Forman say they will support Mr. Landrieu, albeit with some reluctance. In the State Legislature, where he served for 16 years, this scion of the state's leading political family did not earn high marks from the business lobby.

"I will probably support Landrieu, because he does after all represent some change," said Richard Currence, a Forman contributor, retired executive with an offshore oil services company and Uptown resident. "His record in the Legislature, for the business community, left a lot to be desired. People like me are going to have to swallow pretty hard. I've got to overcome that and say he's the guy of the two that can do a better job in leading the city out of the mess we're in."

In his speech after the voting Saturday, Mr. Nagin referred to two wealthy businessmen here who have previously backed him, Joseph C. Canizaro and Donald T. Bollinger, apparently in a renewed bid for the support of the business community.

True to his relaxed style, Mr. Nagin scheduled no campaign events Sunday, in contrast to Mr. Landrieu, who held a news conference at which he again emphasized what he considered the importance of the biracial coalition that supported him.

His campaign had sought to "not polarize or divide anyone," he said, and indeed, he largely avoided the central question of whether some neighborhoods should not be rebuilt. He had tried to represent "all segments of the population," he said. "African-Americans and whites have supported this candidacy."

At a time when citizens here are angry at elected officials at all levels, Mr. Landrieu said he hoped to win back the full city's confidence. "My job is to earn the trust of all New Orleans voters," he said.

That festering anger will not help Mr. Nagin, among whites or blacks. "The incumbent right now, he looks like he's lost the grasp to get this city moving," said Walter Ennis, a black insurance adjuster who said he voted for Mr. Landrieu on Saturday.

    Vote for Mayor Points to Change in New Orleans, NYT, 24.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/us/24orleans.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

New Orleans Hip-Hop

Is the Home of Gangsta Gumbo

April 23, 2006
The New York Times
By KELEFA SANNEH

FOR thousands of people — we'll probably never know exactly how many — Hurricane Katrina was the end. But for listeners across the country, that not-quite-natural disaster also marked the beginning of a party that hasn't ended yet. Ever since those awful days last year, the country has been celebrating the rich musical heritage of New Orleans.

There was a blitz of benefit concerts, including "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy," a pair of shows held simultaneously at Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall last September. A New Orleans jam session closed the show at the Grammy Awards in February. There have been scads of well-intentioned compilations, including "Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast" (Nonesuch), "Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now" (Concord) and "Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert" (Blue Note), a live album recorded at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Benefit. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last month, a video segment paid tribute to New Orleans music through the years, from Louis Armstrong to the Neville Brothers; there was also the inevitable New Orleans jam session.

But one thing all these tributes have in common is that they all ignored the thrilling — and wildly popular — sound of New Orleans hip-hop, the music that has been the city's true soundtrack through the last few decades.

Rap music remains by far New Orleans's most popular musical export. Lil Wayne, Master P, Juvenile, Mannie Fresh, B. G., Mystikal and many other pioneers have sold millions of albums, and they have helped make their city an indispensable part of the hip-hop world. Unlike all the other musicians celebrated at post-Katrina tributes, these ones still show up on the pop charts, often near the top. (Juvenile's most recent album made its debut at No. 1, last month.) Yet when tourists and journalists descend upon the city next weekend, for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, they'll find only one local rapper on the schedule: Juvenile, who is to appear on the Congo Square Louisiana Rebirth Stage at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Maybe New Orleans rappers don't mind being left out. No doubt most of them prefer popularity — and its rewards — to respect. But why should they have to choose?

Hip-hop was long considered unfit for polite society. And yet the extraordinary snubbing of New Orleans hip-hop comes at a time when the genre is gaining institutional validation. The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History recently announced plans for a hip-hop exhibit. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum exhibited "Roots, Rhyme and Rage: The Hip-Hop Story" in 1999. Colleges and universities around the country are offering conferences and courses devoted to hip-hop history. At the same time that hip-hop is being written out of the history of New Orleans, it's being written into the history of America. Could that possibly be a coincidence?

The story of New Orleans hip-hop begins in earnest with what is known as bounce music: festive beats, exuberant chants, simple lyrics that ruled local nightclubs and breezeway parties in the late 1980's and early 90's. The future hip-hop star Juvenile got his start in the bounce-music scene. But like many New Orleans musicians before him, Juvenile found out that having a citywide hit wasn't quite the same as having a nationwide hit.

By the mid-90's, Southern hip-hop was starting to explode, and so some New Orleans entrepreneurs figured out ways to go national. Master P, a world-class hustler and less-than-world-class rapper from the city's rough Calliope projects, founded a label called No Limit, and used it to popularize a distinctively New Orleans-ish form of hard-boiled hip-hop. For a time Master P was one of pop music's most successful moguls. (He made the cover of Fortune, and he never let anyone forget it.)

Master P's crosstown rivals were the Williams brothers, proprietors of Cash Money Records, which eventually replaced No Limit as the city's dominant brand name. Cash Money signed up the hometown hero Juvenile (who was raised in the Magnolia projects), as well as the city's greatest hip-hop producer, Mannie Fresh. Working with a great group of rappers including Lil Wayne and B. G., Fresh perfected an exuberant electronic sound; he did as much as anyone to pull the musical legacy of New Orleans into the 21st century. You could hear brass bands in the synthesizers, drum lines in the rattling beats, Mardi Gras Indians in the sing-song lyrics. (If you're wondering where to start, try Juvenile's head-spinning 1998 blockbuster, "400 Degreez," which has sold 4.7 million copies.)

Like most musical stories, this one doesn't really have a happy ending — or any ending at all. Master P's empire dissolved, which explains why you might recently have seen him on "Dancing With the Stars." Mystikal, one of the city's best and weirdest rappers, split with No Limit in 2000, and he's currently serving a jail sentence for sexual battery and tax evasion. Juvenile, B. G. and Mannie Fresh have all left Cash Money, though Lil Wayne remains.

The came Katrina. Not all of the city's stars were living in New Orleans when the storm hit, but all lost houses or cars or — at the very least — a hometown. Lil Wayne moved his mother to Miami; Mannie Fresh set up shop in Los Angeles; B. G. is living in Detroit.

But the music never stopped. Juvenile's "Reality Check" (UTP/Atlantic), released last month, was the fastest-selling CD of his career; for the defiant first single, "Get Ya Hustle On," he filmed a video in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward. B. G. recently released a strong new album, "The Heart of tha Streetz Vol. 2 (I Am What I Am)" (Koch); it was strong enough, in fact, to earn him a new record contract with Atlantic. In "Move Around," the album's first single, Mannie Fresh sings (sort of) the cheerful refrain: "I'm from the ghetto, homey/ I was raised on bread and baloney/ You can't come around here, 'cause you're phony."

And then there's Lil Wayne, who last fall released "Tha Carter 2" (Cash Money/Universal), perhaps the finest album of his career (it has sold about 900,000 copies so far). In his slick lyrics and raspy voice, you can hear a city's swagger and desperation:

All I have in this world is a pistol and a promise
A fistful of dollars
A list full of problems
I'll address 'em like P.O. Boxes
Yeah, I'm from New Orleans, the Creole cockpit
We so out of it
Zero tolerance
Gangsta gumbo — I'll serve 'em a pot of it

All right, so this isn't the stuff that feel-good tributes are made of. Despite the topical video, "Get Ya Hustle On" is a mishmash of political commentary and drug-dealer rhymes. (The song included the well-known couplet, "Everybody tryna get that check from FEMA/ So he can go and score him some co-ca-een-uh.") And much of the music portrays New Orleans as a place full of violence and decadence: expensive teeth, cheap women, "choppers" (machine guns) everywhere. If you're trying to celebrate the old, festive, tourist-friendly New Orleans, maybe these aren't the locals you want.

Furthermore, much of the post-Katrina effort has focused on "saving" and "preserving" the city's musical heritage. Clearly top-selling rappers don't need charity. In fact, many have been quietly helping, through gifts to fellow residents and hip-hop charities like David Banner's Heal the Hood Foundation.

But it's worth remembering that many New Orleans hip-hop pioneers — from DJ Jimi to the influential group U.N.L.V. — aren't exactly millionaires. And for that matter, many rappers aren't nearly as rich as they claim. In any case, glowing recollections aren't the only way to pay tribute to the city. The story of Katrina is in large part a story of poverty and neglect; it's no coincidence that many of the rappers come from the same neighborhoods that still haven't been cleaned up. Surely the lyrics to a Juvenile song aren't nearly as shocking as those images most of us saw on television.

The language of preservationism sometimes conceals its own biases. If all the dying traditions are valuable, does that also mean all the valuable traditions are dying? If a genre doesn't need saving, does that also mean it's not worth saving? If New Orleans rappers seem less lovable than, say, Mardi Gras Indians or veteran soul singers, might it be because they're less needy? Cultural philanthropy is drawn to musical pioneers — especially African-American ones — who are old, poor and humble. What do you do when the pioneers are young, rich and cocky instead?

Believe it or not, that question brings us back to the Smithsonian, which has come to praise hip-hop. Or to bury it. Or both. The genre is over 30 years old by now, and while its early stars now seem unimpeachable (does anyone have a bad word to say about Grandmaster Flash or Run-DMC?), its current stars seem more impeachable than ever. From 50 Cent to Young Jeezy to, well, Juvenile, hip-hop might be even more controversial now than it was in the 80's; hip-hop culture has been blamed for everything from lousy schools to sexism to the riots in France. In a weird way, that might help account for the newfound respectability of the old school. To an older listener who's aghast at crack rap, the relatively innocent rhymes of Run-DMC don't seem so bad. If the new generation didn't seem so harmful, its predecessors might not seem harmless enough for the national archives.

Maybe the New Orleans hip-hop scene — "gangsta gumbo" — just hasn't been around long enough to make the history books. But that will change, as the rappers start seeming less like harbingers of an ominous future and more like relics of a colorful past. New Orleans hip-hop will endure not just because the music is so thrilling, but also because the rappers vividly evoke a city that is, for worse and (let's not forget) for better, never going to be the same.

After all, long before his name was affixed to an airport, Louis Armstrong, too, seemed manifestly unfit for polite society. Back when he recorded "Muggles," an ode to marijuana, he was a symbol of the so-called "jazz intoxication" that was corrupting an earlier generation the way hip-hop is corrupting this one.

A quarter-century from now, when the social problems that Juvenile and others so discomfitingly rap about have become one more strand of the city's official history, they may find themselves honored in just the kinds of musical tributes and cultural museums that currently shut them out. By then, their careers will probably have cooled off. They'll be less influential, less popular, less controversial; not coincidentally, they'll have a less visceral connection to the youth of New Orleans. And finally, their music — and maybe also their recording studios, their custom jewelry, their promotional posters — will seem to be worth saving. Perhaps, like so many other pop-music traditions, "gangsta gumbo" is a dish best preserved cold.

    New Orleans Hip-Hop Is the Home of Gangsta Gumbo, NYT, 23.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/arts/music/23sann.html

Runoff Election Is Set

for New Orleans Mayor's Race

April 23, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, April 22 — Mayor C. Ray Nagin made a strong showing Saturday in the city's first mayoral election since Hurricane Katrina but failed to escape a runoff election next month in which he will face Louisiana's lieutenant governor, Mitch Landrieu.

With 94 percent of the city's 442 precincts reporting, Mr. Nagin had 39 percent of the vote, ahead of Mr. Landrieu, who had 28 percent. A third leading candidate, Ron Forman, a local businessman, had 17 percent.

Because no candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote, Mr. Nagin and Mr. Landrieu will compete in a runoff on May 20.

Mr. Landrieu's showing Saturday put him in a strong position to become the first white mayor of New Orleans since his father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1978. He is likely to pick up most of Mr. Forman's vote, almost exclusively concentrated in white precincts. In addition, Mr. Landrieu apparently picked up as much as 20 percent of the vote in black precincts, according to analysts on local television stations.

Mr. Nagin, however, the only major black candidate, polled better than expected, setting up what is likely to be an intense campaign between the two men over the next month.

With turnout apparently low in black precincts, Mr. Nagin appealed for unity after the results were in.

"If we don't come together as men and women, we will perish as fools," he said. "We must become comfortable with one another."

Some black voters interviewed here Saturday, dissatisfied with the slow pace of recovery, said they were supporting Mr. Landrieu.

"We have no direction right now," said Marvin Keelen, who had journeyed from Baton Rouge to vote. "We can't make any decisions."

Nonetheless, it appeared that Mr. Nagin, who had not previously been popular in black neighborhoods, would pick up a large share of the black vote.

Mr. Landrieu, in a speech to supporters Saturday night, invoked his biracial support. He said the city's different racial and ethnic groups "almost in equal measure came forward to propel this campaign," and he promised to "push off the forces of division."

His campaign hopes to draw on the popularity of his political family among black and white voters. Mr. Landrieu's sister, Mary, is a Democratic United States senator from Louisiana.

State officials went to elaborate lengths to involve the tens of thousands of people still displaced from this damaged city. But for months, civil rights groups have challenged the very notion of holding an election now. Officials accepted ballots mailed and faxed in at the last minute, and the state set up voting places all around Louisiana.

Throughout the day, New Orleans citizens streamed past piles of debris to vote in improvised polling places. The hurricane's floodwaters had destroyed dozens of voting sites, forcing state officials to cobble together giant makeshift ones.

Some had traveled hundreds of miles to cast their ballots, piling into buses in Atlanta for an overnight trip, or getting into cars bleary-eyed for a long morning voyage from the rural hinterlands.

Many came to a giant warehouse on Chef Menteur Highway in flood-ravaged eastern New Orleans, where officials had combined 50 precincts and 27 voting places into the biggest of the makeshift precincts. Citizens cast their ballots under signs bearing the names of destroyed voting places in the Ninth Ward: "7925 Alabama St.," or "St. Mary's Academy," or "Schaumberg Elementary School."

In a festive atmosphere, voters greeted relatives and friends they had not seen since the storm and spoke of what they said was the imperative of appearing in person to vote.

"This is New Orleans; this is my home," said Frank Echols, who said he had driven all morning from Mississippi, over 100 miles. His home in eastern New Orleans was heavily damaged in the flooding.

"I could have voted by mail, but I wanted to be part of this," said Mr. Echols, a retired official with the city's mass-transit agency. "We don't know what the future is going to hold, but we're going to be part of it."

Melva Pichon had driven nearly eight hours from Conroe, Tex. "This determines the future of our city," Ms. Pichon said. Saying she had opted for the incumbent, she added: "I want to make sure that the person who gets in has experienced this before."

State election officials described turnout as steady all day. Before Saturday, some 20,000 people had already voted by mail or at early voting centers set up throughout the state.

With the massive task of reconstruction here stalled, citizens said repeatedly before Saturday's tally that they were looking for the city's chief executive to present a clear way forward.

Throughout the truncated mayoral campaign, the leading candidates largely avoided confronting the central issue: whether some neighborhoods were so inherently vulnerable to flooding that they should not be rebuilt. That issue, so tied up with sensitive questions of race and class, seemed too hot to handle in the current campaign, though analysts speculated it might now be taken up in the runoff.

    Runoff Election Is Set for New Orleans Mayor's Race, NYT, 23.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23elect.html?hp&ex=1145851200&en=d28f81ca4b3166a0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mystery and Unease

as New Orleans Is Set to Vote

April 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, April 21 — Last week, the N.A.A.C.P. chartered four buses in Houston, hoping to fill them with voters returning to Louisiana to cast their ballots early in this city's mayoral election. But only six people showed up, and several buses made the trip empty. It seemed a bad sign for black participation in the vote.

Around Louisiana, on the other hand, 20,000 residents have already cast ballots, more than 10 times the normal number, and many of them are likely to have been evacuated from black neighborhoods after Hurricane Katrina. What appear to be contradictory tea leaves help explain why this election is one of the most mysterious in the region's history, so fraught with uncertainty that for weeks analysts have been hedging their bets on the outcome.

Nobody knows how many people will show up to vote here on Saturday and whether most will be black, as in elections for a generation, or white. Nobody knows exactly how many people are in the city. A white mayor may rule at City Hall for the first time in nearly 30 years, or maybe not.

"We don't know the racial composition of the electorate," Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans, said. "We don't know the racial composition of the evacuees."

Those questions of race are likely to determine which two candidates emerge from the election to compete in the runoff on May 20, assuming no candidate gets a majority of the vote.

For all the confusion, there is general agreement on the three leading candidates, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Ron Forman, a local businessman. The latter two candidates are white, and if they are the winners on Saturday, it will represent a significant upheaval in the city's power structure.

As many as 200,000 of the city's 290,000 registered voters may be living outside New Orleans. Most are probably black, as were two-thirds of the 20,000 who already voted, according to the secretary of state's calculations. The low participation indicates to Ms. Howell that most evacuees will not be voting. Having failed to delay the vote in court, many civil rights advocates have argued for weeks that the cumbersome absentee process would disenfranchise black voters.

Thousands of residents may pour into the city on Saturday, or perhaps not. For many who do, the ritual of voting has been upended. Fewer than a third of the normal 256 polling places will operate. Meanwhile, state officials have erected large billboards all over New Orleans telling voters where to call if they are unsure of their new polling place. In an unusual move, Louisiana's secretary of state has come from Baton Rouge to take charge of the vote.

There will probably be confusion on Saturday, but so has there been throughout an electoral season that feels grafted onto the city's overriding preoccupation — whether New Orleans has any future at all.

So for many here, the vote for mayor is more than just an election. Uptown, downtown, in black and white neighborhoods, residents say they will never cast a more significant vote.

"It's the most important election ever for the city," Wayne Gillette, a white lawyer, said outside his home in the Gentilly neighborhood. "It's about the whole direction for the city."

Heather Wright, a white jeweler in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, said: "This mayor, whoever it is, could be the one that could possibly turn the city around. Possibly turn around the schools, end the corruption."

With recovery from Hurricane Katrina stuck in neutral, a political climate of indecision and not a single federal dollar yet delivered for rebuilding, the voters are waiting for some clue, any clue, about what comes next.

A timid campaign behind them, frustrated New Orleans voters await both signs that the city's troubled past is not also its future, and a leader who can pull them from the morass. No candidate addressed what many said was the central issue, whether some flooded neighborhoods should be rebuilt. Over and over, voters interviewed this week — especially white ones — said they were looking for someone who would take a stand, and break with the past.

"Somebody has got to have the guts to stand up and say, 'No, you can't rebuild there.' Somebody has got to draw the line somewhere," said Russell Lawson, gesturing across the counter in the cool of Markey's Bar in the Bywater neighborhood. "We're waiting for someone to show some leadership. We have the opportunity to rebuild the city into something so much better than what we had before."

But there is disagreement over what that should be, just as there is a sharp split about the cataclysm — who performed well, who did not — and its aftermath. Mayor Nagin has lost considerable popularity since the storm, and without a sharp surge in support from black voters, never his biggest cheerleaders, he may be knocked out in the vote. Mr. Forman has done well mostly among white voters seeking a change at City Hall, and Mr. Landrieu is hoping to capitalize on his well-known political family name that has previously been popular among both races.

The unknowns over this election have added to the general uncertainty.

"A lot of people are very depressed and upset, more than you can see," said Charles Myles, a concrete worker who is black, sweeping up outside the trailer that is now home in the Gentilly neighborhood, one of the most integrated in the city. Behind him was his gutted house, inundated by seven feet of water after Hurricane Katrina.

"It's just going to be a very long time before we recover," Mr. Myles said. "We need someone up there who can make sure that everybody does what they are supposed to do, someone that stays on Bush."

The fault line is race. Most black voters are rallying around Mr. Nagin, expressing hurt over the scorn now aimed at him by former white supporters. The attacks on Mr. Nagin, derided by many whites as indecisive, flip-flopping and refusing to acknowledge that some neighborhoods might be too vulnerable to rebuild, are taken personally.

A bastion of black political power is seen as slipping away with the city's changed demographics, and Mr. Nagin, not previously popular with most black voters, is regarded as the only defense.

"I don't know nobody else but Nagin," said Clark Joiner, a black construction worker in the Marigny neighborhood. "He didn't do nothing wrong. He's got a little plan. People just need to let him go along."

Mr. Nagin "did all he could do," Bishop B. L. Goss Sr. said in one of the old black Uptown neighborhoods on the river. "Nagin couldn't have done no more than what he did. Let him stay there and finish what he did."

Others here, weary of the trash, the ruined houses and the businesses teetering on the edge of collapse, do not relish that prospect. "All I see is indecision on the part of Nagin," said Lance Wesa, a French Quarter jeweler who is white. Mr. Wesa said he might have to close his store for the summer.

"It's a terrible time for this city," Paul Poché, who is white, said as he watered his luxuriant garden in Bywater. "We've got to get it together, see what we can make out of the ruins. If the help's going to come, it's going to have come from somewhere else. Because this place is a wreck."

    Mystery and Unease as New Orleans Is Set to Vote, NYT, 22.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/us/22election.html

Grant Will Revive

Planning to Develop New Orleans

April 20, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Louisiana officials plan to unveil an organization today that will revive the process of creating a New Orleans rebuilding plan, using $3.5 million newly pledged by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The ambitious effort calls for six months of work by urban planners, architects and other experts, along with public meetings in New Orleans's 13 community districts and in the four cities that have taken in the greatest number of the displaced: Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Dallas and Houston.

Billions of dollars in federal community development grants cannot be released until a comprehensive rebuilding plan for the state is in place. Sean Reilly, a member of the board of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which is readying the statewide plan, said the other affected parishes had completed their basic planning, leaving Orleans Parish as "the last and most important piece of the puzzle." The city's Bring Back New Orleans Commission was putting neighborhood-by-neighborhood planning in place when federal financing dried up.

The new group, the Community Fund Support Organization, will be managed by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, a local public charity. The full budget for the planning process has been estimated at $7.9 million. The portion not covered by the new Rockefeller Foundation pledge is to be raised from public and private sources.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana applauded the grant and the planning process that it will produce.

"What people need is to get the right kind of information to make smart decisions for themselves, and it's the one ingredient that they have not been given," Ms. Blanco said in an interview. "They just hear noises out there, but nobody has sat down in the various neighborhoods, and it has to be done that way."

The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already provided $3 million to Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina, is one of the nation's largest foundations, with assets of more than $3 billion.

The sum it is providing for the planning effort is unusually large, said Darren Walker, director of the foundation's domestic program. Holding some public meetings outside the state will add to the time and expense required, Mr. Walker said, but it is essential that the people of New Orleans have a voice in the process, wherever they are.

"Everyone has a role to play," he said, adding that the effort "marries the best of urban planning with the wisdom and local knowledge and authentic voice of community residents."

"We owe it to ourselves as a nation," Mr. Walker said, "to not allow this opportunity to pass."

    Grant Will Revive Planning to Develop New Orleans, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/us/nationalspecial/20rockefeller.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Replacing lost housing

is off to a slow start

Updated 4/17/2006 12:26 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Mindy Fetterman

One idea for new housing in the post-hurricane, post-flood New Orleans is a tiny yellow "Katrina Cottage" that can withstand a hurricane's winds. If it gets wet inside, you just hose it out — no mold. It will cost about $35,000.

Another is a 20,000-lot development with "New Orleans-style" homes on a farm next to a golf course in a neighboring suburb. The homes will cost from $150,000 to $250,000.

A third is an "urban loft" condo development with a pool on the roof at the edge of the Warehouse District near the French Quarter. Prices not announced.

And the flashiest: A gleaming steel-and-glass tower, 70 stories high, with condos that will cost much more than any of the above. It would be the tallest building in Louisiana. The name on the tower: Trump.

"Everybody's drooling, waiting for the building boom to begin," says Rick Whitney, a small developer who has 16 properties in the New Orleans area.

That hasn't happened yet.

Despite tentative plans announced by a few developers, and new flood maps out last week that give homeowners some guidance about how high above ground to rebuild, the housing purgatory that has gripped New Orleans for more than seven months remains. And it won't ease soon.

The new home construction plans announced so far target wealthy buyers, even out-of-towners who might want a "weekend place" in downtown New Orleans. They're being built in the "high and dry" land near the unflooded French Quarter or in a suburb miles away.

When built, they'd replace a fraction of the nearly 250,000 homes in the metro area that were damaged when Hurricane Katrina ripped through in late August and the levees failed, flooding some areas of town with 14 feet of water.

None of the developments are aimed at replacing the tens of thousands of damaged and uninhabitable homes in lower- or middle-class areas such as the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview or St. Bernard Parish.

Some individual new homes are being built by historic preservation groups and charities such as Habitat for Humanity and Catholic Charities of New Orleans, which announced this month it would build 4,000 rental and elderly housing units. More than 50,000 homeowners have gotten permits from the city to repair their homes, and many are.

Even though the "Katrina Cottage" would be a replacement for low-income homes, it's just an idea. The cottage is envisioned as a modern-day "Sears house," like the mail-order homes sold by the retailer in the early 1900s.

"It's a tale of two cities right now," says developer Roger Ogden, co-owner of the Canal Place Mall downtown, which was looted and burned after the hurricanes. It reopened in February.

"We have the historic infrastructure, the French Quarter, the Museum District and others, that are back open," he says. "But in the outlying suburbs of Orleans Parish and St. Bernard Parish, where the extensive flooding caused mind-boggling destruction, nothing much is happening yet."

Waiting to decide

In New Orleans, it's still a waiting game.

Property owners had been waiting for advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to tell them how high to rebuild to qualify for flood insurance and rebuilding money. Last week FEMA said buildings must be at least 3 feet off the ground and meet its base flood elevations. Buildings in the lowest-lying areas might have to be raised up to 11 feet. Most homeowners were reluctant to rebuild until the new flood maps came out. It could take more than a year for governments to OK the guidelines.

Renters have had to wait for their landlords to decide what to do, too — 47% of New Orleans' housing was rental property,

The state of Louisiana is waiting for congressional approval for an additional $4.2 billion it wants to fund a proposal to subsidize homeowners for up to $150,000 for damage (minus insurance), provide low-interest loans to rebuild, or buy property outright for up to $150,000. The House has approved it; the Senate has not.

Property owners are waiting to find out how much money they'll get from the federal government if they abandon their property. Until then, city and parish governments can't decide if they want to redevelop it. Until then, developers can't decide where to build.

Some Louisiana parishes (the equivalent of counties) are considering ideas for rebuilding that are coming from meetings called charrettes (French for "carts"), being led by a group of so-called New Urbanist architects brought in by the state. And separate neighborhood meetings still are underway to try to assess how many people will return. That will help governments decide which areas get rebuilt first.

Walter Leger is head of the Louisiana housing recovery plan that is awaiting Congressional approval.

But personally, he's like many in New Orleans: He can't decide what to do.

His home in St. Bernard Parish was flooded with 14 feet of water, which killed the 45 trees around it. He doesn't know if he should rebuild. Will the levees hold for this hurricane season, which starts in June? Or is it time to sell and move to higher ground? What will his neighbors do? If he rebuilds, would his house be the only one on the street for years?

"I haven't made a decision yet," says Leger (pronounced Ley-jere). "And that's one of the fundamental problems in New Orleans."

A little yellow house

One of the most innovative ideas for housing is a cottage that a group of architects is proposing be built to replace homes destroyed throughout the Gulf Coast.

The 170- to 1,700-square-foot cottage could be bought as a kit from a home repair retailer, such as Lowes or Home Depot, and assembled on a lot. Or it could be pre-made by a manufacturer and delivered by truck. Traditional "stick" construction could be used to build it from a set of architectural plans.

The cottages can withstand 130-mile-an-hour winds and can be built with plastic-foam-core concrete panels that won't mold. The houses cost $100 a square foot.

A homeowner could live in the tiny cottage while building a bigger house, then use it for a studio or workplace. Or it could serve as the "kernel" of a house, and be enlarged later.

"Everybody loves the idea that they can order a house that would be cute and nice and turn up, and that's the end of it," says architect Marianne Cusato, who designed a 770-square-foot cottage shown in St. Bernard Parish last month. "People see them and want one in their backyard."

Her "Katrina Cottage" is one of several designs being proposed by New Urbanists architects, a loose collective of architects that is advising Mississippi and Louisiana on how to rebuild. They get their name because they design communities with homes, retail stores, schools and offices within walking distance, in an old-fashioned, town-center way.

Officials in both states are lobbying to have Katrina Cottages replace FEMA trailers that are being provided as temporary housing. But FEMA says that would require a change in federal law. Negotiations continue.

"We're proposing a new model of housing, to replace 20,000 FEMA trailers in our communities with something akin to the Katrina Cottage," says Gavin Smith, director of recovery and renewal for Mississippi. "They're more livable and more in keeping with our coastal architecture. They're safer and can be anchored on elevated foundations."

The New Urban Guild early this month showed 16 Katrina Cottage designs at a national manufactured housing show to strong interest, says Steve Mouzon, co-founder of the guild. One company signed a contract to make them. "Everybody wants to be first out of the gate" if the government approves spending money for the cottages, he says.

A slow pace on the ground?

Some criticize the seemingly slow pace of planning and rebuilding in New Orleans and Louisiana compared with neighboring Mississippi. Many blame the federal government for being slow to approve money to support homeowners.

"At this point, seven months after the storms, people are discouraged that there are not programs outlined to help them," says Patricia Gay, executive director of the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans.

Charrette planning meetings have been held in all 11 Mississippi towns devastated by hurricane winds (flooding was not the issue there), and 10 have adopted the plans. Only Biloxi declined, because its city government is continuing an earlier development plan supported by its casinos.

But in New Orleans and Louisiana, property owners — and the governments — have been more reluctant to accept planning advice from outsiders.

An Urban Land Institute plan for New Orleans, released right after the hurricanes, called for major sections of the city near Lake Pontchartrain to be abandoned for parks and wetlands as the area is rebuilt. That set off a public outcry about property owners' rights and abandonment of some poor, African-American neighborhoods. The plan died.

Even help with FEMA trailers has caused controversy. Property owners don't mind them set up in an individual's backyard, but there's been resistance to putting groups of trailers together. Two weeks ago, Mayor Ray Nagin suspended construction of FEMA trailer parks after neighbors in the upscale Lakewood Estates objected to trailers being installed there.

Only one neighborhood in New Orleans plans to host the urban planning architects for meetings on how to rebuild their neighborhood, the middle-class African-American neighborhood of Gentilly. The meetings begin tomorrow. Yet, reaction has been mostly positive to the plans, which have been adopted in St. Bernard Parish next door, and Cameron and Vermillion parishes on the western edge of the state.

"I hate to second guess those on the ground, living with it every day," says Bruce Karatz, the CEO of KB Home, the national home builder which has announced plans to build homes in a nearby town (Developers' plans, 3B). "But the institutions and entities (in New Orleans) have not been able to get much going on the residential side."

That might be true, New Orleanians say.

But they say that's because the damage is so widespread and so devastating that it takes time to work through all the issues of rebuilding.

"Whatever happens in New Orleans, it's not going to be some grandiose, Big Brother, you-do-it-this-way-or-go-to-hell kind of plan," says developer Ogden. "It's democracy in action. The individual property owner will have a say. The neighborhoods will have a say. The city will have a say. The state will have a say. And all of the others (insurers, bankers, the federal government) will have a say," he says.

"It's not the best in terms of speed," Ogden says. "But it's who we are."

    Replacing lost housing is off to a slow start, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2006-04-16-new-orleans-housing-usat_x.htm

Torn by Storm,

Families Tangle Anew on Custody

April 16, 2006
The New York Times
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON

NEW ORLEANS — Last June, after a long dispute, a judge decided that Bobby F. Spurlock and Zandrea Johnson should share custody of their daughter.

Then came Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Spurlock, whose home in Jefferson Parish was undamaged in the storm, remained in Louisiana. Ms. Johnson, whose home in eastern New Orleans was destroyed, evacuated, with the child, to Memphis.

Now Ms. Johnson plans to stay in Memphis indefinitely, and an already unpleasant clash over the best interest of a 6-year-old girl is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

The storm and the flooding that came with it here uprooted families, leaving them in staggering states of stress and uncertainty.

For some families, already torn apart by separation and divorce, like Mr. Spurlock and Ms. Johnson, the fallout has been especially damaging, producing painful new battles over child custody and visitation, financial support and division of assets.

"How can things change from joint custody to relocation in a couple of months?" asked Mr. Spurlock, a 37-year-old sales manager for a car dealership. "I am not trying to take her from her mom, but I want equal time with my daughter."

After the damaged Orleans Parish Civil District Court set up operations near Baton Rouge in October, custody and support cases began to mount.

Since January, when the court returned to New Orleans, judges and lawyers say they have seen scores of family disputes related to the storm. Other parishes have experienced similar surges.

Now the school year is coming to a close, allowing for less-disruptive movement of children, and new filings for divorce are increasing.

"Families that were operating on an emotional string, well, that string has broken," said Paulette R. Irons, a district court judge. "All that's left is dissension. It will be a busy summer, I can tell you."

Although some broken families have just been struggling for a new sense of stability, others have used the storm to try to beat the legal system, Judge Irons said. She said she had seen noncustodial parents who had spirited away their children without notice, custodial parents who had moved without good cause and parents who had tried to avoid payments of child support.

Judge Irons said she had also noticed an increase in domestic violence petitions, some of which appeared to have been efforts to bolster custody claims.

Some cases involve demands by parents for the return of children who were taken to other cities, and others are requests from relocated parents to stay temporarily in a new place with their children or to move permanently. In some cases, both parents have relocated.

Jeffrey Harris, a disabled ship worker who moved to Arlington, Tex., after the hurricane, is using a legal aid service to try to arrange visits with his 5-year-old son, whom his wife took to Alabama. The couple's divorce proceedings were interrupted by the hurricane, and Mr. Harris's lawyer is now in Atlanta.

"All I want is to have my divorce final and get to see my son, and it ain't happening," said Mr. Harris, 36, who said he had not seen his son since before the hurricane. "I am on a fixed income. I just can't get over there to see him. I don't know what to do."

There have been so many cases like Mr. Harris's in Texas that the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers sponsored a Webcast with the Texas Bar Association last month on family law issues related to Hurricane Katrina. Among the topics discussed was jurisdiction.

The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act states that if a person has lived in a state for six months, that state may be able to assert jurisdiction in a custody case. Although new jurisdiction is not guaranteed, the act potentially allows people from the storm-affected region to seek a new day in court wherever they move.

Louisiana has strict guidelines governing requests for relocation in settled custody cases. They include prior written notice to the remaining parent of the intent to move, and a waiting period during which the remaining parent can file an objection.

But the guidelines do not address emergency upheavals, like those caused by Hurricane Katrina, which leave judges the messy task of determining when a required evacuation becomes a voluntary relocation and — when children are involved — who can stay where and for how long.

"It's hard to make these decisions," Judge Irons said. "On the one hand you want people to come back, but you don't want them to have to come back to squalor. It's just case by case."

Standing in the gutted, musty shell of her former apartment in the Lakeview section of New Orleans, where the 17th Street canal flood wall was breached, Stiliani Revere said she felt victimized by the process.

In October, Ms. Revere said, a Jefferson Parish judge told her she would lose custody of her 5-year-old daughter if she tried to move the child out of the New Orleans area. Her former husband, who declined to comment, had filed for emergency custody after Ms. Revere's evacuation out of the state.

Ms. Revere left New Orleans a day before Hurricane Katrina struck, stopping in Memphis and Houston before settling temporarily in Fort Worth. She enrolled her daughter, Isabella, in school, and said she had planned to stay at least through the fall school term while she figured out a plan to return.

Instead, she said, she felt compelled to return to New Orleans while her life was still in a chaotic swirl. She moved in with an aunt in Jefferson Parish, and Isabella enrolled in her third school in two months.

"I had just lost every single thing I owned, and now a judge was telling me I could lose my child if I didn't come back," said Ms. Revere, 33, her eyes rimmed with tears, as she gazed out of the cloudy window of her daughter's former bedroom. "It just seemed crazy and unfair."

Ms. Revere has had an unusual view of the other side of the custody issue. She is a legal secretary for the lawyer who represents Mr. Spurlock in his case to have his daughter returned. Ms. Revere and Mr. Spurlock each empathized with the other's plight.

Holding an envelope addressed to "Daddy" in a child's careful, oversize print, and bearing a Memphis postmark, Mr. Spurlock said he was shattered by a judge's decision in December to allow his daughter to remain in Tennessee. He said Ms. Johnson, a nurse, could have been compelled to move closer to facilitate visits.

"This is my biggest nightmare, having to go into court as an African-American man and justify my desire to be an involved father," said Mr. Spurlock, adding that he vowed long ago not to be like his own, largely absent, father. "I said I would never be that stereotype, and now I am being treated like a deadbeat."

Ms. Johnson and her lawyers did not respond to requests for an interview.

Other cases remain undecided. Wayne Jacque, a New Orleans police officer, and Quandra Broussard, a soldier with an Army maintenance unit, had been awaiting the completion of their divorce when the hurricane struck.

Their daughters, Asia, 10, and Kiara, 6, had been living with Mr. Jacque in eastern New Orleans for three years. Ms. Broussard had spent time in Iraq and now lives in Lawton, Okla., near her Army base.

The girls have lived with neither parent since the hurricane. Mr. Jacque, who remained on duty after the storm, sent them to his brother's house in Dallas for what he assumed would be a short stay. But with his home in New Orleans destroyed and the children's school still closed, the girls have been unable to return.

Mr. Jacque has been awarded temporary custody, but a court-appointed evaluator must decide which parent will eventually have primary custody. "I just want them with me," Ms. Broussard said. "They shouldn't be in Texas."

Mr. Jacque, 34, is living in a trailer and working extra hours to try to pay for a new home before the court evaluation. "I am nervous," he said. "I wasn't before the storm. I knew I had done everything I should do as a parent. But I can't show a social worker that my kids would be living with me in a trailer."

Not every situation has worsened since Hurricane Katrina. Solangel Calix, a professional flamenco dancer and the mother of three teenagers, said she and her former husband barely spoke before the hurricane.

But when Ms. Calix and the children evacuated to Houston, her former husband, a restaurateur, who asked that his name and the names of the children not be mentioned to preserve their privacy, helped set her up in temporary housing. The two now speak regularly.

"I have been flabbergasted," Ms. Calix, 50, said. "But almost losing everything puts things into perspective, to where family is what matters, what counts."

Some lawyers are pushing for legislation that would add guidelines relating to emergency evacuations into the state's relocation statute. In the meantime, some warring spouses are taking their own precautions.

Judge Manny Fernandez, a chief judge in St. Bernard Parish, which was heavily damaged, said he had heard a case recently in which the parents specified in their custody agreement how the children should be relocated in the event of an evacuation.

"I was in practice for 34 years before becoming a judge, and I've never seen anything like that," he said. "Everything has changed now."

    Torn by Storm, Families Tangle Anew on Custody, NYT, 16.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/us/nationalspecial/16custody.html

Levee decision angers residents

Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:48 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

BURAS, Louisiana (Reuters) - Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, Richard and Brenda Simmons still agonize over whether to rebuild their smashed two-story home in lower Plaquemines Parish on the southeastern tip of Louisiana.

Their decision got harder this week after the U.S. government said it may not spend the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to raise all the levees on the thin strip of land jutting into the Gulf of Mexico.

Like many here, the announcement hit Brenda, 48, hard. She said she is angry that lower Plaquemines, a seafood and energy hub with an eroding coastline, may get left out while much of southern Louisiana wins beefed-up flood barriers.

"There are people who have lived their lives down here, for heaven's sakes. They want to come home, they have no place else to go. They put their heart and soul in this area," she said.

Residents and business owners now wonder if they will be able to get insurance if they try to rebuild the ravaged area.

Virtually every structure in Buras, a town with a pre-Katrina population of 3,300 about 60 miles south of New Orleans, was damaged by Katrina on August 29. Less than a month later, Hurricane Rita's storm surge swamped it again. The Simmonses' street is strewn with wrecked homes and debris.

This week, Donald Powell, U.S. President George W. Bush's Gulf Coast rebuilding chief, said the administration will ask Congress for $2.5 billion to strengthen the levee system in New Orleans and the vulnerable surrounding areas by 2010.

The plan is to protect 98 percent of the population from a 1-in-100-year flood by adding stronger walls and making the levees taller, in some cases 7 feet.

But the plans don't include the south Plaquemines peninsula through which the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf.

STUDYING ALTERNATIVES

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated it would cost another $1.6 billion to protect just 2 percent of the at-risk population, or about 14,000 people in small towns like Buras, Triumph and Venice.

The Corps' Lt. Gen. Carl Strock said engineers are trying to figure out how to protect the narrow strip of land.

"Right now we're looking at massive earthen levees throughout the system. There might be a more cost-effective way to provide point protection in critical areas," he said.

But Lonnie Greco, operations manager for Plaquemines Parish, said using population to decide levels of protection is unfair.

"It was very disappointing," Greco said. "What the rest of the country doesn't realize is it is the only parish we have in the state of Louisiana that puts out the oil and gas revenues and has the seafood industry. The state's going to lose and the rest of the country's going to lose."

The parish accounts for 40 percent of the state's energy revenue.

Outside the wreckage of his house, Richard Simmons, a 50-year-old sheriff's deputy, pointed out Americans suffered a big spike in gasoline prices when his region's ability to supply oil was hobbled by the storms and said that could happen more frequently without the necessary protection here.

Venice, the parish's southernmost town, has reopened a handful of restaurants and stores to serve the oil, gas, shipping, commercial-fishing and sport-fishing crowds. But the devastation is still staggering, with trailers reduced to crumpled metal and boats left capsized on land.

Here, Carey McCarta, 60, is working to get the Deuces Wild bar reopened for business. It is gutted and its walls bear a brown line showing it sat in more than 6 feet of water.

He said his parish should get better levees afforded the rest of Louisiana, although he predicted residents will return regardless, as they did after Hurricane Camille in 1969.

"I've been here 40 years, I've paid my federal taxes and I've paid my share of them," said the veteran boat captain. "We've made it our home and I think we ought to be protected."

    Levee decision angers residents, R, 15.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-15T174822Z_01_N14240706_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-PLAQUEMINES.xml

Lenient Rule Set for Rebuilding

in New Orleans

April 13, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER and JOHN SCHWARTZ

NEW ORLEANS, April 12 — Federal officials issued unexpectedly lenient guidelines on Wednesday for rebuilding the flood-damaged homes of New Orleans, potentially allowing tens of thousands of homeowners to return to their neighborhoods at costs far less than they had feared.

Under the guidelines issued here by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, huge swaths of homes might still have to be rebuilt at least three feet off the ground, or risk getting no federal reconstruction money or insurance.

But the announcement, anxiously anticipated as a critical step in rebuilding this still-ravaged city, was nonetheless greeted with some relief by local officials and residents. They had feared that, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's catastrophic flooding, the government would demand that some houses be raised by as much as 10 feet, at enormous expense.

The lesser requirement assumes that the area's damaged levee system will be solidly reconstructed. To that end, federal officials also announced Wednesday that most of the system's 36 miles or so of flood walls — which sit atop levees in places where massive earthen structures are not practical — would be torn down and replaced. The cost for that and other levee improvements is $2.5 billion, which the Bush administration said Wednesday that it would actively seek from Congress.

The announcement dovetails with a political climate in New Orleans in which the idea of not rebuilding damaged neighborhoods has been strictly taboo. In a heated mayor's race that is now reaching its conclusion, no candidate has been willing to say some areas should not be rebuilt because of flood danger.

Now, the federal government — by making rebuilding requirements less stringent than had been anticipated — appears to have concurred, though FEMA officials did not say specifically why they chose the three-foot figure.

Some experts were critical of the decision. "It's wacky," said J. Robert Hunter, a former director of the federal flood insurance program. "Three feet — where did that come from? Why are we building up three feet, when the water was up over the roof?

"What's that three feet going to do?" Mr. Hunter asked. "Instead of coming up with real science, they're making it up. Which means that people are going to be at risk, they're going to die again, and taxpayers are subsidizing unwise construction with very cheap insurance."

In addition, though the upgraded levee system will guard against 100-year floods — those that have a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year — it will protect against the most powerful storms.

"One-hundred-year protection and Category 5 protection are not the same thing," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief engineer of the Army Corps of Engineers.

At one point over the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5 storm; when it made landfall along the coast last August, it was described as Category 3 or 4. The greatest flood damage occurred after the storm had passed and the levees and flood walls gave way.

Most officials here, though, said they were relieved that homeowners can get on with rebuilding now that the federal house-raising requirement is known.

"Over all, the new flood maps released by FEMA today truly do represent some good news for the city and its rebuilding process," said Greg Meffert, executive assistant to Mayor C. Ray Nagin. "Essentially, these new maps more or less maintain the city to the already previously enforced 100-year flood elevation standards."

For months, Louisiana authorities have complained that FEMA was dragging its feet in issuing new flood-elevation requirements, the first since the mid-1980's. The delay caused uncertainty for thousands of people, they said.

Now mortgages can be applied for, and lives that had been on hold can move forward.

"I would view it as good news, and I would view it as information that we can use to get on with planning our lives," said Sean Reilly, of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which will decide how federal rebuilding money is spent. Mr. Reilly agreed with Donald Powell, the top federal official in charge of Gulf Coast rebuilding, who said while making the announcement here: "The good news is, it's not a dramatic-type elevation."

As it is, many homes — even severely damaged ones — may not have to be raised at all, if they already meet or exceed the three-foot requirement. And since it applies only to homes that were destroyed or "substantially damaged," which the guidelines describe as damage to more than half the structure, the potential impact is further reduced because city officials have been liberal in revising damage assessments downward. In addition, virtually all two-story homes in which the first floor was wiped out but the second was untouched fall below the 50-percent threshold.

"It's good news for a lot of people," said Matt McBride of the Broadmoor Improvement Association. The Broadmoor neighborhood flooded badly. "It's basically good news, in that people don't have to raise their houses to exceed Katrina flood levels. For a lot of historic homes, this doesn't change many things."

LaToya Cantrell, for instance, president of the Broadmoor association, got five feet of water from Lake Pontchartrain, but because her house was already elevated by four feet, she will not have to raise it.

Even in neighborhoods of newer houses, like those in eastern New Orleans, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina's flooding, the federal government's new requirement could be considered generous.

"All of the two-story houses in eastern New Orleans have less than 50 percent damage, and this doesn't affect them," said Mtumishi St. Julien, a homeowner in that area who heads the Housing Finance Authority of New Orleans. "It's not going to drastically impact New Orleans, as some people suggest."

FEMA officials, in making their announcement, declined to say how many homes would be affected, or whether the most popular ground-level type of new construction — slab-on-grade — might still be allowed.

The announcement by the Army Corps of Engineers that the floodwalls would be replaced was the clearest admission yet by the Corps that much of New Orleans's levee system had long been flawed, and was not simply overpowered by forces that went beyond what the system was designed to withstand.

General Strock, the Corps' chief engineer, said the entire system of floodwalls would have to be examined to determine what must be replaced. "We must assume that because the foundations of these levees are pretty much the same throughout the system" the problem is widespread, he said.

In a conference call after the announcement, General Strock said even the system being planned would not prevent flooding in New Orleans in the case of another hurricane like Katrina. "But it will not be catastrophic flooding" caused by a breach in the system, he said.

Until the completion of the upgraded network of levees and flood walls, planned for 2010, he said, "there is a heightened level of risk that will go down over time."

Still uncertain is the fate of lower Plaquemines Parish, jutting into the Gulf of Mexico and severely flooded by Hurricane Katrina. Home to about 2 percent of the New Orleans area's population, the parish would require an additional $1.6 billion to raise its levee system to FEMA guidelines, money the Bush administration has not promised to seek.

Wednesday's advisory, as officials called it, opens the door to new flood-insurance maps, which will come later this year. Even for those who must raise their houses, the federal requirement could be good news because elevating a house by as little as five feet can cost more than $100,000. Up to $30,000 in federal money is available to homeowners for such projects.

Whatever the opinions of outside experts, the new federal policy was viewed favorably here.

"Over all, it's good news in that FEMA has agreed Katrina was only a one-time event, and flood insurance won't be based on catastrophic events but on common sense," said Mr. McBride of the Broadmoor association.

    Lenient Rule Set for Rebuilding in New Orleans, NYT, 13.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/us/nationalspecial/13rebuild.html

Louisiana officials say

Katrina recovery wasteful

Tue Apr 11, 2006 12:46 AM ET
Reuters
By Michael Depp

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Multibillion-dollar hurricane recovery efforts on the U.S. Gulf Coast are plagued by bloated costs and waste with too many contractors getting a piece of the action, lawmakers said at a hearing on Monday.

Louisiana legislators frustrated by the slow pace of recovery accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Army Corps of Engineers of spearheading a flawed rebuilding process with little transparency and contractor oversight.

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, held the field hearing as part of efforts to avoid the mistakes made after Hurricane Katrina in future crises.

"There seems to be a great pillow in the middle," Kevin Davis, president of storm-ravaged St. Tammany Parish, said of a disconnect between FEMA management and on-the-ground personnel. "Creativity and flexibility are discouraged."

The August 29 storm killed at least 1,300 people along the Gulf Coast. The region is bracing for the formal start to the 2006 hurricane season on June 1 against a backdrop of often-fractious relations with the federal agencies.

Coburn questioned the Corps' debris removal contracts as an example of mismanagement. He asked why details were not being divulged and questioned FEMA's deferral of key cleanup initiatives to the Corps.

"We believe that they have the requisite experience that we don't have within FEMA," responded Tina Burnette, deputy director of acquisitions for Katrina under the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency.

But Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, said the Corps contracted out its key cleanup operations to large, private firms, which in turn sub-contracted down a lengthy chain of companies before any work was done.

Too much of $100 billion-plus earmarked for Louisiana hurricane relief efforts is tied up in wasteful subcontracting practices, lawmakers said often at the hearing.

Also, local contractors are frequently being shut out of big jobs despite laws guaranteeing their role, Vitter said.

Derrell Cohoon, chief of the Louisiana Association of General Contractors, which represents 700 firms, said local players were getting subcontracts that were too small and piecemeal to be either profitable or meaningful.

Several politicians complained about FEMA travel trailers used for temporary housing, which have cost the agency $50,000-$70,000 each to buy and install. The money would be better put in residents' hands to repair their homes or to find other housing, the said.

The trailers themselves have been troublesome. One local politician testified some of his constituents have had them delivered, only to be locked out because different contractors were in charge of handing out the keys.

    Louisiana officials say Katrina recovery wasteful, R, 11.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-11T044646Z_01_N10398609_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-RECOVERY.xml

In Attics and Rubble,

More Bodies and Questions

April 11, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

NEW ORLEANS, April 5 — When August Blanchard returned to New Orleans from Pennsylvania in late December, his mother was still missing. Family members, scattered across the country, had been calling hospitals, the Red Cross and missing persons hot lines, hoping she had been rescued.

But Mr. Blanchard, 26, had a bad feeling. Twice, he drove past the pale green house on Reynes Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he and his mother, Charlene Blanchard, 45, had lived, yet he could not bring himself to enter.

It was not until Feb. 25 that one of Mr. Blanchard's uncles nudged the front door open with his foot and spied Ms. Blanchard's hand. Dressed in her nightgown and robe, she lay under a moldering sofa. With her was a red velvet bedspread that her daughter had given her and a huge teddy bear.

The bodies of storm victims are still being discovered in New Orleans — in March alone there were nine, along with one skull. Skeletonized or half-eaten by animals, with leathery, hardened skin or missing limbs, the bodies are lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters or lying face down, arms outstretched on parlor floors. Many of them, like Ms. Blanchard, were overlooked in initial searches.

A landlord in the Lakeview section put a "for sale" sign outside a house, unaware that his tenant's body was in the attic. Two weeks ago, searchers in the Lower Ninth Ward found a girl, believed to be about 6, wearing a blue backpack. Nearby, they found part of a man who the authorities believe might have been trying to save her.

[On Friday, contractors found a body in the attic of a home in the Gentilly neighborhood that had been searched twice before, officials said.]

In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, there were grotesque images of bodies left in plain sight. Officials in Louisiana recovered more than 1,200 bodies, but the process, hamstrung by money shortages and red tape, never really ended.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where unstable houses make searching dangerous, a plan to use cadaver dogs alongside demolition crews was delayed by lawsuits and community protests against the bulldozing. In the rest of the city, the absence of neighbors and social networks meant that some residents languished and died unnoticed. Many of the families of the missing were far from home, rendered helpless by distance and preoccupied with their own survival.

Now, as the city begins to rebuild in earnest, those families still wait, agonizing over loved ones who are unseen and unburied, but unforgotten.

"We never reached out to anyone to tell our story, because there's no ending to our story," said Wanda Jackson, 40, whose family is still waiting for word of her 6-year-old nephew, swept away by floodwaters as his mother clung to his 3-year-old brother. "Because we haven't found our deceased. Being honest with you, in my opinion, they forgot about us."

She continued, "They did not build nothing on 9/11 until they were sure that the damn dust was not human dust; so how you go on and build things in our city?"

In October and November, the special operations team of the New Orleans Fire Department searched the Lower Ninth Ward for remains until they ran out of overtime money.

Half a dozen officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency rebuffed requests to pay the bill, said Chief Steve Glynn, the team commander. When reporters inquired, FEMA officials said the required paperwork had not been filed.

During that period, if someone called to ask that a specific location be checked for a body, Chief Glynn said, there was no one to send. The Blanchards were not the only family left to find a loved one on their own.

Others had no family to find them. The name of Joseph Naylor, 54, was posted on Hurricane Katrina message boards by a friend, J. T. Beebe, who said in an interview that Mr. Naylor had no relatives except maybe an estranged cousin. Mr. Naylor was found in his attic on March 5.

Anita Dazet, who lives on a street that had little flooding, said she had been back home for five months before she thought to check on her neighbor, Lydia Matthews, whom Ms. Dazet described as mentally ill, and found her dead. Ms. Dazet said she had assumed that the same church that regularly left meals on the porch for Ms. Matthews had helped her evacuate.

Ms. Blanchard, too, was described by family members as mentally ill, but able to care for herself. When family members urged her to evacuate before the hurricane, she refused. "She would get violent if you tried to make her leave," said Shirley Blanchard, a sister.

In February, FEMA agreed to pay for the search for bodies to resume, and on March 2 the agency's special operations team was able to begin a systematic check of the 1,700 structures in the Lower Ninth Ward, the site of the city's worst destruction.

It is tedious, hot work. Each team of firefighters works with one or two dogs trained to find human remains. If the dogs sense a body, the workers lift heavy furniture, dig through stinking mud or pull down ceiling tiles to find it.

Often, the search is fruitless — in part because of Hurricane Rita, which flooded the area again two weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Many who had perished in the first storm were washed away, leaving behind only the smell of death.

According to a fluorescent orange scrawl on Ms. Blanchard's house, a search was conducted in September by the New Orleans police. Many bodies were overlooked during initial searches, partly because houses were structurally unsound or, with their contents in heaps, impossible to walk through. A thorough check might have required hacking through a collapsed roof or moving a small mountain of debris.

This time around, no one wants to miss anything. On a recent day, firefighters spotted a gallon-size pickle jar in an exposed attic, suggesting that someone had tried to weather the storm there. Because the house could not be entered safely, a piece of heavy equipment called an excavator was summoned to dismantle it. But the firefighters found nothing.

And finding a body is just the first step. Of the 14 bodies found since mid-February, none have been definitively identified and released for burial, partly because FEMA closed a $17 million morgue built to handle the dead from Hurricane Katrina. The morgue was used for eight weeks, and agency officials said there was no longer enough volume to justify keeping it open.

FEMA declined to allow the New Orleans coroner, whose own office and morgue were ruined in the storm, to continue to use the autopsy site.

For now, newly found bodies are stored in a refrigerated truck in Baton Rouge, La. The coroner, Dr. Frank Minyard, says a temporary office will be ready in about a week.

To Geneva Celestine, Ms. Blanchard's mother, who was on the front porch of the house when her body was discovered, not being able to bury her daughter is only the latest in an exhausting series of horrors.

"It's awful," she said by telephone from Pennsylvania. "To go there and find your own child, something they're supposed to be doing. Something they've got paid to do. And you see the mark on the house. It's really sad."

Early on, families were so angered by delays in releasing bodies that a few picketed the morgue. But although there is no longer a morgue to picket, the jurisdictional squabbling that contributed to the delays has not ended. Dr. Minyard's state counterpart, Dr. Louis Cataldie, said he had a mobile morgue and could take DNA samples immediately if Dr. Minyard would allow it.

"We have a very good idea who some of those people are," Dr. Cataldie said. "If we could get DNA, we could confirm it very quickly."

Bringing that kind of resolution to families is what motivates the searchers, who spend days in the desolate landscape of chest-high weeds and houses popped open like packing crates. Searching a single structure can take half a day.

Mickey Bourgeois, a search team member, recalled an incident when the team was told where to look for a mother and a baby. They found only the woman, he said.

"When something like that happens," he said, "you can't talk the guys into leaving until everything's out of the house."

Happy Blitt contributed research from New Yorkfor this article.

    In Attics and Rubble, More Bodies and Questions, NYT, 11.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/us/nationalspecial/11body.html

As Katrina Recedes,

Newspapers Still Float

April 10, 2006
The New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

BILOXI, Miss., April 8 — Glenn Currie, an architect, slid 50 cents into a coin box here the other morning and pulled out a copy of The Sun Herald, the local daily published in nearby Gulfport.

"I read it every day," he said. "They report what we need to know."

Mr. Currie, 59, said he especially appreciated the paper's before-and-after series, which features a building before Hurricane Katrina struck seven months ago, and after, often to shocking effect.

Less than 80 miles west in New Orleans, a similarly intense reader interest is taking place. At CC's coffeehouse on Magazine Street one morning last week, there were so many people absorbed in that day's Times-Picayune that the scene looked like a commuter train.

"These writers are energized and passionate," said Angele Thionville, 34, a mother of three boys, as she glanced up from the paper. She was not a big fan of The Times-Picayune before Katrina, she said, but now if she misses the paper one day, "I feel so out of touch."

While much of the country has moved on from coverage of Katrina, considered the largest natural disaster in modern American history, both The Sun Herald and The Times-Picayune remain all Katrina, all the time. For their role in covering and enduring the storm, both papers have received accolades, and next week both may well receive Pulitzer Prizes.

Both papers have struggled along with their communities, and during the recovery have faced some similar issues and adopted similar approaches to their new reality. But there are major differences, too. Both have taken on a new importance as news sources and as advocates in their communities. With buildings along 70 miles of the Gulf Coast reduced to matchsticks and parts of New Orleans abandoned and still without reliable electricity or phone service, The Sun Herald and Times-Picayune are connecting with readers the way newspapers did before the arrival of television.

The big question, ultimately tied to the economic fortunes of their areas, is what kind of future these newspapers will have as news organizations and businesses. Here their stories diverge. The Sun Herald, which before the storm had a circulation of 47,000 daily and 55,000 on Sunday, has rebuilt its circulation and advertising base; it is just 400 shy of its prestorm circulation and a few percentage points short of its prestorm ad revenue.

Even as many homes and buildings remain skeletal or in mounds of debris, the presence of casinos here and the likelihood that more will come has instilled confidence in the region.

The Times-Picayune, which had more than five times the circulation of The Sun Herald, now has regained about two-thirds of its readers, with a circulation of 176,000 daily and 196,000 on Sunday. But readers are returning faster than advertisers. Only 10 percent of the city's businesses have reopened. "We're suffering significant revenue losses," said Ashton Phelps Jr., publisher of the newspaper, which is owned by Advance Publications.

The obstacles that New Orleans and its newspaper faced in the storm and continue to face are on a different order of magnitude from the Gulf Coast as a whole. More than 200 people died in Mississippi, and 300 are still missing. In New Orleans, more than 1,100 died, and 2,000 are missing.

New Orleans faces bigger challenges, too, in part because of its terrain. The water remained in New Orleans, while it quickly drained from other communities along the coast. New Orleans is scrambling to reinforce the levees as the next hurricane season approaches, and residents are still waiting for flood maps before they decide whether to rebuild, leaving a cloud of uncertainty over the city. It is also in the midst of a chaotic mayor's race with two dozen candidates, making its leadership seem unstable and its direction unclear.

The tiny Sun Herald, indeed much of the Gulf Coast, has been overshadowed by the attention paid to New Orleans. But recognition may be at hand. Editor & Publisher, which reports on the newspaper business, said last month that The Sun Herald was in line to receive the Pulitzer Prize for public service.

The Times-Picayune, according to Editor & Publisher, is a Pulitzer finalist in two categories: commentary (by Chris Rose, one of its columnists) and breaking news, for reporting that a major levee had been breached and the city was being flooded while other media were reporting that New Orleans had been spared.

The Pulitzer board, which does not comment on finalists at this stage of the process, is meeting in New York later in the week to vote on the winners, and is to announce them next Monday.

The report that The Sun Herald may be under consideration for the public service award, journalism's highest honor, has already been something of a victory for the paper — and something of a disappointment for The Times-Picayune, stoking a newfound competition between the two. The Sun Herald likes to emphasize that it did not miss a day of print publication, while The Times-Picayune points to the scope of the disaster in New Orleans and its near-impossible reporting conditions.

The Pulitzer board can move finalists to different categories, so no one can say if either paper will make the cut or in which category. But the head-to-head competition over Katrina coverage suggests that the board will have to grapple with the very definition of public service.

The spotlight on New Orleans after Katrina has been a sore point for Mississippi. The Sun Herald has editorialized to that effect, complaining that the national media had left the broader Gulf Coast a footnote in the New Orleans story.

Before the storm, The Sun Herald, which is owned by Knight Ridder, had an emergency plan in place. The paper, in advance, sent four of its news staff members and two Knight Ridder designers to its sister paper, The Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Ga., while most of the staff reported along the coast and hunkered down in the Sun Herald building.

The building was built after Hurricane Camille destroyed the region in 1969. It sustained little damage from Katrina, and its presses remained dry, but it lost all power and communications. Shortly, the Knight Ridder cavalry arrived in Gulfport.

"They showed up with sat phones, chain saws, food and water," said Stan Tiner, The Sun Herald's editor and a former marine. "The logistics were very well organized." Even P. Anthony Ridder, the company's chief executive, showed up.

The Times-Picayune staff evacuated its building in delivery trucks as the floodwaters rose, and headed to Baton Rouge, La. A small band of reporters and editors felt sick at the thought of leaving and commandeered a delivery truck to return to New Orleans, defying martial law to report the news. The Times-Picayune suspended publication for three days.

Staff members at both papers experienced much of the grief that their readers did, but while many lost their houses, no employees died. Some lost loved ones, and all have their own harrowing tales.

Jean Prescott, 64, a features writer at The Sun Herald, said that her sister and her sister's husband drowned in their house. The authorities subsequently misplaced the bodies, she said, then they cremated someone else instead of her sister. The family did not receive her sister's ashes for three months.

"It wasn't unique," Ms. Prescott said. "So many people were found dead, they just couldn't keep track."

Workers at both papers said they are throwing themselves into telling their readers' stories instead of coping with their own.

"We're journalists and we just pack it away," said James O'Byrne, 46, features editor of The Times-Picayune, whose home was ruined. "You don't get a special badge of courage for losing your home," he said; it was a common event.

Anita Lee, 49, a reporter at The Sun Herald, said, "We're just not dealing with a lot of it," as she stepped around the debris of her former home and showed off the government-issued trailer where she lives now. "Our insurance is up in the air, our S.B.A. loan is not finalized, our house has not been torn down, and we're writing about other people in the same situation."

In some ways, she said, the shared experience with her readers has made her job easier. "I always tried to get to a level of understanding with the people I was interviewing," she said. "Now I get there a lot quicker."

The experience has given the pages of both papers a new urgency, and both seem less constrained by traditional objectivity, to the point of printing front-page editorials.

"We're far more direct in getting at what we think matters," said Jim Amoss, the editor of The Times-Picayune. "The urgency is palpable."

Mike Perlstein, 45, a criminal justice reporter at The Times-Picayune, said that articles about underhanded dealings and "good-old-boy New Orleans ways of doing things" that once drew ho-hum reactions are now "drawing howls of outrage from readers and keeping the news staff really engaged."

"There are issues on the business side, as there are with any newspaper," he added. "But we're still riding a riveting and unbelievable story about the rebuilding of a major American city."

Part of that rebuilding for the city and the paper depends on the return of advertisers. "It's a chicken-and-egg thing," said Tod Smith, who directs advertising plans for major clients in New Orleans. "What comes first, the services that people need? Or the people who support the services? There are a lot of unanswered questions."

The paper has many ads for car dealers (many people had car insurance, so practically all cars in New Orleans look brand new). The paper also is running small ads for services like mold remediation and air-duct cleaning. And its big department store, Dillard's, is open and buying full-page ads.

On the Gulf Coast, Dillard's remains shuttered. But Vicki Barrett, the advertising director at The Sun Herald, said that what the paper had lost in retail advertising, it had gained in classified ads. Perhaps one measure of the comeback status of both regions is an ad in The Sun Herald that would seem unthinkable in New Orleans — a company promising to meet "all your swimming pool needs."

The Sun Herald is optimistic about its future. South Mississippi, with its miles of white sandy beachfront and new casinos being built inland, expects more than $30 billion in new investment in the next few years.

"It's going to be a boom like no newspaper market has ever seen," said Ricky R. Mathews, The Sun Herald's publisher.

Gary Pruitt, the chief executive of McClatchy, which recently agreed to buy Knight Ridder, agrees. Mr. Pruitt is selling 12 of Knight Ridder's 32 papers, but he is keeping The Sun Herald, saying it meets his criteria for a growth market.

"We're basing our decision on our readings of the business and population projections and the resiliency of the local economy," he said.

Mr. Phelps, of The Times-Picayune, addressed the matter at a meeting of newspaper executives recently.

"The $64,000 question for us is this: What is the economy going to look like 18 months, two years from now, when most of the insurance checks have been cashed and the federal relief efforts taper off?" Mr. Phelps asked.

"We just don't know," he said, adding later: "The truth is that it's so big, we have still not found the bottom of how life has changed for us. We're still riding Katrina's winds."

    As Katrina Recedes, Newspapers Still Float, NYT, 10.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/business/media/10hurricane.html

New Orleans

fearing return to crime-ridden past

Fri Apr 7, 2006 1:48 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Recent killings on the streets of New Orleans have some in the hurricane-ravaged city fearing one revival they had hoped to avoid -- its distinction as one of America's most crime-ridden cities.

Months after floodwaters that submerged 80 percent of New Orleans subsided, residents enjoyed an unfamiliar respite from the gang- and drug-related crime that gripped the city for years.

Now, as evacuees trickle back from Houston, Atlanta and elsewhere to rebuild in the birthplace of jazz, so are some violent criminals, police and a community activist said.

"Crime today is not as bad as it was before August 29, which is before (Hurricane) Katrina. But I think it's also safe to say that crime has been escalating in this city, particularly since it has begun to repopulate," said Raphael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a police watchdog group.

"That's what I think the public is concerned about, they're seeing some upticks, some escalation since January, and particularly since Mardi Gras, and they're concerned we may be returning to pre-Katrina."

During Mardi Gras in February, 22-year-old Jermaine Wise was shot and killed. In March, police arrested Ivory "B-Stupid" Harris, 20, in connection with the killing.

On March 19, musician Michael Frey, 28, was walking home in the Faubourg Marigny area near the French Quarter when a robber killed him with a shotgun blast to the chest.

The same day, a gunman opened fire on one of the famous music processions that are part of New Orleans funerals and killed Christopher Smith, 19, and injured another man.

POLICE SAY CRIME IS DOWN

Despite the brazen acts, police contend crime is down by a wide margin, even accounting for the evacuation. The current population, about 200,000, is less than half the pre-storm number.

"Everybody talks about crime, but the reality is we've got less crime now that we've had in decades. Overall, our crime figures seem to be down around 70 percent," New Orleans Police Department spokesman Juan Quentin said.

There have been 18 homicides this year, down from 68 by April 2005, he said. Part of it is because the department's 1,400 officers have the resources to follow cases and make arrests under Chief Warren Riley, Quentin said.

In 2004, there were 264 murders, or 56 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That compares to seven per 100,000 in New York and a national average of 5.5 per 100,000.

Quentin said some troublemakers are among those returning to the city, but he characterized them as "gang wannabes." He also dismissed reports that gangs were setting up shop in abandoned homes around town.

Jeweler Janet Bruno-Small said prior to the hurricane, "there was just something in the environment that was very dangerous and very volatile. However, since the storm, I've felt pretty safe. Although recently people have been warning me to be more cautious."

Before Katrina struck, the majority of the crime in New Orleans was linked to drug trafficking and an overtaxed court system that gave criminals light sentences, Goyeneche said.

One prescription for keeping crime down after the country's worst natural disaster is demanding professionalism from a police force that had a reputation for corruption and poor relations with the public, he said.

The police department is struggling to rebuild credibility after dozens of its officers abandoned duties or looted stores in the chaos after the storm.

    New Orleans fearing return to crime-ridden past, R, 7.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-07T174750Z_01_N06345725_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-CRIME.xml

Patchy Recovery in New Orleans

April 5, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS — Anyone looking for a potent symbol of the battered state of the economy here seven months after Hurricane Katrina might stop by the offices of Don Hutchinson, the city's economic development director. People seeking assistance from Mr. Hutchinson's agency are greeted by a pair of revolving doors that have been sheathed in plywood and shut since shortly after the storm struck at the end of August. Visitors must enter through a side door.

There are any number of signs signaling a steady but unsure recovery in New Orleans, from a vibrant nightlife in pockets of town to census estimates that suggest that the city is repopulating at a much faster pace than predicted a few months ago.

Yet those signs of optimism only bring into sharp relief the alarmingly sluggish pace at which the city's economy is recovering. By Mr. Hutchinson's count, fewer than one in 10 businesses has reopened its doors since a surge of water buried four-fifths of the city. By comparison, New Orleans officials estimate that 40 percent of the residents have returned home.

Before Katrina struck, New Orleans was home to 22,000 businesses, the vast majority of them small establishments with 99 or fewer employees. Today, barely 2,000 of those have reopened.

"The recovery in New Orleans is going more slowly than we had hoped," said David Wyss, the chief economist at Standard & Poor's, which grades the financial health of municipalities. "We look at the numbers from Mississippi and Alabama and see what we expect to see: a lot of people hurting, but lots of rebuilding activity to the point where I would describe the economies there as strong." By contrast, Mr. Wyss said, "there's far less activity in New Orleans than you would expect six or so months after a hurricane."

Most of the businesses that have resumed operations fall into one of two categories: restaurants (29 percent of the food establishments operating in the city before Katrina have reopened, according to the city) and large companies with the economic means to fix up their facilities and cover the extra costs of doing business in an area that is functioning but disabled.

"Small businesses don't have the large cash reserves like the big guys do," Mr. Hutchinson said.

A lack of working capital, though, is only one potential hurdle confronting a small business here. Another is a lack of customers.

Ruston Henry, for instance, the younger half of a father-son team that ran the H & W drugstore in the Lower Ninth Ward, figures that they need to borrow more than half a million dollars before they are able to reopen.

But money, Mr. Henry said, is not their main concern. The Lower Ninth Ward, still without drinkable water or gas, is an unpopulated swath of town that has lain in ruins since the levees were overwhelmed, drowning the area.

"We were a neighborhood pharmacy," Mr. Henry, 44, said. "And what's a neighborhood pharmacy without a neighborhood?" They have applied for a Small Business Administration loan to gut, refurbish and restock a store that Mr. Henry described as having been destroyed by the flooding. (Flood insurance, he said, would cover only a small part of their losses.)

But they are in no rush, Mr. Henry said, to reopen this storefront, which his father and a partner established in 1963.

Thousands of business owners are apparently confronting the same sorts of issues. There is no reason to reopen a shuttered auto repair shop in the Ninth Ward or New Orleans East, an area north and east of downtown where a majority of the city's black professionals lived before Katrina, when most of the cars one sees in these devastated communities are abandoned vehicles destroyed by the storm.

A tour of the ravaged eastern half of the city shows mile after mile of abandoned businesses and vacant malls. It does not seem to make a difference whether a business is part of a chain, like a McDonald's or a Rite Aid, or a big-box retailer like Toys "R" Us, or simply a mom-and-pop dry cleaner or boutique store. All sit unoccupied — forlorn, damaged reminders of how far New Orleans must go to recover from what many describe as the worst natural disaster in modern American history.

In the meantime, Mr. Henry and his wife, Kim, a self-employed environmental engineer, are living with their two teenage children in Jackson, Miss., where Mr. Henry found work as a pharmacist with Wal-Mart. The couple, who lived in the Lower Ninth before the storm, also lost their home.

Virgil Robinson Jr., the chief executive of Dryades Savings, a black-owned bank based in New Orleans, said, "You would think we would be making lots of commercial loans to business damaged by the storm, but so far we're not." Businesses, like homeowners, Mr. Robinson said, are putting off making big decisions until federal authorities publish new flood maps, which will provide critical guidance for rebuilding.

They are also seeking "a clearer sense of which communities will be coming back when," Mr. Robinson said, before seeking money to rebuild.

"There's so much uncertainty that basically most of our customers are taking a wait-and-see attitude," he said.

A lack of housing is proving another roadblock for even the most well-intentioned businesses, as is the lack of essential services. Dryades's crosstown rival, Liberty Bank and Trust, one of the country's largest black-owned banks, was situated in a six-story glass tower in New Orleans East before Katrina struck. It invested the money required for its head office to be ready again for occupancy by January, yet two more months would pass before BellSouth could re-establish phone service and Internet access in a part of town covered by six feet or more of water.

"We basically need to rebuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure in the eastern half of the city," said Merlin Villar, BellSouth's director in the area. Pockets, though only pockets, of New Orleans East have phone service, Mr. Villar said, and BellSouth is in the process of replacing switching stations and trunk lines destroyed by flooding.

Liberty reopened its headquarters in late March, though the building that was once occupied by some 75 employees now has perhaps 15 workers.

"Housing is still a big issue," said Alden J. McDonald Jr., the bank's chief executive. "We can only move back employees who have been able to find a place to live back in New Orleans." The majority of Liberty's employees, including Mr. McDonald, are working out of a temporary beachhead that the bank established in Baton Rouge shortly after the storm, 80 miles to the north and west.

"My feeling is we're only at the beginning of the Katrina curve," said Ken Murray, an entrepreneur who has founded two companies in New Orleans. "I think another year or two will pass before we fully understand how big a chunk of activity was taken out of the city's economy."

That is a phenomenon, however, that Mr. Murray will be observing from afar. Shortly after the storm, he moved his two businesses — one a 50-person sales and marketing firm called Parker, Murray & Associates, founded in 1990, and the other a software start-up, VanillaSoft, that employed 16 people before the storm — to Dallas. That affects other businesses because he relied heavily on local merchants for supplies and services, but he said he felt that he had no choice but to leave town.

Mr. Murray cited both a lack of housing and the uncertainty of the business climate for years to come as two of the primary factors prompting him to move his operations to Texas.

"I'm talking to a lot of other business owners who want to be part of the recovery, but share my concerns," he said.

Those who express optimism about the future of the New Orleans economy note that most of the city's hotels are again open for business, as are the majority of companies in the central business district. Economic development ideas that languished before the storm — like a vague plan to establish New Orleans as a worldwide center for biotechnology innovation — have been revived as city leaders hope to leverage the sympathy expressed by people around the country into actual businesses.

At first glance, the employees of Energy Partners would seem to provide some hope. The company, a publicly traded oil exploration business, chose to move back into its downtown headquarters in December, despite the many headaches that persisted, including unreliable mail service and an incomplete health care system.

Yet while Energy Partners and its chief executive, Richard A. Bachmann, exhibited the kind of can-do spirit that the city needs these days, the company also embodies the precarious nature of the local economy. Whether Energy Partners and its 100 or so employees will stay in New Orleans remains to be seen. The company's commitment to New Orleans, Mr. Bachmann said, is no stronger than the city's will to reform itself. If he does not think that city, state and federal officials have made progress on a number of fronts over the next year — from shoring up the levee system, much of which is federal responsibility, to an overhaul of a public school system that ranked as one of the worst in the nation — then he may leave town.

"There are a number of companies like us that are working for change that will leave if it continues to be the same old business as usual," Mr. Bachmann said.

Yet for some, business as usual would be a dream come true. Mr. Robinson of Dryades Savings described "the general unreliability of everything right now." The electrical equipment at his downtown branch, two blocks from the corner of Canal and Bourbon Streets, was destroyed when the basement of his building took nine feet of water. He ordered new equipment and lined up electricians, but delivery of the equipment took much longer than expected. And he learned the hard way about the demands on tradesmen working in New Orleans now. He had initially hoped to reopen the branch in December, but it did not open until March.

"The concept of a completion date is a very fluid concept right now," Mr. Robinson said.

    Patchy Recovery in New Orleans, NYT, 5.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/business/05recovery.html

FEMA Trailer Park

Fails to Survive Storm From Residents

April 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, April 4 — A mayoral election is less than three weeks away, and the sympathy of elected officials for the irritations of voters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is boundless.

As a result, there will be no trailer park in Lakewood Estates, a collection of solid, spacious homes behind a high locked gate in the Algiers section.

Last weekend, angry residents of the neighborhood took to the street to protest a trailer park being built on their doorstep by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for 34 single women and their children who were left homeless by the hurricane. FEMA, their signs proclaimed, was "raping" their neighborhood.

Construction was already well along — some 20-odd trailers are already in place on the dusty lot — but fortunately for the residents of Lakewood Estates, campaign season is also well along.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin, habitually relaxed in his reactions, wasted not a moment this time. On Monday morning, with news of the residents' uprising in the local media, Mr. Nagin called a news conference.

"I'm very upset about it," he said. The contractor had "disrespected" citizens. FEMA had "bullied" city workers. Enough was enough. "This is unacceptable," the mayor said.

The disputed trailer park was now history, Mr. Nagin said. And so, for the moment, were all other trailer sites in the city, whose construction the mayor proclaimed "suspended."

The residents of Lakewood Estates had won. FEMA, though, said it was puzzled, especially since the Algiers trailer site had been approved by the mayor months ago, said Darryl Madden, an agency spokesman. All the necessary building permits had been obtained, Mr. Madden said.

A lawyer for the city declined to comment, citing a pending suit by the residents. City documents disputed the assertion that the building permits had been obtained, but a City Hall news release indeed confirmed "that this particular Algiers site was not removed from the original list."

Seven months after the hurricane, fights over where to house its displaced victims continue. Up and down Louisiana, but particularly around New Orleans, residents and local officials have taken action against the incursion of displaced city residents — overwhelmingly black — who are portrayed as bearers of crime and bad living habits, and as destroyers of property values.

Some of the most virulent opposition has occurred in the victims' own backyard. Last December Mr. Nagin backed away from a list of proposed city sites after expressions of outrage. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was forced to intervene here late last year, when officials could not agree on where to put the trailers.

And by the end of last year, 32 of Louisiana's 64 parishes had banned these trailer sites. Only eight had approved them unconditionally.

If these flare-ups are less frequent than before, FEMA says the need for temporary housing is nonetheless as great as ever. In New Orleans, where the agency has set up nearly 10,000 trailers, 109 sites await Mr. Nagin's approval, the agency says. He has already approved more than 100 such sites, some 17 of which are occupied. FEMA says about 12,000 requests for trailers are pending in the city, with new ones coming in all the time.

"I think it's appalling and I think it's yet another example of 'not in my backyard,' " said William P. Quigley, director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University and a litigant on behalf of hurricane victims, speaking of the Algiers site. "The people of New Orleans have been made more welcome across the U.S. than they have been in their own hometown."

The sudden loss of the Algiers site is a sharp blow, Mr. Madden said. "This was going to be a location where we were going to be able to place 34 displaced families, at a time when placing families is important," he said.

"The fact is, we have been working on this site since the mayor approved it," Mr. Madden said. "For this decision to be made at this juncture jeopardizes our effort to provide housing to displaced citizens in the aftermath of Katrina."

Security cameras watch the entrance of Lakewood Estates, and a sign proclaims "24-hour camera surveillance in progress." The collection of trailers sits on a two-acre plot on one side of a low wall, a humble contrast to the substantial, well-landscaped dwellings on the other side.

"If you look at this facility, it looks like Guantánamo," said the protest leader, Edward D. Markle. He was still furious at FEMA, though the site appears dead, for now. "It's bad," Mr. Markle said. "You've got a thousand locations that are better. I won't be able to take a bath without them seeing me."

He suggested that a much larger plot of land, across the road and away from the homes, would have made a far more suitable location.

"It's not an issue of we don't want them in our backyard," Mr. Markle said. "We invite them in our backyard. We just don't want them in our bathrooms and bedrooms."

    FEMA Trailer Park Fails to Survive Storm From Residents, NYT, 5.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/us/nationalspecial/05trailers.html

Race Is at Fore

as Vote Nears in New Orleans

April 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, April 3 — As the first vote since Hurricane Katrina, the April 22 mayoral primary was supposed to be about the critical choices facing this battered city — an issues-filled debate about whose reconstruction plan was best.

Instead, with the city's majority-black status in doubt for the first time in decades, one dominant motif has emerged in the campaign: race, which for nearly 30 years has been merely a muted subtheme in politics here. Since 1978, New Orleans has elected black mayors, and there has been little doubt about the racial identity of the eventual winner.

This year, the three major candidates or their supporters have aligned themselves along racial lines, with each camp hoping it has singled out the correct, and as yet unknown, demographic. In part, this is a measure of how far the office of mayor has been reduced in the seven months after the storm.

Though the candidates' promises and speeches have filled the airwaves in advance of the primary election, there is little doubt that the real force in rebuilding will be the billions in pending federal aid. That money will be doled out largely by the State of Louisiana; the role of any future New Orleans mayor will be strictly secondary.

"The decisions are going to be made elsewhere," said Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans.

This impotence, though not formally acknowledged by the candidates, has created a vacuum into which has rushed the politics of racial identity, closer to the surface this year than in any other election in recent memory.

Tough discussions about whether some neighborhoods should not be rebuilt or whether the city should issue far fewer building permits have been largely absent. Even contemplating such notions publicly is considered a political kiss of death.

As a result, debates have been rowdy, substance-free brawls, mostly among a slate of 22 aspiring mayors, with unknown candidates gleefully taking potshots at their better-known peers.

No candidate appears to be making a more explicit racial bid than the incumbent mayor, C. Ray Nagin, the one major black candidate in the jostling, Hurricane Katrina-inspired crowd.

An unknown executive in 2002, elected largely through white support and for years the target of sharp criticism among blacks here as failing to favor black-owned companies, Mr. Nagin has been all but abandoned by the white businessmen who enthusiastically supported him the first time. They now fault his posthurricane leadership and are donating thousands to Mr. Nagin's white opponents.

As a result, he has remade himself as a black candidate — first with his provocative speech in which he predicted New Orleans would once again be a mostly black "chocolate city"; later by disavowing a reconstruction plan devised by whites, which was seen by blacks as cold-shouldering ruined African-American neighborhoods.

This past weekend Mr. Nagin took part in a protest march over the election here led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, figures he has not previously been close to.

Jim Carvin, his veteran campaign consultant, acknowledged that Mr. Nagin was counting on a moment of racial solidarity.

"In each election black voters have voted for black candidates against a white candidate," said Mr. Carvin, who has advised every successful New Orleans mayoral campaign since 1970. "My feeling is they will do the same thing again."

But the polarized election here is also partly a legacy of the storm's unequal damage, which caused greater suffering and displacement, proportionally, among blacks. Many black voters are still living elsewhere and will have to vote using unfamiliar absentee mechanisms that may hold down their participation. In many black neighborhoods, there is considerable worry that whites are about to retake control after nearly three decades of black rule.

"There is anxiety, fear, that this can take us back so many years," said Bishop Paul S. Morton Sr., an influential black minister here and head of the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, the largest church in the state before Hurricane Katrina. "There's a lot of people that are really, really concerned."

On the other hand, said Ms. Howell, the political scientist, "there are many white voters who see this as their chance to take the city back."

Their candidate is Ron Forman, who remade the city's once-decrepit zoo, is head of the private, nonprofit Audubon Nature Institute and has for years been lionized by many white residents of Uptown.

Mr. Forman is a rarity in New Orleans, a professional success who has not moved elsewhere. Signs with his name are plastered all over the fanciest homes in the Garden District but are conspicuously absent on poorer blocks.

Mr. Forman, a businessman from a working-class background, is not making an explicit racial appeal. But a recent packed Uptown gathering of young professionals supporting him was a sea of white faces.

"Most of us in this room go to Newman, Country Day or Trinity," Mr. Forman said, naming the city's elite private schools, acknowledging the room's racial homogeneity, then suggesting that not everyone in the city was as fortunate.

"How are you going to get the African-American vote?" a young man called out, neatly pinpointing Mr. Forman's dilemma. He responded that he worked on that issue "every day."

Straddling the middle is Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the most politically polished of the lot, a veteran state legislator and the son of a former mayor and brother of a United States senator.

Two of these three candidates are all but certain to meet in a May runoff — the field of 22 is testimony to posthurricane civic activism, but the other 19 are given little chance — and Mr. Landrieu thinks he will be one of them, precisely because of his biracial appeal.

"I'm the only candidate that has African-American and white support, in equal numbers," Mr. Landrieu, who is white, said in an interview last weekend, before castigating his two major opponents for representing narrower segments of the electorate.

Political professionals largely back his judgment, partly because the Landrieu family has a long history of attracting black voters.

In a recent mayoral debate, Mr. Landrieu was the one candidate who zeroed in on what is likely to be the defining dynamic in New Orleans for years to come: "The most important thing is the mechanism to move the money from the government to the citizens," he said.

Yet there is evidence that the calculations of Mr. Carvin, who began his string of mayoral successes helping to elect Mr. Landrieu's father in 1970, may be correct. Mr. Nagin may well be able to count on a strong lift from racial solidarity.

Bishop Morton said: "African-Americans are usually very loyal to African-American candidates. I've talked to some people who say, 'I don't care how bad the black is, he's better than any white.' "

Yet the professionals acknowledge that with much of the electorate missing, and the rest of it a racial and socioeconomic mystery, any projections made now are meaningless.

"I've done elections for 50 years," Mr. Carvin said, "and I've never had one like this."

    Race Is at Fore as Vote Nears in New Orleans, NYT, 4.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/us/nationalspecial/04orleans.html

Bill Cosby

tells New Orleans blacks

to reject crime

Sat Apr 1, 2006 10:36 PM ET
Reuters
By Russell McCulley

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Entertainer Bill Cosby urged New Orleans' black population on Saturday to cleanse itself of a culture of crime as it rebuilds from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina last year.

Cosby, whose criticism of some aspects of modern African-American culture has stirred controversy in recent years, told a rally headed by black leaders that the city needed to look at the "wound" it had before Katrina struck.

"It's painful, but we can't cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound," Cosby told the rally of about 2,000 people in front of the city's convention center.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you had the highest murder rate, unto each other. You were dealing drugs to each other. You were impregnating our 13-, 12-, 11-year-old children," he said.

"What kind of a village is that?"

Cosby sparked heated debate in 2004, when he criticized blacks whom he said were putting a higher priority on music and fashion than on education and morality.

Before Katrina killed more than 1,300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands, New Orleans had nearly half a million residents, 70 percent of them black. An estimated 30 percent of the city had incomes below the poverty line.

Less than half the population has returned to the heavily damaged city and evacuees remain scattered across the country. Many of those who have come back are whites who lived in affluent areas that were less affected by flooding.

Other speakers, including civil rights activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, denounced what they said was an attempt by state and federal officials to disenfranchise the evacuees in April 22 local elections by not setting up out-of-state voting stations.

Jackson said evacuees should be allowed to vote in "satellite" polling places outside the state, just as Iraqi and Mexican expatriates have cast ballots from the United States in elections in their home countries.

"If we in fact can use this technology for Mexican-Americans and Mexico, then we ought to," Jackson said. "If we can use this technology for Iraqi-Americans in America to Baghdad, then we ought to. We can use the same technology for New Orleanians, wherever they are in America."

Voting stations will be available at 10 sites in Louisiana outside of New Orleans, but state officials have said casting ballots outside the state is not allowed.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who is black and faces 21 challengers in his re-election campaign, said not enough was being done to guarantee a fair vote.

"We deserve to be treated like Americans," he said.

    Bill Cosby tells New Orleans blacks to reject crime, R, 1.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-02T023605Z_01_B728330_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-PROTEST.xml

Levee Plans

Fall Short of FEMA Standards

March 31, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

New Orleans's levees do not meet the standards that the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires for its flood protection program, federal officials said yesterday — and they added that the problem would take as much as $6 billion to fix.

FEMA has long based its flood planning on whether an area is protected against a flood that might have a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, also known as a 100-year flood. Without that certification, the agency's flood maps have to treat the entire levee system as if it were not there at all, which means that people hoping to build in the affected areas might have to rebuild their homes at elevations of 15 or even 30 feet above sea level in order to meet new federal building standards.

But since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the agency has toughened its 100-year standard, based on new information about land subsidence and the increasing severity and frequency of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. There is also new data about weak soils in the area and the failure of some of the city's floodwalls.

As a result, the levees that the Army Corps of Engineers is now building will not meet the new FEMA standard. Donald Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, said Thursday that the Corps now believes it cannot meet that standard without spending additional billions to upgrade the flood protection system still further.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana expressed outrage over what she called a monumental miscalculation and said it was shocking to learn that $6 billion more might be needed for the hurricane protection system.

"This means that, just two months before hurricane season, the Corps of Engineers informs us they cannot ensure even the minimum safety of Southeastern Louisiana," Ms. Blanco said in a statement. "This is totally unacceptable."

But Mr. Powell said in a news briefing yesterday that the $2 billion that the Army Corps of Engineers is currently spending and the $1.4 billion in additional funds it has requested will make the system stronger and better than it has ever been. Asked if he would feel comfortable living in the area despite the government's inability to certify the levees, he responded, "after the Corps completes its work, yes."

Mr. Powell called the difference "a regulatory issue, not necessarily a safety issue." When the current work on the levees is complete, he said, there might be flooding from a storm like Hurricane Katrina, but the levee system would not fail catastrophically again.

Although people can rebuild without the federal flood maps today, many homeowners may well decide that the risks of rebuilding are too great. The Louisiana Recovery Authority has said that its plan to provide grants to those who rebuild will favor those who meet FEMA requirements.

Mr. Powell said that to start the process of getting the new flood maps, the federal government only needs to state that it does intend to meet the certification standard — a process that it can undertake for the entire system at the full $6 billion, or pick and choose projects to cut costs.

The flood advisory documents, which will begin the process of creating final flood maps, could emerge within days, Mr. Powell said. It will take up to 18 months to complete the maps.

In the briefing, Mr. Powell said that rebuilding the city could take 25 years — a sentiment shared by many disaster recovery experts. He added, however, "It could be much shorter than that, depending on how they plan their future. I'm going to be doing everything I can to make this as short as possible."

Matt McBride, a member of the community group in Broadmoor, a New Orleans neighborhood that was inundated during Hurricane Katrina, said many city residents would be disappointed by the levee announcement. While many people in his neighborhood were committed to rebuilding, he said, "It's just one more headache on top of the hundreds that we're dealing with."

    Levee Plans Fall Short of FEMA Standards, NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/us/nationalspecial/31levees.html

As Life Returns to New Orleans,

So Does Crime

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, March 29 — The wail of police sirens is back, and gunfire again punctuates the night. As drug dealers move into flood-damaged houses, alarmed residents say that in the last few weeks, they have begun to sense a return to the bad old days before Hurricane Katrina, when crime was an omnipresent straitjacket on life in this city.

In a city that once led the nation in homicides per capita, crime has long been a leading indicator of New Orleans's health and prospects — an unavoidable part of the equation for a walk around the block or a trip to the grocery store.

That diminished greatly after the storm, when several hundred thousand people were evacuated. But there are signs that the past may be returning, with a new twist.

Police officials say the landscape of abandoned houses, stretching block after block, after Hurricane Katrina is being incorporated into a revived drug trade, with the empty dwellings offering an unexpected convenience to dealers returning from Houston and Atlanta.

Residents concur, pointing to this boarded-up house or that abandoned-looking shed as a place where they have seen young men congregating.

"It's coming back," said Capt. Timmy Bayard, the New Orleans police officer in charge of narcotics investigations.

"It's not as plentiful as it was," Captain Bayard said. But, he added, "we're starting to grab some people." His men, searching abandoned houses in the Eighth Ward, have found drug stashes. He said it was like "looking for a needle in a haystack."

There are popping sounds of gunfire at night in the Central City and St. Roch neighborhoods flanking downtown — not as often as before, but enough to induce unease.

"Less, yeah, but it's started back up," said the Rev. A. P. Williby, who owns a house in Central City. "Shooting and killing — that's what we had before. It ain't going nowhere."

Two shootings, one of them fatal, occurred in January and earlier this month.

Parasol's, a classic old-line bar in the Irish Channel neighborhood, was held up at midnight recently. And a young man was killed after handing over his wallet in the Faubourg Marigny, a neighborhood of popular bars and restaurants.

On Web forums, there are reports of robberies and break-ins.

In Houston, which saw a sharp spike in killings after Hurricane Katrina, police officials say they have noticed a decline since the beginning of the year.

Homicides were up 24 percent in 2005, but Houston police officials say the number would have been down 2 percent, absent cases in which either the suspect or the victim was a storm evacuee.

Last fall, there were "multiple" hurricane-related killings in Houston nearly every weekend, said Houston police Sgt. Brian Harris of the Houston police, but the violence has significantly eased, he said.

New Orleans again appears to be drawing the people who wreaked havoc on its streets before the storm.

A local murder suspect wanted in Houston, for example, drifted back here and was arrested in Kenner, a New Orleans suburb, this month.

In the past, even when there were lulls in crime, many residents felt as if they were living in a city under siege.

Perception became part of the reality, fueling an exodus of whites and blacks to the suburbs or out of state.

The drug culture has been deeply ingrained here and never fully disappeared. A local rapper called Juvenile, in his new post-hurricane album, declaims: "E'ybody need a check from FEMA/ So he can go and sco' him some co-ca-een-uh."

But crime is nowhere near its pre-storm levels. With the city's population reduced by at least three-fifths, statistics indicate that crime is down 60 percent to 70 percent over all, the department said.

There have been 16 killings this year, compared with more than 60 for the same period last year, which means quieter days for the police but still works out to an annualized rate of 32 killings per 100,000 people, ahead of Cleveland and Chicago.

A gnawing sense of vulnerability, particularly in poorer neighborhoods, is returning. On any block, it may have no more concrete basis than the sight of idle young men hanging out, but it is real nonetheless.

"They're beginning to surface again," said Alfred Barrow, a newspaper deliverer, painting his porch on an empty-looking block at 3rd and Magnolia in Center City.

"I'm out here throwing papers at 3 a.m., and I see them. What reason is there for them to be out there?" The anxiety is not helped by the police department's struggle to return to normal. At about 1,400 officers, the department is not far from its strength of just under 1,600 officers before Hurricane Katrina.

But the department is operating out of trailers, much of its data-gathering capability is impaired because of storm damage, and about 80 percent of its officers lost their homes in the storm.

There is evidence that the non-working poor — the population most implicated in crime, as victims and perpetrators — may be returning in higher percentages, for now, than middle-class residents washed out by the storm. A population map prepared for the city appears to suggest as much.

"It looks like the worst have come back," said Andrew Jackson, a homeowner on Villere Street in the Eighth Ward.

"That house over there," he said, pointing to an empty-looking dwelling down the block where he said youths congregate. "You don't see 'em during the day, but you see them at night."

There are a few hopeful signs. Before, this was a city virtually awash in guns, experts say. The contractor who cleaned up the city's storm drains after Hurricane Katrina said his crews had recovered a least a dozen firearms. Guns are not as prevalent, the police say.

Another aid, officers and residents say, is a new level of cooperation from citizens who had traditionally mistrusted the New Orleans police.

For years, the police here had complained that witnesses and residents refused to help, fearing retribution from gangs and drug dealers.

Killings in broad daylight on busy blocks produced few or no witnesses.

Now, "the people who are here are the people who want to be here, and they don't want that back," said Kenny Zeiger, who described his block in the St. Roch area as "one of the three worst corners in the neighborhood" for drug activity before the storm.

"The people are calling the cops more," Mr. Zeiger said.

Capt. John Bryson commands the Sixth District in Central City, a high-crime area.

"It's incredible," Captain Bryson said. "People you normally wouldn't believe would want an association with the police department call us up."

He is confident about keeping the lid on, even as more people return.

"We have control," he said. "We have gained this ground."

Less than a mile away, Mr. Barrow is skeptical — about the present, and the future.

"It don't take much to improve what it was," he said, "because what it was, was probably the most vicious killing scene in the U.S."

    As Life Returns to New Orleans, So Does Crime, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/national/nationalspecial/30crime.html

Judge Refuses

to Delay New Orleans Vote

March 27, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:32 p.m. ET
New York Times

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday refused to delay New Orleans' April 22 mayoral election, telling both sides to solve any problems that might hinder displaced residents' ability to vote.

''If you are a displaced citizen, like I am, we have a burning desire for completeness,'' said U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle, whose own New Orleans home flooded after Hurricane Katrina.

Lemelle said voting will help the city rebuild, but he warned that its residents have already lost trust in institutions. ''I recognize that there is still room for improvement in that electoral process,'' he said.

Civil rights groups had urged the judge to postpone what would be the city's first municipal elections since the hurricane, arguing that too many black residents won't be able to participate.

The Aug. 29 storm flooded 80 percent of the city, destroying some polling places and scattering more than half the population. What was a mostly black city of nearly half a million people was reduced to well under 200,000 inhabitants.

Some black leaders say the state's plan to allow mail voting for residents in other states, along with satellite polling places elsewhere in Louisiana, won't do enough to give all displaced residents the opportunity to vote.

''We can see that train wreck coming in slow motion,'' plaintiffs' attorney Bill Quigley said Monday.

Secretary of State Al Ater, the state's top election official, said he was prepared to work with the plaintiffs and the judge. ''I'm very proud of what we're doing,'' he said.

The city elections had been set for Feb. 4, but state officials said they could not possibly hold balloting that soon after Katrina. The postponement led to a lawsuit by residents who wanted no delays, and the state then set the April 22 date. The state's emergency plan includes polling stations in 10 Louisiana cities, a national advertising campaign, and an easing of voting rules to allow displaced residents to cast ballots.

Mayor Ray Nagin, criticized in some quarters for his response to the hurricane, is running for re-election against nearly two dozen opponents, including Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Institute chief executive Ron Forman.

Monday's hearing was called after the NAACP and other civil rights groups argued the plan contained the equivalent of a poll tax, the voting fee that was banned after it was abused in the South to disenfranchise blacks. They said displaced residents would have to pay for transportation to vote in New Orleans and the expenses would be the ''modern equivalent of a poll tax.''

Fewer than 10,000 registered voters have requested absentee ballots, said Dale Atkins, who is campaigning for re-election as civil district court clerk.

Other complaints include cumbersome absentee ballot procedures, frequent movement of precinct locations and a refusal to share information about how candidates can reach the displaced voters.

Election procedures in Louisiana and many other Southern states are subject to Justice Department approval because of their history of racial discrimination.

Several black leaders argued Friday for satellite voting locations outside Louisiana, though a spokeswoman for Ater said state law doesn't allow out-of-state voting operations.

''This is a Florida in the making,'' said Urban League President Marc Morial, a former New Orleans mayor, referring to Florida's extensive voting problems in the 2000 elections. ''If you see an election train wreck coming, why not do something to prevent it before the wreck occurs?''

------

On the Net:

Elections Division: http://www.sec.state.la.us/elections/elections-index.htm

    Judge Refuses to Delay New Orleans Vote, NYT, 28.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-New-Orleans-Elections.html

Levees may not protect

all New Orleans: officials

Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:31 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Mayor Ray Nagin said on Thursday he is confident that $770 million of levee repairs will protect most of New Orleans this hurricane season, but officials warned another Katrina-strength storm could swamp low-lying areas again.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is racing to meet a June 1 deadline -- the formal start to the hurricane season -- to have the 350 mile levee system protecting New Orleans and the surrounding area back to pre-Katrina condition or better.

Nagin and presidents of two nearby Louisiana parishes said after a tour of levee and floodwall repair projects with Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the Corps' director of civil works, they were pleased with the progress, which is now 49 percent complete.

"Based upon their scope of work, the number of contractors that they have, the progress thus far, it looks as though June 1's a good date and we should be just about ready," Nagin said at a construction site where massive temporary gates for his city's 17th Street Canal are being built.

About 169 miles of levees were damaged in the August 29 hurricane. Levee failures led to flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans and wholesale destruction in parishes like St. Bernard and Plaquemines. More than 1,300 people were killed on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Nagin and Riley said they could not be 100 percent sure that neighborhoods among the worst hit after Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward and parts of New Orleans East, will be safe should another big hurricane slam the region this summer.

Both areas were submerged when a levee holding back the Industrial Canal breached, and both still lie mostly in ruins.

Nagin this week warned anxious residents who want to rebuild in those areas that risks will be high for about two years, until long-term flood-control improvements can begin.

"It's less risk with these repairs, but there still is risk and even if we go into September 2007 and complete all the authorized projects, there will still be risk," Riley said.

When this round of repairs and reinforcement is done, the system should be stronger than before, so the danger would be from the levees being topped, he said.

Various engineering groups have blamed breaches on a range of factors, from soil erosion and settling along floodwalls to poor design and maintenance by the Corps and its contractors.

Nagin said he is now comfortable with Corps officials' claims about the quality of the repair work on the levee system protecting New Orleans, most of which was built in the 1960s.

"It's a different time and space. The world is watching and monitoring it a lot closer, paying attention ... and I've also talked to some independent engineers, and they seem to be on track. It looks much better," he said.

Some residents remain wary.

"I don't know -- I hope it holds. We've been through too much down here now," said retired longshoreman Earl Green, 79. He lives in a rented apartment after evacuating to Arkansas and Michigan and has opted not to rebuild his flooded home.

The 70-ton gates set for the mouth of the 17th Street Canal, where a breach caused flooding in the Lakeview area, are aimed at protecting against a surge from Lake Pontchartrain.

U.S. President George W. Bush has asked Congress to appropriate an additional $1.46 billion for long-term levee and pumping-station improvements. It has yet to be approved.

    Levees may not protect all New Orleans: officials, R, 23.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-03-23T233124Z_01_N23174169_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-LEVEES.xml

Nagin:

N.O. now has better levees, plans

Posted 3/21/2006 12:39 PM
Updated 3/21/2006 2:37 PM
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans is better prepared for the upcoming hurricane season because of stronger flood walls and better evacuation plans since Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin said in an interview Tuesday.

"We should be able to sustain another Katrina," the mayor said.

"If a Category 5 hits us, probably the city will be gone and the levees will still be standing. The work they're doing is just incredible," Nagin said of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (Related story: Baton Rouge wrestles with population growth)

The Corps, which designed and built the city's levees, has been heavily criticized by residents who note the city survived the worst of the Aug. 29 storm but then was swamped when flood walls broke, inundating 80% of the city with brackish water. Many have expressed fear about the condition of the levees as the June 1 start of hurricane season approaches.

But Nagin told The Associated Press he's confident the Corps is using better materials and designs on the levees.

He also said that evacuating the city in the event of another hurricane should be smoother. He said he would be in closer contact with forecasters at the National Hurricane Center so he'll know quickly whether a mandatory evacuation will be needed. The one ordered two days before Katrina hit was the city's first.

Nagin said he is concerned about the large number of travel trailers in which people are living while they repair their homes. Because the trailers are not very secure in high wind, they may need to be evacuated faster than the rest of the city.

"They could turn into little missiles," Nagin said.

But he predicted residents would be more likely to comply with evacuation orders now. In the future, he said, they will be bused away from the city rather than to shelters like the Superdome, where residents were stranded in hot, dank conditions for days after Katrina hit in late August.

"People are pretty attuned to leaving if I say you have to leave, so I don't see that as being as much of a challenge," he said.

Nagin is up for re-election April 22 and facing a slate of two dozen candidates, including Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

The mayor said he believes the city can be mostly restored in the next five years.

New Orleans officials estimate about 189,000 of the city's roughly 455,000 pre-storm residents have returned, and Nagin said he expects a significant jump in population after the end of the school year, when many families with children enrolled in schools elsewhere can return without disrupting their education.

He said the pace of rebuilding will likely depend on federal and state aid, but too much bureaucracy could hobble hopes for restoration.

"The worst-case scenario is the state creates an incredible bureaucracy to issue this money, everything gets bogged down and bottle-necked and lots of people get frustrated and we kind of limp along at half the population we had," he said.

On Monday, Nagin endorsed a proposal that would allow all residents to rebuild homes in neighborhoods shattered by the hurricanes. An advisory commission had recommended flooded neighborhoods be replaced with parks and that the city go slow in rebuilding low-lying areas.

    Nagin: N.O. now has better levees, plans, UT, 21.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-21-nagin-hurricanes_x.htm

New Orleans mayor

warns of risk in rebuilding plan

Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:30 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin finalized a sweeping plan on Monday to rebuild the city after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, rejecting calls to turn ruined neighborhoods into parks but warning some residents that floods are still a risk.

Nagin delivered his recommendations on a slew of proposals by his Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which seek to revive the battered city's communities, repair its economy, revive its rich cultural scene and restructure a city government hobbled by inefficiency long before the storm.

When it issued its report last January, the commission angered some hard-hit residents with calls to replace badly damaged and flood-prone areas with green space for a smaller population and to slap a moratorium on building permits.

Nagin told about 500 people packed into a hotel ballroom that he tossed out those parts of the report and urged citizens to make their own decisions on rebuilding homes.

He said he is more confident that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is improving the crucial levee system to a condition that will protect the city this hurricane season while many residents are reclaiming their neighborhoods.

But he warned that Corps officials have told him some of the worst hit areas, New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward -- which still lie in ruins 6-1/2 months after the disaster -- will flood again if another hurricane hits.

"Even with the restoration of higher, better fortified levees, this challenge is corrected, but it will not be fixed for probably another year or two," Nagin said.

"That's why it's important that you as citizens have the option of rebuilding on your own, or taking advantage of the buyout options in the Failed Levee Homeowner Recovery Program I pioneered."

Residents of those neighborhoods have complained they are being denied opportunities to rebuild from the August 29 storm, and still lack basic services like electricity and sewers.

About 80 percent of city known as the birthplace of jazz was flooded when Katrina breached several levees. The hurricane killed as many as 1,300 people along the Gulf Coast and another 2,000 are still listed as missing.

The population of New Orleans proper is still estimated at under 200,000, less than half the pre-Katrina number.

Besides setting up a framework to revive, the commission's recommendations seek to close the historical standard of living gaps between rich and poor, and black and white residents, said Nagin, who is campaigning for re-election.

That would be accomplished partly through state-funded programs to add badly needed low-income housing for purchase and rental, by improving the decimated public transport system and increasing access to health care.

Some at the meeting were not impressed, like nursing instructor Cora Charles, a longtime Lower Ninth Ward resident.

"I got my tax bill in December and I paid it before January 31. On the back of it, it said police and school, and now I can't even get a school open in the Lower Ninth," Charles, 70, said to cheers from the crowd. "Maybe I can get my taxes back. Is that possible, mayor?"

Nagin gave community leaders until June 30 to submit long-term development plans for their neighborhoods.

    New Orleans mayor warns of risk in rebuilding plan, R, 21.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-03-21T043019Z_01_N20201750_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-PLAN.xml

Behind Louisiana Aid Package,

a Change of Heart by One Man

March 20, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

Louisiana was in a foul mood on the February day that President Bush's Gulf Coast rebuilding coordinator, Donald E. Powell, stood before an audience of fellow bankers in Baton Rouge.

Two weeks before, the administration had rejected Louisiana's housing recovery plan. Mr. Powell's own idea of housing aid excluded thousands of homeowners, many of them poor, who lived in the flood plain but did not have flood insurance when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Asked about those who had counted on federally built levees to protect them, Mr. Powell, a wealthy man from the dry Texas Panhandle, noted that he had been responsible enough to buy flood insurance for his home in Amarillo.

The members of the Louisiana Bankers Association were not won over. Nor was The Advocate, Baton Rouge's newspaper, which demanded Mr. Powell's dismissal, calling him a "flint-souled" bean counter whose only concern was "guarding the money."

Those with a more charitable view, Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, among them, complained that he lacked the authority to be effective, and some critics wondered if he was simply another presidential crony.

But barely a week would pass before Mr. Powell did an about-face that turned many of his critics into fans, showing that not only had he listened to the locals, but also that his conclusions had carried weight with Mr. Bush. With Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Mayor C. Ray Nagin at his side, Mr. Powell announced that the president would seek $4.2 billion more for Louisiana to compensate homeowners — even those in the flood plain.

Mr. Powell's epiphany came after hours of listening to Louisianians: the decision makers; the woman who cleaned his room at the Sheraton; Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the wife of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (whom he called after hearing she was a Louisiana native); the inspectors examining high-water marks in homes. As he drove through New Orleans with Mr. Bush on March 8, he pointed to a small restaurant in the Ninth Ward and rattled off the owner's real estate woes.

"He had a learning experience," said Walter Isaacson, vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. "It's the most amazing thing for somebody of his stature. It's because by himself, he walked around. He walked around and talked to people."

Mr. Powell says walking about in the region incognito, in blue jeans and boots, is becoming a bit harder now that people are starting to recognize him. "I went with no preconceived thoughts," he said. "And I realized that while Mississippi was an act of God, Louisiana was an act of God and man. There were some flaws. The levees breached."

Last week, Mr. Powell spent much of his time lobbying House members, successfully, to preserve the appropriation. For several days, other states mounted an effort to siphon off some of the money, and conservatives said the entire amount was too large, but on Thursday the House overwhelmingly approved it.

Mr. Powell's work on the housing plan made many Louisianians think that in appointing him, the administration had finally done something right. Garland Robinette, a talk-radio host in New Orleans who has interviewed Mr. Powell several times, recalled telling him, "I was totally prepared to not like you at all, and it aggravates me that you're doing something to make me think you might be a good guy after all."

For Mr. Powell, former chief executive of the First National Bank of Amarillo, the listening tour was part of any banker's due diligence. Texas bankers are a particular breed — conservative, unpretentious and keenly competitive. One newspaper columnist recalled that years ago, after being offered a job in Amarillo, he received a solicitation call two hours later from Mr. Powell's bank. Asked about the incident, Mr. Powell said, "I probably was mad at our people because it was two hours."

Given his prominence in the Texas Panhandle, Mr. Powell's political connections go almost without saying. To the first President Bush, he is an old friend; to the second, he was a top fund-raiser. He had been to Washington only three times, he said, before he was appointed chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2001, a position he left several months early to take his current post in November.

Mr. Powell, 64, is from a working-class family in Amarillo, where he helped his father peddle tobacco and snacks to shopkeepers. A football scholarship made him the first in his family to go to college. He began his career by walking into a bank and asking for a job. During the Texas banking crisis of the 1980's, Mr. Powell hauled the Amarillo bank from the brink of failure.

The $4.2 billion was not his first accomplishment as recovery czar. Until he intervened, state officials had spent hours trying to ensure that the federal government would continue to pick up all recovery expenses, a routine matter that, nevertheless, was authorized for a month at a time.

He also persuaded the president to ask Congress for an additional $1.5 billion for the state's levee system, doubling the previous request. And he became a go-to guy for local officials who hit snags in issues like debris removal and trailer placement.

But his rejection of the housing buyout plan, called the Baker bill after Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who created it, infuriated many state officials. State leaders had taken great pains to build support for the plan, which called for the creation of a federal agency to buy and sell damaged property. Mr. Powell caused further outrage by skewering the Baker bill — gratuitously, many thought — in an opinion article in The Washington Post.

But he continued to push for an alternative. The first step was to agree on how many houses were damaged, and how badly. Mr. Powell forced Louisiana to justify its figures house by house, using aerial photographs and numbers collected from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Red Cross and insurance companies. He was involved in details including how to reward those who had carried insurance and how to provide incentives for people to rebuild more safely. But he made no promises.

"He's a good poker player," said Andy Kopplin, a former chief of staff for Governor Blanco who is now the executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. "I'd been getting calls and making calls to those guys at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night and sending data sets up. There was an extraordinary effort going on that gave us hope; at the same time, it was never clear to us that we were going to get a breakthrough."

Some Louisiana Democrats suggested the $4.2 billion was nothing more than damage control by the administration, noting that the president had been hammered for his lack of attention to Hurricane Katrina in his State of the Union address and quickly responded by announcing $18 billion in new money for the Gulf Coast. Further reviled after rejecting the Baker bill, they say, Mr. Bush opted to devote the $4.2 billion to Louisiana, which had been shortchanged in an earlier appropriation.

But Mr. Powell said that the entire effort was influenced not by politics, but by hard data. "I'm on a mission, and I can't — while I'm sensitive to it — that can't guide me," he said of public opinion. "I can't be either pushed or held back. I know if we're attempting to do the right thing. I have a conscience. If you're moving, someone's going to be critical."

In the meantime, the flint-souled banker seems to be winning the battle for hearts and minds. Louisianians who might have been his adversaries have taken to inviting him over for brunch with the family and praising his frugality.

But Mr. Robinette, the talk-show host, reserves the right to change his mind if Mr. Powell starts to deliver bad news despite Mr. Bush's promises to the region.

"It could still be good cop, bad cop," Mr. Robinette said, "and we just haven't seen the bad cop yet."

    Behind Louisiana Aid Package, a Change of Heart by One Man, NYT, 20.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/national/nationalspecial/20powell.html

Grim find

shows normalcy

still eludes New Orleans

Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:22 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A backhoe gingerly lifted away twisted lumber, shingles and soiled household items in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward to reveal a decayed body.

Before the remains could be moved onto a stretcher, bagged and loaded into a van, workers found a second corpse in the same small area of the tangle that was once a house and repeated the process as passing cars slowed.

The scene on the 2400 block of Tupelo Street on quiet Sunday morning could have just as easily never played out.

But it did, and two more of the estimated 400 people missing in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina's floods more than half a year ago would be stricken from the list.

A successful Mardi Gras, the return of pro basketball and crescendoing sounds of construction and jazz music lull people into a sense that normalcy is returning after America's worst natural disaster and the botched early response.

The scene on Tupelo Street shows it hasn't.

It began early in this section of the Lower Ninth with two students working to clear the mounds of debris that still litter the ruined neighborhood, officials at the scene said.

Walking by wreckage of a house that had just been bulldozed off the street where it sat since the water subsided, the students noticed a limb in the tangled mess and called police.

Officers arrived, then officials with the coroner and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and then a search and rescue team with a red truck and a sniffer dog. It is a well-established procedure.

Tim Campbell, a chaplain with Victim Relief Ministries, arrived to read a prayer for the dead.

Coroner's investigator Orrin Duncan said more bodies are being found each week as the pace of home demolition picks up in the Lower Ninth Ward, a mainly African-American community that was hammered by a torrent when the levee that held back the city's Industrial Canal breached after the August 29 storm.

He is still not used to it.

"It affects me. It's my home," the 35-year-old said. "It definitely affects me, thinking that they didn't search."

The bodies on Tupelo are too decomposed to immediately determine their gender, he said. They are darkened, stiff, vaguely human in form, anonymous.

Hurricane Katrina killed an estimated 1,300 people along the Gulf Coast, and 80 percent of New Orleans flooded when the levees gave way. Spray-painted markings on the wrecked homes in this neighborhood suggest searchers went through them months and months ago.

Henry Irvin, 69, who lived in the neighborhood for five decades, said he was angry rescue crews did not find the bodies earlier when they moved the debris off the street.

"They did a lot of pushing homes around here. I'm just glad they're going through it the right way now," he said.

(Additional reporting by Matt Daily)

    Grim find shows normalcy still eludes New Orleans, R, 19.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-03-20T012143Z_01_N19223160_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-DEAD.xml

In Louisiana,

Graft Inquiries Are Increasing

March 18, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE EATON

KENNER, La. — Long before this suburb west of New Orleans was shaken by Hurricane Katrina, it was notorious for its fierce political infighting, for name-calling and mudslinging, for charges and countercharges of cronyism and corruption.

But accusations about matters like ticket-fixing are one thing, and allegations involving millions of federal dollars for storm recovery are quite another.

In February, federal prosecutors in New Orleans began bringing witnesses before a grand jury looking into possible fraud in Kenner municipal contracts that were awarded immediately before and after the hurricane. The mayor and the entire City Council have been subpoenaed to testify, although the government has not made clear its target.

Growing numbers of subpoenas may soon be issued across Louisiana, where local politics remains a blood sport and corruption has been a bad habit. That combination has become far more volatile with the addition of millions of dollars in aid beginning to flow from Washington and an army of auditors, investigators and prosecutors determined to make sure that the money is properly spent.

So far, the scrutiny has resulted in several major fraud prosecutions around the state. The government has filed charges against a politician in St. Tammany Parish, north of New Orleans, who is accused of seeking hurricane contract kickbacks, and against several federal workers accused of seeking bribes and a contractor who was paid millions of dollars for work the government says he did not perform at a tent camp.

New hurricane fraud investigations are being opened "sometimes by the day," said Jim Letten, the United States attorney in New Orleans, who was the lead prosecutor in the corruption case against former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, convicted in 2000 of a scheme to extort money from businessmen seeking gambling boat licenses.

"Additional investigations focus on everything from fake charities to identity theft to contractors behaving fraudulently to public corruption cases," Mr. Letten said.

Grand jury investigations normally take place in secret, and Mr. Letten said he could not discuss the focus or the scope of the inquiry in Kenner, a city of 70,000 people that is home to New Orleans's airport.

But some information has become public, in part because the mayor and several City Council members have held news conferences on the investigation. Reporters were waiting in the halls of the Hale Boggs Federal Building on March 9 when a contractor and all seven members of the Council trooped up to the fourth floor to testify. And the contracts in question have been a subject of public acrimony between the mayor and the Council, a circumstance that led to a fistfight between a contractor and the brothers of a councilman at a Mardi Gras ball in February.

"Kenner is the home of hardball politics," said Jeff Crouere, a political commentator who is a former executive director of the Louisiana Republican Party. (Almost all the battling politicians in Kenner are Republicans.) But the grand jury inquiry, coming so soon before hotly contested city elections on April 1, "is just an incredible situation," Mr. Crouere said, "where voters are left scratching their heads."

Dominic O. Weilbaecher, a city councilman and former interim mayor, has raised questions about at least $22 million in city spending on debris removal, trailers and public relations.

The spending was approved by the current mayor, Philip L. Capitano, who is running for re-election. A former ally of his, Mr. Weilbaecher contends that Mr. Capitano is now rewarding campaign contributors, overpaying cronies and generally spending taxpayer money without demonstrating that the city is getting anything in return.

"I've been talking to guys from the F.B.I. for two years, just because of the foolishness I've seen from this administration," Mr. Weilbaecher (pronounced WHILE-backer) said in an interview.

What is new, he said, is that federal money is now involved: the city is seeking reimbursement for storm-related expenses from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"My take is, the U.S. attorney wants to send a message that regardless of what's going on with elections or any other thing, you don't mess with the federal government," Mr. Weilbaecher said.

The mayor replied that his efforts after the storm saved the city money, got it up and running quickly, and did not involve any impropriety.

"We did it better, we did it cheaper," he said in an interview. "That's why it's so funny we're being investigated by a grand jury right now, when we were more efficient, cheaper and better than all the surrounding communities."

The mayor later sent along a letter he had received from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business praising his "bold and intelligent leadership" after the storm.

Randal Perkins, owner of a major debris removal company that worked in Louisiana and Mississippi after the hurricane, said in a phone interview that he believed Kenner was paying less on its cleanup contract than the Army Corps of Engineers was spending on similar work.

"It's politics," Mr. Capitano said of the inquiry. Mr. Weilbaecher and another councilman, Michael McMyne, "are trying to help the guy who ran against me" in the last election.

That guy, Nick Congemi, is the police chief and brother of Mr. Capitano's predecessor as mayor. The chief is among four candidates challenging Mr. Capitano this time.

"I don't think anybody can plot with the U.S. attorney's office," Mr. Congemi said recently. "That accusation is a simple politician's answer to a deep dilemma he's in now."

Whatever is behind the accusations, Mr. Letten, the prosecutor, had no choice but to look into them, said L. Eades Hogue, a former federal prosecutor representing the contractor who has appeared before the grand jury. "It smacks of politics," Mr. Hogue said, "but the U.S. attorney is obligated to investigate allegations such as these."

Even some critics of the mayor do not dispute that this city of about 15 square miles began rebounding from the hurricane faster than many other communities. But they suggest that this had less to do with politicians than with the route of the storm, which struck hardest at points farther east.

"As bad as it was, this city was blessed," said John T. Lavarine III, who like his father before him serves on the City Council. "We were on the western fringes."

Which is not to say that Kenner escaped unscathed. Driving his Crown Victoria through the city recently, Mr. Lavarine headed north and west to Loyola Drive, where white FEMA trailers line the streets like false teeth in front of damaged houses. Across town, a huge apartment complex that housed mostly Hispanic residents sits moldering, roofs torn off and walls tipped in.

Worried about rebuilding their homes and about the next hurricane, Kenner's residents, some politicians among them, seem embarrassed by the investigation and fed up with the political squabbling.

"The fighting and all has not served the city well," said Edmond J. Muniz, a retired businessman and politician known for founding Endymion, one of the biggest Mardi Gras krewes, or parade groups, who decided at the last minute to run for mayor. "I don't know how to put it. I wouldn't want to say we are a laughingstock, because it isn't funny."

    In Louisiana, Graft Inquiries Are Increasing, NYT, 18.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/national/18kenner.html

FEMA Will Try to Recoup Millions

Distributed for Hurricane Relief

March 18, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, March 17 — Acknowledging that it wrongly distributed tens of millions of dollars in hurricane relief last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday that it would try to recoup aid from thousands of individuals or families who fraudulently or otherwise wrongly collected money.

Officials at the agency said it was a routine step taken after any disaster because in the rush to distribute emergency aid, benefits were occasionally paid twice to the same family or to people who were ineligible.

"In every disaster there are just some people who are bad apples who attempt to take advantage of the programs," said Donna Dannels, the acting deputy director of disaster recovery at FEMA.

But auditors examining the $6.8 billion in disaster assistance distributed last year to 1.7 million households after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma said FEMA was to blame for much of the abuse because of a woefully inadequate accounting system that left it vulnerable to fraud.

"The right way to do this is to prevent it in the first place," said Gregory D. Kutz, managing director of a unit in the Government Accountability Office that has already found that thousands of people submitted duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers to receive aid. "You will never catch even a fraction of the people who have committed fraud here."

So far, FEMA has sent letters to 1,500 families asking them to return payments, which most frequently came in the form of $2,000 in cash but could legally reach $26,200 per household.

FEMA's requests for repayment came after it conducted its own search for duplicate payments and other irregularities.

The letters that went out this week were just the first wave. FEMA officials said Friday that they would most likely seek the return of aid from 2 percent to 3 percent of approved applicants. They said that they could not estimate how much money they would try to recoup, but that it could be up to $100 million.

In some cases, payments were made to families to cover immediate expenses that have since been reimbursed by private insurance, Ms. Dannels said.

But the inquiry by Mr. Kutz and his staff members, which is still under way, has already shown that thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of inappropriate payments were made because people were able to apply for and collect aid repeatedly.

For example, about 5,000 of the 11,000 victims of Hurricane Katrina who collected FEMA debit cards worth $2,000 that were distributed in Texas also received $2,000 payments in the mail, even though they were eligible for only one so-called expedited assistance payment to buy food, clothing and other emergency supplies.

Separately, investigators found that thousands of payments for cash aid and rental assistance were sent to people who applied with falsified Social Security numbers or numbers that belonged to people who had died.

The problem, the investigators found, was that when people called FEMA's toll-free registration number, the agency did not try to confirm their identities by using government records to match the applicants' names with the submitted Social Security numbers.

"FEMA provided the fraudsters an opportunity that was very appealing to steal money," Mr. Kutz said. In one case, a person used 15 different Social Security numbers to collect $41,000.

The weaknesses in FEMA's emergency aid system are not new: in 2004, after Hurricane Frances in Florida, it gave out $31 million in aid to more than 12,000 residents of the Miami area that auditors later ruled was largely unjustified because hurricane-force winds never hit the area. FEMA ultimately moved to recoup much of this money as well.

Individuals who receive a letter from FEMA will have a month to repay the requested amount before they will be charged interest. Recipients will have a chance to appeal, but if the appeal is not sustained and the payment is not made, the debt will be turned over to the Treasury Department to collect.

Officials from FEMA and the treasury could not say Friday how successful the government had been at recovering excessive or unjustified payments from past disasters.

R. David Paulison, the acting FEMA director, said the agency was moving to correct some of the problems, including establishing a way to verify applicants' identities when they applied for aid over the phone, a system that would be in place for the next hurricane season.

Ultimately, Mr. Paulison said, there will never be a way to stop all fraud and waste.

"For every instance of an incorrect payment, there are thousands who were genuinely in need of the federal government's help," Mr. Paulison said in a statement Friday. "It is our job to ensure there is not delay in receiving that assistance."

    FEMA Will Try to Recoup Millions Distributed for Hurricane Relief, NYT, 18.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/politics/18fema.html

Clergy urge Washington

to end Katrina aid delays

Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:26 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Some 150 U.S. religious leaders, after touring areas of New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, chastised Washington on Friday for delaying billions of dollars in aid for a region known for its historic churches.

Members of the clergy from 80 cities and 30 denominations called on Congress to quickly pass $4.2 billion in supplemental housing funding Louisiana has requested so thousands of evacuees scattered around the country can come home.

The pastors gathered in New Orleans for a summit to launch a national campaign for their efforts, during which they visited such areas as the Ninth Ward, Gentilly Woods and New Orleans East that are still in ruins more than half a year after Katrina triggered levee breaches and massive flooding.

Churches throughout the flooded areas, especially in the Ninth Ward, were damaged.

As many as 150,000 homes in New Orleans were damaged in the August 29 hurricane. The population of the city is still under 200,000, less than half the pre-storm number.

"I'm just overwhelmed with the magnitude of the neglect," Rev. Heyward Wiggins of the Camden Bible Tabernacle in Camden, New Jersey, told Reuters after the tour. "It's as if it's become a forgotten city."

Hurricane Katrina took 1,300 lives along the Gulf Coast, and about 2,000 people are still listed as missing.

The House of Representatives on Thursday passed $19 billion of funding for Gulf Coast reconstruction, but refused to earmark a full $4.2 billion for Louisiana housing programs, as the state had requested.

The Gulf Coast money is part of a $91.9 billion bill that also provides funds for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate's version has not yet cleared its Appropriations Committee.

Religious leaders, brought together by the People Improving Communities through Organizing, or PICO, network of faith-based organizations, said the housing money should go solely to Louisiana, not shared among all Gulf Coast states, as some lawmakers have suggested.

They also said they were urging that members of Congress support a bipartisan initiative for Louisiana to get rebuilding money from offshore oil and gas royalties and lease sales.

The Rev. Rayfield Burns of the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, said he and his colleagues were calling on their congregations and communities to press lawmakers into more speedy action on recovery so those "in exile" in other parts of the United States can be "freed."

That includes spurring the Federal Emergency Management Agency into quicker action providing trailers and other temporary housing to those who needed it, leaders said.

    Clergy urge Washington to end Katrina aid delays, R, 17.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-03-17T232553Z_01_N17410544_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-CLERGY.xml

House Approves $4.2 Billion

in Aid Sought by Louisiana

March 17, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE EATON

It took weeks of crunching data, crossing fingers and lobbying in Washington. But Louisiana officials and the Bush administration succeeded yesterday in persuading the House to approve $4.2 billion in hurricane relief that state officials say is crucial to their effort to rebuild houses and apartments ruined by last year's storms.

The House did not require that all this money be spent in Louisiana, as the state's delegation and the White House had urged, leaving state officials concerned that some of the money might be claimed by Mississippi or Texas.

But before voting 348 to 71 to spend the money, the House beat back continuing efforts by conservative Republicans to eliminate all of the $19 billion of hurricane spending from the $92 billion emergency supplemental spending bill, which also includes large sums to pay for the war in Iraq. These lawmakers, trying to curb government spending, have also raised concerns that the hurricane money is not being spent wisely.

Though the measure still faces critics in the Senate, its passage in the House was a deep relief for Louisiana officials, who have struggled to come up with a housing plan after the White House rejected a proposal earlier this year to create a special agency to buy up flooded properties and sell them to developers.

"I want to thank the country for its generosity, in that these funds will let these people go back to work," said Representative Bobby Jindal, Republican of Louisiana, whose district includes suburbs west and north of New Orleans.

Housing remains in short supply in Louisiana, and state officials say that makes it virtually impossible for the local economy to recover.

Mr. Jindal said he expected the money to be reserved for Louisiana, even though that is not required in the version of the bill passed by the House.

The money approved by the House yesterday is in the form of community development block grants, which the state can use to buy out properties that cannot be safely rebuilt, as well as to restore houses and rental units. Under the plan for the money proposed by Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, homeowners could receive up to $150,000, while owners of rental properties would be eligible for loans and other assistance.

Donald E. Powell, whom the Bush administration appointed to oversee the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, supported the plan and visited Capitol Hill to explain it, a spokeswoman said in an e-mail message.

Mr. Powell and Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority who also met with House staff members earlier this week, emphasized that the $4.2 billion request was based on a rigorous analysis of the state's losses.

"Every single dollar ties back to a destroyed house or a destroyed piece of critical infrastructure," Mr. Reilly said in an interview.

This approach contrasts with the state's early estimates of its needs, which critics on Capitol Hill said were overblown and unsubstantiated.

Louisiana will soon send another lobbying contingent to the Senate, which is not expected to vote on the bill until May, Mr. Reilly said.

"It gives us more time to make our case," he added, "but the bad news is, every delay means a delay in recovery. People are really hurting."

In the meantime, senators from Texas and Mississippi are likely to try to get more hurricane-relief money for their states, either by increasing the appropriation or by ensuring that they get some part of the housing money approved yesterday.

Texas has estimated that it needs $2 billion in hurricane aid, and a spokesman for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said yesterday that she was committed to taking as much money as she could to her state.

Some members of the Louisiana delegation expressed disappointment that the $4.2 billion was not explicitly reserved for their state, which they say suffered disproportionately from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"This has put us in a competition for the pittance, the few dollars," said Representative Charlie Melancon, Democrat of Louisiana, whose district includes St. Bernard Parish, which was deeply flooded after Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Melancon said he was also frustrated that the House had not approved an amendment he sponsored to increase the $1.46 billion in the bill to rebuild New Orleans levees.

"They're hoping we disappear off the radar screen," Mr. Melancon said of his colleagues. "People who wear Christ on their sleeves and vote against helping people are the biggest hypocrites."

    House Approves $4.2 Billion in Aid Sought by Louisiana, NYT, 17.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/politics/17aid.html

Trailers, Vital After Hurricane,

Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf

March 16, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

PORT SULPHUR, La., March 11 — In its rush to provide shelter for victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has created a pressing new Gulf Coast hazard: nearly 90,000 lightweight trailers in an area prone to flooding, tornadoes and, of course, hurricanes.

The risks of living along the coast inside what amounts to little more than an aluminum box are already obvious to Mitchell and Marie Bartholomew, whose travel trailer here in Port Sulphur, about 40 miles southeast of New Orleans, rocked so violently in a recent routine storm that they abandoned it for a hotel.

"It rattles, it rolls," said Mr. Bartholomew, 62, a retired boat captain, whose trailer sits between the Mississippi River and the slab where his home once stood. "It is like telling you to get out."

Government officials along the Gulf Coast and in Washington agree that the temporary housing, while better than a tent or emergency shelter, is far from ideal.

"They're campers," Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi told a Senate committee this month. "They're not designed to be used as housing for a family for months, much less years. The trailers don't provide even the most basic protection from high winds or severe thunderstorms, much less tornadoes or hurricanes."

With hurricane season less than three months away, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in an interview that he too was worried about the situation. Not only are the trailers lightweight, they are often placed next to partly reconstructed homes and debris that can turn into dangerous projectiles when the wind picks up, Mr. Chertoff said.

Since the travel trailers used by the Bartholomews and others are intended to be portable, they are mounted on wheels so they can be pulled by large pickup trucks until, on reaching their destination, they are jacked up and mounted on concrete blocks. Designed initially for recreational use, the units — 35 feet long, 8 eight feet wide and weighing about 6,000 pounds — are much smaller, lighter and less expensive than so-called mobile or manufactured homes, which are typically emplaced permanently.

More than 87,100 families in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are living in the FEMA trailers, while only some 2,300 are in the sturdier mobile homes.

FEMA ordered far more travel trailers than mobile homes after the hurricane because the trailers could be towed to a homeowner's property and quickly dropped into place. Being portable, they are not generally covered by building codes and not explicitly banned in flood zones.

For further security along the windy Gulf Coast, FEMA secured the trailers to the ground with steel straps that connect to four corner anchors, although many homeowners have installed their own trailers, in some cases without anchoring them at all.

The added security for the FEMA trailers means that while they may vibrate or rock in the wind, they should not be vulnerable to tipping over until winds exceed 75 miles per hour or so, said Mark C. Smith, a spokesman for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. That speed is typical during intense tropical storms, extremely severe thunderstorms and all hurricanes. (FEMA agrees that 75 m.p.h. should be the threshold for evacuation, although Eddie Abbott of Gulf Stream Coach, a trailer manufacturer, said he thought an anchored trailer would be stable at higher wind speeds.)

By comparison, new coastal homes must be able to withstand winds of up to 110 to 150 m.p.h., depending on location, said Gene Humphrey, an official in the Mississippi fire marshal's office.

The potential hazards with the trailers are obvious across the gulf region. In Myrtle Grove, La., north of Port Sulphur, FEMA trailers sit on the ground below houses that are suspended on stilts to avoid routine floodwaters that would swamp the trailers. Elsewhere, they have been installed just a few feet away from homes that remain ripped wide open from Hurricane Katrina.

Add wind, and the environment can quickly become treacherous. Jimmy Cappiello, a retired oil platform operator who now lives part time in a Port Sulphur trailer, saw sheet metal, trash, wood planks and even the carport from a nearby house flying during a recent storm. He waited it out in his pickup, which he felt was more solid than the trailer.

"I ain't taking no chances," Mr. Cappiello said. "I don't feel safe in it."

In early February, the New Orleans police reported that at least one FEMA trailer was ripped from its anchors when a tornado passed through. And last July, in Pensacola, Fla., a number of trailers installed after a 2004 hurricane were damaged or flipped when Hurricane Dennis hit.

Mr. Humphrey, from the Mississippi fire marshal's office, said he realized that many families wanted a trailer next to their damaged houses. But FEMA, he said, made a mistake in installing the lightweight trailers, instead of the heavier mobile homes, in this high-wind zone on the coast.

"This is pretty serious," he said. "It never should have happened."

With so many trailers and damaged homes along the gulf, and with some levees weakened, local officials will most likely call for coastal evacuations more frequently this year, said Mr. Smith, the Louisiana official. "The key," he said, "is going to be trying to figure out how to word it so people don't get a false sense of security, but people don't panic, either."

Mr. Chertoff said he had already spoken with officials at FEMA and the Defense Department to make sure that federal agencies are ready if needed to help in evacuations.

"We are going to say, 'We want to see the plan, and we want to see what the capabilities are,' " Mr. Chertoff said. " 'And if you don't have the capabilities, we need to know that, because we are going to make sure we have those capabilities in place.' "

In recent weeks, some coastal cities, including Biloxi and Ocean City, Miss., have decided that when severe storms approach, they will open temporary shelters where people living in travel trailers or damaged homes can wait out the bad weather.

"We have to be on our toes sooner," said Ashley Roth, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. "The trailers are just not safe to stay in, in the event of severe weather."

Some trailer residents along the coast in Mississippi and Louisiana said they would not be reluctant to head for more solid shelter. "They won't have to tell me — we will be moving out," said Daisy Lightell, 57, of Happy Jack, La., north of Port Sulphur, who lives in a FEMA trailer with her husband. "Otherwise, we could end up in 'The Wizard of Oz.' "

Above all, officials want to discourage residents from trying to evacuate with their trailer in tow, a circumstance that could create an even worse hazard.

"I imagine there are going to be some people who consider it," said Jesse St. Amant, emergency preparedness director for Plaquemines Parish, La. "But I hope they think better of it. Trying to haul a travel trailer during an evacuation would be cumbersome and dangerous."

    Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf, NYT, 16.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/nationalspecial/16trailers.html

Forecast on Shrunken New Orleans

March 15, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS, March 14 (AP) — By the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans will have less than 60 percent of the population it had before the storm, according to a study prepared for the city.

The hurricane, which struck Aug. 29, emptied New Orleans of almost all its estimated 465,000 residents. The city's population has rebounded to an estimated 189,000, state officials said.

The new study, conducted by the RAND Corporation, projects that the population will be 272,000 by September 2008, 58 percent of the prehurricane level.

Sections of the city that suffered only wind damage or minor flooding are filling up now.

"But when you look at other parts of the city with serious flood damage, the amount of work needed to make those areas livable again is likely to take a lengthy time," said Narayan Sastry, project leader of the study.

Gregory C. Rigamer, president of GCR & Associates, a New Orleans consulting firm, said he expected the city to reach a population of 250,000 to 275,000 by the end of 2006. "Then, it's going to slow down because the efforts to recover the remaining areas are going to be difficult," Mr. Rigamer said.

The RAND report paints a bleak picture for the city's prestorm residents who lived in poverty, an overwhelming number of whom are black and many of whom did not have cars to leave the city before the hurricane.

"Lack of transportation will also make it difficult for poor evacuees to travel back to the city to evaluate the condition of their former residences and either to begin the process of repairing their homes or to find a new place to live," the study said.

In issuing the study, RAND warned that it had to work quickly, had limited data and was confronted with considerable uncertainties in New Orleans in drawing its conclusions. It said more study would be needed.

    Forecast on Shrunken New Orleans, NYT, 15.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/national/nationalspecial/15population.html

Louisiana Turns to the Needs of Renters

March 15, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, March 14 — Underscoring the serious housing shortage for workers here, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana announced a $1.75 billion plan Tuesday to encourage landlords to repair or build apartments and houses for rent.

Officials hope the plan will lead to the restoration or construction of as many as 45,000 dwellings in a city where huge swaths of low-income housing were left unlivable by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. But they emphasized that the plan was contingent on approval by Congress, which has been increasingly reluctant to give Louisiana a special hand.

The money for the plan would come out of the $4.2 billion that President Bush has proposed sending to Louisiana to cover housing needs. But Congressional appropriators seem determined to reduce that amount, in part because lawmakers from neighboring Texas and Mississippi have asked for some of the money, and in part because conservatives maintain that the tens of billions already appropriated for emergency relief and reconstruction in the region is enough. The issue comes up for debate in the House on Wednesday.

Before the hurricane, just over half the residents of New Orleans were renters. The labor shortage being felt in all areas of the local economy — "now hiring" signs are still abundant — is partly a result of the wholesale destruction of small apartment buildings, rental houses and apartment complexes throughout the city.

Governor Blanco, a Democrat, accentuated the point Tuesday in announcing her plan. Nearly half the estimated 200,000 jobs lost in the metropolitan area because of the storm were low-wage jobs, she said.

"Rebuilding or reopening affordable apartments and rental homes is critical to getting our workers, and their families, back home," the governor said in an outdoor news conference at a development of single-family homes and apartments.

Until now, the focus has been on getting homeowners back on their feet. Three weeks ago the state unveiled a $7.5 billion package of loans and grants to help owners rebuild and repair.

But perhaps even more critical to the immediate revival of South Louisiana's low-wage economy is establishing rental housing for workers. "This whole program is intended to make sure there is available housing at affordable rents," said Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, created by the governor.

Under the two chief provisions of the plan, about $940 million would be made available to small landlords in no-interest loans _— money they would not have to repay until the property was sold — and $585 million would go to developers, as a direct subsidy for rents and debt.

The proposal would prod developers to build housing for a mix of incomes, and landlords to fix up apartments for lower-earning households. For instance, bigger loans would be provided to landlords charging lower rents, and developers would be pushed to mix unsubsidized apartments into their government-aided projects, in a bid to avoid the islands of poverty that characterized the city before the storm.

Ms. Blanco and Mr. Kopplin announced the proposal at one such rental development of mixed incomes: River Gardens, which planted New Orleans-style homes — Creole cottages, for example, and camelbacks, a local version of a split-level — on the site of one of the city's worst housing projects, St. Thomas, now demolished. The new development was completed not long before the storm, but hardly shows wear.

Though derided by some critics outside New Orleans as a tasteless pastiche, River Gardens replaced a sprawling, dangerous complex that was a deathtrap to many of its residents. Gunfire could be heard nightly in the project's environs, which had one of the highest murder rates in the city.

The new, well-maintained development near the Mississippi River is light-years away from that, and indeed Ms. Blanco held it up as a model on Tuesday.

Yet what would have been acceptable as everyday occurrences at St. Thomas can create their own set of problems now, as was evident Tuesday when several tenants loudly interjected criticism at the news conference.

Officials later said some residents had had difficulty adapting to the new development's requirements, and indeed one woman, Sharese Jones, complained that she was "being evicted from here because of a TV" that she had kept on all night.

"Everybody who's back here, who's low income," Ms. Jones said, "is being picked on."

    Louisiana Turns to the Needs of Renters, NYT, 15.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/national/nationalspecial/15rent.html

Road to Rebirth Diverges

on a Mississippi Bridge

March 14, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

BILOXI, Miss. — At the eastern tip of this city there was once a bridge. Like much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, it was reduced by Hurricane Katrina to a muddle of concrete and pilings, tumbled over like a giant line of dominos.

Everyone wants it rebuilt as soon as possible. But officials on one side of the bridge — those in Biloxi — favor a large, multilane structure that can accommodate casino workers and the new horde of gamblers. On the other side, in Ocean Springs, officials want to restore the four-lane drawbridge that once spanned the bay, hoping to keep their French-colonized, tree-lined town the definition of quaint.

The debate over what should replace the Biloxi-Ocean Springs bridge in many ways illustrates the entire rebuilding effort along the Mississippi coast, where cities, drained of resources, infrastructure and people, struggle toward rebirth.

Gov. Haley Barbour's rebuilding commission and many small-town officials advocate a planning approach known as New Urbanism, which supports pedestrian friendly, historically themed developments where people of mixed incomes share the same neighborhoods and are closely linked by public transportation. Given a rare chance to redesign their landscapes, many residents and officials want to see towns designed around trolley cars, pedestrian walkways and open spaces.

"I want us to be a more walkable town," said Lou Rizzardi, an alderman from the nearby beachfront city of Pass Christian. "We don't have sidewalks, we don't have gutters, we want our downtown to be more dense. This may be a pipe dream, but it's the way we used to live."

But critics here mock New Urbanism as being impractical and ignorant of the preference of most Americans for privacy over community, and as creating towns that often look like film sets rather than real communities.

"A lot of people there are more into the arts and come from other areas," said Mayor A. J. Holloway of Biloxi, speaking of Ocean Springs and its preference for a smaller bridge with a bicycle lane. "And I don't see people riding bikes 85 feet in the air."

Officials from Biloxi and Gulfport, robbed by the hurricane of their fishing docks and antebellum homes and emboldened by new legislation that permits gambling on land, believe their cities' futures lie in rows of casinos, high-rise condominiums and a new multilane bridge. Officials deride the idea of trolleys replacing cars on busy roadways and suggest that such ideas are preferred by people who come from, as they say here, "away."

Pass Christian, once a haven for retirees and people with second homes, is now warily weighing offers from the condominium developers it once avoided, as all the town's businesses have been swept away, leaving its coffers empty.

Other places are equally desperate; Waveland and Bay St. Louis, neighboring cities with distinct cultures and histories, are considering a merger.

And as with New Orleans, which Mississippi residents say has overshadowed the narrative of their plight, the struggle to rebuild here is also a struggle for a future identity, as the culture, physical landscape and industries of the region face inevitable change.

The historically rich, laid back, slightly tawdry Mississippi coast has always stood apart from the otherwise largely provincial state. With its French colonial history, the coast has carried few of the historical burdens wrought by cotton plantations, slaves and the civil rights movement.

The state government, which has long encouraged local control, is not poised to dictate a uniform rebuilding agenda for its coastal region, even though state planners may support the smaller approach. And so commerce seems poised to drive the decision making instead.

"The coastal communities are different, but they are linked, and that is the complexity of it," said Charles Reagan Wilson, the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. "But it is going to be difficult for each town to preserve the character they have had before Katrina. The model for the future of the coast to me seems to be the Florida Panhandle, with condos and things like that. That is the private, economic, capitalistic future."

The devastation of the coast here remains shocking to the uninitiated eye; towns where people have clearly worked night and day just to remove debris look as though they were hit by a hurricane six days ago, rather than six months.

In Pass Christian, where nary a house is standing and bedsheets are still threaded through the trees, the order to boil water only just ended. Its municipal government, like many in the region, is housed in a doublewide trailer.

Biloxi is still a tangle of crumbling buildings, bent signs and silent streets. But all that changes in the parking lots of the three casinos that have opened on land, where drivers are lucky to find a space. Crowds appear within the casinos from seemingly nowhere, as if planted in place, with people holding cocktails and clutching room keys that double as casino entry cards in the cavernous, smoke-fogged halls.

"Biloxi is going to be high-rises and condos," said Duncan McKenzie, president of the Chamber of Commerce and a vice president of the Isle of Capri casino. "People refer to what happened here as a tragic opportunity." Even before the storm, casinos were Biloxi's second-largest industry after the military, employing 15,000 people and generating $19.2 million in taxes.

But now there are few places for the lowest-paid casino workers to live. In the western part of Biloxi, the mom-and-pop motels and low-income apartment buildings were destroyed, and developers have been buying up land for large condominiums, Mayor Holloway said.

"Low- and moderate-income housing was a problem before Katrina," Mr. Holloway said. "And it is an even bigger problem now. We are working with the casinos to see if they are interested in developing housing for their workers."

In light of these many problems, Mr. Holloway, casino executives and others believe that it is in the best interest of Biloxi to have a functioning bridge that links workers to homes, gamblers to casinos and the city to the rest of the coast as soon as possible.

The State Department of Transportation wants to build an eight-lane, 85-foot-tall bridge to replace the decimated four-lane structure, paid for with federal funds unleashed after Hurricane Katrina.

But officials in Ocean Springs deplore the notion of a large bridge dumping traffic into its tree-lined town. They prefer a bridge half the size, with a bicycle lane. The chasm between Ocean Springs and Biloxi in some ways can be accounted for by the relative damage of each. The beachfront homes in Ocean Springs — one of the oldest cities in America, founded in 1699 — took a beating. But its downtown was more or less unscathed, which has led the town to not only survive, but flourish.

Once a quiet bedroom community with a number of artists, upscale women's sportswear shops and picturesque restaurants and candy stores, the town is now dotted with new restaurants and bars that are filled with volunteers, contractors and neighbors who do not want to take the long route into Biloxi now that the bridge is out. Just as important, it has the one thing that separates the surviving towns from the sinking ones: a still-standing Wal-Mart.

"We've been a place for people to escape," said Donovan Scruggs, the planning and development director in Ocean Springs. "Pre-Katrina, there was not much of an after-7 crowd downtown. Now we have a vibrant little nightlife downtown. Our revenues increased 50 percent in November over the same period in 2004."

There is a similar chasm between Waveland and Bay St. Louis, which are considering the merger. Bay St. Louis has fewer resources than Waveland and about half its budget, and it sees a future more oriented toward tourism. Waveland, which is resisting the merger concept, wants to rebuild its downtown like a miniature French Quarter.

"I am hard-pressed to see where combining would benefit the people of Waveland," said Mayor Tommy Longo of Waveland, as he ate a barbecue sandwich recently in City Hall (yes, a trailer), trying to get through another day of negotiating insurance claim complaints, Army Corps of Engineer problems and out-of-state deliveries.

Residents say they just want their old town back, name and all.

"Waveland has always been Waveland," said Cindy Peterson, folding laundry in her government trailer. "We should go back to what it was. Nothing like Katrina will happen again in my lifetime anyway."

    Road to Rebirth Diverges on a Mississippi Bridge, NYT, 14.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/national/nationalspecial/14biloxi.html

Billy Graham

returns with Big Easy sermon

Posted 3/12/2006 8:01 PM
Updated 3/13/2006 12:25 AM
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In his first public sermon in nine months, evangelist Billy Graham delivered his message of repentance and salvation Sunday to an overflow arena crowd in this city slowly recovering from devastation.

The Rev. Billy Graham, right, talks with his son Franklin before delivering a sermon at a New Orleans service.
By Bill Haber, AP

The 87-year-old required a walker to get to the podium but was greeted with a standing ovation and screams from the capacity crowd of 16,500 inside New Orleans Arena. Another 1,500 people watched on a large screen on a concourse at the neighboring Superdome — an evacuation center where flooding and rancid conditions reigned the week after Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29.

Graham told the crowd he watched television with shock as it became clear that Katrina and the broken flood system had destroyed much of the city and caused so much suffering.

"I had no idea the punch it had," he said.

But he also said he watched in awe as rescue personnel and others came to the aid of distressed residents. That, he said, was when "we knew the God of love was watching over us."

Sunday's message was his first evangelistic sermon since June, when he led his final revival meeting in New York City. He was in New Orleans for a two-day event organized by local ministers and his son, Franklin Graham, now the leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Graham's 20-minute sermon included an altar call — an invitation to accept Christ as savior that is a hallmark of his evangelism. "If you're not sure of your relationship to God, if you're not certain and you'd like to be certain, I'd like you to come," he said.

Graham has preached to 210 million people worldwide in a ministry career that spanned more than six decades. But in recent years he has suffered from Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer. Four years ago, he had a series of brain surgeries — the remnants of which still cause him pain.

On Wednesday, Billy Graham toured some of the neighborhoods hardest hit when Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, unleashing torrents of water and chaos on the city.

He addressed a gathering of ministers on Thursday, saying no one could say why something like Katrina happened, but that he believes the city of New Orleans has the foundation for a spiritual revival.

    Billy Graham returns with Big Easy sermon UT, 12.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-12-graham-service_x.htm

Bush Insists

on Approval of Full Aid

for Louisiana

March 9, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

NEW ORLEANS, March 8 — President Bush demanded on Wednesday that Congress provide Louisiana with the full $4.2 billion he has requested in housing aid for this storm-battered state, even as the House and Senate began considering whether some of that money should go to other states in the region.

Visiting New Orleans after taking more criticism last week for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush said he fully understood the "pain and agony" of people frustrated with the pace of reconstruction. He urged local officials to speed the removal of debris and said the federal government would rebuild the levees to provide greater protection against floodwaters like those that swamped the city six months ago.

Mr. Bush inspected the damage and cleanup efforts here, and said he was impressed by the desire of hurricane victims to "pick up and move on and rebuild." The president, in shirt sleeves, spoke at a work site here, in front of construction cranes, cement mixers, bulldozers and excavation equipment.

Mr. Bush's visit, his 10th trip to the region since Hurricane Katrina, came as a political battle erupted among Gulf Coast states seeking federal money for relief and reconstruction.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from Texas and Louisiana are engaged in a tussle over the proposed $4.2 billion in housing assistance for Louisiana, with Texans demanding a share of the money to compensate their state for taking in hurricane refugees.

Speaking in New Orleans, Mr. Bush allied himself with Louisiana over his home state. "Congress," he said, "should make sure that the $4.2 billion I requested goes to the state of Louisiana."

In the House, the Appropriations Committee on Wednesday took up the administration's $4.2 billion request, without designating it exclusively for Louisiana. John Scofield, a spokesman for the panel, said the committee was simply following its standard practice, which is not to set aside money for a particular state.

Mr. Scofield said the money would be distributed to hurricane-afflicted states on the basis of need, under a formula devised by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and predicted that Louisiana would get the "bulk of the money."

Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said Louisiana would fight any effort to split the money that Mr. Bush had promised Louisiana. "The number didn't come out of thin air," Mr. Reilly said on Wednesday. "It was fact-based. Every dollar ties back to a damaged house or a damaged piece of local infrastructure."

In the Senate, where the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, testified on Wednesday before the Appropriations Committee, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said her state was "absorbing enormous costs that should be the federal government's."

For example, Ms. Hutchison said, Texas is still educating 38,000 Louisiana schoolchildren at a cost of $6,000 per child, but is getting just $4,000 from the federal government.

"We shouldn't have to spend on the Katrina evacuees our regular allocation of C.D.B.G. money and not have that reimbursed," she said, referring to Community Development Block Grants. "That is not fair."

But another Republican on the panel, Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, strongly urged colleagues to limit the block-grant money to Mississippi and Louisiana.

Mr. Bond also said it was unwise for Congress to give out huge sums when the states had not produced "comprehensive plans" for recovery.

"I don't believe this is any way to run a program," he said. "The American public expects planning and accountability, not a request for a larger bar tab, and while it may sound offensive, we do expect results."

On Tuesday, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, a Democrat, said she feared that Congress would "chip away" at the money promised to Louisiana and divert some of it to other states.

"I do not for a minute seek to minimize the needs of Mississippi, Alabama or Texas," Ms. Blanco told the Senate Appropriations Committee. "The entire Gulf Coast suffered, but Louisiana bore the brunt of this disaster."

Mr. Bush took a helicopter tour of the New Orleans area and went inside an abandoned home in the Lower Ninth Ward, the low-income, working-class neighborhood ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The city has made progress cleaning up debris, he said, but "there's still a lot of work to be done, no question about it."

Speeding to a levee on the Industrial Canal here, Mr. Bush's motorcade passed by dozens of collapsed homes and overturned cars and mounds of rubble, clothing, toys and furniture.

With Governor Blanco and Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans at his side, Mr. Bush said: "The vast majority of debris on public property has been removed. Most of the remaining debris is on private property, in yards or inside houses that need to be gutted or demolished. To get the debris, the residents need to give permission, in most cases, to the local authorities. They need to get back to their houses, so they can decide what to keep and what to remove."

The president expressed confidence in the work of the Army Corps of Engineers, saying the agency would repair the city's flood-protection system before the next hurricane season began in June.

Mr. Bush said the engineers were "correcting design and construction deficiencies," so the levees would be "equal or better than what they were before Katrina." But he said Congress had shortchanged the financing, and he urged lawmakers to provide $1.5 billion more for work on the levees — an elaborate system of embankments and structural barriers.

Federal spending on Hurricane Katrina relief is rapidly approaching $100 billion. To date, the White House said, $88 billion has been made available, "with another $20 billion requested" by the administration.

After inspecting the damage in New Orleans, Mr. Bush went to an elementary school in Gautier, Miss.

Laura Bush, traveling with the president, said 1,121 schools in the Gulf Coast had been damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mrs. Bush, a former school librarian, announced an initiative to rebuild the book collections of those schools.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

    Bush Insists on Approval of Full Aid for Louisiana, NYT, 9.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/national/nationalspecial/09bush.html

Tough Hurdles for Companies

in Move Back to New Orleans

March 8, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS, March 7 — When Frank A. Glaviano Sr. told friends that he believed his company, Shell Oil, would return to New Orleans despite the devastation done by Hurricane Katrina, many had a good laugh. Forget it, they said; you are moving to Houston.

After all, more than 100 Shell employees lost their homes when water covered much of the city and the surrounding suburbs. Mail delivery was still unreliable, air service remained thin, and only a small fraction of the previous hospital capacity was back. With Shell's American base in Houston, it seemed to make sense to move its exploration and production unit there from New Orleans.

But Shell, a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, returned last month to its marbled office building here at One Shell Square, after making an extraordinary investment to do so. It bought $32 million in residential properties in the area — 120 houses and condominiums in all — to lease to its employees. The company owned no residential property in the United States before Hurricane Katrina.

In considering whether to move back its 1,000 employees who worked in New Orleans before the storm, Shell had to monitor closely things like the federal government's commitment to rebuilding the levees and the city's progress in reviving its school system.

"In the end, we decided to do the right thing by the city, the company and our employees," said Mr. Glaviano, the company vice president in charge of Shell's operations here.

Shell's unusual move demonstrates the difficulties that businesses of all sizes have encountered in moving back to New Orleans, and the dedication that is required to restart commerce in a city where basic necessities, like roofs, can be difficult to come by. To reopen their doors, many businesses have had to develop expertise in flood protection, transportation and medical care.

Chevron, one of Shell's competitors, which this week moved back the last of its 700 or so employees who worked in New Orleans before the storm, has added a paramedic to its staff and leases an ambulance so it does not have to rely on the city's 911 system in an emergency.

Most companies, of course, do not have the resources of a company like Shell, which reported record profits of $25.3 billion in 2005. "A lot of smaller companies, and even a lot of medium-sized ones, cannot afford the costs of getting up and back in business," said Don Hutchinson, the director of economic development for the city.

As a result, six months after Hurricane Katrina, at least four of every five businesses in New Orleans are still shuttered, Mr. Hutchinson said. About 60 percent of the downtown businesses have reopened, he said, but that statistic is deceptively high because many companies are moving back only part of their workforce.

Another large energy company, Dominion Exploration and Production, a subsidiary of Dominion Resources, has announced that it will start moving employees back to New Orleans this month. But 140 of those positions — 40 percent of its pre-hurricane workforce — will remain permanently in Houston, according to David J. Auchter, a Dominion spokesman.

Entergy, the country's fifth-largest power company, has so far issued no public statement about the fate of its 1,500 employees who worked in New Orleans before the hurricane, except to say that whatever the company's decision, not all of them will be moving back.

"The question isn't whether New Orleans is going to take a huge hit in terms of job loss," said Jay Lapeyre, a local businessman who, as chairman of the Business Council of New Orleans, speaks on behalf of more than 50 of the area's largest corporations. "The real question is where we'll have to rebuild from once we know where we've bottomed out."

Many factors went into Shell's decision to move back to New Orleans, including a workforce that was eager to return. Informal polling, said Rob Ryan, a Shell vice president, showed that more than 80 percent of employees preferred moving back to New Orleans over staying in Houston, including those who had temporarily relocated to Houston. A sense of corporate responsibility was also a factor.

New Orleans is a city where oil and gas exploration takes a back seat only to tourism and perhaps the port in terms of economic impact, and before Hurricane Katrina, Shell was the industry's largest employer in the city. Its tower — a white marble monolith on a premier corner of the downtown business district — is the second tallest in town. The Place St. Charles office building is the tallest.

From Shell's perspective, the city had a variety of factors working in its favor, including its culture and especially its geography. The easy access to the rich oil reserves in the waters off the Louisiana coast first drew exploration firms to New Orleans decades ago, and the wells could not easily be abandoned — at least not by firms with the means and the will to stay.

"A lot of the smaller oil and gas companies haven't committed to return," said Mr. Hutchinson, the city economic official. "Basically, it's still wait and see with most of them."

That was Shell's attitude for weeks after the storm. Houston is the energy capital of the nation, and there were efficiencies in moving the company's operations to the home office. To many executives, there was no question that Houston represented the path of least resistance.

"This was one of those decisions," Mr. Glaviano said, "that had several executives feeling very strongly that we should relocate to Houston and several feeling very strongly in favor of moving back."

Shell was luckier than many of its rivals. The building Dominion called home before the storm, across the street from the Superdome, still sits abandoned, with roughly half of its windows covered by plywood. The basement and first floor of Chevron's office tower were flooded, which meant it was not ready for occupancy until the end of January.

The building Shell calls home, in contrast, sits atop a pedestal of white marble stairs. "The building was fine," Mr. Ryan said. "The key issue for us was whether we could bring 1,000 employees back."

To answer that question, Shell set up a virtual war room to monitor the city's progress and help its executives calculate the wisdom of returning. The company assigned about two dozen employees to judge the city's progress on a long list of factors, like repairing the pumping stations and providing parking in the central business district.

Other big companies did the same, including Chevron, which approached the task with military precision. It issued daily situation reports, devising a color-code system "just like the federal government does to track the terrorist threat level," said Matthew Carmichael, governmental affairs director for Chevron in New Orleans. Early on, the company deemed almost every core function code red.

It was in late October that Mr. Glaviano and his colleagues decided to move back to New Orleans, yet it was not until January that a thorough audit of the state of the city prompted the company to conclude that "the city was sufficiently back, from a safety and security perspective," Mr. Ryan said.

Nonetheless, Shell employees are returning to find that working downtown remains a challenge. Flight capacity is less than half of what it was before the storm — a crucial issue for a company with headquarters in another city. Mail service is still so unreliable that customers often pay the extra expense of overnight services to pay bills and send other important documents. The 120 or so Shell employees who lost homes no doubt appreciate that the company leases them housing at cost, but some of the units are a two-hour drive from downtown.

Still, despite these and other inconveniences, most of the employees seem happy to be back home, Mr. Glaviano said. Certainly he is. "Walking through the lobby," he said, "it feels like an ordinary day to me."

    Tough Hurdles for Companies in Move Back to New Orleans, NYT, 8.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/national/nationalspecial/08shell.html?hp&ex=1141880400&en=517a42f7bc218865&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Political storms unabated

in Bush New Orleans trip

Wed Mar 8, 2006 1:09 AM ET
Reuters
By Matt Spetalnick

WACO, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush returns to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans on Wednesday seeking to fend off the latest fallout from a political storm that has battered his popularity and shows no sign of blowing over.

Bush's trip, his 10th to the city since Hurricane Katrina, comes amid fresh scrutiny of his administration's botched response to the disaster, high on a list of troubles that have shaken public confidence in the president in his second term.

With his approval ratings at or near an all-time low, Bush hopes to refocus attention on his $19.8 billion request to Congress for new aid to the Gulf Coast to reassure residents he is following through on his promise to help them rebuild.

The increase in federal funds has stirred hopes, but many in New Orleans remain frustrated by the slow pace of progress on the ground, especially in poor, predominantly black neighborhoods hardest hit by massive flooding after the August 29 storm.

"It's a shame to call this America," said Briscoe Brazella as he pulled waterlogged belongings from his home in the city's Lower Ninth Ward. "If this was America as God intended ... every home here would just about be rebuilt by now."

More than six months after Katrina struck, much of New Orleans, once best known as a boozy tourist mecca that lived by the motto "Let the good times roll," is still in ruins.

Barely a third of its nearly half a million inhabitants have returned and it's not clear how many more will.

Bush has faced new criticism over a video showing officials warning him the day before Katrina hit that levees meant to protect New Orleans from flooding could fail. Critics said it made it hard to accept the White House's insistence that it was surprised by the storm's intensity.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that more than six in 10 Americans disapprove of the way Bush handled Katrina.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan has maintained that while Bush was not satisfied with the federal response, the video had been "twisted" out of context.

But Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University, said: "Bush has to do some damage control."

STRUGGLING TO REVIVE APPROVAL RATINGS

Bush's trip, coupled with a stop in Gulfport, Mississippi, comes as he is struggling to pull up his job performance ratings, which dropped to 34 percent in a CBS News poll last week.

Katrina is only one of a list of woes that have damaged the administration's credibility. Others include growing pessimism over the Iraq war and Bush's failure to head off tempests such as a Dubai firm's plan to take over key U.S. port operations.

The president's weakness portends a tough fight for fellow Republicans in November congressional elections.

Defiant House Republicans moved to block the ports deal, which they consider a security risk, by attaching an amendment to spending legislation for the Iraq war and hurricane relief.

In need of a boost, Bush's aides may have timed his New Orleans visit to tap into any upbeat mood lingering from the city's scaled-down Mardi Gras revelry, which ended last week.

He overnighted at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Details of his schedule were kept under wraps. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat with whom Bush has had chilly relations, planned to meet him, her office said.

She and governors of other hurricane-stricken Gulf states urged Congress on Tuesday not to shortchange them on aid.

Residents will be looking for signs Bush is serious about returning the historic jazz city to its glory. McClellan said Bush wanted to "get an up-close look at the ongoing recovery."

But many were disappointed by Bush's last stopover in January when his motorcade bypassed the worst devastation. His comment that the city was a "heck of a place to bring your family" became fodder for late-night TV comedians.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Jones in New Orleans and Peter Kaplan, Richard Cowan and Donna Smith in Washington)

    Political storms unabated in Bush New Orleans trip, R, 8.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-03-08T060847Z_01_N07416533_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-HURRICANE.xml

White House defends

quality of levee construction

Posted 3/6/2006 10:05 PM
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday defended the quality of materials being used to rebuild the levees around New Orleans, as President Bush got assurances from the Army Corps of Engineers that it was on track to restore the system by the start of hurricane season.

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, head of the Army Corps, told Bush in a private briefing that 100 miles of the 169 miles of levees damaged by the Aug. 29 hurricane have been restored. He repeated the briefing later for reporters at the White House.

Strock took issue with findings from two teams of independent experts who said the Corps was taking shortcuts and using substandard materials, leaving large sections of the system substantially weaker than before the hurricane.

"We are using the right kind of materials," Strock said. "There is no question about that."

The findings, first reported Monday in The Washington Post, were made by engineers on a National Science Foundation-funded panel and by a Louisiana team appointed to monitor the rebuilding.

Strock said the Corps had yet to see the findings or information on where the teams took their samples. He suggested the monitors may have been testing the wrong soil. He said the Corps is trucking in clay from Mississippi to rebuild the system because the local soil does not meet quality standards.

Strock acknowledged that the levees will not be able to protect low-lying areas in the event of another Katrina-like storm this year.

"If we were going to have another Katrina-like event, I think I can say with a high level of confidence you wouldn't see the catastrophic flooding that we saw in the first event," Strock said. "You would see overtopping, though, of levees. You would see flooding in low-lying areas."

Strock said the president, who is visiting the Gulf Coast Wednesday, told him he appreciated the Corps' work and that it was meeting the commitments that he made to restore the levees in time for the next hurricane season.

"He expressed confidence that we're doing that," Strock said. "So I think that he's comfortable with where we are."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan also rejected allegations of inferior rebuilding.

"The Corps of Engineers is using modern design and construction methods, which have greatly improved the last 40 years, which is the time when those levees were originally built," McClellan said.

Bush signed legislation Monday extending unemployment benefits another 13 weeks for victims of Katrina and Rita. The benefits had been scheduled to end last Saturday for at least 165,000 victims, including small-business owners and self-employed workers.

The White House also defended Bush on Monday against fresh criticism that he was disengaged and uninformed in the run-up to Katrina's landfall.

Last week's reports about Federal Emergency Management Agency briefings, particularly before Katrina hit, prompted fresh criticism by lawmakers who said the government should have been better prepared for the storm that flooded New Orleans and killed more than 1,300 people. A video of an Aug. 28 briefing showed officials warning Bush and others that the storm might overtop levees, put lives at risk in the Superdome and overwhelm rescuers.

McClellan said the criticism of Bush for not asking questions during the video ignores the fact that before the videoconference he had been on the phone with governors in the region and received updates from then-FEMA chief Michael Brown and his own staff. Bush got on the videoconference to boost morale, not collect information, McClellan said, and he left before it ended for a previously scheduled press event at which he made a statement on the hurricane.

"Some have twisted the facts to fit a story line," McClellan said. "He was not there to participate in the full briefing. He was there for that purpose: to lift their spirits."

McClellan also said that referring to Bush's statement four days after the storm that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," ignores the explanations given by the White House and Bush himself about what he meant.

"What the president was referring to was the sense that, after the storm had initially passed, that there was a sense that that worst-case scenario had not happened," McClellan said. "Some have taken it out of context to suggest he was referring to any predictions before the hurricane hit."

    White House defends quality of levee construction, UT, 6.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-06-levees_x.htm

House Speaker

Offers Hope for New Orleans

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY

NEW ORLEANS, March 3 — Six months after he said it did not make sense to rebuild parts of New Orleans, J. Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, stood amid the rubble of the Lower Ninth Ward on Friday and, in a reversal, spoke words of comfort.

"I think you have to be here firsthand on the ground to see the impact," Mr. Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said while standing on the banks of a breached levee that allowed a surge of water to wipe away a swath of the city.

"We want to make sure these edifices are safe and that the system is foolproof," he said, so that New Orleans does not have to "relive this nightmare over again."

Mr. Hastert and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, arrived in New Orleans on Thursday with a 34-member Congressional delegation on a fact-finding tour of the section of the Gulf Coast devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana officials took advantage of the opportunity to urge support for President Bush's proposed aid package.

"We are extremely dependent on your good graces and understanding," Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said.

"We ask for your mercy and plead for your help," Ms. Blanco added.

Mr. Hastert made no commitments, but said that he was most interested in making sure taxpayers' money would be well spent and that people would not be in harm's way again.

Ms. Pelosi was blunter, saying, "I'm not absolutely certain that our federal agencies on the ground here are meeting that challenge."

In the Ninth Ward, the delegation was greeted on Friday by about three dozen protesters who were angry about what they called Mr. Hastert's slow pace in getting to New Orleans. The speaker's visit came after tours of the city by the Prince of Wales and the king of Jordan.

When the Congressional leaders said they were shocked by the extent of the flood devastation, the protesters said they should have expressed that feeling earlier.

"You wouldn't be shocked if you had come sooner than six months," one protester, the Rev. Will McCadney, shouted toward the delegation.

Mr. McCadney's congregation had been based in the Ninth Ward but is now scattered around the country. He said he had hoped to get answers from the delegation. But the protesters were kept about 100 yards from the officials, and Mr. McCadney said he was dismayed that he could not get close to Mr. Hastert.

Later, Governor Blanco, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and others talked with the protesters.

"Why did it take six months for them to come see us?" Mr. McCadney asked. "That's too long. I feel bewildered, left. Forgotten."

Asked about his earlier comments about not rebuilding New Orleans, Mr. Hastert said, "I think that was a misrepresentation of what I said. I said, Before you rebuild New Orleans, you have to make sure the people are not in harm's way."

    House Speaker Offers Hope for New Orleans, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/politics/04tour.html

New Orleans Official Vanishes for Week,

but Surfaces to Run for Mayor

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, March 3 — For a week she was on the lam, a fugitive from the remnants of this city's judiciary and her high responsibilities as well.

Nobody knew where the Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court was hiding out — or if they did know, they would not say. In a kind of carnivalesque charade that seemed like an extension of Mardi Gras, arrest warrants were issued, the city's top judges, furious, made threats, but still the clerk, Kimberly Williamson Butler, refused to appear. That she is also the city's top elections official in a week when candidates were filing to run for mayor only made the disappearance more breathtaking.

Ms. Butler had been asked by the judges to relinquish some of her responsibilities in applying for federal money to clean up the flood-damaged courthouse. She refused, and the judges of the criminal court issued a warrant for her arrest.

Meanwhile, as she hid from the authorities, the critical lynchpin of New Orleans's faltering criminal justice system — cleaning up the city's flooded evidence room — was balanced on Ms. Butler's game of hide-and-seek. With thousands of defendants backed up, trials cannot move forward until rusty guns, muddy clothing and other items are decontaminated. But Ms. Butler was not playing.

Finally, in a coda that segued perfectly into the frayed city's uneasy perch between cheer and despair, Ms. Butler showed up in court Friday to answer the judges' summons, only to announce to reporters on the courthouse steps that she was quitting her job — so she could run for mayor.

"You know what? I don't think I'm the right person to be clerk of court," a beaming Ms. Butler announced.

Her pastor was standing behind her, and a revelation appeared to be in the offing.

"I think I'm the right person to be mayor," the now former clerk said.

A reporter called out: "Are you serious? Are you running for mayor?"

Ms. Butler remained firm.

Inside the courthouse, law clerks shook their heads in disbelief at yet another unreal post-Katrina moment. Ms. Butler, meanwhile, had already warmed a stump speech to serve as the mayoral race's 15th candidate, one based on the politician's time-honored gambit of recent personal experience. She was, after all, facing a contempt hearing in front of every criminal court judge in the city, all of them unamused, on Monday at 9 a.m.

"The things that I'm going through, I'm just like an average everyday New Orleanian," Ms. Butler said, her voice rising. "I can identify with people that have made mistakes and had to stand before judges. I can identify with people that have lost their homes, because I'm living in a hotel room myself."

Once close to Mayor C. Ray Nagin, Ms. Butler has pursued an erratic course in public life here, plummeting from semi-folk-hero status after Mr. Nagin fired her three years ago — she was considered mayoral material back then — to opprobrium for failing to deliver all the voting machines to precincts in an election in 2004.

Hovering in the background of her latest career episode is the already chaotic state of the criminal justice system here. With the public defenders' office down to a fraction of its prestorm strength, judges have threatened to release thousands of indigent defendants who have been waiting for trials, and who depend on free legal help.

But those trials themselves cannot go forward without the physical evidence, which sat in the flooded-out basement of the Art-Deco criminal courts building in Mid-City — five feet of water, for over two weeks. Among other things, a critical ledger book detailing the room's holdings must be cleaned up.

Ms. Butler is the custodian of that evidence; the judges, hoping to help her out, had in January appointed her veteran predecessor, Edwin Lombard, to aid in its decontamination, and in pursuing the necessary FEMA-financed contracts.

Ms. Butler had at first apparently welcomed the help. But then she decided it was an assault on her authority, and refused to go along.

In the meantime, the legal community in New Orleans — already on edge with uncertainty over what is to become of the thousands of criminal defendants in limbo — has been observing the minidrama with bemusement, aware that there is a serious underlying problem.

The evidence "must be decontaminated and reorganized," said Kevin Kelly, clerk to Chief Judge Calvin Johnson. "That must happen, and it hasn't happened quickly enough. This is affecting the due process rights of numerous criminal defendants."

Like many other public officials here, Ms. Butler was eager to demonstrate her status as a victim of Hurricane Katrina.

"There are a lot of people that have chosen not to come back," she said, "but I believe in New Orleans, and I believe that we need a leader right now. I tell you what, every day, there's not a day that goes by that someone doesn't say, you need to run for mayor."

And with her lawyer cutting off any more questions, Ms. Butler walked off across Poydras Street, beaming.

    New Orleans Official Vanishes for Week, but Surfaces to Run for Mayor, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/national/nationalspecial/04clerk.html

Debating a Shipping Shortcut

That Turned Against New Orleans

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

NEW ORLEANS — It has been a long road back for New Orleans Cold Storage. After Hurricane Katrina, with no power for its freezers, 32 million pounds of chicken rotted in the waterside warehouse of the shipping company, and the reek was detectable from a mile away.

The company put itself back together, but its 135 jobs are suddenly facing a more serious threat. New Orleans Cold Storage, like other nearby businesses, owes its livelihood to the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, the reviled navigational shortcut between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico that many faulted for much of the city's devastation.

The canal, referred to locally as Mr. Go, is widely considered an environmental disaster. Residents and officials here say they want it shut down or at least bottled up. If the channel is closed, thousands of jobs could be lost unless the government spends $400 million to move the nine major businesses that currently depend on the channel directly to the banks of the Mississippi.

In the struggle to build adequate flood protection, as the canal dilemma shows, even the easy decisions are hard. A city whose economy was built around shipping and trade cannot easily limit its access to water.

And that helps to explain why so many hard decisions like whether some neighborhoods should be abandoned are not being made at all.

The role of the canal in the flooding six months ago is not in dispute. Computer models of the storm and photographs suggest that the canal acted as a funnel for water being forced up toward the city, leading to the breaches in the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal that devastated the Lower Ninth Ward.

Last month, the State Legislature passed a resolution urging Congress to close the canal, which the Army Corps of Engineers completed in the 1960's.

"People are really afraid of the Mr. Go and have a right to be," said Henry Rodriguez Jr., president of the devastated St. Bernard Parish, just east of the city.

Mr. Rodriguez's sector suffered widespread damage because of levee failures along the length of the canal.

"My No. 1 choice would be to close it entirely," he said, adding that his parish could also live with options like installing movable gates to close the outlet for storms.

For decades, Mr. Go has also come under criticism for destroying the wetlands alongside it by acting as a channel for saltwater from the gulf, which kills vegetation, and it has never lived up to its promise as a major navigational waterway.

The channel has become such a presence in the collective consciousness here that a lawyer, Soren Gisleson, recently wore a Mr. Go Mardi Gras costume with a wig coiffed to resemble a tidal wave and a watery blue strip painted from his face down the center of his white tuxedo.

Nonetheless, the revival of New Orleans Cold Storage and other shipping-related businesses has been a bright spot in the flattened economy, one the city would like to nurture. Mark E. Blanchard, executive vice president of the company, said shutting the canal, or even letting it languish, would be a severe hardship.

"We worked for a long time with the Port of New Orleans to be able to build this facility on the water," Mr. Blanchard said.

The plant, which opened in 2003, employs 135 people directly, along with 200 union-represented stevedores hired by a contractor, for a $13 million payroll in the last year. The company was preparing to build a third berth and expand its warehouse by a third.

Having made an $11 million investment based on the government's original commitment that it would keep the canal clear and deep, New Orleans Cold Storage faces a number of difficulties. The storm cut the canal depth, to 22 feet from 36 feet, meaning that the company's clients have to use smaller ships.

After being loaded, they continue east into the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, which connects to the river through a lock, and go back to sea down the Mississippi. But the locks, which are 80 years old, are too narrow for many larger ships, so that solution is temporary at best.

Without a sense of future success, Mr. Blanchard said, "we'd probably have to reconsider where we expand in the future."

Those who support some continued use of the canal but are resigned to a future without Mr. Go say the effects on businesses and their employees should be softened.

The state economic development secretary, Michael J. Olivier, said that the nine businesses that would be most hurt by closing the canal has 1,000 employees and that an additional 9,000 jobs would be affected.

"What are we going to do about these nine businesses now, who in good faith located there?" Mr. Olivier asked. "I would hope that we can convince Congress and the administration that they should have a role in helping to fix that."

Gary P. LaGrange, president of the Port of New Orleans, said it would cost $381 million to relocate all nine businesses to the banks of the Mississippi and $5 million a year to take goods to ships on the Mississippi by truck or barge until new wharves can be built on the river.

"Any way you slice it, you're going to have added transportation costs, which makes you less competitive," Mr. LaGrange said. "These are only interim solutions. We've got to look to long-term solutions."

The Corps of Engineers has proposed building navigable gates to stop storm surges from funneling up the canal. But corps officials say the ultimate fate of the canal will be determined as part of long-range studies of the levee system. No decision about closing the canal is imminent, according to the corps.

Major water projects are notoriously time-consuming. Construction on a new lock for the nearby Inner Harbor Navigational Canal started in 2002 and has not been completed. Congress first authorized it in 1956.

To Mr. Rodriguez, the parish president, the top question is how to give residents a sense that their safety comes first. "What's more important," Mr. Rodriguez asked, "people's lives or the economy?"

Mr. Blanchard, of the shipping company, said he knew that rebuilding was vital.

"It's a huge balancing act between people having houses and people having jobs," he said. "You can fix all their houses and make them whole here. But if there are no jobs, what are they going to do?"

    Debating a Shipping Shortcut That Turned Against New Orleans, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/national/nationalspecial/03canal.html

Divers Work the Gulf Floor

to Undo What Hurricanes Did

March 1, 2006
The New York Times
By JAD MOUAWAD

ABOARD M.S.V. BOTNICA, in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana, Feb. 22 — Gliding gracefully half a mile below sea level, two robotic submarines are part of an unusual repair job intended to restore much-needed oil resources to the nation's strained energy network. After two months spent digging and cutting and shuffling heavy equipment by remote control, their job should be done by early March.

But the huge task of fixing the country's most important energy hub is far from over. Six months after Hurricane Katrina battered the gulf with 175-mile-an-hour winds and waves higher than eight-story buildings, more than a quarter of the region's oil output is still shut down.

The shortages, amounting to 6 percent of the country's domestic production, have worsened a global picture of razor-thin margins of supply, playing a central part in keeping oil prices around $60 a barrel.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged 167 offshore platforms and 183 pipelines, shut down production for weeks and pushed prices to their highest levels since the fall of the shah of Iran led to the oil shock of the early 1980's. Nineteen movable well-drilling rigs snapped from their moorings and drifted, some as far as 60 miles.

By contrast, Hurricane Ivan, rated as one of the most severe storms in the gulf when it struck in 2004, destroyed just 7 platforms in shallow waters and damaged another 24 structures and 102 pipelines.

"The storms cut a huge swath over the landscape," said Allen J. Verret, the president of the Offshore Operators Committee, an industry group. "We were still recovering from Hurricane Ivan when the terrible sisters came."

Now, he said, "we are all concerned by how long it takes to bring it all back up again."

Few will openly say so, but oil companies are racing against the clock. In less than four months, the next hurricane season kicks off.

Last year's severe storms forced the United States and its allies to release strategic stocks of petroleum held for emergencies like wars or embargoes. More than 20,000 miles of underwater pipelines and 3,000 offshore platforms were in the path of either storm.

Today in the gulf's offshore region, 362,000 barrels of oil a day, out of a total of 1.5 million barrels, remain shut off, along with 15 percent of the region's natural gas production, or 1.5 billion cubic feet a day.

Restoring production has proved exceptionally arduous because of the storms' impact on communities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Oil companies had to deal with workers who had lost their homes, contractors who had lost their equipment and widespread destruction to the region's basic infrastructure.

"All the components of the production system have to be in place" before output can be restored, said Melody Meyer, who heads Chevron's production unit in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shell, the top oil producer in the gulf, estimated the cost at $250 million to $300 million. The company said that three-quarters of its total capacity of 450,000 barrels a day had been returned to production.

But one of its biggest structures, Mars, which produced about 140,000 barrels of oil a day before Hurricane Katrina, is not expected to restart until the second half of 2006. The platform was badly damaged when a drilling rig tumbled over in the storm, shattering equipment, living quarters and the intricate network of electronics and pipes that girdle all platforms. Also, the pair of pipelines that take Mars's oil and natural gas to shore were badly damaged.

With no realistic option of towing the platform back to a shipyard, repairs had to be done at sea. Nearly 500 workers have been living in a floating hotel flanking the platform, linked by a pontoon while they complete the tedious job of refitting and rewiring the structure.

Other major producers, like BP and Chevron, have similarly suffered. Chevron, which lost a major platform during Hurricane Rita, said that its output was back at two-thirds of its prestorm capacity of 300,000 barrels a day. The company indicated that as much as 20,000 barrels of oil a day would probably never be restored. Over all, it put its bill from the storms at $1.4 billion, a figure that includes the estimated lost production.

"We're scrambling for resources, like everybody else," said John R. Sherwood, the chief executive of Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners, a small oil producer that lost 5 of its 30 shallow-water platforms. "There's a tremendous strain in the service sector, which was stretched anyway because of the high energy prices and has been magnified by the two storms."

The industry was already facing a shortage of ships and qualified crews, marine technicians and offshore experts before the hurricanes. Divers to inspect the platforms are especially in demand. Special teams had to be brought from Canada.

The work is especially slow when it comes to finding and fixing pipelines in the gulf's shallows, where the water is so opaque that divers have to blindly feel the ground with their hands until they find a missing bit of pipeline.

"It's definitely been nonstop around the clock," said Craig Reynolds, managing director of Specialty Diving in Hammond, La. For the first time, he has had to place customers on a waiting list of one to two weeks.

The Gulf Coast is by far the most sensitive region for the nation's energy supplies. Refineries in Texas and Louisiana account for nearly half the country's domestic capacity and most of them were affected by the storms.

Today, as much as one million barrels a day of capacity, or 6 percent of the nation's total refining capacity, remains shut down. Most of that should be back by the end of March, according to the Energy Department.

The recent wave of hurricanes has exposed the country's reliance on the region's fragile infrastructure and raised uncomfortable questions about its reliability as America's most critical domestic energy source.

"We haven't done anything to reduce our vulnerability," said Ted M. Falgout, the director of Port Fourchon, the largest servicing hub for the offshore industry, about 80 miles south of New Orleans. "I hate to think of the next hurricane season."

The port is a beehive of active cranes, docks and wharfs, with helicopters zooming above, a constant stream of trucks coming in and ships heading out to sea. Everything needed to run an offshore platform, from tissue paper to heavy electric generators, is loaded there.

It took port officials three days to clear the waterway after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Falgout said. While other ports on the coastline were devastated, Port Fourchon managed to resume operations within days.

In the weeks after the storm, some oil companies used small tankers and barges to take oil to shore, or redirected flows through undamaged pipelines. Even as they repair the damage, most companies continue to explore the depths of the gulf for new reserves.

"They have every incentive to get things restarted," said Chris C. Oynes, the head of the Gulf of Mexico regional office of the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department.

At sea about 45 minutes by helicopter from Port Fourchon, the 318-foot-long Botnica — which normally does duty as an icebreaker — is about the last thing you would expect to find in the semitropical gulf waters. While Shell mustered an armada of 24 ships to inspect its equipment in the gulf, it needed a special type of ship, able to stay precisely above a particular spot for weeks on end, while minisubmarines replaced two 85-foot-long sections of pipelines linking Mars to the coast.

"No other vessel was available for the job," said Mike Coyne, a senior Shell engineer, who oversees the company's 1,500 miles of pipelines in the gulf.

The pipelines, about 100 miles southeast of New Orleans, were crushed when a drilling rig broke free from its moorings during Katrina, dragging along a 12-ton anchor that plowed the sea floor.

Shell's engineers had to come up with novel procedures for a job performed beyond diver depth, and rig new tools so they could be powered by the hydraulic system on the minisubs. The work used remotely operated underwater vehicles for the first time in that kind of repair, and involved dozens of engineers onshore, a step-by-step manual thicker than a New York phone book, and minisubs nicknamed Mil-28 and Mag-77.

"It sounds simple but it's actually quite complicated when you have to do it at 3,000 feet below the sea," said Frank Glaviano, the head of production for North and South America at Royal Dutch Shell. "It's never been done before."

On the control deck, the ship's captain seemed torn about his soon-to-end assignment.

"They would really need us right now in Finland," said Leif Kampe, the captain of the Botnica, which usually slices though 30-foot-thick ice at this time of the year. "But there's more money to be made here."

And it's warmer. "It's nice," he added, "being here with the Southern guys."

    Divers Work the Gulf Floor to Undo What Hurricanes Did, NYT, 1.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/business/01gulf.html

Storm's Missing:

Lives Not Lost but Disconnected

March 1, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

BATON ROUGE, La. — As far as Curtis Broussard Jr. is concerned, he is not missing. He is in Missouri City, Tex., where he plans to stay. But according to the State of Louisiana, Mr. Broussard, formerly of Cherry Street, New Orleans, has not been found.

His daughter, Antonette Murray, had not heard from him since Hurricane Katrina. In January, she finally reported him to the state, expecting to hear back that he was dead. But though he was added to the missing list, other family members had known of his whereabouts since September, and a reporter recently put Mr. Broussard back in touch with his daughter after a few telephone calls.

Despite intensive efforts to reach the scattered refugees of Hurricane Katrina, nearly 2,000 such names remain on the state's list of people still unaccounted for, out of 12,000 that had once been reported. Even now, new missing persons reports trickle in; there were 99 over the two-week period that ended Feb. 5.

But officials say the number is less a measure of the storm's lethal power, or even of the lives it upended, than of the trauma, disarray and instability that persist half a year later. Only about 300 of those on the list are believed to have died in the flooding; many of the rest are adrift in America, having failed, for a variety of reasons, to remain in touch with their own families. A call center set up by the state to reunite families has struggled to get government financing and research tools.

Many of the recent reports of missing people are from distant relatives or friends looking for news. But others are more urgent: they come from mothers looking for their children's father; from families who have just found a relative's body in New Orleans and need to register that person officially, a requirement before a body can be released by the authorities; or from people who seem only now to be able to assume any task beyond day-to-day survival.

"We get some calls that say, 'I just thought about my fiancé is missing,' " said Lenora Green, shaking her head in a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. "It's like they just click back into reality because of the shock they're going through."

Ms. Green is a shift supervisor at the Find Family National Call Center, a vast array of cubicles, computers and telephones in a former sporting goods store in Baton Rouge, created after the hurricane to help people locate loved ones, living or dead. The call center is a collection place, not just of names and vital statistics, but of the most intimate stories of a poor city broken apart by crisis.

They include every permutation in the grand mosaic of human relationships, an intricate design of unpaid child support, paranoia, grudges, helplessness and anguish, the lonely cul-de-sacs of estrangement and old age.

"Some people are just getting out of jail," Ms. Green said. "Some, it's like baby-mama drama, I call it."

Some evacuees simply do not have access to the one human link most taken for granted: the telephone. Numbers have been changed, disconnected, rinsed away. "That's how I got lost," said Alvin Alphonse Jr., who was put on the missing list by a former girlfriend claiming to be his cousin. "I didn't have anybody written down, no numbers, nothing."

Scott Shepherd, another call center worker, allowed one couple to use the telephone at the center after they told him they did not have one.

After the call, he led the woman to a brass bell the workers ring every time someone is located.

"I was able to let that woman ring the bell for her own sister," Mr. Shepherd said.

Officials at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which helps reunite parents with their children, said they had had to adjust to some stark facts about a population that did not have access to phones, computers or in some cases even television. One reunion involved a child who had been left in the care of a neighbor who could not read or write.

But again, said Ernie Allen, president of the center, the problem is more fractured families than orphaned waifs. The most pressing cases, in which parents let their children have the first seats in rescue helicopters, or pushed them to the front of the line to board buses at the Superdome, have been resolved. The center has 131 children remaining on its list, down from more than 5,000.

"The vast majority of these kids are with a dad or a mother or a brother," Mr. Allen said. "They're not alone, but they're separated from some key person in their families."

Initially, families were told to contact the call center if they thought a loved one might have died in the storm. But some families have put off calling because they see it as an admission that they have lost hope. Still others have made a report but refused to fill out an eight-page "victim identification profile," which lists details like tattoos and jewelry. Without such a form, a body at the morgue might never be identified.

Cheryl Spooner, a call center worker who has used databases, the Internet and hunches to locate the missing, said one of her difficult cases was a mentally disabled man who had been in a group home in New Orleans. She cannot find the man, and she cannot find the home's owner. But the family does not want to fill out the profile or supply DNA for a match. "The brother is saying, 'We're going to keep searching for my brother. We don't want to do that right now,' " Ms. Spooner said.

She and other workers also regularly call back those who have reported someone missing, to see if they have made contact on their own.

Of the 12,000 reports taken by the call center, which is run by the state health department and staffed in part by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster mortuary team, more than 8,000 people have been found alive. But for the center's staff members, who might talk to a single caller a dozen times, it is the saddest stories that linger.

One woman waited months to report her daughter missing because she rarely heard from her anyway, and the place where her daughter stayed in the city had not flooded, said Bonnie Riley, a part-time minister who keeps her Bible close to the phone as she answers calls. But when the mother finally went back to New Orleans, she learned that her daughter had gone to the store after the storm. "And that's when the levees broke," Ms. Riley said, adding that the daughter was presumed to have drowned and been washed away.

Because many bodies may never be recovered, it may take years to learn how many of the 1,880 people on the missing list are dead, but the current estimate is around 300, which is based in part on the number of names about which there are repeated inquiries, said Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state emergency medical director. The total number of deaths so far in Louisiana is 1,080.

The call center has had its share of obstacles. Because of database incongruities, about a dozen people are listed as both missing and dead. It has no access to commercial databases that charge a fee to supply information about people, which is why a reporter with such access was able to put Mr. Broussard in touch with his daughter when the center had not. Because of privacy concerns, it has only recently been given access to FEMA's list of people who have applied for housing assistance, said Henry Yennie, the deputy director of operations at the center.

But for many, the center is the only hope, as other Internet sites for evacuees start to disappear. A spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, Kathleen Salanik, said its Web site, katrinasafe.com, was about to be taken down because it was no longer of use. "We know from previous disasters that the greatest need is in the first two to four weeks," Ms. Salanik said. But, she added, 11 people had posted or updated information on the site in the last 24 hours.

One of the center's tasks is to find the next of kin of the dead. That job falls to Christine Niss, a medical legal investigator who says it is as much art as science. "You have to sit and think about where they might leave a trace of themselves," Ms. Niss said, explaining how one victim's emphysema, revealed in an autopsy, had led her to his family.

She found a hospital in New Orleans where he had been a patient before the storm and had listed a next of kin.

In another case, her trail led her to several family members before she reached the victim's brother. "The whole family ended up getting back together and mending fences," Ms. Niss said. The brother was so grateful, she said, he called her right after the funeral. "There were still people in his house eating the deviled eggs."

Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta for this article, and Janet Roberts from New York.

    Storm's Missing: Lives Not Lost but Disconnected, NYT, 1.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/national/nationalspecial/01missing.html

Critic's Notebook

New Orleans Exults in Its Old Self,

if Only for a Moment

March 1, 2006
The New York Times
By JON PARELES

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 28 — There was feathered gridlock on Mardi Gras morning at the corner of Second and Dryades Streets in the Third Ward here. The Golden Comanches tribe of Mardi Gras Indians, with a chief whose golden-feathered headdress reached at least 10 feet high, was moving along Dryades. At the corner of Second were the Wild Magnolias, another tribe, which had arrived in a U-Haul full of its own feathered suits. The Stooges, a New Orleans brass band, were on the corner too, playing Mardi Gras Indian songs like "Hey Pocky Way" and "Let's Go Get 'Em."

The Indians — African-Americans who feel tied to Native Americans by bloodlines and a history of resistance — have paraded informally at Mardi Gras for more than a century. The big organized parades were elsewhere, but as soon as the music started, the corner was packed with neighbors and costumed spectators, shaking parasols and dancing to the funkified parade beat. Queen Rita of the Wild Magnolias, wearing an explosion of turquoise plumes, held up her arms to unveil messages on giant fans: "I Love N.O." and "We are back."

This was the New Orleans of self-made neighborhood celebrations and homegrown jubilation: the culture most endangered by the depopulation of the city. This year, the parade is not just a habit and a ritual, but an act of will. Most members of the Stooges have relocated to Atlanta, and it's uncertain whether the band will resettle in New Orleans. Many of the city's Mardi Gras Indians, who sew their prodigious suits themselves, had to start over and create in four months what usually takes a year. They practiced their songs not at the corner bar, but in Baton Rouge, La., or Austin, Tex. A car parked on a nearby street, with a sign saying it belonged to the Flag Boy of the Golden Comanches, had Texas license plates.

Inevitably, there were fewer Indians on the streets this year than at Mardi Gras celebrations over the past decade. But those who were in the city were clinging fiercely to their music. At an Indian practice session on Sunday night, at a shotgun-shack bar in the Third Ward, members of at least six tribes — among them the Black Eagles and the Young Navajos — drummed and sang the traditional songs, competitively and together, with an ecstatic, trancelike intensity.

It seems everyone wants a piece of Mardi Gras good will. Britney Spears, who is from Kentwood, La., was in town making charitable gestures toward a group of local schoolgirls, in front of the cameras for "Good Morning America." Movie stars waved from parade floats. But while Mardi Gras was a party for tourists — one the city welcomed — it was an act of self-renewal for native New Orleanians. Ivory Hall, of the Golden Comanches, had decorated his suit with a dove holding an olive branch, like the biblical one that returned to Noah after the flood. "Either you're going to cry about this thing all your life," he said, "or you're going to go back and get into it."

On Monday night, known here as Lundi Gras, the New Orleans pianist Dr. John played classic Mardi Gras songs at the House of Blues. But his band is called the Lower 911 — some members lost everything in their homes in the Lower Ninth Ward — and he very pointedly interspersed the party tunes with other, more intransigent songs. At the end of his set, he bounced into the hymn "I Shall Not Be Moved." After Mardi Gras, many of the revelers will scatter back to their new homes, and others will go back to living in trailers or coping with how to rebuild. Without housing for the city's longtime residents, the culture of New Orleans will be up against the erosion of mileage and time. In an interview a few days before his concert, Dr. John said, "If they rip out the community where it all comes from, it's ripping out where everything is connected."

Mardi Gras costumes can simply be a day's worth of glitter and flash, or a whimsical disguise. But in New Orleans, they are often a deeper statement: a hidden identity revealed, a message decorated with feathers and beads. In an interview, Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles tribe said that in eras past, African-Americans who believed they had Native American blood would dress as Indians on Mardi Gras day to reveal their "true self"; even in segregated times, living in New Orleans was better than being placed on a reservation. The Indian costume was not a disguise, but a disclosure.

This year, many of the people doing what their parents and grandparents had done, in the places they had always lived, were for the moment not New Orleanians. But they had come home from wherever the flooding had washed them up to show their true selves.

For this year's Mardi Gras, New Orleans dressed as its old self, too: a city with music pouring out everywhere, a city that dances rather than give in to troubles, a city where traditions are joyously upheld. It is, for the moment, an illusion. But today's Mardi Gras costume is one that New Orleans would be happy to wear all year round.

    New Orleans Exults in Its Old Self, if Only for a Moment, NYT, 1.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/arts/music/01pare.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Amid Smiles and Sighs,

a Leaner Fat Tuesday Returns

to New Orleans

March 1, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 28 — People living here never think about needing a calendar to plan their Mardi Gras, which would be like planning to attend February. But many of the people here on Tuesday did have to mark the date, the end of a season they had never before missed, and decide whether to make the trip home.

They lived here before the storm, and they had to drive in from Tennessee, Georgia, Texas and the country towns of Louisiana, not really tourists and not really locals. They slipped back into town for the party they once reached on foot, finding the climactic day of the Carnival season a new and confusing swirl of old friends and traffic.

As the parades passed, they stood at all the best places to watch — under the highway overpass, in the inside swoop of Lee Circle, on the soft dirt of the Garden District's neutral grounds. But they checked their watches and counted those cold beers because of the long drive back that lay ahead.

"We said, 'We'll come back and try to enjoy it,' " said Larry Chaney, 36, who moved his family to Roswell, Ga., in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina. It seemed to be working, with his wife, Quimonder, and their children all smiles as they reached St. Charles Avenue just in time for Monday night's parade. But they faced a two-hour drive to a relative's home in Lafayette before bedtime.

Mardi Gras 2006 was elevated — or marred, some would say — to a new level of importance and scrutiny after city leaders vowed last year that it would go on. Fat Tuesday wore a you-were-there gravity like clunky beads; Mardi Gras was never meant for international news coverage. But nature lent itself to a good time, providing a warm, sunny day, as though it were lifted from early May.

Mardi Gras veterans recalled the massive crowds of previous years, the choking traffic on streets and sidewalks alike. The crowds did not come this year, with attendance dropping by an estimated half, and the streets were left largely to families.

Although the crowds on Fat Tuesday were the largest of the two-week Carnival period and throngs moved through the French Quarter and occasionally surrounded the floats, one could walk along a parade route with relative ease — a feat impossible in recent years.

Among other things, Mardi Gras may be remembered as the largest showing of black families in the city since the storm. The scene was all but unthinkable six months ago, when image after image showed hands stretched to the sky in horror, not joy.

LaCher Marshall, 28, spent three days in the Superdome before getting on a bus to Texas. "It was like hell," she said at a parade. The passing helicopters on Monday night made her smile, reminding her of one that lowered itself enough outside the Superdome to cool the waiting crowd with a breeze.

She lives in Plano, Tex., now. "I really miss home, and I want to be home," she said.

The Zulu parade rolled first, as it does every Fat Tuesday, drawing a huge crowd by this year's standards before 9 a.m. The social club known as the Zulu Tribe began in 1909 and was historically black. All of the members riding the floats, black and white, wore blackface, which might have caused offense were it not the case every year.

The Krewe of Rex, which traditionally carries the Carnival's king in its parade, followed the Zulus, who eventually marched in a "second line" toward their headquarters. The dancing-march took them and their spectators into a far more damaged part of town. They passed the more than 800 empty units of the vast, labyrinthine Lafitte Housing Development, built in 1941 for poor blacks and vacated and sealed shut with metal plates after the hurricane.

One Zulu marcher, Harold Brown, 47, scaled a railing to get to a second-floor overhang. He lived in that building, he said. He danced up there for a while, climbed down and said of the dance: "Opening my house back up. They don't give it to me, I'm going to take it my way."

The second-line march seemed a long way from the gentility of Uptown. A pole-straight, chest-high brown line from the flooding stained every house. The day before the parade, wary of crowds, Joan Wade, 34, stopped at the home where her grandmother used to live and strung up yellow tape.

"We don't want this to be a public restroom, or for someone to throw a cigarette butt and the lawn catch on fire," she said.

A spray-painted symbol showed that searchers found two dead dogs in the home on Sept. 28. Their names were Shaq and Sammy, Ms. Wade said, pausing as she spotted four loose dogs approaching. She ran to her car. "I don't know if they've been in the water or some kind of contamination," she said, peering out her window.

The next day, no wild dogs in sight and a full-blown second line approaching, Naomi Gibson, 69, ignored the yellow tape and sat down on a stranger's stoop. She had settled in Houston, she said, but was glad to be back watching another parade with her family.

"This is what we do," she said. "They can't keep us out. Every chance we get, we're coming home. The only people who didn't make it are the ones who couldn't."

    Amid Smiles and Sighs, a Leaner Fat Tuesday Returns to New Orleans, NYT, 1.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/national/nationalspecial/01mardigras.html

New Orleans revelry

closes post-Katrina Mardi Gras

Tue Feb 28, 2006 12:22 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeff Franks and Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of costumed revelers shouted for beads and danced in the streets on Tuesday as New Orleans bid the blues goodbye, at least for a day, to close the first Mardi Gras season after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

Just blocks from neighborhoods that still lie in ruins and where hundreds died in the August 29 storm and floods, the annual Fat Tuesday spectacle of drunkenness and debauchery went on as it has for 150 years, in a ritual local officials hope will speed the historic city's recovery.

But the day's gaiety could not exclude all reminders of the surrounding tragedy. Many celebrants wore colorful costumes that pilloried the federal and local governments whose performance in the chaotic aftermath of Katrina has been heavily criticized.

And some of the elaborate floats still bore water marks and flaking paint from the storm damage.

"We're letting people know that we can poke fun at ourselves. Everybody's trying to deal with this and get their lives together. Vodka cures everything," said reveler Barry Rush, sipping from his drink.

Rush was wrapped in one of the emblematic blue tarps the government gave out by the thousands to cover storm-damaged roofs. He called himself the "Katrina blowhard."

Large crowds lined the streets for a day of parades led by Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the city's oldest predominantly black Carnival club, or krewe, and by Rex, the traditional King of Carnival.

Families arrived before dawn to stake out prime viewing places to watch the tractor-drawn floats and grab the "throws," or trinkets tossed by the masked krewe members on board.

"Throw me something, mister," they shouted in the traditional Mardi Gras cry for beads.

In the French Quarter, celebrants threw beads from balconies overlooking Bourbon Street to the pleading revelers below, many of them cruising the streets with beers or Hurricanes, a powerful local drink, in hand.

One woman dressed as the mold that now fills many of the flooded homes, another as a very hefty Meals Ready to Eat, the military rations that rescue workers gave to storm victims.

"These are the meals they gave out during the hurricane and I ate too many," said Catherine Giorlandl.

A moment of silence for Katrina's victims, accompanied by the ringing of church bells throughout the city, was scheduled later in the day as the parade for Rex passed the reviewing stand for local dignitaries at Gallier Hall.

Katrina's winds and floods destroyed or damaged 80 percent of the city and touched off days of crime-plagued anarchy when government rescue efforts foundered.

Although the French Quarter and the wealthy uptown area were relatively undamaged, much of New Orleans still lies in ruins and abandoned by evacuees who fled the storm. More than 1,300 people along the Gulf Coast died.

Many people argued that Mardi Gras should be canceled in 2006 because of Katrina, but supporters said the annual festival was important both economically and psychologically to the damaged city.

Retired New Orleans firefighter Alvin Rabb, who rode in past Zulu parades but was just a spectator this year, said he thought Mardi Gras had done the city good.

"This week has been great. It lets people know that New Orleans is going to survive. You know, there's an old saying - nothing stops a stepper," he said.

One discordant note was the absence of 75-year-old clarinetist Pete Fountain, who, for the first time in 46 years, did not lead his Half Fast Walking Club on its traditional early-morning musical walk through the famed historic district. His club members said he had health problems.

This year's turnout was said to be lighter than in previous years -- the city that now has less than half its pre-storm population of nearly half a million -- but there were still big crowds in the final days of Mardi Gras.

"The crowd on Bourbon Street and the activity on Bourbon Street is similar to every Mardi Gras we've ever had. We haven't seen a reduced amount of population coming down here to enjoy themselves," a French Quarter policeman told a local television station.

Mayor Ray Nagin, wearing a military costume and riding a horse, told CNN the crowds were "absolutely comparable in size" to past years, with people 20 deep in some areas along the parade routes.

"It really pumps me up because as I ride through the crowds, everbody's so excited, they're cheering, they're thanking us for putting on Mardi Gras," he said.

"To all the New Orleanians who are not here, we're having this one for you," he said.

(Additional reporting by Russell McCulley, Elena Vega)

    New Orleans revelry closes post-Katrina Mardi Gras, R, 28.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-02-28T172037Z_01_N26297206_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-MARDIGRAS.xml

Flood-Control Proposal

Seeks Gates and 'Armored' Levees

February 28, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The Bush administration has asked Congress to pay for two huge gates in the New Orleans area to close off the navigational canals that devastated the city's Lower Ninth Ward, along with "armored" levees that would not be destroyed when water washed over the top, according to the most recent details of its spending plan.

The $1.46 billion flood-control proposal is part of the administration's $19.8 billion emergency financing request that was announced this month. A description of how the money would be spent was discussed in detail on Friday by Donald E. Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, on a visit to New Orleans.

The proposed repairs could be completed in about four years, said James Ward Jr., deputy director of the the United States Army Corps of Engineers task force responding to Hurricane Katrina.

The current proposals "may not be the ultimate solution" to providing protection against the strongest storms, Mr. Ward said yesterday, and the corps has begun a two-year study to develop proposals for protection against Category 5 storms. But current proposals, he said, are "something we could implement more quickly, and that would significantly improve the existing system."

The most striking part of the new plan is the $350 million proposal for a new gate on the city's Inner Harbor Navigational Canal near Lake Pontchartrain and another near the intersection of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. The gates are designed to be closed during severe storms to block a surge up the Gulf outlet similar to the one blamed for much of the damage to the Lower Ninth Ward.

The plan also calls for gates and pumping stations at the 17th Street, London Avenue and Orleans canals. The corps is racing to complete temporary gates and pumping stations by June 1, the beginning of hurricane season, but the temporary pumps will not be able to keep up with the challenge of a big storm, and some neighborhood flooding is still likely to occur. The permanent pumps will match the current capacity of today's pumps, and will have reliable power, at a cost of $530 million.

The gate closings address the fact that the canal levees and floodwalls were badly stressed by Hurricane Katrina, and the corps would otherwise have to rebuild the walls entirely to declare the system safe. "These floodgates would really serve the same purpose," Mr. Ward said.

The administration plan would also pay to restore wetlands that mitigate storm effects, and to strengthen the bases of levees in particularly vulnerable areas, a process called armoring. Corps officials have said they do not have the authority to armor the levees without explicit Congressional orders.

A hurricane expert who has studied the effects of Hurricane Katrina's surge along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet applauded the move to place gates in the navigational canals.

"I am very encouraged they are doing it," said the expert, Hassan S. Mashriqui, an assistant professor at the Louisiana State University hurricane center.

"This gate, prior to Katrina, probably would have saved a few hundred lives," Mr. Mashriqui said.

He added, however, that closing off the navigational canals only addressed one of the problems for eastern New Orleans and the communities beyond. Unless the levees along Lake Borgne are strengthened well beyond their original design, he warned, a storm like Hurricane Katrina will cause extensive flooding in St. Bernard Parish once again. "This is a must," he said.

    Flood-Control Proposal Seeks Gates and 'Armored' Levees, NYT, 28.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/national/nationalspecial/28flood.html

Critic's Notebook

New Orleans at Mardi Gras:

Anger Gives Music an Edge

February 27, 2006
The New York Times
By JON PARELES

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 26 — The beat was crisp New Orleans funk, thumping to keep the crowd dancing at the uptown club Tipitina's. The band onstage, Dumpstaphunk, was led by Ivan Neville, the son of Aaron Neville and a member of New Orleans's first family of rhythm and blues. Like many top New Orleans musicians, he was back in town for a club date on the weekend before Mardi Gras, when so many local musicians returned to the city's clubs that it almost seemed they had never gone away.

In this city that holds so many roots of American music — jazz, rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll — music is more than entertainment. It's a ritual and a lifeline.

On the surface of the New Orleans music scene, much was familiar this weekend. More than 80 nightclubs offered live music, perhaps two-thirds the number before Hurricane Katrina. The clubs in the French Quarter and uptown, in the "sliver by the river" neighborhoods that were spared major flood damage after the storm, were booked solid with New Orleans all-stars: funk bands like the Radiators and Galactic, brass bands like the Rebirth Brass Band and the Soul Rebels, jazz musicians like Kermit Ruffins and Trombone Shorty. They're still playing New Orleans standards as the drinks flow.

But there's a changed spirit in the old songs: the tenacity of holding together bands whose members have been scattered across the country, and the determination to maintain the New Orleans style.

And in new songs, an open anger coexists with the old good-time New Orleans tone. Over a funk beat, Mr. Neville had something to say. "Talkin' to the powers that be!" he declaimed like a preacher. "A lot of people got disenfranchised, displaced, and now we got a lot of distrust." He moved into a song built on the local greeting "Where y'at?" But one verse listed whereabouts of displaced New Orleanians: "Where y'at? Texas! Mississippi!" Another asked the federal government: "Where y'at, when we really needed you?"

In the 21st century, the most commercial New Orleans music has been hip-hop. Juvenile, a New Orleans rapper, has spent most of his career doing gangta boasts. But he has just released the single "Get Ya Hustle On," with a video clip shot in the ruins of the Ninth Ward. It shows children in masks of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the city's mayor, C. Ray Nagin, wandering through the wreckage as Juvenile raps lyrics like "We starving, we living like Haiti with no government" and "I'm trying to live, I lost it all in Katrina." A house he had just built was destroyed in the hurricane.

There has always been more to New Orleans music than its nonchalant facade. The city has repeatedly catalyzed American music, as sounds that started in the streets of New Orleans reached the world as jazz, put the roll into rock 'n' roll and taught new syncopations to rhythm and blues. Within the songs is the tension and fascination between classes and cultures: African, European, French, Spanish, Caribbean, Native American, rich and poor.

"They don't all get along," said Nick Spitzer, the host of the Public Radio International program "American Routes" and one of the authors of "Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America's Creole Soul" (Penn Press). "But they've created an amazing shared culture." New Orleans musicians have long been able deliver troubled thoughts with a smile, as Louis Armstrong did in "Black and Blue" and Fats Domino did in "Ain't That a Shame."

When New Orleans musicians play the old songs, what once came across as easygoing now carries a streak of bravado. Like other New Orleanians, many musicians have lost their homes, possessions and sometimes family members, and they are traveling long distances to play in their old local haunts. A song like "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" now echoes with the knowledge that some natives of the city will never return. And there are new, bleaker resonances when a Mardi Gras Indian group like the Wild Magnolias sings the traditional song "Shallow Water Oh Mama," or when a brass band picks up the bouncy "It Ain't My Fault."

Vaughan's, a club in the Upper Ninth Ward, is too small for a stage. Mr. Ruffins, a trumpeter, has returned to his regular Thursday gig there after a long hiatus imposed by the storm, and he and his band were nearly backed against the club's wall by the dancing crowd. He was playing and singing old New Orleans songs like "Mardi Gras Mambo," with a jovial Louis Armstrong growl. Yet no one, onstage or off, has forgotten that the Lower Ninth Ward, still in ruins, is only a few blocks away.

Mr. Ruffins finished one set with a pop standard once sung by Bing Crosby, "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams." Halfway through, in casual New Orleans style, he handed the microphone to an audience member, who belted the song — with a line about castles tumbling — and then held on to the microphone long enough to add, "That's for all the people that lost their houses."

Later, Mr. Ruffins agreed. "Those tunes take a whole different meaning now," he said. "At one time in the club, we would just be singing them. Now, I listen to the words."

    New Orleans at Mardi Gras: Anger Gives Music an Edge, NYT, 27.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/arts/27orleans.html

New Orleans Running Out of Options

as It Scrambles for New Loans

February 26, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 25 — Somehow, some way, at some point in the future, city officials here will need to pay back all the money they are borrowing. In the meantime, though, the Mardi Gras parades must still be protected, the police must still patrol the streets and the garbage must be picked up.

And so, even though the city has already racked up $120 million in debt, officials here are scrambling for loans of as much as $200 million more so that New Orleans can continue to pay its bills through the end of the year.

"We can't keep borrowing money," said Oliver M. Thomas Jr., the president of the New Orleans City Council. "But the need for fire protection doesn't just go away. At some point, we need to rebuild our parks and restart recreation programs as children and families start coming back."

Youth programs, however, are the least of the city's problems right now. With its credit rating downgraded to junk-bond status, it is not clear how the city will even find the money to maintain its most critical services, like police and fire protection. Though the city has already laid off nearly half its work force, New Orleans still needs $150 million to $200 million in 2006 to fill the huge hole that Hurricane Katrina blew in its budget, said Reginald Zeno, the city's finance director.

The lost revenues include tens of millions of dollars in property taxes that will go uncollected in a city in which more than 80,000 homes, according to state estimates, were severely damaged or destroyed. With more than half of New Orleans's populace still living elsewhere, sales tax collections are less than half of last year's levels.

"We put together a bare-bones budget last fall, but we still don't have the resources to fund it," Mr. Zeno said.

Mardi Gras should provide some relief. Crowds were sparse through the first weekend of the eight-day festival, which resumed Thursday and continues through Tuesday, but officials here remain optimistic that it will prove a boon to the economy and, by extension, the city coffers.

Yet even a healthy Mardi Gras would provide only temporary relief to a city that has been falling deeper into debt with each passing week.

The federal government is one potential source of money, Mr. Zeno said, but the city has already borrowed $120 million from the Treasury, and any more will require Washington to lift its ceiling on such loans.

Commercial banks are another option. But even before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had a subpar BBB+ debt rating. Since the storm, the rating has been "severely downgraded" to a B, which is junk-bond status, said Alexander M. Fraser, an analyst at Standard & Poor's, the bond rating agency. The low rating makes it much harder to receive commercial loans.

J. P. Morgan Chase, which has a large presence in New Orleans, is working to raise a $150 million line of credit on the city's behalf. The company has agreed to commit $50 million of its own money, said Donald E. Wilbon, who leads the firm's public financing group in the southeastern region, but whether other banks will take the same risk remains unclear.

"It's a challenge putting together a syndicate given the situation here," Mr. Wilbon said. Typically a city would secure such a bond using future property tax collections as collateral, but the reliability of those revenues is just one more unknown in this city where so many big questions remain unanswered.

"It's a dire situation," said Janet R. Howard, chief executive of the Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit policy organization based in New Orleans.

One thin ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary picture are sales tax collections, which Mr. Zeno described as "a little more robust than we were initially projecting." But good news is relative in a city suffering through what some have dubbed the worst municipal financial crisis in the nation's history.

The city collected $5 million to $6 million a month in sales taxes in the last quarter of 2005, Mr. Zeno said. That compares with the $12 million to $13 million it averaged each month before the hurricane, which covered about one-third of the city's pre-storm $470 million operating budget.

The sales tax, which includes a tax on hotel rooms, is now the city's primary source of revenue, Mr. Zeno said.

Mardi Gras should produce at least a modest increase in the February sales tax figures, Mr. Zeno and others said, with hotels fully booked.

Several large hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton and the Fairmont, are still closed, but there are still about 20,000 hotel rooms housing guests. (Roughly half of those are occupied by insurance teams, contractors, news organizations and others taking up temporary residence here.) The city receives $1.50 for every $100 spent on a local hotel room.

According to one recent study, Mardi Gras usually contributes roughly $16 million to the city coffers, even after subtracting police overtime, garbage pickup and other additional costs associated with the festivities. But of course this is anything but a typical year.

Echoing a sentiment expressed by others, J. Stephen Perry, president of the Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, predicted that Mardi Gras would generate 50 percent to 60 percent of the economic activity of past years. But he is not worried so much about today as the time between Fat Tuesday and the city's Jazz and Heritage Festival, which starts in late April.

"We're really going to struggle this spring," Mr. Perry said. The city was scheduled to play host to 70 major conventions this year but instead will hold only 15.

Unlike the federal government, which habitually spends more than it collects, state and local governments must balance their annual budgets. The city has laid off most of its planners, building inspectors and demolition employees, said Deputy Mayor Greg Meffert, at a time when their services are needed more than ever.

"I don't know what else we can cut when we've already laid off all these people whose skills we could use right now," Mr. Meffert said. The city has 20 percent fewer police officers today than before Hurricane Katrina, and 9 percent fewer firefighters.

Shortly after the storm, the city received a $90 million public assistance grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In October it borrowed $120 million under a $1 billion emergency federal loan program Congress set up in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

That represented the maximum New Orleans could receive under FEMA's rules — a limit set at 25 percent of a city's pre-disaster revenues. So while President Bush has proposed setting aside an additional $400 million to help local governments devastated by the storm, the city would not be permitted to borrow any more money unless granted an exemption.

The city is lobbying the federal government to bump that limit to 50 percent so it can borrow another $120 million. One advantage in borrowing from the federal government, Mr. Zeno said, is that "those terms are much more favorable to us than a private bank loan."

Another advantage is there is always a chance the city will not have to pay the money back.

"We're going to ask Congress at some point to forgive these loans and make them grants," said John Neely Kennedy, the state treasurer.

The state could also prove a lifeline for a city in need of cash. This month state lawmakers approved participation in a federal loan program that would let the state borrow $200 million on behalf of local governments — as long as the state provides a dollar-for-dollar match. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has endorsed the proposal, but it is still not clear where the state, which is struggling through budget woes of its own, would find the matching funds, Mr. Kennedy said.

"We're better than we were, but we're not well yet," he said. "Parishes, particularly New Orleans, still need help."

    New Orleans Running Out of Options as It Scrambles for New Loans, NYT, 26.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/national/nationalspecial/26fiscal.html

Mardi Gras Diary

Amid Revelry,

Evidence of City's

Cruel Transformation

February 25, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 24 — For a long time I hated Mardi Gras, and tried to flee the city in those weeks.

It was the opposite of what made New Orleans beguiling, or so it seemed to me: loud and raucous, the city's ritual self-abasement enforced mass jollity. The workaday New Orleans, underpopulated, green and quiet, was best in its absolute regard for individual states of joy or gloom.

For years I failed to see the point, a distaste reinforced when visiting hordes from the mainland let their hair down and turned the French Quarter into a "Disneyland for drunks," as a dyspeptic bookseller friend put it. The history of Kings of Rex going back decades was commemorated in some of the city's grandest homes, while the city's crumbling social compact failed to receive similar attention. I knew too that some Jewish families in the Uptown neighborhood left town during Carnival because they would not be invited to the fancier balls.

Yet over the years a different aspect gradually began to sink in. Streaming through the streets of my neighborhood in the Garden District, after the parades, were the city's poor — black families, on the way back to their homes a few blocks away, children skipping with their loot next to strollers festooned with beads.

These were the days of the year when the neighborhoods were joined, however tenuously. The local grandees in their columned mansions had to suffer it. Orders of precedence were reversed. Difficult lives had this release, at least. Outsiders amazed at the lack of internal clamor for change in New Orleans fail to account for these ephemeral satisfactions.

In recent years, going to the parades with my young children opened my eyes again — bead-catching turned out to be serious business — and I made my peace with Carnival.

This year has been a shock. Black people are largely absent in the trek back from St. Charles Avenue, the parade route. There were some black families at the Krewe of Muses parade Thursday night, but where were the children and mothers streaming back to the tattered houses close to the Mississippi River? The crowd was thinned out, boisterous only in patches. It was mostly white, and mostly local.

The Muses parade carried some telltale signs. Instead of bands from each of three traditionally black Catholic prep schools in New Orleans — St. Augustine, Xavier Prep and St. Mary's — there was a small single band uniting the three, a so-called Max Band. Another group styled itself the Ninth Ward Marching Band, but it was almost all-white — clearly commemorative, rather than representative, of what had been a black neighborhood, now gone. The band members wore military-style helmets with "9" on them. The once-obscure Ninth Ward is now a world-famous war zone.

Nothing has brought home Hurricane Katrina's cruel demographic shift like this. A friend — a native, unlike me — said after Sunday's parades that it reminded her of the Mardi Gras of her childhood, four decades or so earlier: smaller, more homogeneous, peopled more largely by locals. The city was still majority-white in those days. It may be so again at this moment. Every "expert" has a different set of numbers and projections.

Two years ago there was a shooting at the Muses parade — rival teenage gangs from the Mid-City neighborhood shot at each other, and a young woman, a paradegoer, was fatally wounded in the crossfire. The shooting terrified the city's tourism mavens and led to a beefing-up of security. This year, two New Orleans police officers, posted close to the spot, looked bored and sleepy as they surveyed the thin, peaceful crowd.

Carnival is still a sort of release this year, even if it proves to be a tourism bust. The giant dummy refrigerators and the floats lampooning local politicos squeeze humor from a grim time. (William J. Jefferson, a New Orleans congressman, was skewered for having commandeered a National Guard truck to check out his house during the flood: "Uh, General, may I borrow a Black Hawk? I think I left the oven on," was painted on one float.) In Louisiana, elected leaders can always provide a laugh when nothing else can.

But one thing the Mardi Gras season may not constitute this year is that amazing, temporary social upending, the same as in popular festivals going back to the Middle Ages — a kind of escape valve for social tensions. The poor, no longer hidden away, used to come out.

In the terrible days after the storm, they came out, too. Before the rescuers arrived, along with the troops and the hordes of reporters, New Orleans was, briefly, a city almost entirely of impoverished African-Americans. The ruined neighborhoods belonged to them. I was struck by the sight of people, hanging out in the street, in a dry zone by the river on one of those days. Then the people were gone, and the city was empty.

    Amid Revelry, Evidence of City's Cruel Transformation, NYT, 25.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/national/nationalspecial/25mardi.html?hp&ex=1140930000&en=39c3eb54f38acfae&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Recovery

After Hurricanes

Come Tempests Over Cleanups

February 24, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE EATON

PONCHATOULA, La. — When a big contracting company hired him to clean up this small town northwest of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Matthew Lopez saw it as a way to help his neighbors and to make decent money: $9 for every cubic yard of hurricane debris he delivered to a dump.

But as soon as he started clearing downed branches, there was a problem: out-of-town contractors that also worked for the larger company were sneaking into his territory and snatching up the loose debris.

"You'd push up a pile with a Bobcat, turn your back, and their truck would be right there," he said. That left him and his small crew to do the hard, not very lucrative work of cutting up big trees with chain saws.

So Mr. Lopez did what a lot of small contractors here say they are trying to do: he found a lawyer and sued the big company that had hired him for breach of contract, saying it favored his out-of-town rivals and had let them steal his work.

The case is just one of dozens of courthouse disputes and public controversies that have erupted over the still-gargantuan task of removing tons of debris in Louisiana and Mississippi, almost six months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Government officials, contractors and workers all describe a complicated and bureaucratic process that wastes money, slows the cleanup and fails to ensure that the economic benefits of the work go to the people who need them most, the residents of the disaster areas.

Indeed, the problems are now so clear that even the Department of Homeland Security and its Congressional critics have decided that the entire process for cleaning up after storms — and paying for the cleanups — needs to be restructured.

Among the many problems that have plagued the $1.3 billion cleanup program are these:

¶Contractors and workers, ranging from individual laborers to a quality-control consulting firm, contend that they have been abused, underpaid or not paid at all. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently filed a federal lawsuit in New Orleans accusing two private cleanup companies of shortchanging hundreds of immigrant laborers, says the federal government is turning a blind eye to violations of labor law.

¶Many local government officials complain about the slow pace of the cleanup, which federal officials concede is only half done in Louisiana. Local politicians are also fuming over their lack of control over what happens in their communities.

¶Congressional leaders from Mississippi say that one large and politically connected debris-removal company, AshBritt Inc. of Pompano Beach, Fla., is trying to thwart a plan to give work to small companies in their state. The company says it is the victim of a politically motivated effort to take away its business.

¶Louisiana contractors are so angry about the small quantity and low quality of the work they are getting that their trade organization is asking the state to take over federal debris-removal contracts being handled by the Army Corps of Engineers. Local people say that armies of middlemen do no work but siphon off money, while some big companies contend that they have been forced to hire contractors on the basis of their political connections.

Meanwhile, government investigators have opened at least five inquiries into debris removal, and federal prosecutors have filed two criminal complaints involving it.

Officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, which handle much of the contracting for debris removal, say the agencies are satisfied with the cleanup's pace, given the magnitude of the task. They note that Hurricane Katrina created twice as much debris as the four 2004 hurricanes in Florida combined.

In Louisiana, of an estimated 60 million cubic yards of debris, about 32.7 million cubic yards of debris were picked up by early February, 18 million of them by contractors hired by the corps, according to FEMA data. In Mississippi, where local governments have been more prone to undertake their own removal, almost 32 million cubic yards out of 43 million have been removed.

The corps says it has spent about $1.3 billion so far, and FEMA is spending hundreds of millions of dollars more reimbursing local governments for the debris removal for which they contract directly.

But some outside experts agree with the local complaint that the pace has been far too slow. "I've been shocked," said Jane A. Bullock, a former senior official with FEMA who is now a consultant and a professor at George Washington University. "The recovery is going every bit as badly as the response did."

[Last week, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, acknowledged that debris removal remained a problem. He vowed to Congress to improve the system by, among other things, "cutting out middle-men and ensuring that states are quickly and cost-effectively supported by qualified local debris removal firms."]

Before Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers, which handles federal debris removal programs on FEMA's behalf, had a standing contract with AshBritt to clean up after emergencies in Louisiana and Mississippi. But in early September, facing the hurricane's enormous destruction, the corps opened the job to competitive bidding and awarded $500 million contracts to four big out-of-state companies.

AshBritt was given Mississippi; Ceres Environmental Services of Brooklyn Park, Minn., was assigned Louisiana cleanup north of New Orleans; and the Environmental Chemical Corporation of Burlingame, Calif., and Phillips & Jordan of Nashville were given contracts to work in and around New Orleans.

Local governments were also allowed to hire their own debris-removal companies, with the cost to be picked up by FEMA. But many local officials complain they were discouraged from doing so by threats that they would be audited or have to cover some costs themselves.

It was in part a desire to get work for local people that prompted St. Bernard Parish, the devastated area east of New Orleans, to insist on hiring its own contractor, officials there say. But five months after basically every building in the parish was flooded, FEMA has yet to reimburse the government or its contractor for debris removal costs, which the public works department says have reached $50 million. Local officials say they are being punished.

"This is blackmail; you can't tell me it's not," said Henry Rodriguez, the parish president. "They're trying to put our contractor out of business, to prove that you have to use the Corps." St. Bernard may borrow money to pay part of the bill, he said recently, adding, "FEMA will cause the parish to go bankrupt in six months or a year."

The Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security, which is an intermediary between local governments and FEMA, said the federal agency contends that the parish was paying its contractor too much, particularly for demolition, according to an e-mail message from Mark C. Smith, the state agency's spokesman.

This argument infuriates Clyde P. Martin, Jr., who until he resigned on Feb. 10 was St. Bernard's director of public works. FEMA will not tell the parish what prices it considers reasonable, he said. And despite the best efforts of his staff, he said, they cannot find out what the Corps is paying in New Orleans, which had similar damage.

The Corps has refused to release many details of its contracts, including how much it is paying its main contractors, who say they cannot give out information without the Corps' permission. The debate over using local businesses may be even more intense in Mississippi as a result of the Corps's decision in September to award the $500 million Mississippi contract to AshBritt of Florida. Members of Congress from both parties demanded to know why the work had not gone to a local company, which they said was required by federal law.

In December, the Corps responded by seeking a new $300 million contract with an unprecedented twist: only Mississippi companies would be allowed to bid. Up to $150 million would be reserved for small or minority-owned businesses.

That angered Mr. Perkins, AshBritt's owner, who said the new contract would not benefit small companies, which he said were already getting more than 70 percent of money his company spent in Mississippi.

"I understand the political side that takes place probably better than any businessman in this business," said Mr. Perkins, a major donor to the Republican Party who is known for aggressive lobbying. (He has hired, among others, the firm founded by Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.)

AshBritt has filed formal contract protests, prompting bipartisan criticism from Congressional leaders.

"After all that has happened to the Gulf Coast, I find it appalling that any company would resort to legal maneuverings to make a few dollars off of Mississippi's pain," Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement.

But Mr. Perkins remains defiant. "I'm way out on the end of a plank here with sharks circling around," he said, explaining his decision to file a protest to the new contract. "But I don't have a choice. They are taking my business away."

That is precisely the feeling expressed on a much smaller scale by Mr. Lopez, the dump truck owner, whose lawsuit against Ceres Environmental has been moved to Federal District Court in New Orleans.

Ceres has asked the court to dismiss the case or require it to go to arbitration or mediation. "Lopez seeks payment for work he was not promised, work he did not perform, and indeed, work he was not capable of performing," the company said in court filings.

Mr. Lopez maintains that he was sandbagged by Ceres, and hopes to be paid money he says the company owes him for work he did, as well as some compensation for the work he thinks was stolen by the favored out-of-town crew.

His suit seeks information about how much debris was removed and how much subcontractors were paid, said Jed Cain, a lawyer who represents him.

Mr. Lopez said he wanted answers to another question about debris removal. "You wonder," he said, "where the money's going."

    After Hurricanes Come Tempests Over Cleanups, NYT, 24.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/national/nationalspecial/24debris.html?hp&ex=1140757200&en=e164300cd0b59bcb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Federal Response

Homeland Security Would Share Duties

for Disaster Response Under Proposal

February 24, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — Acknowledging the multitude of Hurricane Katrina failures, the Bush administration on Thursday advocated giving federal agencies from the Pentagon to the Department of Justice a greater role in the nation's disaster response playbook.

If adopted through both legislation and executive order, the recommendations would reverse some of the steps taken after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to centralize responsibility for responding to natural disasters or terrorist attacks at the newly created Department of Homeland Security. And the plan could require the White House to play a larger coordinating role in future disasters.

Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's domestic security adviser, said that enlisting help from federal agencies made sense.

"There's a lot of expertise resident in the federal government," Ms. Townsend said at a White House briefing, where she released the report she and her staff had prepared.

But some critics worry that diffusing responsibilities among agencies could leave no one clearly in charge and not produce results.

"This may simply be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic," said Michael Greenberger, a law professor and domestic security expert at the University of Maryland.

The Homeland Security Department and its Federal Emergency Management Agency will continue to be the lead federal player in disaster response efforts, according to the blueprint proposed by Ms. Townsend. But the Pentagon may take over the commanding role during catastrophes "of extraordinary scope and nature," like a nuclear attack or "multiple simultaneous terrorist attacks causing a breakdown in civil society," the report says, citing examples even more extreme than Hurricane Katrina.

More routinely, the military will be expected to provide logistical support, including sending troops to deliver supplies or rescue victims.

The Justice Department, which now shares responsibility for disaster law enforcement efforts with the Homeland Security Department, would be primarily charged with that even in less severe disasters. The reassignment was attributed to the slow and disorganized response to lawlessness in New Orleans.

The Department of Health and Human Services, meanwhile, would take back from FEMA the disaster medical teams it used to supervise before the Department of Homeland Security was established. And the Department of Housing and Urban Development would be expected to find temporary housing for victims, a duty also now handled by FEMA, which Ms. Townsend said placed too much emphasis on buying travel trailers and mobile homes rather than on finding apartments or other options.

David Heyman, director of the Homeland Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Washington, said that once the changes were in place, the Homeland Security Department would have more reliable federal partners to orchestrate its response. "It's pretty clear that D.H.S. is still the boss," he said.

But Professor Greenberger said the changes might dilute the homeland security secretary's powers.

"The pendulum is swinging, and it is swinging to someone being in charge of the response by the whole government, working out of the White House, not in the Department of Homeland Security," Mr. Greenberger said.

Ms. Townsend said the White House would in fact create a Disaster Response Group "to make sure that if there are any disagreements or any bureaucracy, there's a mechanism here at the White House to break through that."

A new National Operations Center that provides "situational awareness" for all federal agencies would also be set up, taking away some of the duties now handled by the Homeland Security Operations Center, which only opened in July 2004.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff did not attend Ms. Townsend's briefing on the 217-page report, which was titled "The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina, Lessons Learned." His only public comment was in a one-paragraph statement, in which he praised the report and said it should help create "a more seamless federal disaster management system."

By emphasizing that the Homeland Security Department should prepare for any type of disaster, the report indirectly echoed frequent criticism that the agency was too focused on possible terrorist strikes. Perhaps most fundamentally, the report argues that the federal government must be prepared to intervene when local and state agencies are so overwhelmed that they cannot clearly articulate what help they need.

This new approach, which could send troops to a disaster zone, has provoked opposition by some governors, including Jeb Bush of Florida and Haley Barbour of Mississippi, who have argued that the states should lead the response.

Unlike a report released last week by a House committee that investigated the response to the hurricane, the White House inquiry provides little detailed criticism of the performance of top leaders after the storm, including President Bush and his staff, Mr. Chertoff and Michael D. Brown, the former FEMA director.

The report also does not explain how federal agencies that would pick up new assignments in future disasters are supposed to pay for the required staff and equipment or how their new disaster response duties will be managed.

Predicting the impact of the proposed changes is difficult, domestic security experts said. It is possible that the federal government would be able to perform better if responsibilities were parceled out among agencies.

Housing and Urban Development, for example, already works with 2,500 public housing authorities across the United States and indirectly with thousands of landlords, so it may be able to more quickly find housing alternatives for disaster victims than FEMA.

The Justice Department, which is in charge of the F.B.I. and has longstanding relations with the local and state police, may be able to more rapidly deploy huge numbers of law enforcement officers to help maintain public order.

But Clark Kent Ervin, the former Homeland Security inspector general, said the end result might be a less cohesive federal response.

"There seems to be this tendency to reinvent the wheel and then reinvent it again," Mr. Ervin said. "If you are going to have a Department of Homeland Security, then we need to figure out whatever is inhibiting its effectiveness and provide what it lacks, not simply parcel out responsibilities from various agencies where they came from."

    Homeland Security Would Share Duties for Disaster Response Under Proposal, NYT, 24.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/politics/24katrina.html

White House study

outlines Katrina 'lessons'

Posted 2/23/2006 9:05 AM
Updated 2/23/2006 9:00 PM
USA TODAY
By Richard Benedetto

WASHINGTON — A White House report Thursday found numerous failures in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and called for 125 fixes, including better communications, better evacuation plans and first aid training for students.

The "Lessons Learned" study acknowledged that the White House made mistakes by not recognizing problems earlier and moving more quickly to coordinate federal aid. (Related: Full report details | Video report)

"I wasn't satisfied with the federal response," President Bush said in unveiling the report. "We will learn ... to better protect the American people."

Katrina hit New Orleans and a wide swath of the Gulf Coast early on Aug. 29, killing more than 1,300 people and causing nearly $100 billion in damage.

Bush ordered the internal review Sept. 6 after the slow federal response to the storm was harshly criticized.

Among the report's recommendations is an improved system for delivering critical supplies. (Related story: Hotel stay extended for some)

"FedEx can track a package anywhere in the world, real-time. FEMA should be able to do the same thing for ice, water and food," said study leader Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism.

The report also calls for a stronger role for the Pentagon in planning and response, including those "extraordinary circumstances" when the military should lead the federal response.

A USA TODAY survey in October found governors strongly opposed to the notion of the Pentagon usurping the states' traditional role in coordinating disaster response. Townsend said the White House respects the "bright lines" that bar the active duty military from some homeland security duties, but she suggested the military could help "when state and local first responders are overwhelmed."

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the report was, "regrettably, an understated and often-times self-congratulatory report written by those who were part of one of the most damaging and disturbing government failures in our history."

The White House study comes a week after a special House committee issued a report that blamed every level of government for the poor response to Katrina, criticizing the Bush administration, but also citing Louisiana and New Orleans officials for inadequate evacuation and shelter planning.

"It remains difficult to understand how government could respond so ineffectively to a disaster that was anticipated for years," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who led the House inquiry.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is also studying the Katrina response. Its report is due in March.

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu said many of the administration's proposals have "significant merit," particularly improving communications and better evacuation planning. Landrieu said she would work to help get them implemented, but she questioned whether Bush's new budget contains adequate funds to get the job done.

    White House study outlines Katrina 'lessons', UT, 23.2.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-23-white-house-katrina_x.htm

Churches struggle to get by

in New Orleans

Posted 2/23/2006 8:45 PM
Updated 2/24/2006 4:54 AM
USA TODAY
By Anne Rochell Konigsmark
and Martha T. Moore

NEW ORLEANS — There are just two services per weekend, down from six, and folding chairs instead of the pews that were ruined. But about 800 people are filling Our Lady of Prompt Succour church in Chalmette, La., on Sundays, even though some have to drive more than 100 miles to get there.

Prompt Succour flooded with 4 feet of water after Hurricane Katrina last fall, but it was lucky: The seven other Catholic churches in St. Bernard civil parish were destroyed.

Across the region, churches, temples and mosques have struggled not only to rebuild their homes but to re-gather their members. An estimated 900 houses of worship in the Gulf region were damaged, destroyed or unusable after the hurricanes, according to Religion News Service.

The archdiocese of New Orleans will close 30 of its 142 churches in New Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, Archbishop Alfred Hughes said this month. Seven will close for good; the others may reopen if enough members return.

Whether other churches in St. Bernard reopen "depends where the people move," says the Rev. Mark Lomax, who oversaw the churches there. "Where the people are, the church will be. They're just not back in numbers at this point, and we're five months into this thing."

Nearly one-third of the Catholic church's 1,244 buildings in the archdiocese of New Orleans suffered flood and water damage, and more than 850 were damaged by wind, according to the Rev. William Maestri, the archdiocese's superintendent of schools.

The church has reopened 81 of its 107 schools and 107 of its 142 parishes, even though many parishioners, like those at Our Lady of Prompt Succour, are still living far away and commuting to church.

The damage has been so great that the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, headed by former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, announced in December that $20 million of the $90 million it will spend in the region will go to churches and other houses of worship, which are not eligible for public rebuilding funds.

"If they don't get help from this particular fund, there may be no help at all," says the Rev. T.D. Jakes, pastor of a large Dallas church, who is helping the foundation decide how to give away the money.

"Without faith institutions, you can't have a community," says William Gray, the former congressman from Philadelphia who is pastor of a Baptist church there. He is also advising the Bush-Clinton fund. "Their history is the history of the community."

"Most of these pastors started and built ministries from the ground up, so they're not people that are easily dissuaded," Jakes says.

Since Katrina broke levees and flooded New Orleans, the Episcopal Church of the Annunciation is no longer an 85-year-old Gothic brick building on a busy corner of South Claiborne Avenue. It is a congregation trying to worship together, whether on the Internet, in a parking lot or now in the comparative luxury of a double-wide trailer, where parishioners muddle through songs without any organ or piano accompaniment.

The priest, Jerry Kramer, was once a missionary in Africa; he never dreamed he would one day look back on that job as the easier assignment.

Kramer, 38, lost his home and his church when Katrina hit Aug. 29. The neighborhood where he lives and works may not be rebuilt because it is too flood-prone. In less than a year, his three children, 6 to 14, have attended three schools and lived in nine homes. Many of his parishioners have no homes at all. And he worries about the more than 100 people who used to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every Saturday at the church.

Kramer is trying to buy property around his church to install government-supplied trailers for his homeless parishioners. He wants to build showers and a laundry for neighbors working on their damaged homes.

Almost every day, the parish runs two relief operations, one in the church parking lot and one in the Lower Ninth Ward. Volunteers hand out water, bleach, school supplies, toiletries and other items to a steady stream of passersby.

"We're running on grace and fumes," says Kramer, smiling and sweating after a standing-room-only service in the trailer.

Kramer has been waiting months for the federal government to provide his family with a trailer. The church had flood insurance, but new federal elevation regulations mean it may not be feasible to rebuild it. And the Episcopal Church does not pay for rebuilding parishes. So for now, there are no plans for a new building. (Related story: Hotel stay extended for some)

"There's no help coming. We have to do it ourselves," he says.

A week after the storm, Kramer borrowed a boat and a Dutch journalist's press pass and motored into the city to retrieve the church's silver and vestments and rescue his kids' gerbil from their nearby home. The water was so high at the church that he was able to glide over the fence out front. The pews were floating, as were the brand-new prayer books and Bibles. Beer cans and cigarettes littered the altar. But miraculously, the silver and vestments were still there. The gerbil was alive, too.

Right away, Kramer started searching for his parishioners. He set up a tracking center on the church's new website, www.annunciationinexile.homestead.com.

By January, he had located every parshioner. About 90% have returned to the New Orleans area, he says. Sunday service attendance is down to about 60 from 120 before the storm, but the church is attracting newcomers, because so many other churches are closed.

Sharon Martyn says the church has become a focal point for her recovery from the trauma of Katrina.

"Katrina taught me a lesson about what the church is," she says. "I had to detach from the building."

In the church yard, amid the five trailers Kramer has acquired so far, a hand-painted sign reads "Annunciation Acres Trailer Park."

"They don't teach you this in seminary — trailer park maintenance 101, navigating floodwaters," he says. "But Africa was good training. You learned how to make do with nothing."

    Churches struggle to get by in New Orleans, UT, 23.2.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-23-NO-churches_x.htm

Anguished relatives

still await word on 131 kids

Posted 2/23/2006 8:28 PM
Updated 2/23/2006 9:22 PM
USA TODAY
By Wendy Koch

Distraught relatives continue to search for at least 131 children whom they have not heard from since Hurricane Katrina struck six months ago.

Almost all, 97%, of children initially displaced by America's worst natural disaster have been reunited with parents or other relatives, says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center For Missing & Exploited Children, a private advocacy group. Yet investigators are struggling to find the rest.

"We're still operating under the assumption that most of these kids are with someone," Allen says. "But some probably didn't survive the storm and won't be found."

The center has heard from relatives who say they still don't know the whereabouts of 131 children — five in Mississippi and the rest in Louisiana, mostly New Orleans.

The Find Family National Call Center in Baton Rouge, a joint federal and state effort, lists 1,960 people as missing, of whom 245 are age 20 or younger.

Together the centers have about 100 workers making more than 1,200 calls daily. Every time a child or adult is found, workers at the Baton Rouge office ring a bell — an average of 30 times daily.

"We've found quite a few people who didn't want to be found," says Henry Yennie, the Call Center's deputy director, citing as one example an Arkansas parolee. If one parent is accused of child abuse, he says the center may honor the other parent's request not to disclose an address or phone number.

So far, few children are known to have died from Katrina, says Robert Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. Of 824 identified victims, only 12 were under the age of 21. "Almost 80% of those who died were over the age of 50." He says 86 bodies remain unidentified in Louisiana.

Still, parents who weren't with their child when Katrina hit worry.

"I just want to know where she is and if she's all right," says Hollis McGee, of his 7-year-old daughter Jasmine. "I feel stressful. Sometimes I want to hurt myself." McGee, who was evacuated from New Orleans to Houston, heard Jasmine and her mother survived Katrina but doesn't know where they are. "I want to hold her in my arms," he says. "She's so pretty."

David Allen knows well McGee's agony. After nearly six months of searching, including a door-to-door hunt in New Orleans, he got a call last week that his son David Lee Morgan, 5, was evacuated to Houston with his mother.

Allen, who's now doing maintenance work in Baton Rouge, says he had many sleepless nights and continued to pay child support even when he didn't know whether his son was alive.

"I feel wonderful now," Allen says. "I'm so happy."

The child's mother, Deborah Morgan, says she couldn't find Allen's phone number. She says her son is ready to visit his dad and perhaps spend the summer with him.

Last Friday, after months of anxiety, Darlene Caire and her husband, Lionel, received a call that his 13-year-old son Lionel Jr. was living in Indiana with the boy's mother. They got his address only after calling a child support office.

"They got displaced like us," says Caire, who was evacuated from New Orleans to Tulsa. "Everybody was in survival mode then. It's OK, because now we know."

    Anguished relatives still await word on 131 kids, UT, 23.2.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-23-katrina-kids_x.htm

New Orleans Journal

Away From Mardi Gras,

Glints of Life

as the Hopeful Trickle Home

February 22, 2006
The New York Times
By DAN BARRY

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 21 — At evening time in parts of the Gentilly neighborhood here, headlights become searchlights, skipping spectrally across the facades of empty houses, street after street, in the pitch of absence.

This is how it has been since Hurricane Katrina, six months ago. But now isolated beacons of light suggest the return of the determined: here the glow emanating from the small windows of a government trailer, there the power lamps revealing the gut renovation of a house.

On an otherwise deserted Music Street, for example, Karry and Deanna Causey have set up a trailer, hired contractors, stripped the first floor of their home — and surrounded their storm-damaged house with bright lights to ward against the uneasiness that comes from camping out on the wilderness of their own property.

"This is home," said Mr. Causey, 46, a grounds operator for Southwest Airlines. "This is where we wanted to be. This is where we will be."

This is where the Causeys and their three children are: on a mostly deserted street with little light after dusk. Some older couples in the neighborhood will not be returning, Mr. Causey said, because "they just can't do this."

The Causeys have hope for the future but no illusions about the present. "We won't see people in this neighborhood for six months," said Mrs. Causey, 43, a collections manager.

Most of this week's Mardi Gras parades will proceed along St. Charles Avenue uptown, where repaired lights shine, restaurants buzz and people move about much as they did before. This reassuring street life, though, tells only part of the complicated story of New Orleans

Drive a mile or two in almost any direction and you find neighborhoods that are the opposite of festive. Well more than half the city's 180,000 houses were flooded, and for days, if not weeks, many of them sat in several feet of water. Thousands of homes are beyond salvage, and entire neighborhoods may have to prove their worth or be razed.

But some residents have imbued desolate streets with signs of life that may create a domino effect of encouragement for those uncertain about returning. They frequent the occasional reopened hardware store and rail against price gouging by some contractors and gas stations. They create light in the surrounding darkness of neighborhoods called St. Claude, or Lakeview, or the Ninth Ward. In Faulknerian spirit, they endure.

The resolute include the five Causeys of Music Street, who carry debris to the curb, then cram into a trailer at night.

And Sandor Szalmas, 43, who waited out the storm and flooding on St. Claude Avenue in the Ninth Ward, and is now putting up new fencing. He was so protective of his property in those early days that he told the National Guard to keep moving.

And Wade Manger, 47, who rushed out of his house on Desire Street as the waters rose and was taken with his family to the convention center. They wound up in Knoxville, Tenn., but Mr. Manger was back home by December. "There wasn't nobody back but me and my daughter," he said. "The National Guard was coming to the house every day to see if we were O.K."

Now Mr. Manger can stand on the porch of his house, still in desperate disrepair, and detect the life returning to Desire. "They there, they there," he said, gesturing to a sagging house, passing over an abandoned one and pointing to another with traces of activity.

On the front of his own house, the Day-Glo spray-painted mark of a search-and-rescue team mars the wood. In an X-shaped code, it announces that on Sept. 14 the Manger house was searched, and no bodies were found.

Maybe for those who return, these ubiquitous, troubling signs will become a folk-art badge of honor. The interpretation could be: That was then, and this is now.

    Away From Mardi Gras, Glints of Life as the Hopeful Trickle Home, NYT, 22.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/national/nationalspecial/22orleans.html?hp&ex=1140584400&en=63dc447b82cdc48f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Using a Lobbyist's Pull

From the Governor's Seat

February 21, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

JACKSON, Miss. — It seems hard to imagine that in the age of Jack Abramoff, being a former lobbyist may be a good thing for a politician. But the back-slapping prowess of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican who is legendary on K Street, Washington's Great White Way of influence peddling, has proved invaluable to this storm-rattled state.

In mid-December, as Congress was rushing toward its Christmas break, negotiations stalled on a multibillion-dollar bill to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina here and in Louisiana. Tempers flared as House conservatives dug in against the cost. It was a bottom-of-the-ninth impasse, ready-made for a heavy-hitter lobbyist.

Enter Mr. Barbour, a fireplug of a man whose soft Delta accent and gentle Southern manners mask a stiletto-sharp approach to politics.

In a private meeting that began on Dec. 16 and lasted well past midnight, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Republican whip, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, questioned Mr. Barbour about the package.

It may have helped that Mr. Barbour's answers were crisp. But it was also probably beneficial that Mr. Barbour, as chairman of the Republican National Committee in the 1990's and later as a prominent lobbyist, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mr. Hastert and other House Republicans.

Either way, the logjam broke and the House agreed to the Senate's higher number, $29 billion. In the process, Mr. Barbour helped ensure that Mississippi got nearly as much housing money as Louisiana, even though his state had far less damage.

"Haley," said a Democratic Congressional official involved in the budget negotiations, "was the closer."

Democrats ridiculed Mr. Barbour during the 2003 governor's campaign here as a puppet of the tobacco, pharmaceutical and other well-connected industries. Later, he was sharply criticized for describing as "fabulous" the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, and eyebrows went up when AshBritt, a Florida company that was a former client of Mr. Barbour's lobbying firm, won a big federal contract for clearing storm debris.

But Mr. Barbour never apologized for his lobbying experience or his closeness to the administration, asserting that his Washington connections would only help one of the nation's poorest states.

Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Barbour says, has proved him right.

"It is obvious that my experiences and relationships over the last 35 years helped me help the state at a time when it needed it more than ever," he said in an interview.

Democrats are skeptical. Though they commend Mr. Barbour's response to the hurricane, they say it seems stellar mainly compared with the often stumbling performance of officials in Louisiana, which suffered far more devastation. They also say that Mr. Barbour is hardly the only powerful official pulling money toward Mississippi.

"The real hero in all this is Thad Cochran," said Representative Gene Taylor, a Democrat who represents the Mississippi Gulf Coast, referring to the Mississippi Republican who leads the Senate Appropriations Committee. "Let's face it. When you are the chairman of Appropriations, you are the man."

Many in Mississippi argue that the package Mr. Barbour negotiated does not do enough for low-income renters. Its centerpiece is $5 billion for Mississippi homeowners who lived outside the flood plain and whose houses were destroyed by surging waters. Mr. Barbour said one of his priorities would be to use tax credits and other incentives to encourage construction of affordable housing near the coast.

Yet even Mr. Barbour's critics say his political fortunes have been strengthened by the national stage Hurricane Katrina gave him. In the days after the storm, the governor and his wife, Marsha, were steady presences on the coast and on national television. He was applauded for appointing a rebuilding commission soon after the storm, and his role in bringing home billions of dollars has been widely publicized in the state.

W. Martin Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, said that Mr. Barbour's poll ratings had fallen to the low 40's last year after he tried to cut 48,000 low-income elderly and disabled people from Medicaid, but that those numbers jumped into the high 50's after Hurricane Katrina.

"Before the storm, we were criticized for electing a well-known, high-paid former Washington lobbyist to be our governor," Mr. Wiseman said. "But now everyone is happy that we elected a well-known, high-paid former Washington lobbyist to be our governor."

In his 15th-floor office overlooking Mississippi's domed Capitol, Mr. Barbour keeps a large black-and-white satellite photograph of Hurricane Katrina's swirling mass bearing down on the Mississippi coast, a reminder of the storm's breathtaking power.

But on a nearby credenza, he keeps a reminder of a different sort of power: a series of photographs showing Vice President Dick Cheney campaigning for him in 2003.

Years before Mr. Abramoff became this era's most infamously well-connected Republican lobbyist, Mr. Barbour was Washington's man to see. In the 1980's, he was political director for President Ronald Reagan. He was chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997, helping Newt Gingrich engineer the 1994 campaign that overthrew decades of Democratic control in the House.

From 1997 to 2003, his all-Republican lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith & Rogers, ranked among Washington's most powerful and profitable, earning $13 million in 2003, according to Influence, a publication that tracks lobbying. Mr. Barbour's clients have included Microsoft, BellSouth, CBS and a bevy of energy, pharmaceutical and tobacco companies.

As a lobbyist, Mr. Barbour was vital to Republicans as a fund-raiser and strategist. He gave a party that raised $100,000 for Mr. Hastert's political action committee immediately after Mr. Hastert was elected speaker in 1999. He also served as one of Mr. Hastert's most trusted outside advisers.

Mr. Barbour played a similar role advising and raising money for George W. Bush when he ran for president in 2000. Today, Mr. Bush calls Mr. Barbour "my friend." Mr. Barbour is known to call the president "Junior."

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Barbour put his bulging Rolodex to work. From the start, a Republican credo seemed to guide his approach, and unlike Louisiana officials, he avoided criticizing the Bush administration while portraying his state as self-reliant. When Louisiana's Congressional delegation proposed a $250 billion relief package that was ridiculed as the "bayou bandits' bill," Mr. Barbour called for a comparatively paltry $35 billion.

"In the wake of Louisiana having asked for $250 billion, most in Congress realized that was reasonable," Mr. Barbour said of his request.

He focused on persuading House conservatives, who were concerned not only about the cost of the package, but also about the precedent it would set in using federal money to bail out homeowners lacking flood insurance. Comfortable with arcane policy details, Mr. Barbour argued that the federal government had a duty to help people outside the flood plain because they had relied on federal maps in deciding not to buy flood insurance.

"It's easy to convince the already convinced," said Representative Bobby Jindal, Republican of Louisiana. "It was much harder to convince the skeptics. And he had great impact on those people."

Starting on Dec. 12, Mr. Barbour set up camp in the Capitol Hill office of Senator Cochran, visiting lawmakers and committee chairmen. But when House negotiators refused to budge from their number, about $23 billion, even after Mr. Cochran had lowered his request to $29 billion from $35 billion, Mr. Barbour turned directly to Mr. Hastert for help. It worked.

"We don't know what was said in that session," a Democratic Congressional official said of Mr. Barbour's Dec. 16 meeting with Mr. Hastert. "But whatever it was, it worked." The official was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

After the logjam broke, Mr. Barbour used his influence to shape the bill. Although Mr. Cochran's original request for $13 billion in block grants was scaled back to $11.5 billion, Mr. Barbour and Mr. Cochran ensured that Mississippi's share remained roughly the same: more than $5 billion. They accomplished that by devising language to cap Louisiana's share at 54 percent, about $6.2 billion, Congressional negotiators said.

That limit has infuriated Louisiana Democrats, who point out that their state suffered three times as many destroyed houses as Mississippi. They publicly praise Mr. Barbour as helping pass the package, but they privately fume that their governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat, has been shunned by the White House and treated far more roughly than Mr. Barbour in hurricane hearings led by Republicans on Capitol Hill.

[Last Thursday, President Bush sent Congress a request for $19.8 billion in additional aid for the Gulf Coast that includes $4.2 billion for rebuilding or buying out severely damaged houses in Louisiana. State officials said the money would compensate for the disproportionate share Mississippi received last year.]

For all the plaudits Mr. Barbour has received, Hurricane Katrina may have constricted his political ambitions. Once mentioned as a possible candidate for president in 2008, he now says he is too busy rebuilding Mississippi to focus on a national campaign. In February, he vowed not to run for president in 2008 and declared his intention to seek re-election in 2007.

In the interview, Mr. Barbour said the hurricane had provided an opportunity to rebuild "bigger and better." He envisions a revitalized coast where larger, more luxurious casinos will anchor a tourist-centered economy featuring golf courses, resorts and high-rise condominium buildings like those lining Florida's Gulf Coast. The casinos will be allowed to expand onto the shore under legislation Mr. Barbour pushed through the State Legislature last year.

Ever the pitchman, Mr. Barbour has also begun planning a campaign to attract out-of-state investors to Mississippi by emphasizing what he calls the "strong, resilient and self-reliant" way Mississippians responded to Hurricane Katrina. And he is preparing his next request to Congress, which will include billions to restore disappearing wetlands and barrier islands.

"None of us foresaw we'd have something like Katrina, and that we'd be going to Washington to ask for something of this magnitude," Mr. Barbour said. "But even during the campaign in 2003, people thought it would be good to have a governor who understood Washington."

    Using a Lobbyist's Pull From the Governor's Seat, NYT, 21.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/national/nationalspecial/21barbour.html?hp&ex=1140498000&en=935fa5a1938fd44f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Louisiana Unveils

a Plan With Cash to Rebuild Homes

February 21, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 20 — With thousands of ruined homeowners here watching weeks turn into months without assistance, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana for the first time unveiled a real package of assistance on Monday, proposing to use federal money for loans and grants that aides said would spur rebuilding in devastated areas.

For months an unpromising brew of competing ideas, inadequate money and political fighting has left Louisiana homeowners devastated by Hurricane Katrina in limbo, wondering where to turn for help. Some have returned and are rebuilding on their own, but many thousands more remain in exile, without the money needed to come back and start over. More than 330,000 homes sustained some damage, state officials say.

Officials here said the state's $7.5 billion proposal, which offers up to $150,000 in grants to repair or rebuild, along with inexpensive loans, would not have been possible without the $4.2 billion in new money promised by President Bush last week, and $6.2 billion allocated last year.

The plan for the first time included incentives for lower-income homeowners to return to South Louisiana and repair their homes, or build anew.

Until now, attention has been focused on the idea of buying out acres of ruined homes with government money, then redeveloping the land. But that has generated concern in New Orleans that lower-income residents may be tempted to take the buyout cash and move elsewhere, leaving the city smaller, whiter and more middle-class.

The proposals offered Monday appear to point the rebuilding in a different direction. Buyouts are de-emphasized: those seeking them would get only 60 percent of the value of their former homes, with a maximum of $150,000; in contrast, under a popular proposal by Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, the 60 percent figure was a minimum.

Instead of simply handing ruined homeowners a lump-sum check, as Mississippi proposes to do, the ideas outlined Monday emphasize a combination of cash, and low or no-interest loans with the purpose of encouraging repairing and rebuilding.

A homeowner with a $60,000 mortgage who lived outside the flood plain, and thus had no insurance, might get an $89,500 grant toward a new $120,000 home, and a $20,000 no-cost loan.

A wealthier homeowner facing $170,000 in repairs, and with a payout from the insurance company of $150,000, might get a $9,500 state grant, assuming a FEMA payment of $10,500, in another example given Monday.

"We are providing ways to keep homeowners as homeowners," said Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, created by Ms. Blanco. "You can successfully rebuild South Louisiana with the package we have proposed."

Mr. Kopplin noted that a major difference between the new plan and Mr. Baker's was in providing for inexpensive loans.

Early reviews suggested that even in New Orleans, where local leaders have agitated for their own buyout plan, also capped at $150,000, the new proposal might have hit the mark.

Bush administration officials, including the president, have repeatedly urged Louisiana to come up with a workable housing plan. Several here suggested the new proposals might come close.

"I commend them for it," said Mtumishi St. Julien, chairman of the housing subcommittee of the Bring New Orleans Back commission, Mayor C. Ray Nagin's rebuilding panel. "The fear in New Orleans has been about a buyout. People need to be made whole, but the very first priority is to bring our people home. This was designed to bring our people home."

Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a nonprofit group in Baton Rouge, said the plan seemed reasonable.

"It's not just a blank check," he said. "If you look at it over all, it seems pretty well balanced. Nobody makes out like gangsters. This one has a dollar amount, and it sort of assumes the little guy will have a more difficult time with resources."

Many details remain to be worked out, notably the mechanics of getting money into the hands of homeowners. Ms. Blanco has proposed a telephone call center where homeowners could begin registering their claims, starting next month. Her proposal to create an agency to distribute the money was shot down last Friday by the State Legislature, newly aggressive in the face of a governor whose authority is perceived to have been weakened in the wake of the storm. Some legislators invoked a familiar criticism of the governor, accusing her of being too keen to create state agencies.

Still, state officials said alternative means could be found for getting the money to homeowners, including using existing state agencies familiar with administering housing aid programs, of which there are several.

More than six months after the storm, speed is essential, several said.

"We've just got so many people who are just hanging on by their fingertips," said John Neely Kennedy, the state treasurer. "It's time to get some money to these people. To this day, we haven't gotten a dime to homeowners."

    Louisiana Unveils a Plan With Cash to Rebuild Homes, NYT, 21.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/national/nationalspecial/21buyouts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

New Orleans rebuilding plan

takes shape

Mon Feb 20, 2006 7:41 PM ET
Reuters
By Stuart Grudgings

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Long-awaited plans to rebuild New Orleans and compensate hundreds of thousands of hurricane victims took shape on Monday as Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced details of a program that would give homeowners up to $150,000.

It is the clearest recovery plan to emerge since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast nearly six months ago and follows a White House request to Congress last week for an additional $4.2 billion in federal funds for Louisiana.

"This is one of the most important programs our state will ever run," Blanco said in a statement.

"In the not-too-distant future, I predict the sounds of hammers and saws will be ringing through all of our communities as our homes are rebuilt."

Some 170,000 homes were destroyed and 1,300 people killed by Hurricane Katrina, which sparked massive flooding in New Orleans, and Hurricane Rita that followed a month later.

Under the new plan, which is in line with a proposal by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, owners of homes that suffered $5,200 or more in uninsured damage could receive up to $150,000 toward the pre-storm value of their homes, less insurance and other federal payments.

Uninsured homeowners living in the official flood zone would be covered, but their assistance would be cut by 30 percent. That reflects sympathy with the thousands of uninsured owners who trusted the federally built levees that failed in August, while sending a signal that everyone should get insurance in the future, Blanco said.

'JUST BEGINNING THE PROCESS'

Owners will be able to use the funds to rebuild, repair, relocate or accept a buyout of their mortgage.

Blanco stressed that the plan was dependent on congressional approval of the funds, which are in addition to $6.2 billion already approved, and that she would listen to the views of residents before finalizing the details.

"We're just beginning the process. I'm finding it very difficult to put a timeline on it because too much of it is not in our control," she said in an interview on local radio.

New Orleans residents, about two-thirds of whom remain displaced by the disaster, have faced months of uncertainty over the city's recovery.

A previous plan that would have allowed federal buyouts for homeowners was shot down by the White House, which accused city and state officials of lacking a clear plan.

It remains unclear how the new plan will affect the shape and size of one of America's most famous and culturally rich cities. Some residents in badly hit areas are fiercely determined to stay, but there are doubts over how the shrunken city can provide services for sparsely populated neighborhoods.

A call center would be set up in March to start the registration process for the program.

After months of frustration, owners in some of the worst-hit areas were skeptical about the latest plan.

"A lot of these homes are worth more than they're going to give," said Larry Leavell, a 31-year-old who was working on his mother's house in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward. "Let me rebuild my house and leave me alone."

Greg Duhe, a 43-year-old uninsured owner in nearby St. Bernard parish said he would welcome any help.

"If we were able to get something, we'd be pleased," he said. "You believe it when you see it."

    New Orleans rebuilding plan takes shape, R, 20.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-02-21T004047Z_01_N20344729_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-REBUILDING.xml

Concern Over Soil Content

As Levee Repairs Continue

February 19, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

BAYOU BIENVENUE, La. — It will take a staggering four million cubic yards of soil to repair the levee system around New Orleans, and nearly half of it will go here, a battered 12-mile stretch along the navigational canal, east of the city, known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.

Yet critics of the Army Corps of Engineers say the new construction is likely to fail again. The sandy local dirt being used for levee construction is too weak, they say, and not enough thick clay is being imported by barge from Mississippi to strengthen it.

Getting enough of the kind of soil that can stand up to future hurricanes is one of the greatest challenges of the levee effort, as the Corps of Engineers and its contractors race to restore the storm protection system. By June 1, the start of hurricane season, they want the levees to be at least as strong as they were before Hurricane Katrina. The St. Bernard project, which began last fall, is among the biggest challenges in rebuilding the 350-mile system around New Orleans; the Corps estimates that this stretch of levee alone will require 1.65 million cubic yards of soil, most of it excavated from local pits.

To build the new levees to a 20-foot height, much of them in inaccessible areas, the corps has had to search for soil with enough clay content to bind the sandy blend that is here. To strengthen the local soil, the Corps has been bringing in clay by barge from Mississippi.

Corps officials acknowledge that getting enough of what they call "borrow" material has been difficult, but say the search has been going well and the levees will be strong.

"I'm very confident in what we're building," said Col. Lewis Setliff III, commander of the Task Force Guardian, the corps unit that is responsible for restoring the damaged flood protection system. "It's certainly better than what was there before."

But Robert G. Bea, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leader of the group of independent investigators that is financed by the National Science Foundation, said the earth he had seen on the site "is no better than it was before."

On an inspection tour of the levees last month, he collected some 200 pounds of samples and found them distressingly rich in sand and peat. "The soil I brought back with me is nothing I would want in a levee," Professor Bea said.

He sent the soil samples to Jean-Louis Briaud, a soil erosion expert at Texas A&M University. Professor Briaud said that the soil, if not properly compacted in the construction process, would erode easily: on a scale of erodability from one to five, he places the soil at one, the lowest grade.

"The compaction makes a big difference," Professor Briaud said, and the work the corps does on the soil could improve its strength to between Grade 4 and 5 if it is compacted to the highest possible degree. Corps officials say that the soil is being compacted well; Professor Bea said that the compacting work he saw did not appear to be sufficiently effective. He added that at the time he was there, no clay was being mixed into the sandy soil.

"You might have the holes filled," Professor Bea said, "but does that mean that people are O.K. to go back and restore their homes and their lives?" He added, "I'm still struggling to reconcile my view of reality with what the corps is saying is going on there today."

Corps officials disagreed with his assessment. At one repair site where bulldozers moved with steady purpose, Lt. Col. Murray Starkel, deputy district commander for the corps here, reached down and picked up a gummy blob of clay. "There is good material on site," he said.

Kevin Wagner, the project manager for the corps, said there was one principal reason for the difficulty: "This is Southern Louisiana," Mr. Wagner said, where the soils are famously swampy and weak, and people building new homes will commonly drive piles 60 feet into the dirt to anchor the foundation of a house.

However, he said, "We're sampling soil every day" to ensure that they are getting a good blend of clay and other soils that are appropriate for levee building. "We've done more testing on this job than any levee construction we've ever done," he said.

If corps inspectors see sandy material coming from the local borrow pits, Mr. Wagner said, "they say, 'Don't even load that on the truck.' " When digging yields no clay, he said, they tell the contractors, "You're not getting any clay here — move on." And if subsequent inspection of a portion of levee shows that too much sand has been mixed in, "We're going to tell the contractor to go out and remove it," Mr. Wagner said.

Colonel Starkel said that even if the occasional truckload of sandy soil got into the mix, "is that the linchpin that's going to make it fail? No. It's a small piece" of a much larger project, he said.

The levees that failed here were the first line of defense for St. Bernard Parish, which took an enormous hit from Hurricane Katrina. The storm surge came directly across Lake Borgne from the hurricane as it passed to the east and slammed into the levee, crashing over the top and a second, locally maintained levee as well.

Working conditions at the remote, marshy site, where armadillos waddle along narrow spits of land, can be miserable. On a recent day, the mosquitoes were so thick that they seemed to form a vicious cloud. "We're going to get shirts that say 'blood center,' " Mr. Wagner said, "because we've donated so much to the mosquitoes."

Mr. Wagner has more than a professional interest in seeing the levees rebuilt well. He is a native of the St. Bernard Parish town of Chalmette, and like many of the people here, most of his family once lived close together. His in-laws' two-story home, he notes with wonder, had water above the kitchen counter — which may not be surprising, except for the fact that their kitchen is on the second floor. Now his family members are scattered, like the 70,000 others in the parish displaced from 28,000 homes. "We've got to work a whole lot harder to keep the family together now," he said.

Colonel Starkel said that the force of the hurricane, especially here, has been played down. From a boat, he pointed to Tower Dupré, a pre-Civil War era brickwork gun battery that had stood the test of time and pounding waves even as the receding shoreline left it standing in open water in Lake Borgne. Hurricane Katrina reduced it to rubble.

"On August 28, that was a pretty formidable structure," he said. "Now it's gonzo."

But even though long stretches of levee remained standing, a preliminary report published in November by the Berkeley group and a team from the American Society of Civil Engineers found inherent weaknesses in the crazy quilt of flood protection along the canal. Failures often occurred where one kind of flood protection, such as concrete floodwall, met a weaker type, such as earthen levee. The report also found that the line of defense was weakened by the use of "highly erodable sandy soils" in the levees.

The president of St. Bernard Parish, Henry Rodriguez Jr., said in a telephone interview that he had heard the talk of substandard repair, and recently received a briefing from the corps on the progress of the levee project. "I feel more comfortable with the situation," he said.

Mr. Rodriguez, who is living in a trailer behind the parish government offices, said he believed that the corps was working to blend soil that would do the job to protect his constituents. "Let me tell you something — they've got a lot of inspectors out there watching them," he said. "It's not like it was last time."

    Concern Over Soil Content As Levee Repairs Continue, NYT, 19.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/nationalspecial/19dirt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Celebrations

In Mardi Gras,

a City Learns to Party Again

February 19, 2006
The New York Times
By DAN BARRY

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 18 — Trumpets sounded, drums pounded and the feet of a city marched in place, tapping an anticipatory beat on asphalt. Someone gave the noontime signal for a parade to move forward, and it did: exuberant, silly, gaudy, giddy, diminished, defiant.

It could have been just another parade, even just another Mardi Gras parade. But Saturday's train of floats and marching bands — five parades that seemed to blend into one — was the joyous first step of this year's Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, and the first since Hurricane Katrina altered the physical and psychic landscape here nearly six months ago. Every tossed string of beads, every flipped plastic coin carried the weight of added meaning.

While this city tradition of celebration continued, things looked and felt different. The crowds were far thinner than usual, and not because the chilly day had the gray cast of a fish's belly. No more than 200,000 residents have returned to what had been a city of 465,000, and those who ventured to the parade route were joined by only a scattering of tourists. A sense of absence, though gradually lifting, still lingered.

"There's just not as many people in New Orleans anymore," Karen Giorlando said as she kept an eye on her nephew and niece, 8 and 5, whose home in the Lakeview neighborhood was flooded. "Now the parade's all about the kids. They're all stressed. They needed this."

Another example of the differences came with the first club to wheel its garish floats into view: the Krewe of Pontchartrain, as in Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters burst through levees to flood the city.

The krewe's members stood on the floats and tossed out plush toys shaped like grouper, a fish plentiful in the lake. People along St. Charles Avenue ignored the reminders of last year's deluge, calling out for the toys and receiving them with gratitude.

Following the Krewe of Pontchartrain was the Mystic Krewe of Shangri-La, whose founder and longtime captain, Mary Katherine Tusa, stood majestically on the first float, wearing a mask and a huge headdress of red feathers. Her krewe reflected both the damage done by the hurricane and the determination borne of it.

Ms. Tusa said her krewe usually had 26 floats; this year, it had 9. It also usually has 500 members participating; this year, it is 160, because so many members lived in Gentilly, the Ninth Ward and other neighborhoods devastated by the storm.

"They're all displaced, they're all over the place," she said. "I was against riding. I didn't think it was appropriate."

But Ms. Tusa said she gradually had a change of heart. "If this will help this city, come hell or high water, then I'm for the ride," she said. Moments later she was tossing beads with a silly but regal flair.

Few celebrations have caused as much communal doubt and self-examination as this year's Mardi Gras. Is it proper to revel in life when so many have died? Should the city's focus stray from rebuilding for trinkets, beads and silliness?

In the end, the answer became clear, even obvious, to most: Mardi Gras must continue. People reasoned that the local economy desperately needed the help that an extended street party would bring — as much as $1 billion in previous years — and that cultural traditions should be embraced. The city needs to laugh again, to dance again.

In addition, Mardi Gras shows the world that New Orleans is still New Orleans. Since the first celebration in 1857, the festivities have been canceled or severely curtailed 13 times, usually by wars or strikes, but the city refused to grant Hurricane Katrina the distinction of causing the 14th interruption.

Arthur Hardy, the publisher of an annual Mardi Gras guide, said he was being inundated with requests for comments by reporters and television crews from around the world. "We've never had this kind of coverage," Mr. Hardy said. "It's a real opportunity for the rest of the city to show itself."

He even suggested the news angle: "We're very much a tale of two cities. The message is, We're on our way back, but we still have a ways to go."

Just how far the city has to go was demonstrated by its hat-in-hand struggle to cover some of the costs of the revelry. Mardi Gras is a celebration by the people; they organize the clubs, or krewes, and pay for the floats and baubles. But the government still has to pay the police and sanitation costs — and this year, the city is all but broke.

City officials hired a company to attract sponsors, figuring that businesses with lucrative disaster-relief contracts would happily underwrite some of the expense. The effort elicited exactly one sponsor: Glad Products, which gave an unspecified six-figure donation and a gift of 100,000 garbage bags.

On Thursday, just two days before the first official parades, the City Council voted unanimously to spend $2.7 million on police overtime and other city services. It did not, however, indicate where exactly it would find that $2.7 million.

The city had little choice. Parades were planned, and people would still cry out for plastic doubloons hardly worth the expense of breath. Stores would still sell the king cake, in which an infant-like figure baked into it requires a warning: "Caution: Non-Edible Baby Figure Inside This Cake!"

But no one pretends that things are normal here, or that this is just another Mardi Gras. Parade routes have been shortened, the number of parade days cut. Tourism officials say that Mardi Gras usually attracts as many as 1.2 million visitors a year. This year they expect 700,000 at most, although they will not have a precise figure until the largest parades roll in the busy final days of Carnival, which concludes on Fat Tuesday, Feb. 28.

Today's modest parades, though, finally gave residents license to be silly — about the absence of people, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the crazed rhythms of life.

"We don't care if anybody else comes," shouted Diana Sanchez, 53, of the city's West Bank. "We're here for Mardi Gras."

Beside her was a smiling Pat Neie, 68, who one might argue had little to smile about. Her house on the West Bank was flooded, and she is living in a government trailer. "And it leaks," Ms. Neie said, keeping her smile.

Soon Ms. Sanchez, Ms. Neie and thousands of others were cheering, hooting and begging for trinkets as the parades of the krewes of Pontchartrain, Shangri-La, Pygmalion, Pegasus and Sparta rolled up Napoleon Avenue, turned right at the shuttered Copeland's of New Orleans restaurant and continued down St. Charles, along a route that still bears scars from the hurricane.

Leading the way was a band that included students from three different high schools: St. Mary's, flooded out; St. Augustine, flooded out; and Xavier Prep, spared. They combined their talents and marched as the MAX Band.

Men, women and children dressed in colorful tunics and conical hats leaned from floats and tossed strings of beads onto the streets. They twirled through the air and clattered onto the ground or into outstretched hands.

Most of the floats had gentle themes, like "God Bless New Orleans." A few, though, were sassier. One float bearing the likeness of Neptune read: "FEMA, God of the Sea — The One That's in Our Living Room."

The parades shuffled down St. Charles, where the storm-damaged power lines for the famous streetcars will not be ready until at least December. Krewe members hollered and waved as they passed restored homes and restaurants with "Now Hiring" signs and the Williams Super Market, once an emblem of devastation, now under renovation.

The route said: A lot of work remains for this city with no money. But the parades said: Yes, but this is Mardi Gras. Grab yourself some beads.

    In Mardi Gras, a City Learns to Party Again, NYT, 19.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/nationalspecial/19mardigras.html?hp&ex=1140411600&en=81d9636d04cecfa3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mardi Gras Set

for City Stripped of All but Pride

February 17, 2006
The New York Times
By DAN BARRY and ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 16 — With a purplish dusk settling over the city, a few workers in a hurricane-damaged warehouse daub the final garish touches on an armada of Mardi Gras floats. Any day now, these grotesqueries on wheels will roll through city streets, reminding all who see them to seize the day, for tomorrow we fast.

Across the rutted street from the warehouse, the workers can gaze at the railroad tracks and see an endless stretch of unspoiled white government trailers, sitting on flatcars like a broken string of oversize, colorless Mardi Gras beads. A different kind of grotesquerie on wheels, these trailers will be homes for the fortunate, reminding all who see them that six months after Hurricane Katrina, hard times, not good times, continue to roll in the great city of New Orleans.

The first Mardi Gras parade of 2006 will strut and shout up Napoleon Avenue and then along St. Charles on Saturday, trumpeting a plaintive, post-traumatic theme: "May God Bless New Orleans." This parade, and the more than two dozen to follow over the next 11 days, through Mardi Gras on Feb. 28, will wend through a city stripped of all but its pride in the wind and floodwaters.

The people on the floats will toss beads and plastic coins onto the New Orleans they love, but not quite the New Orleans they remember — a city where the famous plea of the Mardi Gras spectator, "Throw me something, mister," takes on a newer, more desperate meaning.

Fewer than half of the city's 465,000 residents have returned from the storm-induced diaspora — but more are coming home every day, and faster than expected. Still, many black residents are absent, suggesting a demographic and cultural shift in the offing for a city that now has more whites than blacks for the first time in decades.

The city government has no money, but chic restaurants hummed for Valentine's Day. About half the city's traffic lights remain out of order, but those working along Magazine Street control the growing traffic in Uptown. Garbage pickup is once a week, instead of twice, but the abandoned fetid refrigerators are long gone. Many homes have damaged electrical systems, but power is usually available once those homes are rewired.

In the French Quarter, you can have a café au lait and browse for antiques, and in Gentilly you can peer into the open windows and doors of deserted houses that look like rows of huge skulls.

This is New Orleans at Mardi Gras — a place where the parade route of the future is still unclear. The end of summer, all of autumn, and most of the winter have passed, but Hurricane Katrina continues to define nearly every aspect of life.

The heart-pounding tales of survival, and the heartbreaking stories of loss, have lost their dramatic drive somehow. "Let's get on with it," people here say.

One who exemplifies this attitude stands outside that warehouse jammed with Mardi Gras giddiness: Louis Massett, president of Massett & Company, float maker. The hurricane destroyed about 35,000 square feet of his work space, after which looters paid a visit, taking tractors, generators and just about every hand tool.

When he saw the devastation — including an oversize jester's head, crushed, and an oversize hand, mangled — Mr. Massett announced that he would not produce floats for the 2006 Mardi Gras. But he gradually changed his mind, he said, and now has to get out some 70 floats — fewer than the 200 he usually produces, but he is still in business.

Depending on where you wander, you can see businesses opening their doors, like flowers budding for a new spring. Near Tulane University, Yvonne LaFleur has been running the women's accessories shop that carries her name, while several neighboring stores remain shuttered. Broken glass dazzles the sidewalk near her palace of hats, gloves and gowns.

Things are different, Ms. LaFleur said. Employees have not returned. The postman delivers letters maybe twice a week, but never any catalogs. The only coffee to be bought is at a gas station. And although about 80 percent of her business has returned, more of it is done online. Those who do visit the shop share storm stories that she cannot help but carry home.

Business for Mardi Gras hats, gowns, and the long kid gloves, selling for $289 a pair, has been good. But, she said softly, "I have not seen any of my black debutante business."

Still, for every Yvonne LaFleur, there is a Rolando Duboue, owner of Royal Auto Parts in the Lower Ninth Ward, pointing to a water line nearly 10 feet high in his empty, echoing shop. For every Radio Shack open along Canal Street in the Central Business District, there is a closed Foot Locker.

And for every Magazine Street, there is a South Claiborne Avenue: RiteAid, Popeye's, Hit 'n' Run Liquors, McDonald's, Pizza Hut (with a sign that reads "izza ut"). Closed, closed, closed, closed, closed, on a road pointed toward the Superdome.

The sediment of unreality left in the hurricane's wake has yet to wash away. The city operates as if in a half-state between nightmare and full consciousness. It is a dreamy existence inconceivable to those living elsewhere, who believe that if the lights are on along Bourbon Street, then the city has returned to its unique state of normality.

The city government remains in financial distress, despite laying off nearly half its work force last fall. Nearly $200 million in the red, it has yet to resume full property tax collection and is being kept afloat partly by loans from sympathetic bankers who have provided about $75 million.

"And we're going to them again," says Greg Meffert, the city's chief technology officer and a top aide to Mayor C. Ray Nagin. "We're like, 'Dude, we're starving.' "

The criminal justice system, a part of the social contract normally taken for granted, sometimes seems to border on collapse. The courts building, the parish prison and the police headquarters have been unusable since the flood. At least 300 police officers, flooded from their homes, have been living on a couple of docked cruise ships that are set to sail in a couple of weeks. Parking meters are little more than curbside adornments, and jury trials are months away, awaiting courtrooms and a pool of jurors.

For now, a prisoner's first appearance before a judge takes place in the grimy basement of the old city jail in Mid-City. The judge, in shirt-sleeves, walks to the back of the room to address prisoners who are lined up against a wall that still bears a five-foot-high waterline. The assistant district attorney, in a leather jacket and jeans, reads off the charges while chewing gum — casual even by New Orleans standards.

The public defender's office usually represents 80 percent of the defendants in this impoverished city, but only 7 of its 42 lawyers have returned. The system's inability to provide the constitutional right to counsel forced a Criminal Court judge last week to suspend all cases involving public defenders, and other judges may follow suit.

"It's a total breakdown of the state criminal justice system," says Arthur A. Lemann III, a defense lawyer here. "It's incredible. I think they have better facilities in Afghanistan. It's a circus."

Other cornerstones of a normal society remain cracked.

Many school buildings, like the Louis Armstrong Elementary School in the Lower Ninth Ward, sit empty and mud-caked, like settings for teenage horror movies. Of the 117 schools in the city's scandal-plagued, underperforming system, only 19 will be open by Mardi Gras — and most of those as charter schools, wrested from school officials by determined parents.

Only three of the city's seven hospitals are open, and only a third of the area's doctors have returned, according to one recent survey. Before the storm, the metropolitan area had just over 5,000 hospital beds, but now that number is below 2,000.

It seems that each new day presents another story of how government does wrong by New Orleans, from the failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina to the inability to get those trailers to people who need them.

In the poor St. Claude neighborhood, young men shooting a ball through a bent hoop joke about the flashes of white they see across the railroad tracks. "Ain't stopping here," the men say, as they linger in the ghost town that was their childhood home.

A damaged infrastructure, a flawed governmental response, an absence of some familiar faces, the pervading sense of loss — all this might give the impression of a city in surrender. That impression would be false.

Evidence of communal determination is reflected in the joggers in Audubon Park, the workers fixing a storm-damaged U-Haul sign, the "Welcome Home" messages adorning the Times-Picayune newspaper boxes. More telling, though, is that the determination is found in places hardest hit by the hurricane, including neighborhoods that one day might have to prove their ability to survive to city officials considering what to salvage and what to abandon.

These days, Gentilly is mostly a neighborhood of absence, with rows of deserted houses that take on a haunted quality once night falls. But on Music Street, a light shines in the gutted home of Karry and Deanna Causey, a middle-class couple in their mid-40's who have become pioneers in their neighborhood of 14 years.

Flooded out and scattered to faraway places, they returned to a corrupted home that posed the question: What now? They decided to gut and rebuild, while they and their three children lived in one of those white trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Electricians and drywall workers drill and bang out a reconfigured Causey home that will include an extra 500 square feet for an upstairs den.

They know they will not see any neighbors for another six months, but they also know that neighbors will return.

"We don't like giving up," Mrs. Causey said. "Everything has changed, nothing has changed. Does that make sense?"

That sentiment is echoed in the Lakeview neighborhood, where the breach in the 17th Street Canal inundated this mostly white, mostly middle-class community with the waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Much of Lakeview remains deserted, although cropping up on lawns are little signs that say, "We're Coming Home to Lakeview."

These words are meant to signal to those who are undecided about returning that this neighbor is coming back, and this neighbor, and this neighbor.

Among those returning is Charles Young, 63, a professional fund-raiser whose home of 31 years accepted seven feet of water that swallowed family heirlooms, family pictures, a family's way of life.

As he stands in what had been the living room, in the house where he and his wife, Sandy, raised and married off three daughters, Mr. Young chokes up — "I'm getting a little emotional, I'm sorry" — but soon regains his composure and optimism. His plan, he says: bulldoze, rebuild, remain.

Mr. Young says that, by the way, he is a lieutenant in the Hermes Krewe, a social club that is organizing a Mardi Gras parade for next Friday. Which makes him think: He has to remind a son-in-law to get a "set of tails" for next week's Hermes ball.

The very thought of Mardi Gras — of worrying about a set of tails — in a city just emerging from a coma may seem odd, even inappropriate, to outsiders. But many people here say it will help the gasping economy, maintain a cherished tradition, and provide a welcome, if temporary, distraction.

This does not mean the event is free of awkwardness. Carl Henry, 42, is a member of the all-black Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, one of the oldest and liveliest organizations in the Mardi Gras pantheon. Like so many others, including some of his Zulu colleagues, he is also a hurricane victim cum survivor: nine feet of water in his East New Orleans home. He and his family know the confines of a trailer.

For 20 years he has taken part in Zulu's Mardi Gras parade, tossing trinkets, called throws, from the floats, strutting, laughing. But this year he will not join the parade because, he says, "It's not the right time."

"I don't feel comfortable," Mr. Henry says. "The money I would spend on trinkets I would put to better use for me and my family. That's just my situation."

Still, when Zulu conducts its post-parade march up Orleans Avenue, past the deserted shotgun houses, past the shuttered doors of the Dooky Chase restaurant, past the "Now Open" banner of the Busy Bee food store, Mr. Henry will be at the club, waiting to welcome his brothers home.

    Mardi Gras Set for City Stripped of All but Pride, NYT, 17.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/national/nationalspecial/17orleans.html

For Want of Money,

Remains of Some Hurricane Victims

Are Not Collected

February 17, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 16 — There are no longer corpses in plain sight, as there were for days after Hurricane Katrina hit. But nearly six months after the storm, officials believe there are still dozens of unrecovered bodies in New Orleans. They even have a pretty good idea where they are.

But no one is looking for them.

Instead, they have been left in muck-filled houses or piles of debris for family members to stumble upon. Last Saturday, for example, Alicia and Herman Robertson found their nephew, Kendrick Smith, in the bedroom where he had lain face down since the storm.

Family members, scattered to Houston, San Antonio and Ville Platte, La., said they had repeatedly asked the authorities to go by the house, at 2305 Flood Street, to look for Mr. Smith, 31. "The city never done nothing," Mr. Robertson said. "It was horrible to see one's loved one laid out like that."

Based on reports from family members, officials have compiled a list of 225 addresses in the Ninth Ward whose residents are still missing. But the search has become snarled in yet another tangle over agency jurisdiction and cost.

The New Orleans Fire Department's urban search and rescue team began combing the Ninth Ward in early October, but stopped two months later when money for overtime ran out, Steven P. Glynn, the chief of special operations for the department, said. "The superintendent had to decide whether to continue that operation or provide adequate fire protection," he said.

The process of "clearing" a house from the list is not simple, Chief Glynn said. Even if the house is still standing, furniture must be removed and as much as two feet of mud shoveled out before searchers can be certain no body is there. For those houses that have collapsed, the current plan is to have a search-and-rescue team work alongside the Army Corps of Engineers, which is charged with debris clearance and cleanup.

Chief Glynn said that he had explained the situation to at least half a dozen officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but that he had yet to get a promise of money for more searches, which would cost about $400,000 for three months.

Nicol Andrews, a spokeswoman for FEMA, said the Fire Department had not filled out a "formal project worksheet" requesting money. But, Ms. Andrews said, "by all accounts, this is something FEMA absolutely would pay for."

The wait is maddening, said Chief Glynn, a third-generation New Orleans firefighter. "It's really not the dead, because you can't do much for those people," he said. "It's the families, who are living with this."

Some of those families have given DNA samples to the state, called the police and tried to search themselves. Lamont Marrero, 26, believes his mother, who was partly paralyzed, is still in her Ninth Ward home, but when he tried to enter, he found the iron security doors rusted shut.

"We don't have any answers at all," Mr. Marrero said. "We don't know anything. That's the only thing left to do, is search the house."

    For Want of Money, Remains of Some Hurricane Victims Are Not Collected, NYT, 17.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/national/nationalspecial/17bodies.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Barge a contentious symbol

of Hurricane Katrina

USA TODAY
Posted 2/17/2006 12:24 AM
Updated 2/17/2006 1:20 AM
By Anne Rochell Konigsmark

NEW ORLEANS — Presidents and royalty have visited it. It's been photographed and marked over with graffiti. And it's at the heart of lawsuits and investigations.

Almost six months after Hurricane Katrina, a mammoth red barge, an enduring symbol of the storm, still sits in the middle of what's left of the Lower 9th Ward. The wayward vessel got there after tearing loose from its moorings and riding a torrent of floodwater into the neighborhood, coming to rest on top of houses, fences and the nose of a yellow school bus.

"It tells the story," says Gen. Hunt Downer of the Louisiana Army National Guard. Downer regularly takes politicians, media and other visitors to devastated areas, and always includes the barge on his tours. "And if you let your mind wander, you ask, 'How are they going to get it out of here?' "

Ingram Barge Company, the barge owner, knows how to remove it, but because of several lawsuits, the Nashville company has been waiting for clearance from a federal court. Approval came this week; soon, Ingram will begin cutting the 200-foot-long barge into pieces to be hauled away on trucks.

Class-action lawsuits claim the barge caused the Industrial Canal levee breach because it wasn't tied down properly before Katrina. The suits target Lafarge North America, which had chartered the barge from Ingram to take cement to New Orleans from the Midwest.

Lafarge says storm surge breached the levee and the barge flowed through the hole. Several experts agree, including Raymond Seed, an engineering professor from the University of California, Berkeley, who was part of a team investigating the levees for the National Science Foundation. "It is our preliminary opinion that the infamous large barge was drawn in through a breach that was already open," he told the Senate in November.

Robert Evans, attorney for the plaintiffs in a class-action suit, says he has an eyewitness who saw the barge break through the wall.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has concluded that a barge could cause a levee failure, but it does not know yet if the Ingram barge caused the breach that flooded the Lower 9th Ward. "It's like an airplane crash — it takes awhile to put all the pieces together and figure out what happened," corps spokesman Wayne Stroupe says.

Ingram's barge was one of thousands of vessels that broke loose during the Aug. 29 storm. The Coast Guard said it is salvaging 3,000 vessels that are blocking roads or shipping channels. Thousands more — on roadsides, atop earthen levees and in the woods — are the owners' responsibility, says Coast Guard Lt. Commander Cheri Ben-Aesau. That includes the Ingram barge.

In a matter of weeks, Ingram will salvage the top of the barge. But for now, the barge remains in its surreal tableau, stirring up sadness, amazement and anger in those who come to see it. Visitors have included President Bush, first lady Laura Bush, former president Bill Clinton, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, King Abdullah of Jordan, Prince Charles of England and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson.

Security guard Mark Young, hired by Ingram to watch the barge, says between 100 and 300 people visit daily.

"You don't believe it until you see it," says Sarah Kropidlowski, who came to New Orleans with a church group from Wisconsin to gut and clean out homes.

    Barge a contentious symbol of Hurricane Katrina, UT, 17.2.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-17-barge-katrina_x.htm

Rebuilding New Orleans,

One Appeal at a Time

February 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 4 — Every day the line snakes down a spartan corridor on the eighth floor of City Hall here, as hundreds of people clutch a piece of paper inscribed with a fateful percentage that could force them to abandon their home.

The number is always over 50, and it means a house was so damaged in the flooding after Hurricane Katrina — more than half-ruined — that it faces demolition, unless the owner can come up with tens of thousands of dollars to raise it several feet above the ground and any future floodwaters.

But there is a way out, and that is why so many people stand in line every day, collectively transforming this half-ruined city. "What you need to do is talk to a building inspector and get that lowered below 50 percent," a city worker calls out to the crowd. And at the end of the line, in a large open room down the hall, that is exactly what happens, nearly 90 percent of the time, New Orleans officials say.

By agreeing so often to these appeals — more than 6,000 over the last few months — city officials are in essence allowing random redevelopment to occur throughout the city, undermining a plan by Mayor C. Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission to hold off on building permits in damaged areas for several months until more careful planning can take place. That plan, greeted by widespread opposition, including from the mayor himself, is now essentially dead.

House by house, in devastated neighborhoods across the city, homeowners are bringing back their new-minted building permits and rebuilding New Orleans. As many as 500 such permits are issued every day, said Greg Meffert, the city official in charge of the rebuilding process.

And there is no particular rhyme or reason to who gets a permit, or consideration of whether their neighborhoods can really support its previous residents. One city building inspector, Devra Goldstein, called the proceedings on the eighth floor "really fly-by-night, chaotic, Wild West, get-what-you-want."

The floor, she said, represents "a plan by default."

It is also testament to the fierce desire of many displaced New Orleanians to re-establish themselves, no matter the odds.

"They told us, if things look close, chances are we can get the assessment lowered below 50 percent, and we can start rebuilding," said George Aguillard, a 65-year-old retired longshoreman waiting patiently in the largely African-American crowd at City Hall.

"At my age, there's no starting over in a new house," said Mr. Aguillard, a resident of the flooded Pontchartrain Park neighborhood. His damage assessment came in at 52.13 percent.

But there may be a steep price to the city's largess in allowing so many people to move back into flood plains without having to elevate their homes. Past federal flood insurance directors say the practice violates the program, which established the 50-percent rule to guide safe building in flood-prone areas. Most communities have adopted it as a minimum standard, say officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the flood program.

In exchange for heavily-subsidized flood insurance for residents, the program expects cities to insist on flood-resistant construction. Some cities that violate the flood rules have been ousted from the insurance program, putting thousands of residents at huge risk.

"They should be suspended, absolutely," said J. Robert Hunter, a former head of the federal flood-insurance program who is now director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. "You can't fake it," he said. "I sympathize with these people. But you shouldn't say 'Well, you're poor, therefore you can build in a dangerous place where you can be flooded again, and killed.' "

He added, "You can't destroy the flood program to achieve a short-term goal."

Another early director of federal flood insurance, George K. Bernstein, was equally critical, saying the practice of reducing flood damage percentages was "just ripping off taxpayers."

"If New Orleans is phonying the damage reports so as to allow inadequate construction, they ought to get thrown out of the program," he said.

FEMA officials say they are keeping a close watch on New Orleans but consider the city to be following the rules.

"I understand they have a process in place," said Michael Buckley, deputy director for mitigation at FEMA. "I wouldn't characterize it as a process to change the determination." Mr. Buckley said he was "not aware" of any large-scale downsizing of damage assessments.

But up on the eighth floor, the downward revisions are over in a matter of minutes. "It was pretty smooth," said Charles Harris, an Orleans Parish sheriff's deputy who had four feet of water in his eastern New Orleans home, and whose percentage of damage was changed to 47 from 52. "They were really helpful. I thought it was going to be a combative thing. I was ready to put on my shield. It wasn't like that at all."

Kevin François, an air-conditioning repairman with a house that was rated as 52 percent damaged, said, "It was basically an in-and-out process." He, left City Hall with a number several points less than 50.

Mr. Meffert, the city official, said the initial assessments sometimes contained errors. Homeowners have to justify any changes to their damage assessments, he said, and must provide the details of their rebuilding plans. "What's swinging the vote is, 'I'm going to do it this way,' " he said.

But some leaving City Hall here are still in a pugnacious mood, despite the friendly reception. "I didn't give them a chance," Florestine Jalvia said proudly, having brought her assessment down to 47 percent damaged from 52.5 percent. A tougher stand on rebuilding would have probably engendered the same kind of reaction as the now-defunct four-month moratorium idea. "I think the city is trying to avoid a major public fight," said Ms. Goldstein, the building inspector.

Out in the once-flooded neighborhoods, there is feverish activity, at intervals. Those hard at work scoff at the commission's idea of holding off on rebuilding until it becomes clearer which areas have a chance of coming back.

"I'm not listening to that, man," said Kristopher Winder, as he finished gutting his mother's house in the Gentilly neighborhood. He had brought it back down to its frame. Down the street, signs in front of one house carry defiant messages: "We're rebuilding, and don't try to stop us!" reads one, and "There's no place like home" reads another.

"I thought, when they said that four-month thing, I thought that was crazy," Mr. Winder said. "I was mad. I thought it didn't make no sense."

"I'm working on this house," he said. "She's going to be up and running in three to four months."

    Rebuilding New Orleans, One Appeal at a Time, NYT, 5.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/nationalspecial/05rebuild.html?hp&ex=1139115600&en=fce11f0ffd058597&ei=5094&partner=homepage

New Orleans Facing Election

and New Order

February 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 2 — In great confusion and peculiar circumstances, this city has suddenly found itself in the midst of an unexpected mayoral election campaign. The result may once again upend this city's old order: a white man might be elected mayor in a city that was, until a few months ago, mostly black.

That outcome would have been undreamed of before the hurricane, but the high probability of one of Louisiana's most potent political families entering a race that almost didn't happen could further transform a political calculus that has prevailed here for nearly three decades.

Mitch Landrieu, the state's lieutenant governor and son of the city's last white mayor — Moon Landrieu, who left office in 1978 — is expected to announce any day his entry into a race that will help define a radically reshaped city.

Among other opponents, he will face Mayor C. Ray Nagin, whose popularity here and elsewhere has withered under criticism of his performance during Hurricane Katrina and his recent remarks about the future racial makeup of the city.

Business leaders and ordinary citizens here are already following this nascent contest with unusual intensity, but no potential candidacy has generated more conversation than Mr. Landrieu's. His family has long been popular among both the city's black voters and the Uptown white liberals.

Moon Landrieu brought blacks into city politics for the first time since Reconstruction. His daughter Mary, the United States senator, a rare white Southern Democrat, was narrowly re-elected in 2002 thanks to support from black voters. Mitch Landrieu himself, in years representing an Uptown New Orleans district in the State Legislature, was an unusual Louisiana politician who straddled the racial divide.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Landrieu was one of a handful of white state legislators who distanced themselves from the ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, when Mr. Duke was elected to the state House from Metairie. Mr. Landrieu denounced Mr. Duke while other white lawmakers, particularly Republicans, embraced him. That stance solidified his support among blacks.

But if Mr. Landrieu, 45, becomes mayor, he will be elected by a very different coalition than the one that put his relatives in office: whites, not blacks, would likely give him his key boost. The storm shattered the city's old demographics, sending tens of thousands of black residents into exile and leaving a mostly white city.

Though scattered residents would be encouraged to vote by absentee ballot, the process will almost certainly be chaotic, particularly since many voters will be hard to find. There would be a strong temptation to read his presence in the race, and any popularity he achieves, as a symbol of the changed electorate.

And yet in one of the paradoxes that help define this city's unusual political complexion, Mr. Landrieu is viewed by some influential black leaders as a less racially divisive figure than Mr. Nagin, a black man who owed his victory four years ago to prosperous white voters. The candidate Mr. Nagin defeated in 2002 drew far more support from working-class blacks than the mayor; these same voters are now among the most uneasy about the way New Orleans is reconfiguring itself.

Mr. Nagin has always been regarded with suspicion by much of the black community, and that has never been truer than now. The mayor's recovery commission, comprised largely of white businessmen, has been criticized for proposals that could have the effect of shrinking the city, to the disadvantage of blacks.

At the same time, the white reaction to Mr. Nagin's Martin Luther King Day speech, in which he called for the return of New Orleans as a "chocolate city," was intensely disapproving, with editorialists and business figures thundering against it. The mayor may have done himself little good with black voters, either.

"Blacks didn't rally around the speech because they didn't think it was genuine," said Cedric Richmond, a state representative from New Orleans who is the head of the Legislative Black Caucus.

Mr. Richmond predicted that in a runoff between Mr. Landrieu and Mr. Nagin, Mr. Landrieu would win handily, with significant black support.

Another leading black politician here, Oliver Thomas, the City Council president, expressed similar sentiments: "Given the relationship the current mayor has had for the last four years with everybody," he said, "I think every vote is up for grabs."

Some political experts believe the power of Mr. Landrieu's name will be enough to draw a biracial coalition similar to the ones the Landrieus have been assembling for years. His record in 16 years in the legislature is regarded as modest, with his most notable accomplishment a drive to reform the scandal-ridden juvenile justice system. Yet the family's commitment to civil rights, going back to a lonely stand by his father against segregationist bills in the 1960 legislature, is seen as trumping all.

"The Landrieu factor is huge," said Wayne Parent, a Louisiana State University political scientist. "Mitch Landrieu, because of his name recognition and previous support, will be a favorite, a clear favorite." The job itself would probably make any candidate hesitate. With New Orleans broke, still half-ruined from Hurricane Katrina and desperate for more federal help, race may matter less than a candidate's willingness to take on the federal government in speeding aid to the area.

At the same time, questions about the legitimacy of holding an election at a time when so many residents are out of town have hovered for months. At first, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco indefinitely postponed the vote, originally scheduled for this month.

That unpopular decision spawned a flurry of lawsuits, and last month the state, under pressure from a federal judge, agreed to a primary election on April 22, with a possible runoff May 20. The state has promised a campaign to publicize it in cities around the country, along with a mass mailing of absentee ballots. But that has not quelled some doubts.

"I'm all for having elections, but I want to make sure that they're fair elections," the mayor said on Wednesday. "And the fact that, as mayor of the city of New Orleans, I still do not have the FEMA list that will allow me to communicate with my citizens who are spread out over 44 different states to at least let them know that they can come back causes me to pause as far as whether we can have fair elections or not."

Mr. Richmond, the legislator, acknowledged the concerns, but said redefining the city's leadership was paramount. "I think we need to have an election," he said, "because we need to have leadership we don't have now. The city is racially divided. We need to bring the races together."

    New Orleans Facing Election and New Order, NYT, 3.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/national/nationalspecial3/03elect.html?hp&ex=1139029200&en=e95a3f4cadbc6221&ei=5094&partner=homepage

FEMA to open apartments to displaced New Orleanians

USA TODAY
Posted 1/30/2006 11:04 PM
By Anne Rochell Konigsmark

NEW ORLEANS — The federal government, criticized for taking too long to provide trailers to those made homeless by Hurricane Katrina, will give some New Orleanians rent-free apartments instead.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency plans this week to start housing displaced people in 325 apartments left empty when Katrina triggered a massive evacuation of the city. If the pilot program works, FEMA may house as many as 20,000 individuals and families in apartments.

The apartments would be free for at least 18 months. FEMA provides small travel trailers to Americans made homeless by disasters and typically doesn't use existing homes or apartments, but to tackle the nation's largest-ever temporary housing need, FEMA is bending its own rules.

"We had a dilemma down here," said Lee Champagne, FEMA's deputy federal coordinating officer for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "We are placing about 500 trailers a day, but at that rate, we will have housed only half the eligible families by March."

All of the apartments were storm-damaged but have or will be repaired before FEMA assigns them to people.

Greater New Orleans Inc., a non-profit organization that promotes local businesses, proposed the plan to FEMA. About 20,000 of the 45,000 apartment units in New Orleans were damaged, said Barbara Johnson, GNO's senior vice president. All of the undamaged apartments are 100% leased, she said, and that's why FEMA is targeting those that were damaged.

"Our No. 1 economic development issue is housing," Johnson said. "Our critical industries — health care, manufacturing, the convention business — need workers, but there is this huge bottleneck because of the lack of housing."

With FEMA promising occupancy for more than a year, apartment owners have an incentive to get financing to make necessary repairs, she said.

New Orleans City Council members, the mayor and local businesses have complained on numerous occasions that FEMA has been slow in its delivery of trailers, which cost at least $58,000 to buy and install. That's $3,300 a month if someone keeps the trailer for 18 months. The apartments will cost FEMA an average of $1,000 a month, Champagne said.

    FEMA to open apartments to displaced New Orleanians, UT, 30.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-30-fema-apartments_x.htm

Study Says

80% of New Orleans Blacks

May Not Return

January 27, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — New Orleans could lose as much as 80 percent of its black population if its most damaged neighborhoods are not rebuilt and if there is not significant government assistance to help poor people return, a detailed analysis by Brown University has concluded.

Combining data from the 2000 census with federal damage assessment maps, the study provides a new level of specificity about Hurricane Katrina's effect on the city's worst-flooded areas, which were heavily populated by low-income black people.

Of the 354,000 people who lived in New Orleans neighborhoods where the subsequent damage was moderate to severe, 75 percent were black, 29 percent lived below the poverty line, more than 10 percent were unemployed, and more than half were renters, the study found.

The report's author, John R. Logan, concluded that as much as 80 percent of the city's black population might not return for several reasons: their neighborhoods would not be rebuilt, they would be unable to afford the relocation costs, or they would put down roots in other cities.

For similar reasons, as much as half of the city's white population might not return, Dr. Logan concluded.

"The continuing question about the hurricane is this: Whose city will be rebuilt?" Dr. Logan, a professor of sociology, writes in the report.

If the projections are realized, the New Orleans population will shrink to about 140,000 from its prehurricane level of 484,000, and the city, nearly 70 percent black before the storm, will become majority white.

The study, financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation, was released Thursday, 10 days after the mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, who is black, told an audience that "this city will be a majority African-American city; it's the way God wants it to be."

Mr. Nagin's remark was widely viewed as an effort to address criticism of a proposal by his own rebuilding panel, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, that calls for a four-month building moratorium in heavily damaged areas. He said later that he had not meant to suggest that white people would not be encouraged to return.

"Certainly Mayor Nagin's comments reflected a concern on the ground about the future of the city," Dr. Logan said. "My report shows that there is a basis for that concern."

The study coincides with growing uncertainty about what government assistance will be available for property owners and renters. Louisiana will receive $6.2 billion in federal block grants under an aid package approved by Congress in December, part of which will be used to help homeowners. But that will not be enough money to help all property owners in storm-damaged areas, Louisiana officials say.

Those officials have urged Congress to enact legislation proposed by Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, creating a corporation that would use bond proceeds to reimburse property owners for part of their mortgages, then redevelop the property. But the Bush administration has said it opposes the bill, out of concerns that it would be too expensive and would create a new government bureaucracy.

Asked Thursday about his opposition to the measure, President Bush told reporters that the $85 billion already allocated for Gulf Coast restoration was "a good start." He added that he was concerned that Louisiana did not have a clear recovery plan in place.

But Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, a Democrat who has clashed frequently with the White House, said Mr. Baker's bill provided a clear plan.

"Administration officials do not understand the suffering of the people of Louisiana," Ms. Blanco said in a statement.

Demographers are divided over the likelihood of a drastic shift in New Orleans's population. William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who has studied the hurricane's impact on the city, called Dr. Logan's projections "a worst-case scenario that will come about only if these evacuees see that they have no voice in what is going on."

But Dr. Frey also said low-income evacuees might indeed begin to put down roots in cities like Houston or Dallas if they did not see movement toward reconstruction in the next six months.

Elliott B. Stonecipher, a political consultant and demographer from Shreveport, La., said that unless New Orleans built housing in flood-protected areas for low-income residents, and also provided support for poor people to relocate, chances were good that many low-income blacks would not return.

"If they didn't have enough resources to get out before the storm," Mr. Stonecipher said, "how can we expect them to have the wherewithal to return?"

    Study Says 80% of New Orleans Blacks May Not Return, NYT, 27.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/national/nationalspecial/27orleans.html

Katrina aid falls short,

Blanco says

Posted 1/25/2006 11:37 PM
USA TODAY
By Oren Dorell
and Anne Rochell Konigsmark

Storm-ravaged areas of Louisiana will get $6.2 billion in federal relief funds in a controversial plan that recommends giving the money to a small fraction of homeowners affected by the storm.

Donald Powell, President Bush's coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, suggested that money from the government's funding grant, announced Wednesday, be doled out to roughly 20,000 homeowners who weren't in a flood zone and did not have flood insurance when Hurricane Katrina hit. State officials must draw up plans for disbursing the money and get federal approval. Louisiana officials had proposed a far more ambitious $30 billion initiative to rebuild ruined areas and said the government's relief effort would exclude at least 140,000 homes.

"It simply will not work," said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, adding that she won't use the money as the White House recommends. "We are not in the business of choosing between our citizens."

Powell told reporters the money should go to homeowners without flood insurance who lived outside the area where federal officials thought flooding would occur. Under that proposal, homeowners who lived inside the flood zone and did not buy flood insurance would not be eligible for the federal funds.

Four other states affected by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma also will get relief money from the grant, Powell said. Alabama will receive $74 million; Florida, $83 million; Mississippi, $5.1 billion; and Texas, $74 million.

Areas that were severely hit by the storm, including large portions of New Orleans and nearly all of St. Bernard Parish, would be excluded from the compensation plan.

Blanco spoke at a news conference in Baton Rouge with Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., architect of a proposal for the federal government to buy and later resell damaged homes. The White House rejected the plan, but Baker said Wednesday, "I've had inquiries from the House and the Senate in the last 48 hours for more information on the bill." He said he has passed bills before that initially were rejected by the White House.

Blanco said she appreciates the government's effort, but "they've almost designed this as a prescription for failure. ... They gave us a ladder but took away the top two rungs."

In Mississippi, where 65,000 homes were left uninhabitable by the storm, authorities expect to be ready to accept applications for federal funds from homeowners in about a month, said Scott Hamilton, spokesman for the Mississippi Development Authority.

Mississippi plans to spend about $4 billion on homeowner assistance and the rest on public works, transportation and economic development. People who accept federal money will have to abide by new, stricter building codes and new Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps, which might mean they will have to elevate their homes to rebuild, Hamilton said.

Powell said the government is leaving the door open for more money, should the grant not be enough.

    Katrina aid falls short, Blanco says, NYT, 25.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-25-katrina-aid_x.htm

White House Declines

to Provide Storm Papers

January 25, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.

The White House this week also formally notified Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, that it would not support his legislation creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said the state would have to use community development money appropriated by Congress.

The White House's stance on storm-related documents, along with slow or incomplete responses by other agencies, threatens to undermine efforts to identify what went wrong, Democrats on the committees said Tuesday.

"There has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said at Tuesday's hearing of the Senate committee investigating the response. His spokeswoman said he would ask for a subpoena for documents and testimony if the White House did not comply.

In response to questions later from a reporter, the deputy White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration had declined requests to provide testimony by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Mr. Card's deputy, Joe Hagin; Frances Fragos Townsend, the domestic security adviser; and her deputy, Ken Rapuano.

Mr. Duffy said the administration had also declined to provide storm-related e-mail correspondence and other communications involving White House staff members. Mr. Rapuano has given briefings to the committees, but the sessions were closed to the public and were not considered formal testimony.

"The White House and the administration are cooperating with both the House and Senate," Mr. Duffy said. "But we have also maintained the president's ability to get advice and have conversations with his top advisers that remain confidential."

Yet even Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, objected when administration officials who were not part of the president's staff said they could not testify about communications with the White House.

"I completely disagree with that practice," Ms. Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in an interview Tuesday.

According to Mr. Lieberman, Michael D. Brown, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, cited such a restriction on Monday, as agency lawyers had advised him not to say whether he had spoken to President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or to comment on the substance of any conversations with any other high-level White House officials.

Nevertheless, both Ms. Collins and Representative Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican who is leading the House inquiry, said that despite some frustration with the administration's response, they remained confident that the investigations would produce meaningful results.

Other members of the committees said the executive branch communications were essential because it had become apparent that one of the most significant failures was the apparent lack of complete engagement by the White House and the federal government in the days immediately before and after the storm.

"When you have a natural disaster, the president needs to be hands-on, and if anyone in his staff gets in the way, he needs to push them away," said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican and member of the House investigating committee. "The response was pathetic."

Even before the House and Senate investigations began, Democrats called for the appointment of an independent commission, like the one set up after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to investigate the response to the most costly natural disaster in United States history. The 9/11 Commission, after extensive negotiations, questioned Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and received sworn testimony from Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser.

"Our fears are turning out to be accurate," Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said Tuesday. "The Bush administration is stonewalling the Congress."

Mr. Duffy, along with officials from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, said that although not every request had been met, the administration had provided an enormous amount of detailed information about nearly every aspect of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Department of Defense, for example, has provided 18 officials for testimony, and 57 others have been interviewed by Congressional staff members, said Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman. It has also turned over an estimated 240,000 pages of documents.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said his agency, which oversees FEMA, had been similarly responsive, providing 60 officials as witnesses and producing 300,000 pages of documents.

But the White House and other federal agencies have been less helpful, members of the investigating committees said, particularly the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is the subject of the sole subpoena issued so far.

"We have been trying - without success - to obtain Secretary Rumsfeld's cooperation for months," Representative Charlie Melancon, Democrat of Louisiana, said in a letter to Representative Davis on Monday. "The situation is not acceptable."

Mr. Davis, in a written response to Mr. Melancon on Tuesday, said he felt that the Pentagon, after the subpoena, had largely honored the committee's requests.

The Congressional investigations began in September, shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, flooding New Orleans, devastating much of the rest of the region and causing more than $100 billion in damage.

Both of the committees are rushing to try to complete their investigations - the House by Feb. 15, and the Senate by the middle of March - in part because of the approaching Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 1.

The separate action this week by the Bush administration to oppose an effort to create what would have been called the Louisiana Recovery Corporation evoked great disappointment among state officials.

Mr. Baker's bill would have bought out owners of ruined homes, offering them at least 60 percent of their pre-storm equity, while also giving mortgage companies 60 percent of their loans on damaged properties. The bonds needed for the project would have been paid off through the sale of federally acquired land to developers.

"The Baker bill as a tool was very efficient in terms of helping people sell out, or clear title to the land," said Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. "We're going to have to go back to the drawing board and do the best with the tools we have."

Donald E. Powell, the Bush administration's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator, said in a statement that the government was prepared to help victims in other ways.

"We share the common vision, the common objective of Congressman Baker, to assist uninsured homeowners outside the flood plain," Mr. Powell said.

Mr. Powell's spokeswoman, D. J. Nordquist, said the administration was open to discussion if the community development money turned out to be insufficient.

Adam Nossiter contributed reporting from New Orleans for this article.

    White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers, NYT, 25.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/politics/25katrina.html

White House Was Told

Hurricane Posed Danger

January 24, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater, forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be released Tuesday by Senate investigators show.

A Homeland Security Department report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, "Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."

The internal department documents, which were forwarded to the White House, contradict statements by President Bush and the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, that no one expected the storm protection system in New Orleans to be breached.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," Mr. Bush said in a television interview on Sept. 1. "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

Other documents to be released Tuesday show that the weekend before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Homeland Security Department officials predicted that its impact would be worse than a doomsday-like emergency planning exercise conducted in Louisiana in July 2004.

In that drill, held because of common knowledge that New Orleans was susceptible to hurricane-driven flooding, emergency planners predicted that in a Category 3 storm, one million people would be forced to move away, 17 percent of the nation's oil refining capacity would be knocked out and as many as 60,000 lives might be lost.

"Exercise projection is exceeded by Hurricane Katrina real-life impacts," the Aug. 27 department report said, two days before the storm hit New Orleans.

The loss of life in Hurricane Katrina was far less - at least 1,350 deaths have been confirmed so far - but the estimated number of dislocated residents was not far off.

A White House spokesman, asked about the seeming contradiction between Mr. Bush's statement on Sept. 1 and the warning as the storm approached, said the president meant to say that once the storm passed and it initially looked as if New Orleans had gotten through the hurricane without catastrophic damage, no one anticipated at that point that the levees would be breached.

The Senate investigators have also found evidence that at least some federal and state officials were aware last summer that the hurricane evacuation planning in the New Orleans area was incomplete.

"We're at less than 10 percent done with this trans planning when you consider the buses and the people," said a summary of a July briefing held with local, state and federal officials regarding a possible hurricane in Louisiana and referring to transportation planning. "If you think soup lines in the Depression were long, wait til you see the lines at these collection points," the summary said, referring to buses that were supposed to help pick up people to evacuate New Orleans.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who is chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that despite such evidence, officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency had told investigators that leading up to Hurricane Katrina they believed that local and state governments could handle the evacuation on their own.

"It is another example of a lack of coordination and planning and a disconnect between what the FEMA officials' perception was and what the reality was facing state and local officials," Ms. Collins said.

Separately Monday, a Democrat on the House committee that is also investigating Hurricane Katrina urged Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, who is the chairman of the House inquiry, to enforce a subpoena presented to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for documents related to the storm.

The Democrat, Representative Charlie Melancon of Louisiana, said in a letter that recent interviews by House investigators had produced evidence that "the Defense Department frustrated FEMA's attempts to get this aid delivered to the stricken region," and that the documents from the Pentagon were necessary to address the accusations.

A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment on the letter.

    White House Was Told Hurricane Posed Danger, NYT, 24.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/national/nationalspecial/24katrina.html

Patients Needing Care

Overwhelm New Orleans's

Hospital System

January 23, 2006
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 18 - The emergency rooms of this bedraggled region are facing their own emergency. As thousands of residents have begun returning in the weeks since New Year's, there are far more sick people than there are doctors, nurses, beds and equipment to take care of them.

The slow repopulation of the city picked up speed after the holidays as more schools reopened and, in the words of one emergency room doctor, the sicker people began to return. But only seven of what had been 15 adult acute-care facilities in the city and three surrounding parishes are open, and only one-third of the acute-care beds.

Hundreds or perhaps thousands of doctors and nurses never returned to New Orleans after the flood; long-term and psychiatric hospitals, not to mention hospices and rehabilitation centers, are now almost nonexistent in and around the city.

As a result, the returning residents have filled the functioning hospitals in and immediately around the city to capacity and beyond. Waiting times in emergency rooms have extended to as much as six hours, medical personnel at three hospitals reported.

Early one recent morning, doctors and nurses at East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie, just outside of New Orleans, were already caring for five seriously ill or injured patients in the emergency room - because the hospital had no more beds to admit them to - while still managing a full load of incoming emergency patients near the entrance. Then two trauma victims from a car accident were brought in, followed by someone showing signs of appendicitis.

The staff had to "play musical chairs" with the accident victims and remaining patients to find everyone a bed and care for them, said Cheryl Carter, the nurse who directs emergency care.

"That's pretty much every day, pretty much every hospital," Ms. Carter said. "The waiting rooms look like a war center or a MASH unit. We look for more and more different ways to manage emergencies."

The city's sickest residents were among the first to leave New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and should be the last to return, but that is not happening, said Dr. John Wales, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at East Jefferson, which for days has had more patients than it has beds. "I think they're coming back and the doctors who took care of them are not around," he said.

The Touro Infirmary is the only full-service hospital now functioning within the New Orleans city limits, and the lack of beds in the city has pushed patients to suburban hospitals like East Jefferson and filled them up. (Children's Hospital is also open in the city.) The situation is likely to get worse as flu season, which usually begins around late January here, hits its stride.

The thought of next month's Mardi Gras festivities has local doctors so worried they have formed a committee just to plan for care during the first large-scale, signature event in the distorted post-hurricane world. Dr. Jullette Saussy, who runs the 911 emergency medical service for the City of New Orleans, said that during Mardi Gras, the number of ambulance calls typically tripled, from an average of 120 a day to 360.

"There's a resource problem right now," said Dr. Peter DeBlieux, who heads the emergency department of Charity Hospital, a venerable institution for the city's poor, which no longer has a building and is operating out of Air Force tents in a far corner of the convention center. Patients with broken arms, he said, have at times been referred to Houma and Baton Rouge, cities that are, respectively, 50 and 80 miles away.

Five hospitals in the city, severely damaged by the storm, have been unable to reopen, including the Medical Center of Louisiana, the only Level 1 trauma center on the Gulf Coast, which is a combination of Charity and nearby University Hospital.

Some hospitals have opened neighborhood clinics or parking-lot tents for walk-in care, but some may never reopen, or may take up to a year to find the money to rebuild. The state wants to replace Charity, and its planned renovations to University Hospital could take several months or up to a year.

The city's rebuilding commission said in a report this week that if 65 percent of the region's prestorm population returns by July 1 - as many experts have predicted - the city will need to triple the number of hospital beds available, which would require hiring 2,550 medical staff members in less than six months and an "extraordinary expense" in housing them and paying them enough to return.

Cynthia Matherne, the designated regional coordinator for emergency management in an area that includes New Orleans and the parishes of Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines, said the problem of limited medical resources put pressure on emergency rooms from all directions.

"The problems we have are multiple," she said. Ordinarily, patients who have been stabilized after an emergency episode are gradually moved out to long-term acute care, rehabilitation or psychiatric facilities.

"But these have not reopened," Ms. Matherne said. "So all the psych patients end up being held in the E.R.'s. And when you're trying to discharge patients, there's no long-term care to discharge them to. There's no discharge to hospice care because there's none available." Home health aides are virtually nonexistent, she added.

"Hospitals are confronted with the question: How you are going to discharge these people?" Ms. Matherne said.

Dr. Saussy, of the New Orleans medical emergency response office, described a parallel problem among the ambulance units in the city. Because only Touro, with 273 beds, and Children's Hospital, with 125 beds, are open, city ambulances must often go to the three hospitals in nearby Jefferson Parish - East Jefferson General (444 beds), West Jefferson Medical Center (330 beds) and Ochsner Clinic Foundation (350 beds, expanding soon to 484).

"We have to wait hours to offload a patient," Dr. Saussy said. "That means we're not going to have that unit available to answer the next 911 call."

Ms. Matherne said the number of acute-care beds in the four parishes before the storm was 5,063, with an average of 4,083 filled each day. "Right now we're right at about 1,750 beds," she added.

Charity Hospital, once a magnet for some of the most severe medical emergencies - and for patients least likely to have insurance - is shuttered, leaving a jury-rigged emergency room under tents within the convention center. Dr. DeBlieux said 100 to 200 patients a day arrived with complaints ranging from major trauma or strokes to breaks and sprains.

Psychiatric patients are now being sent to emergency rooms unused to them. "We are overwhelmed with urban psychiatric patients we wouldn't have seen," said Dr. Joseph S. Guarisco, the chairman of emergency medicine at Ochsner.

Charity's lease at the convention center runs out in a few weeks, and the hospital is making plans to move its emergency room to another hospital building in Jefferson Parish.

In the early weeks after Hurricane Katrina, military medical units from the Army, Navy and Air Force set up temporary medical facilities around the city and helped with everything from diabetes to births to immunizations, but most of these units are gone.

For patients, a medical emergency usually means a long wait, unless it is life-threatening. Ben Cohen, who is 28 and lives in the Midcity neighborhood, started to have intense abdominal pain on Jan. 15 and spent four hours in the Touro emergency room before he was admitted. While there, he watched the single doctor on duty cope with a shooting victim and two trauma cases from a car accident.

"To their credit," Mr. Cohen said, "they did as good a job as they could have."

Dr. Wales at East Jefferson, like other emergency room directors, is trying to get more staff members to come back, particularly nurses and technicians and orderlies. "The issues include getting your existing staff a place to live," he said. "But they can't come back because there is no place. They won't come back without their families."

Dr. Wales added, "At many levels, the disaster continues to unfold."

    Patients Needing Care Overwhelm New Orleans's Hospital System, NYT, 23.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/national/nationalspecial/23health.html



 

Competing Plans to Repair New Orleans Flood Protection

NYT        22.1.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/national/nationalspecial/22flood.html

Competing Plans to Repair

New Orleans Flood Protection

January 22, 2006
The New York Times
BY JOHN SCHWARTZ

At the halfway mark between the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina last year and the beginning of the 2006 hurricane season on June 1, the Army Corps of Engineers has completed only 16 percent of its planned repairs to New Orleans's battered flood protection system, according to corps representatives.

The corps says its work is on track for restoring the system to its pre-hurricane strength by the June 1 deadline, but in the meantime many groups that have studied the disaster are coming up with proposals of their own that they say could be cheaper, faster or stronger.

The Bring New Orleans Back Commission, the group formed by Mayor C. Ray Nagin to produce a blueprint for the city's recovery, issued a proposal on Wednesday to upgrade hurricane protection with measures beyond what the corps has called for. To prevent storm surges from pushing into the city's drainage canals, the commission proposed a series of jetties to stand in front of the three canals, which it says could be built quickly and cheaply and provide New Orleans with some much-needed peace of mind.

"There is, very much, a tension between things that can be done quickly versus those that might take a little longer," Lawrence Roth, deputy executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said in a telephone interview on Friday. His group has weighed in with far-reaching recommendations, and other groups are preparing proposals of their own.

The mayor's commission also proposed a network of dams that would block or slow the opening between the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal and Lake Pontchartrain, and block storm surges from flowing up the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a navigation channel that has been blamed for a storm surge funnel effect that increased the damage to eastern New Orleans.

The group is also calling for long-term flood-control structures that would block or slow surges at the two passes between Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico.

The fast-track structures would cost $100 million to $170 million, according to the commission's estimates, a fraction of the $3.1 billion the federal government has proposed spending on flood control measures in the area. The commission said its proposals would not interfere with any of the corps's plans, but would be add-ons that complement the current plans.

The proposals have not yet found broad support among other engineering experts who have been working on strengthening New Orleans's storm defenses, but Dan Hitchings, the director of the corps's Task Force Hope, which is coordinating the hurricane response in Louisiana and Mississippi, said the plans were welcome and would be examined.

Mr. Roth, of the Society of Civil Engineers, said there would always be competing ideas about how to improve flood protection. The idea of jetties, he said, might be made moot by closing off the canals and putting in new pumping stations at the lake, as the corps has planned.

"Many different people can look at a problem and come up with many different solutions, all with tradeoffs," he said. "Which would be better - jetties or a pump station? You might never get an answer to that."

Meanwhile, the corps's work to restore flood protection to its pre-hurricane levels continues around the clock. This month the corps solicited bids for building temporary closures and pumps at the mouths of the city's three drainage canals, and it is rebuilding long stretches of levee in St. Bernard Parish and along the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal.

The corps is looking to measures that will further strengthen the flood protection system, including restoring levees to their originally designed heights. These measures can be in place by September 2007, according to the corps.

Beyond that, the corps has embarked on a two-year, $8 million study to determine how to strengthen the hurricane protection system for New Orleans and southern Louisiana. A preliminary version of that report is due in June.

While the Bush administration's top official on Gulf Coast reconstruction, Donald Powell, has said the government will build a system that is "better and stronger" than what was there before, the administration has not committed to what the people of New Orleans desperately want: protection from Category 5 storms, the toughest that nature can dish out.

Mr. Hitchings said that the corps was slightly behind schedule but that he expected things to move quickly. "It's not linear," he said, because the "gear-up time" to get contractors in place and to make materials like the enormous quantities of soil available was so great.

Now "they're really moving out," he said. The corps built 30 days of weather delays into the schedule, he said, and with a little help from favorable weather, "I'm very optimistic that they will regain their schedule and in the end get it all finished with plenty of time."

The corps's long-term study, he said, would probably have a lot in common with the outside proposals that are beginning to flow in, but "right now, we're focused on the very near term."

The engineering society is investigating the failure of the levees and is working with the groups that will monitor the corps's progress. Its recommendations include "armoring" the dry side of levees so they are not eroded away from underneath if water spills over the top. Without armoring, Mr. Roth said, "failure is catastrophic because it causes the wall to fail."

The corps has said that the armoring process, like other projects that would go beyond the restoration of the levees to pre-hurricane strength, will have to be approved by Congress.

"It's going to take people being willing to take a chance, to be bold, to sort out Louisiana's levee problems," said Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and a member of Team Louisiana, the group formed by the state to investigate the causes of the levee failures. His group, too, will be making proposals for upgrading protection for the region.

"We may get lucky," he said. "Nature may give us another 10 years before we get another Katrina, or maybe not. But we've got to seize the moment or we're going to lose coastal Louisiana."

    Competing Plans to Repair New Orleans Flood Protection, NYT, 22.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/national/nationalspecial/22flood.html

New Orleans area

sees hope in restructuring

its police forces

Posted 1/19/2006 11:28 PM
USA TODAY
By Kevin Johnson

WASHINGTON — Just before Christmas, the Justice Department quietly held a meeting in Quantico, Va., that included New Orleans-area law enforcement officials and police chiefs from across the nation.

At the top of the agenda: finding ways to ensure public safety in the hurricane-battered region, where police and sheriff's departments are struggling to deal with personnel losses, broken communications systems and a range of other problems.

The meeting was an important step in developing a plan that could dramatically reshape law enforcement in the New Orleans area by merging functions of the city's police department with those of sheriff's departments in four parishes hit hard by Hurricane Katrina.

The plan — which would require approval from local governments and millions of dollars in federal aid — would consolidate the agencies' programs for analyzing evidence and training recruits. It also would create a regional crime lab and an emergency communications system that would link much of the area.

The plan would involve New Orleans and Orleans Parish, as well as Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. The coastal region was home to roughly 1 million people when Katrina hit on Aug. 29, but now it has a population of less than 600,000. Those jurisdictions had more than 4,900 law enforcement officers before Katrina. Now they have fewer than 3,500. (Graphic: Coping after Katrina)

Beyond the structural changes, the plan would require unprecedented changes in local politics. It would take power away from municipally appointed police chiefs and publicly elected parish sheriffs, who for generations have been influential because of their power to dole out jobs and government contracts.

Such officials now say they are willing to give up some autonomy because they are facing a new political truth: Without some guarantee of security, the region's massive rebuilding effort — and its campaign to lure commerce and taxpaying residents who help pay police salaries — could be hobbled from the start.

"Our situation absolutely requires a new political reality," says St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens, who has been the chief law enforcement officer in the now-ravaged parish for 22 years. "No one would have raised (the idea of consolidating) in the past. But if we can make good decisions now, we can save ourselves. If we don't change, we die as institutions."

Stephens says he and his colleagues from Jefferson Parish, Plaquemines Parish and greater New Orleans have reached a basic agreement on what would be a historic experiment in law enforcement.

Several communities across the USA, including Louisville, have merged city and county police operations to address urban sprawl and concerns about mounting costs. In New Orleans, consolidating operations would require the approval of entrenched political institutions spread across at least five agencies.

Nearly every issue involved in how law enforcement operates is on the table, including whether agencies should be downsized dramatically or merged to reflect the area's reduced population. "The slate is clean," Plaquemines Parish Sheriff Jiff Hingle says. "We have a big opportunity to decide how we come back."

'Heck of a problem'

Sacramento Police Chief Albert Najera, one of five chiefs the Justice Department chose to advise New Orleans-area officials about how to rebuild their agencies, says he was surprised at local officials' willingness to surrender power for the greater good.

"This is a heck of a problem," says Najera, who attended the Quantico meeting. "The survival of the (New Orleans Police) Department is in real jeopardy."

The talks about revamping New Orleans-area law enforcement also have focused on another problem: the lack of housing for hundreds of officers and deputies who lost their homes during the flooding.

In New Orleans, an estimated 80% of the police department's remaining 1,435 officers lost their homes, Police Superintendent Warren Riley has said.

Since Katrina, most of the homeless officers have been living on a cruise ship docked in the Port of New Orleans. But the federal contract securing the ship expires March 1, and there is no formal plan to house the officers when the ship pulls out.

"If that ship leaves in March, there may be more than a few officers who decide to take their trade somewhere else," says Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert White, a member of the New Orleans advisory group. "It's a major problem."

String of crises

Since Katrina, New Orleans' police department has been rocked by a series of crises. Much of the city was still underwater when the first reports emerged that some officers had abandoned their posts or had taken part in looting.

During the chaos, then-police superintendent Eddie Compass resigned. Mayor Ray Nagin appointed Riley to take his place, and Riley took charge of a department that had lost its downtown headquarters to flooding.

Shortly afterward, Riley had to deal with allegations of police abuse stemming from the videotaped beating of a man in the French Quarter. Two officers were dismissed because of the incident.

White says the incidents have given New Orleans police an image problem that will need to be repaired along with the department itself. He says the area's success in building confidence in public safety could help thousands of displaced residents and businesses decide whether to return. "If you are gonna have economic development, you've got to have some confidence the environment will be safe."

Local business leaders have been involved in discussions about consolidating agencies, Stephens says. The New Orleans Police Foundation, a group of business and religious leaders, is raising money to help officers find housing.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has pledged to help rebuild the region's law enforcement agencies, but it's unclear how much money the federal government will contribute. Although funding for the consolidation is unsettled, Stephens says that plans for a regional crime lab, a law enforcement training academy and other programs are moving ahead. Possible sites for a lab and an academy have been identified.

"We may need to be propped up (with federal funding) for a couple of years until people return and we get our tax bases back," Stephens says. "But the federal government is not gonna waste enormous amounts of money and energy to finance turf wars."

    New Orleans area sees hope in restructuring its police forces, R, 19.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-19-new-orleans-police_x.htm

New Orleans Agrees

to Give Notice on Home Demolitions

January 18, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 17 - A federal judge approved a settlement on Tuesday in a lawsuit over the first demolitions of New Orleans homes ruined by Hurricane Katrina, after city officials agreed to give homeowners advance notice.

The settlement means that the city can begin demolishing homes, an emotional and symbolic act here, within a few weeks.

A group of advocates for improved housing in damaged neighborhoods filed suit against the city last month, demanding that homeowners be notified before any demolitions. The group dropped its suit with the city's agreement to provide that notification, and Judge Martin L. C. Feldman of Federal District Court signed an order dismissing it.

The standoff had become the first symbolic confrontation over the redevelopment push here, with officials moving to clear rubble from the most heavily damaged area, the Lower Ninth Ward, and community advocates resisting them. Homes, or remains of homes, were set to be bulldozed with no warning to the owners, the advocates said; officials countered that they simply wanted to clear piles of debris that posed safety hazards.

A neighborhood demonstration, news conferences and a court challenge over the demolitions filled the first weeks of the new year, initial salvos in what is shaping up as a contentious effort to transform this limping city. Advocates engineered a confrontation with bulldozers this month in an area where many homes are no more than rubble, insisting that residents be given a chance to pick through them for their possessions.

The fight ended without fanfare. For 123 of the most heavily damaged structures, almost all in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans officials have agreed to give seven to 10 days' notice before bulldozing. The city will publish an advertisement over three days in The Times-Picayune listing the addresses of the affected properties, will post a warning on the its Web site and will try to contact the owners by mail.

The warning will specify that officials intend to "demolish or haul away" the property. Owners have a right to challenge the demolitions in the seven- to 10-day window.

For 1,900 houses less seriously damaged, but still considered in imminent danger of collapse, the city will give 30 days' notice.

Each side claimed victory. "I don't think we've made any significant concessions," a lawyer for New Orleans, Albert Thibodeaux, said. "The other side reacted hastily to a newspaper article."

Mr. Thibodeaux was referring to news reports late last year quoting Greg Meffert, the city official in charge of demolition, saying that 2,500 homes in the city needed to be razed.

A lawyer for a handful of neighborhood residents and advocacy groups called the notice provisions a triumph for her clients.

"We went from a situation where homeowners received absolutely no notice, and where the city believed they weren't entitled to notice, to a situation where the city must provide at least seven days' notice," said the lawyer, Tracie Washington.

From the start, officials agreed that homeowners should be allowed to challenge demolitions, though they made exceptions for homes deemed threats to public safety. But shifting lists and timetables increased the emotional temperature, prompting the lawsuit.

Mr. Meffert, though insisting that the suit had been based on "misinformation," said the notification process was "the right thing to do." But he defended the city's plans, saying, "As a city, we have to move beyond playing victim, and we have to rebuild for everyone."

Mr. Meffert said he did not know when demolitions might begin.

The advocates said they had always accepted the eventual necessity of demolitions.

"In the Lower Nine, we understand and recognize that many of those properties will have to be demolished," Ms. Washington said. "But many individuals just wanted to go in to retrieve that American flag that draped their fathers' coffin."

    New Orleans Agrees to Give Notice on Home Demolitions, NYT, 18.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/national/nationalspecial/18demolish.html

New Orleans mayor

apologizes for remark

Posted 1/17/2006 4:56 PM
Updated 1/17/2006 8:46 PM
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mayor Ray Nagin apologized Tuesday for a Martin Luther King Day speech in which he predicted that New Orleans would be a "chocolate" city once more and asserted that "God was mad at America."

"I said some things that were totally inappropriate. ... It shouldn't have happened," Nagin said, explaining he was caught up in the moment as he spoke to mostly black spectators, many of them fearful of being shut out of the city's rebuilding.

During the speech Monday, Nagin, who is black, said that the hurricanes that hit the nation in quick succession were a sign of God's anger toward the United States and toward black communities, too, for their violence and infighting. He also said New Orleans has to be a mostly black city again because "it's the way God wants it to be."

On Tuesday, Nagin said his comments about God were inappropriate and stemmed from a private conversation he had with a minister earlier. "I need to be more sensitive and more aware of what I'm saying," he said.

The mayor said his speech was really meant to convey that blacks were a vital part of New Orleans' history and culture and should be encouraged to return. "I want everyone to be welcome in New Orleans — black, white, Asian, everybody," he said.

Nagin said the other main point he had hoped to make Monday was that when blacks do return, they must work to stamp out the crime and political infighting that have held them back.

New Orleans was more than 65% black before Hurricane Katrina. The storm displaced about three-quarters of the city's population. Most of the estimated 125,000 residents who have been able to return are white.

Nagin, a former cable company executive and political novice, was elected in 2002 with about 90% of the white vote, according to polls conducted by Ed Renwick, the director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics.

Nagin received less than half the black vote, Renwick said Tuesday, and the mayor's heaviest criticism since taking office has come from rival political factions in the black community, many of whom have portrayed him as an "Uncle Tom" who caters to the interests of white businessmen.

Nagin has been trying harder to gain the trust of black residents, Renwick said.

"But some of the remarks he made Monday will possibly dampen enthusiasm among some whites," Renwick said. "It seemed to be another Nagin-being-Nagin. He has a penchant for just speaking off the cuff and not thinking it through."

The political analyst added: "He also tends to speak to the literal audience he's with at the time instead of the whole world he reaches through the TV, radio and print media."

    New Orleans mayor apologizes for remark, UT, 17.1.2006,
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-17-nagin-remarks_x.htm

NEW ORLEANS

Marchers crossed a bridge from the Lower Ninth Ward.

Photograph:

Lee Celano/Reuters        NYT        January 17, 2006

Protesters at King March Oppose Air Force Flyover

NYT        17.1.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/national/17king.html

Liberty Tries to Push on

but Katrina Still Lingers

January 17, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 14 - Alden J. McDonald Jr. has retired his Katrina-wear. The polos and short-sleeved cabana shirts that Mr. McDonald, the chief executive of Liberty Bank and Trust of New Orleans, favored in the first months after Hurricane Katrina have been relegated to the back of the closet. Once again, Mr. McDonald goes about his daily business dressed in a sports jacket and tie.

On the surface at least, Mr. McDonald's life, both sartorially and financially, has returned to normal. The bank is now cash-flow positive. Over the next 10 days, Mr. McDonald is to reopen two more branches in New Orleans, bringing to four the number of sites Liberty has open in the city, compared with eight before the storm. By month's end, Mr. McDonald hopes to start moving people back into the bank's main headquarters.

He can even steal time for the occasional flight of fancy. To celebrate his wife's birthday last week - her first since their home of 16 years was ruined - Mr. McDonald flew her to Chicago for a long weekend to see the Oprah Winfrey show. "Seeing Oprah has been a lifelong dream of hers," he said.

But looks can be deceiving. Liberty, the city's largest black-owned bank, is still in what Mr. McDonald describes as storm mode. Like most other New Orleans businesses, Liberty must still focus on cobbling together a business that resembles its old pre-Katrina self.

In some ways, because Liberty's operations were focused so heavily in the all-but-deserted eastern half of the city, Mr. McDonald must confront a more difficult set of choices than most of his corporate peers. Much of his time remains devoted to plotting out Liberty's uncertain future in a city still struggling to decide which sections of town, especially in the east, should be permitted to come back and which sections must be reverted to marshland for the greater good.

So for the moment, Mr. McDonald's plans for a big marketing push in Baton Rouge, La., and Jackson, Miss., where he also has branches, are on hold as he and his staff continue the cleanup.

The insurance companies are proving particularly vexing. Seven of the bank's eight New Orleans branches were damaged by the storm or the subsequent looting, and the bank's main headquarters and its operations center were flooded. Yet all he has to show for his efforts so far, he said, is a check for the cost of repairing the roof on a single branch.

"That's everyone's complaint," he said. Mr. McDonald has been suffering insurance companies even when he is away from work: much of his Christmas holiday was spent drawing up a list of the ruined contents of his home, which sat in four feet of fetid water for weeks in the September heat.

The bank's paper files were destroyed, too, when flooding took out Liberty's operations center. A large portion of his organization is devoted to the tedious work of replacing those paper records, as well as the painstaking assessment of every last loan on its books, and the logistics of organizing clean-up crews and the slow grind of reopening operations in New Orleans.

The main holdup in reopening his headquarters, he said, is the lack of telecommunications. The building - Liberty had occupied the brand-new office tower for maybe six months before the storm hit - is in New Orleans East, a part of town still without functioning telephones or Internet access. But even if the bank were able to move back into its headquarters tomorrow, only a small portion of its staff would be able to do so. "The plan," Mr. McDonald said, "is to move back only those employees who have a place to live somewhere close to New Orleans."

Liberty is still without nearly half its employees, many of whom are scattered across the country, but that's just as well. "We're not generating the kind of revenues that we were to justify the same size staff," he said. The bank will post a loss for 2005 when it files its annual report with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation at month's end, Mr. McDonald said. That comes after a banner year in 2004, when profits rose 22 percent over 2003.

"What we'll be watching for are the second-quarter numbers in 2006, and subsequent filings," said William Michael Cunningham, who runs Creative Investment Research, which evaluates the financial health of minority-owned financial institutions on behalf of investors.

It will take through at least the first half of this year, Mr. Cunningham said, for the true scope of the hurricane to reveal itself in Liberty's books, and the books of the city's other two black-owned banks, Dryades Savings and United Bank and Trust.

"Liberty is in the strongest position of all the black-owned banks in New Orleans, but basically I've adopted a wait-and-see attitude for all three," Mr. Cunningham said.

Virgil Robinson Jr., Dryades's chief executive, said his bank "certainly won't show a profit for 2005," but he expects only a modest loss for the year, if not break-even.

Though Liberty will be writing off millions in bad loans, the losses will not be as huge as initially thought. Some 98 percent of his mortgage customers in the water-ravaged areas of New Orleans carried flood insurance on their property, a bank requirement for any borrower in the flood plain. By comparison, fewer than 40 percent of homeowners in the New Orleans area carried flood insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Liberty's main source of revenue before the storm had been its residential and commercial mortgage business. But the bank has written very few loans in recent months in a city that has largely been in stasis as homeowners and businesses await word on the fate of low-lying neighborhoods around the city.

The commission that Mayor C. Ray Nagin assembled to devise a revival blueprint proposed last week that the city impose a four-month moratorium on all new building permits in storm-ravaged areas of the city and that it require each neighborhood hit hard by flooding to prove that it can draw a critical mass of people. Mayor Nagin, who has yet to approve the plan, hints that he will side with residents who oppose a temporary moratorium on permits.

Despite the uncertainty, Mr. McDonald, who is a member of the rebuilding commission, is bullish on the city's long-term prospects. The two branches he is reopening are located in Gentilly, a large community in the center of New Orleans that was flooded. But Gentilly was not hit nearly as hard as New Orleans East, and Mr. McDonald, while driving through the neighborhood recently, noticed plenty of trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency - a sure sign that people are intent on rebuilding.

No other bank has chosen to reopen a branch in Gentilly, which Mr. McDonald views as an opportunity rather than a sign that he would be wiser to husband his limited resources.

"I'm confident that area will repopulate much quicker than the east," Mr. McDonald said.

Certainly Liberty does not lack for cash. That was a primary worry of Mr. McDonald in the weeks after the storm. Liberty has so far had only moderate success selling Katrina Investment Deposits, or KID's, at below-market interest rates.

Yet the bank still finds itself cash-rich because people are using their insurance settlements to pay off their mortgages. "I need to put that cash to work," he said.

Toward that end, Mr. McDonald aims to more aggressively market his services to homebuyers throughout the region.

He has hired mortgage brokers who will seek to lend people money to buy homes, and he plans on opening numerous home-loan stores throughout the region.

"The rebuilding, the cleanup from the hurricane, is going to go on for a long, long time," he said. "And we anticipate a great demand for borrowing."

    Liberty Tries to Push on but Katrina Still Lingers, NYT, 17.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/business/17liberty.html

At Center of Storm Destruction,

Eager Few Try to Reclaim Parish

January 17, 2006
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY

VIOLET, La., Jan. 12 - In the stillness here on Louis Elam Street, where the houses are nothing more than rotting shells collapsing on themselves for block after deserted block, the Robinson family has decided, against all odds, to re-create life all by itself on lot No. 6429.

The Robinsons are living where few people even dare to drive, here in the midst of a vast stretch of desolation on the banks of the Mississippi River east of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish. In all of southeast Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina was the most vicious and thorough in its destruction here, and some streets remain impassable nearly five months later, blocked by houses that the storm surge lifted, twisted and deposited as wrecks.

The blue house with the white trim was one of them, and it belonged to the Robinsons. Now, the family members have come back to what used to be its front yard in a government-issued trailer, determined to make a home again on what seems like the edge of civilization.

"It's heart-wrenching to wake up and see all this mess around you," Gaynell Robinson said while a pot of red beans bubbled on her small stove, turning the stale air fragrant with spices. "But I'm ready to see some progress, and I'm ready to step up and do whatever I can for Violet. I can't imagine not being here. I was raised on this land."

Except for her cellphone and weekly church services, Ms. Robinson has little connection to other people apart from her family in the trailer. It is a 45-minute drive to the Wal-Mart in Gretna, the best option for groceries. There is no mail service, shopping mall or movie theater. And there is just enough electricity to light her trailer and part of the street.

In her pioneering spirit, Ms. Robinson is not entirely alone in St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans's rustic, outdoorsy neighbor, where hunting, fishing and the oil and gas industries have always seemed to keep people connected to the land, generation after generation. Residents speak of "the parish" with the sort of affection usually reserved for a grandfather and are never far from tears when talking about how the storm crushed it.

Despite dire early predictions that the parish would never heal, and despite living conditions that seem unfit for all but the hardiest, officials estimate that 8,000 people like Ms. Robinson have begin to repopulate St. Bernard Parish, which used to have close to 70,000 residents.

The repopulation is mostly an independent movement, with residents saying they have received little guidance or help from the local government as they clean, gut and rebuild on their own. Departments in the parish government have had to lay off up to 40 percent of their workers, and the parish is desperate for an infusion of federal aid to stave off bankruptcy until the tax base can be rebuilt.

What is left of the local government is doing what it can; most streets have been cleared of debris and fallen wires, and the major intersections have working traffic signals. The parish has yet to impose or even propose any restrictions on rebuilding. In fact it is encouraged, in contrast to the stance in New Orleans, where a rebuilding committee has proposed a four-month moratorium to gauge neighborhood viability.

Ms. Robinson, 46, has put her house on a list to be demolished. She has not heard yet when that might happen. She hopes it goes quickly. She cannot stand to see it anymore.

While residents are eager to move on, they remain plagued by the uncertainties that arise when people try to jump-start a community largely on their own. Ms. Robinson wants to build a new house, but wonders whether any of her neighbors will make a similar investment.

Residents also want assurances that the levees will be strong enough to protect them, and they demand the closing of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, the shortcut shipping canal that acted as a conduit for the storm surge to deluge them.

Some people say they are not getting enough information from the parish.

"I ask questions, and nobody can tell me anything," said Linda Mercier Napolitano, a hotel worker whose home in Chalmette had water over its roof for 15 days and was coated in crude oil from a nearby refinery spill. "Is it safe? I don't know. Is the government going to tell me later that I have to raise my house, after I've rebuilt it? I don't know. Will they tear down my house? I don't know."

Mrs. Napolitano and her husband, Roy, now live on a block where there are only two other people, and where the gray landscape is dotted by abandoned boats and cars turned upside down and mounds of trash. But not on their spot: it is an oasis of order and cleanliness.

Roy Napolitano, 64, a former machinist, used a shovel and a crowbar to clear out his home of 35 years and reduce it to the structural supports. A trailer sits in the driveway, which is swept daily. (The oil company cleaned its part of the mess, and the Napolitanos might accept a small settlement from it.)

Mr. Napolitano longs for the neighborhood he knew, where friends shared their catches of the day and got together for big crawfish boils. When the storm hit, his family had $400 worth of shrimp in the freezer, waiting to be served at the next party.

He cannot speak about pre-hurricane times without breaking down.

"We had everything," Mrs. Napolitano said. "We were comfortable. Now look at us, here all alone. We wonder, how many people do we need to sustain the parish?"

Others are considering the same question.

"I'm glad to give it a try again - I built this house from scratch," said Bryan Brunet, outside his 4,000-square-foot, 10-year-old house in an upscale subdivision, Jumonville Plantation. "I did all the wiring and contracting and can do it again. But the whole place is totally trashed. It's hard. It's not that you can't live here, it's, would you want to? If you don't have a job here or a reason to return, why would you live here?"

Mr. Brunet's reasons for returning are employment and family. He and his wife work at nearby oil companies and grew up in the parish.

While they waited to return home, they bought a house on five acres in another part of Louisiana. It is a fine house, Mr. Brunet said, but "all I can say is, it's not home."

He plans to sell the new house and revamp the one in Jumonville Plantation. It took a full week just to shovel out the mud the storm surge deposited. There are several trailers on the street, a sign that people are returning - but for good, or just to salvage a few things and demolish the rest?

"Some days you get really disgusted because you've got to drive 100 miles just to get a box of nails," said Mr. Brunet, 48. "When I was building the house, everything was brand new, and we couldn't wait to live in it. Now you come out and there's devastation across the street. My little boy - all his friends are gone. What's the use staying in a house if you've got no one else around you?"

Officials say they are pleased with the rate of return, however, and expect it to increase.

When asked if he was surprised by how many people had returned, Joseph S. DiFatta Jr., St. Bernard Parish councilman-at-large, said: "Actually, I am. Going into five months, I didn't think we'd be where we are."

"Our whole parish was destroyed," Mr. DiFatta said. "We made history there, and that's not a good type of history to make."

After Hurricane Katrina's eye roared over the parish seat in Chalmette, a massive wall of water inundated some areas of St. Bernard Parish up to 22 feet. Hardly a building was spared water damage.

Still, the school system now has 1,000 students enrolled, and the superintendent, Doris Voitier, sleeps in a trailer outside the administration building, which is being rebuilt. Classes began just 11 weeks after the storm, in 20 trailers that Ms. Voitier and her staff found and had shipped from other states.

"We knew if the parish was ever going to come back, I needed to get the schools operational," Ms. Voitier said.

School buildings are being refurbished by a contractor who specializes in quick turn-arounds. Hot meals for the students are cooked in the school board building in Meraux, about two miles away, and transported in time for lunch in Chalmette. Ms. Voitier said that she had been advised to give students pre-packaged food or sandwiches, but that she had refused.

"This is the only hot meal some of these children would get," she said.

The Dauterive family, with three small boys, was able to return to the parish just after Christmas because the schools were open. But the best place they have to live at the moment does not have an address. It is an old trailer on a dusty road behind a former gas station notable for its enormous heap of rusting debris.

The Dauterives said that renovations on their new house were not finished, but that they just could not wait any longer - Robert Dauterive, a trucker, was ready to get back to his old job. "There's no other way but to be here," Linda Dauterive said.

"We couldn't wait to come home," she said. Then she started to cry.

Storms Called Signs From God

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 16 (AP) - Mayor C. Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.

"Surely God is mad at America," said Mr. Nagin, who is black, at Martin Luther King's Birthday ceremonies here. "He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country."

Mr. Nagin also promised that New Orleans would be a "chocolate" city again.

"This city will be a majority African-American city," he said. "It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans."

    At Center of Storm Destruction, Eager Few Try to Reclaim Parish, NYT, 17.1.2006,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/national/nationalspecial/17bernard.html

New Orleans plan

aims at preserving culture

Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:48 AM ET
Reuters
By Russell McCulley

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - If the city that gave the world Fats Domino, jazz funerals and the po-boy sandwich is to rebound from Hurricane Katrina, nurturing its quirky culture must be part of New Orleans' recovery, said a city plan to preserve cultural heritage released on Monday.

Rebuilding the culture is nearly as critical as rebuilding levees and neighborhoods, said the plan by a panel of musicians, chefs and arts officials and co-chaired by New Orleans native and jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

"The single most important thing is the question of the infrastructure of the city -- the levees, the wetlands, the housing. We all know that's the No. 1 priority," Marsalis told Reuters in an interview ahead of the plan's release.

"But we see people reaching for their culture in times of crisis, all over the world, all the time. This plan says since we know our culture's important, let's put some dollars behind it."

Recommendations include repairing damaged venues and building new facilities, increasing a percent-for-art program under which a portion of proceeds from bonds of most city capital projects goes to arts funding, a stepped-up cultural tourism marketing campaign and greater efforts to bring displaced artists and musicians back to the city.

"If I had to say one thing that's important, we need to bring our artists back," said Marsalis.

Given the opportunity, he believes, the displaced will return.

"Man, where are they gonna go?" Marsalis said. "They are New Orleanians. Of course they're gonna go back. The question for us is, we need to make it possible for them to come back."

PLAN IS NONBINDING

The panel was appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin as part of his Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which last week released a controversial land-use plan giving residents of hard-hit neighborhoods four months to commit to return or those sections could be declared off-limits to redevelopment.

Like the land-use blueprint, the cultural plan is a recommendation and is nonbinding.

The cultural plan looked at arts as disparate as high-end galleries, Creole cuisine and the New Orleans street culture, which includes roving bands of elaborately costumed Mardi Gras Indians, an integral part of the city's famed annual tradition, and the brass bands that accompany jazz funerals.

The city's cultural institutions, pre-Katrina, contributed more than $300 million to its economy.

Since Katrina hit on August 29 and the city flooded, most of its nonprofit cultural organizations remain closed. Fewer than 250 of the city's 2,000-plus musicians have returned, and more than 11,000 people employed by commercial and nonprofit cultural groups have lost their jobs.

Only 11 members of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra have returned full-time, said managing director Babs Mollere. Most lost homes, instruments or both.

The orchestra will proceed with an abbreviated season, Mollere said. But its future could hinge on how many corporate donors, individual benefactors and audience members return.

New Orleans "will definitely be a changed place," she said. "Like every other institution, we're trying to size up what the city will look like."

Experts predict only half of the pre-Katrina population will return in the next two years.

The storm rendered many performance spaces unusable.

"There are some pretty serious questions about where the arts can perform," said Robert Lyall, general and artistic director of the New Orleans Opera Association. "The other unknown for all organizations is, where is the public?"

    New Orleans plan aims at preserving culture, R, 16.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-01-16T154817Z_01_N157713_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-ARTS.xml

After Katrina,

courts flooded by lawsuits

Posted 1/15/2006 11:05 PM
USA TODAY
By Laura Parker

NEW ORLEANS — Bruno & Bruno, a local law firm run by four brothers, paused only briefly when Hurricane Katrina upended the state and its court systems.

The firm, which specializes in class-action lawsuits, medical malpractice cases and personal injury claims, quickly turned to a potential windfall of litigation: the misery and devastation left by Katrina.

Bruno & Bruno hired 20 clerks to field calls from irate homeowners who say their insurance companies have refused to pay claims. Signs advertising the firm's services joined the thicket of "Mold Removal" and "Local Contractor" ads that sprouted across New Orleans.

More than four months after Katrina wrecked much of the city, Bruno & Bruno has filed dozens of lawsuits that reflect the rising frustration and anger among thousands of residents and business owners who lost homes, jobs and relatives in the flooding. The lawsuits' targets include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local government boards that oversaw New Orleans' failed levees, as well as an oil company, a nursing home and insurers.

The Brunos stand out for their industriousness, but they have only a small part of the ballooning legal business stemming from Katrina. Thousands of Katrina victims are suing over flood damage, insurance settlement disputes, alleged wrongful deaths, oil spills, ruined oyster beds, eroded wetlands, evictions and arguments with contractors involved in rebuilding efforts.

The growing pile of litigation is hitting a court system that is still struggling to recover from the disruptions caused by the flooding and evacuations that followed the Aug. 29 storm.

In the Orleans Parish Civil District Court, which reopened in its downtown courthouse here two weeks ago, Katrina lawsuits are stacked on top of a full calendar of fall trials that were never held and are still being rescheduled.

Now, as local courts struggle to catch up with the backlog of trials while handling the wave of litigation inspired by Katrina, there's another complication: It's unclear how successful civil courts will be in rounding up jurors in light of the area's diminished population. New Orleans has an estimated 150,000 to 190,000 residents, down from about 462,000 in 2004.

A shortage of jurors — and the court delays that could result — could particularly affect residents and business owners who need to resolve insurance disputes soon to avoid bankruptcy.

Some judges, including Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Carolyn Gill-Jefferson, say they are cautiously optimistic enough jurors can be found among local residents. However, many others in the legal community are skeptical.

"It's a given they're not expecting any jury trials in Orleans Parish, St. Bernard (Parish) and probably Plaquemines Parish" until 2007, says Robert Kleinpeter, president of the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association, referring to the localities hit hardest by flooding. "People are saying it matter-of-factly."

'Need to do something'

A year's delay could exacerbate an already maddening situation for thousands of homeowners who owe mortgage payments on unlivable homes in mud-caked, empty neighborhoods and who have been in limbo for months, waiting for answers from lenders, insurance adjusters and the government.

Greta Gladney, a fourth-generation resident of New Orleans' devastated 9th Ward, says she and many neighbors see the courts as the only way to stop government plans to raze their damaged homes. Residents "now have to fight for whatever sticks remain of their property," she says. "The court might be the only recourse."

Paul Barron, who teaches arbitration at Tulane University's law school, says that "people have lost their entire livelihoods. Lawsuits are not good solutions, necessarily. But what else do people have?"

Judges have taken action in some lawsuits stemming from residents' frustration with the government's response to Katrina.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose problems in responding to the flooding provoked nationwide outrage, was sued in federal court here in November in a class-action suit brought on behalf of about 250,000 evacuees who were left homeless by the flooding. The residents twice have won extensions of their government-funded hotel stays since FEMA sought to evict them without providing alternative temporary housing.

Howard Godnick, a New York lawyer who represents the Katrina victims, says 85,000 applications to FEMA for temporary housing were still pending in mid-December.

Meanwhile, the city of New Orleans has been sued in federal court by a coalition of community groups challenging the city's efforts to condemn and raze about 2,500 homes, many of which are in the predominantly black Lower 9th Ward. City inspectors had tagged more than 5,000 buildings as unsafe. At a court hearing Thursday, a judge will consider the rules for the demolition.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's decision to delay February's mayoral election because of shortages of voters, polling places and voting equipment has been challenged in three lawsuits, two of them in federal court. A lawsuit in state court was dismissed after Secretary of State Al Ater said he'd try to hold the mayoral election by April 29.

Joe Bruno, 52, the oldest brother at Bruno & Bruno, says Katrina cases have become the primary focus for lawyers like him. "My (pre-Katrina) clients are gone. I don't know how profitable any of this (Katrina) stuff is, but I'm motivated by this need to do something."

The most sweeping Katrina lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, which returned to the federal courthouse here in mid-November. A sampling:

•The Murphy Oil USA Inc. lawsuits— Several class-action suits have been filed against the company, which operates a refinery in St. Bernard Parish. An oil tank at the refinery spilled more than 1 million gallons of crude oil that contaminated more than 2,500 homes and prompted 19 separate class-action lawsuits.

At a court hearing Thursday, Murphy Oil told U.S. District Court Judge Eldon Fallon that it already had paid more than $50 million to homeowners who have settled with the company, and that it had spent another $17 million cleaning up public and private property.

The plaintiffs' lawyers, including Joe Bruno, say the company should pay more, and that the area is too polluted to rebuild. Murphy Oil has declined to say how many homeowners have settled. Fallon is considering whether to allow a class-action case to go forward.

•The fisheries case— Several commercial fishermen's groups, including the United Commercial Fishermen's Association and the Louisiana Shrimp Association, are pursuing a class-action lawsuit against oil and gas companies in south Louisiana.

The defendants include Shell Pipeline, Chevron, Bass Enterprises Production and Sundown Energy. The groups allege that more than 9 million gallons of oil escaped the companies' facilities during Katrina and destroyed oyster beds and fishing grounds along the Gulf Coast.

•The eroding wetlands dispute— A separate suit against more than a dozen major oil and gas producers alleges that drilling and pipeline activities in southeast Louisiana caused the destruction of marshes that would have limited hurricane damage to New Orleans.

•The levee-failure lawsuits— Several suits target the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local levee boards, alleging design and construction defects in the levees that held back Lake Pontchartrain led them to fail and flood the city.

•The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet suit— A suit against the Army Corps of Engineers alleges that the 66-mile channel, which was dug in the late 1950s through St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes to create a shortcut for ships traveling to New Orleans, makes flooding worse in those parishes.

Defendants have not yet filed responses to all the lawsuits. Jim Porter, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, called the wetlands suit a "spurious and unconscionable" move by trial lawyers to "further their own personal agenda. The claims ... are without merit."

The lawsuits against the Army Corps of Engineers face an uphill struggle because U.S. law gives the corps immunity from lawsuits brought for damage caused by flooding. However, Russ Herman, a trial lawyer here, says a group of 15 law firms plans to work together to try to prevail in those suits, even though efforts to sue the U.S. government on similar claims failed after Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

Meanwhile, thousands of insurance claims are piling up in state courts. More than 50 insurance companies have been sued after refusing to pay for damages.

In Mississippi, state Attorney General Jim Hood has sued insurance companies on behalf of policy holders, seeking to invalidate the companies' claim that damage from Katrina's storm surge is not covered by homeowners' hurricane insurance.

Richard Scruggs, a Mississippi lawyer renowned for suing the tobacco industry, also sued insurance companies in state court to try to force them to pay for Katrina damages that the insurance industry says it is not responsible for.

One of his clients is his brother-in-law, U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., whose home in Pascagoula was reduced to a concrete slab. Lott says the house was worth $700,000 and represented half his retirement nest egg. Lott's insurer, State Farm, has declined to comment.

Closed courtrooms

In the outlying parishes where flooding was worst, getting re-established has been especially arduous for courts and lawyers. When Chris Bruno, Joe's brother, filed a lawsuit against St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish — where 90% of the homes were lost to the flooding — he says he was met by a clerk with a cellphone, operating at a table in the courthouse lobby. His suit is among 11 wrongful death cases against the owners of St. Rita's, where 35 residents died after the owners chose not to evacuate.

In New Orleans, the Criminal District Courthouse remains closed for repairs, but criminal courts — a priority for the local government because of public safety concerns and defendants' constitutional right to a speedy trial — are operating out of rooms in the federal courthouse.

The criminal courts are pressing on even though some court records were lost during the flooding. Two evidence-holding rooms and the city's crime lab were flooded, and more than 8,000 inmates from New Orleans-area parish jails had to be evacuated to 34 local jails around the state.

Most criminal court proceedings so far have amounted to preliminary hearings for cases that could go to trial later. However, Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan plans to impanel a grand jury by the end of this month to examine whether patients were euthanized or otherwise abused at local hospitals just after Katrina hit.

The damage to the city's civil court system was less severe, but nevertheless it stopped all activity there. All but four of the 18 judges in civil district court lost their homes to the flood.

The courthouse's electrical system was destroyed, forcing the court to set up in an office park in Gonzales, about 65 miles west of New Orleans.

More changes likely

Many trials depend on jurors.

Civil District Court Judge Madeleine Landrieu, younger sister to U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, says there's no way to gauge how many people will respond to jury summonses, which civil courts will begin to issue again in March.

"There's no playbook here," Landrieu says. "We should be yielding to the criminal justice system first, because of the right to a speedy trial. Many lawyers (in civil courts) are going to make decisions about whether to waive a right to a jury trial."

Under Louisiana law, either side in a legal dispute is entitled to a jury trial if the claim exceeds $50,000. The Trial Lawyers Association has asked state lawmakers to raise the financial threshold on jury trials to perhaps as high as $250,000 so that judges alone can resolve more claims and eliminate the need for a jury to hear the case.

"Businesses and people have to have these claims resolved," Kleinpeter says. "Are we going to be like the goat getting eaten by the python? He sticks there in the middle like a lump. You don't want the legal system to be like that."

The change in New Orleans' population likely will bring about another change in juries: They are likely to be whiter and wealthier than pre-Katrina juries. Before the storm, New Orleans' population was 68% black, the U.S. Census says, and more than 30% lived in households in which the income was below the federal poverty line, about $19,300 for a family of four.

It's unclear precisely how the percentages have changed, but a disproportionate number of residents who've returned to the city are white. Does that mean juries will be less willing to award damages than pre-Katrina juries, which were so reliably sympathetic to plaintiffs in Orleans Parish that courts there became a haven for personal injury lawsuits?

No one is sure. There is a sense of catastrophe, and now abandonment, among Katrina survivors that cuts across race, class and politics.

"We have more than 1,000 claims (from) individuals, business owners, Fortune 500 companies," says Herman, the trial lawyer. "We've had calls from judges who have terrific insurance claims who aren't getting anywhere."

    After Katrina, courts flooded by lawsuits, UT, 16.1.2006, http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-15-katrina-suits_x.htm

The day the music died

Author and critic Nik Cohn has been obsessed by New Orleans for more than 30 years, and has been involved in the rap scene there for the last five. Six months after Hurricane Katrina he revisited the city and was stunned by what he found. In this compelling despatch he describes communitites struggling to piece together their lives as they watch their city being ripped apart by politicians and planners with designs on a very different New Orleans.

Sunday January 15, 2006
The Observer
Nik Cohn


Brandon McGee is a rapper and survivor. His rap name is Shorty Brown Hustle but most people call him B. He is 30, not much over five foot, has a shaved skull and two gold teeth, wears sagging jeans and a hoodie. He never stops talking.
The day before Katrina hit New Orleans, B was leaning towards staying put. Few in his world watch TV news or read papers, so he didn't know how serious the situation was. Hurricanes didn't bother him. Almost every season brought a false alarm. Katrina was almost on the doorstep by the time B's mother, who lived outside the city, called and told him to get the hell out. Still he hesitated. His cousin Terence, who lived in New Orleans East, refused to shift. B stopped by his house and tried to talk sense into him. Terence, trying to impress his girlfriend Vonda, chose bravado over reason. They were still arguing at dawn when the power went out and the wind hit.

They were in a brick apartment complex. The door buckled and the roof blew off, but the walls held. After a few hours, when the eye of the storm passed, everyone in the complex came outdoors to inspect the damage and celebrate their survival. The air was brown and purple and the silence unearthly. Then the waters started to rise. B has always been terrified of water, so he took shelter upstairs. The water rose fast and smelled of gasoline. Soon it was lapping at the upstairs windows.

Boats drifted by, ripped loose from their moorings in Lake Pontchartrain. When Terence grabbed a passing rowboat, B told him to wait. There were people in the building who had no way to save themselves: Miss Beulah, an old woman in a wheelchair, whose husband had gone missing; a woman in her thirties with a baby; a 13-year-old boy; and two small children with no parents in sight. Though all were strangers to B, he hauled them into the boat, along with Terence and Vonda, and they paddled with their hands and bits of driftwood out of the apartment complex, across the vast lake where New Orleans East had been.

From time to time, they passed corpses, floating face down or tangled in felled electric wiring. It was mid-afternoon and the only landmark visible above the waters was the overpass of the freeway, a quarter-mile away. Miss Beulah didn't know where she was. She kept grunting and rocking the boat, but the children were calm. None of them cried, not then or the days that followed. When the boat reached the overpass, hundreds were huddled there. No one knew the levees had burst; some thought this was the end of the world. Military vehicles drove past without stopping and helicopters circled overhead. To B, this meant rescue was at hand. He didn't understand why none of the soldiers dropped food or water, but he told Miss Beulah and the kids that everything was under control. Come morning, their troubles would be over.

The next day was molten. Insufferable heat and humidity are par for New Orleans in late August, but this was like nothing B had experienced. There wasn't a whisper of breeze; the skyline was dotted by fires. Stuck on the overpass without water, he felt his tongue and eyeballs swell. People were screaming and crying. Some jumped; others were hauled back. More dead bodies floated by below. The stench was indescribable. National Guardsmen cruised by in motor boats and waved. None offered help or information. 'Looked like we were supposed to die there. That seemed to be the plan,' B says.

When darkness came, he and some others broke into a grocery store and took what they needed: water, snacks, chocolate. Then he sat awake till dawn, making sure no one bothered Miss Beulah or the kids. They had become his responsibility. Next day, a coastguard boat came by and moved them from the overpass to Chef Menteur Highway, a dilapidated stretch of fast-food joints, strip clubs and hot-sheet motels, where there was less flooding. The hurricane had stripped many buildings bare, leaving only twisted metal. B and his flock sat by the roadside outside Skate Country till a man with a towtruck gave them a lift to Capt Sal's, a seafood restaurant, where other escapees had made an encampment. B helped liberate some of the seafood. Though the fish was spoiled, he was too hungry to care. All inhibitions were falling away. There were no rules now. You got by any way you could.

Miss Beulah could hardly walk a step, every movement made her groan, and she was incontinent. When B tried to lift her, she inundated him. At night, he lay down in the smell and felt he couldn't breathe. Campfires were lit, people cursing and bitching, getting high on weed or alcohol. Suddenly, women started screaming. Five escaped pitbulls came rushing out of the dark. The men beat them off with sticks and iron bars till military police came to shoot them. Someone asked a cop why all these people were stranded here. The cop laughed.

Two days and nights outside Capt Sal's, then a fleet of trucks ferried them to the Convention Centre. They didn't know that the whole city had drowned till the trucks left Chef Highway and climbed on to the Interstate. Penned in like cattle, 50 to a truck, they looked down and saw that the world they knew was gone. The neighbourhoods they'd grown up in lay deep under water, only roofs and treetops visible. It's nothing left but the stink, B thought. Stink and heat is all.

The one consolation was knowing they were past the worst. When they reached the Convention Centre, there'd be food and clean clothing, medicine for Miss Beulah, diapers for the baby. B could take a long, hot shower, let the poisons wash away. Then he'd look for a new life.

The city centre was almost deserted. The convoy of trucks made its way through mountains of debris, a sea of abandoned cars. Isolated figures waded along the streets, carrying their earthly goods in plastic bags, the waters above their waists. There was no looting, no violence and not a sound till the trucks were a few blocks from the Convention Centre and B heard the chanting, faint at first: Help us! Help us! Help us!

The centre consists of large halls with cement floors and plate-glass windows, perhaps a half-mile from end to end. By the time B arrived, the interiors were overflowing and he settled his group on the walkway outside. One end was peopled by families, the others by street gangs. When B went indoors to look for a bathroom, he couldn't get the door open. He shoved harder and managed to look inside. Dead bodies littered the floor.

It was Friday, the fourth day since Katrina, and B hadn't slept more than a few minutes at any time. Some of his new neighbours told him that sex offenders, escaped from custody, were roaming the halls, snatching children, raping and killing them. B believed it. Evil was everywhere. He gathered the children close around him and set himself to stay awake, never mind how long it took. Four more days went by. People pissed and shat wherever they could, old people died in their filth, babies became too weak to cry.

B felt his mind cracking. A rastaman kept circling him, chanting what sounded like spells. Sometimes National Guardsmen strolled by with rifles, laughing among themselves. Days began to bleed together. B thought about dying.

At last, on the morning of the eighth day, troops arrived in force and every-one was bussed out. B wasn't told where he was going or what he'd find there. The main thing was to keep his group together, make sure he finished what he'd begun. He lifted Miss Beulah on to the bus, settled the kids, then took up position at the back to keep watch. Fourteen hours later, the bus pulled up outside an army barracks - 'some place in Bumfuck, Texas' - that looked like the projects in New Orleans: barred windows, dung-coloured bricks.

B couldn't face staying there but he had no ID, no money to phone his mother or pay for a motel room. He was standing in the road, breathing the cool country air, when a white man hailed him and offered a lift to a church a few miles down the road. One last time, B gathered together his flock and they piled into a minibus. More white people were waiting at the church with food and clothing. All B wanted was a shower. The white people gave him a towel and soap, and let him stay in the shower as long as he needed. The soap, B noted, was quality. It smelled real good...

Why did B and so many others have to endure those eight days? Was it racism? Of course. None of this could have happened in Boston or Beverly Hills and the politicians who've pretended otherwise are liars. New Orleans, two-thirds black, largely impoverished, has been for years a sinkhole of neglect and racial profiling. Katrina simply exposed to the world what those in the city already knew.

Was it, therefore, simply a matter of white 'haves' abandoning black 'have-nots'? Not quite. In the decades since the civil-rights movement, America has enmeshed itself in a cocoon of self-delusion and double-talk where race is concerned, and many African-Americans, their own fortunes improving, have played along. The black middle-class has distanced itself from those left behind. Chris Rock, the black comedian, jokes that he loves black people - it's niggas he can't stand. For others, it isn't a joke. The people stranded at the Superdome and Convention Centre were pariahs, and the root of their exclusion, deeper even than race, is poverty. They are what's buried below. Everything that the American Dream is supposed to wipe away. They aren't supposed to exist, yet here they are. How, in God's name, to make them disappear?

I've been obsessed by New Orleans and its music since childhood and have lived there, off and on, more than 30 years. For me, it has always been the most seductive city on earth - corrupt, murderous, half-mad, but so intensely alive that its sins could never outweigh its allure.

In the last few years I spent much of my time there working with rappers, including B, as a would-be producer. When Katrina struck, I was in New York, revving up for another round of recording. Suddenly, the rappers and their families, people I'd come to care about deeply, were scattered all over the South. My own losses were trivial, but they lost everything: homes, jobs, possessions and dreams. When we talked on the phone, they told me their world - black New Orleans - was gone.

Now, on a chill winter morning, I walk the Lower Ninth Ward, close to the spot where the levee burst on the Industrial Canal. It's my first time back in the city post-Katrina, and this is an area I knew well - a ramshackle quarter of wooden, shotgun houses and brick, ranch-styles, ragged and loud, overrun by children. The majority of homes were owned, not rented. Older people grew vegetables in their backyards and went to church every Sunday, but most of the young had lost faith. Guns and drugs had taken over the streets, there were constant shootings, yet the place was vivid with life. Families were all-important, extended tribes that stuck together. Sudden death was commonplace. Blood endured.

Music was everywhere - gospel in the wooden churches, old soul records playing on front porches, rap blasting out of the gangstas' cars. Today, the silence is so profound I can hear a scrap of rag flapping in a thorn bush. In the streets closest to the levee, the ones that took the first brunt of the flood, many houses have vanished entirely.

A giant barge, left (unforgivably) in the canal as Katrina approached, now rests a hundred yards inland, prow upturned like a giant snout. The roadways, littered with drowned cars, are covered in mud, baked almost white by the sun; children's toys cling to the branches of the few trees that survive. Here and there, I come upon a wedding photo or some strands of Mardi Gras beads. Amid the ruins of one home, a marble shrine to the Virgin Mary stands almost undamaged.

A film of dust and grit still hangs over everything, almost four months after the storm. As the morning lengthens, a few clean-up crews appear. Most workers stand idle, perhaps overwhelmed by their task. I talk to a man in protective clothing and a hard hat. White, with a neat ginger beard, he tells me he comes from Mississippi. His name is Cal. 'I don't mean to be heartless, but Katrina came at a good time for me,' he says. The week before the storm, he was laid off from his job. Now he's on a year's contract, with free lodging and medical coverage. 'There's opportunity here if you know how to recognise it,' he says.

Sometimes a car passes, occupied by a black family returning for the day to sift through the wreckage of their home and salvage a few possessions. Until recently, the Lower Ninth was off-limits to all but government workers - too many toxins, too many bodies still undiscovered. Now anyone can come so long as they're gone before dark, and tour buses have begun to cruise the disaster areas, allowing day-trippers to take snapshots in comfort.

Every house still standing displays spray-painted hieroglyphs, marking the date it was inspected, how many corpses were recovered and whether any residents or pets are still missing. An orange sticker means the dwelling has been condemned. Many residents have stuck up 'No Bulldozing' signs but precious few homes can ever be made habitable again. Most returning residents go away empty-handed. In front of their properties stand small piles of discards - beds, sheets, rotted books, framed pictures, a Bible. Each pile is a life. Lives. When I talk to returnees, the consensus is that the levee was blown deliberately, the city choosing to drown the Ninth Ward and the East, which are 97 per cent black, thus sparing the French Quarter and moneyed enclaves uptown. The second levee break, near Lake Pontchartrain, which inundated black and white neighbourhoods alike, is grudgingly allowed to have been unpremeditated.

There's historical precedent for such suspicions. In the great Mississippi flood of 1927, the white city fathers were allowed by the federal government to dynamite a levee, flooding parishes downriver while keeping themselves dry. More recently, a Ninth Ward levee burst during hurricane Betsy in 1965, causing 81 deaths and a quarter-million evacuations, and there's widespread belief that this, too, was deliberate. Small wonder if the breach at the Industrial Canal strikes many as too convenient to be true. My guess is that the levee wasn't blown, because it didn't need to be: its structure was so inadequate that a major hurricane was bound to overwhelm it and the city was aware of this. Call it depraved indifference.

For decades, the king of the Lower Ninth was Fats Domino. He never abandoned his home neighbourhood but built a large, pink-trimmed bungalow on Caffin Street, adjacent to his yellow-and-black office, decorated with music clefs. On sticky summer evenings he used to stand on the porch with his grandchildren, basking in the esteem of passers-by. In his mid-seventies, he still had the same serene baby-face as 50 years before, at the time of his great hits.

In the days after Katrina, a rumour spread that Fats had perished in the flood. Actually, he'd taken refuge in the attic and been pulled to safety through a small dormer window, popped like the cork from a champagne bottle, but it took a while before his rescue was announced. When I make a pilgrimage to his house, a scrawled message on one of the walls says 'RIP Fats, we'll miss you'. The property is protected by a single sheet of plywood, propped across a doorway. I peer through the crack and see Fats' grand piano lying on its back, below an array of crystal chandeliers.

The French Quarter isn't feeling much pain. At the height of the storm, it shipped less than a foot of water. A couple of bars on Bourbon Street never closed. All that's missing are the tourists. There's bitter irony in this, because tourism is the primary reason that New Orleans sold its soul. Before the 1980s, visitors were expected to adjust to native customs. Then the local economy ran aground. The oil boom of the Seventies collapsed, and big business, driven off by Louisiana's punitive taxes, left town. Even the port, the city's primary source of income, was diminished. That left the tourist dollar. The French Quarter, previously ramshackle, was transformed into a creole Disneyland. Shopping malls, convention centres, casinos and theme parks sprang up, enriching a power elite. Old white money and new black money thrived. The populace at large was left to rot.

In recent decades, the mayors and the majority of the city council have been African-Americans, which merely proves that black rip-off artists can be as voracious as white. Pre-Katrina, tourism generated $1 million a day but not a dime ever seemed to reach the streets. And this was deliberate. Tourists need service - menial labour to clean their tables and make their beds, hose away their vomit on Bourbon Street. To provide it, the city adopted a policy of malign neglect. The old black neighbourhoods, rich in history and culture, were allowed to sink into ruin and the school system to founder. Without education, there was no way out. Many who refused to submit to grunt work in the Quarter became criminals, most often drug dealers. The public-housing projects that ringed the city's centre became armed camps, where killing was seen as proof of manhood. By 2000, New Orleans was America's murder capital, eight times as deadly as New York.

For tourists, this was an invisible world. If they ventured beyond the Quarter at all, they took the streetcar past the mansions on St Charles Avenue or joined a walking tour of the Garden District, and few troubled to inquire what paid for such luxury. The only white faces seen in the projects belonged to social workers and drug-trawlers. The city was more deeply segregated than at any time in its history. Almost every project family lost someone to violence or jail. A culture of hopelessness took hold.

These were the people herded into the Superdome and Convention Centre, the people on rooftops and overpasses, waiting to be rescued, and the people branded as looters, even though most took only what they needed to stay alive. If one small good has come out of Katrina it is that they're invisible no longer. That doesn't mean they now have a voice or will be treated better. In the Quarter, they already seem forgotten. About half the hotels and restaurants have reopened, catering to an army of relief workers. Many have the same habits as the tourists they've replaced. As a race, they're gigantic - huge pink slabs of beef, bellies, legs like tree-trunks in floppy shorts - and they drive SUVs to match. New Orleans, shadowy and mysterious, birthplace of jazz, has been taken over by behemoths, blasting country and western on their car stereos.

'We can fix anything that we focus on. We, as a people, and we, as Americans.' So says Scott Angelle, secretary of Natural Resources for Louisiana, and there's little question he's right. The issue, in contemplating New Orleans' future, is what will be the real focus and what window dressing. Politicians, both national and local, have been big on promises. The city will be restored, the levees strengthened, the school system overhauled. New Orleans won't merely be as it was before Katrina, but improved.

As I travel the city, this vision appears selective, to put it mildly. The uptown streets are immaculate. Where houses were damaged, crews are busy painting and restoring. Power and phone service have been restored long since, the zoo is up and running, Tulane University is about to reopen. In designer coffee houses, upscale whites and blacks swap Katrina war stories with the wry humour of the fully insured. The atmosphere is relaxed. The project people are gone, those gangbangers and dope-dealers. At last the city feels safe.

One school of thought holds that the hurricane was a blessing in disguise. Mayor Ray Nagin, echoing the relief worker I talked to in the Lower Ninth, has spoken of 'the opportunity of 400 years'. New Orleans has always been shambolic, a feckless, enchanted backwater, hopelessly behind the times. Here's the chance to clean out its trash, human and otherwise and drag it into the present.

If the Opportunity party has its way, New Orleans will be remade as a boutique city. Instead of the almost half-million who lived here before Katrina, it will slim down by half. The racial make-up will be reversed so that whites outnumber blacks by two-to-one. The menial labour previously consigned to blacks will be taken over by Hispanic immigrants, housed in tent cities. Since many of these are illegals, they can be relied on not to act unruly or whine about civil rights. As images of Katrina start to fade, tourists will return. With the projects razed and criminals gone, big business will also return. In place of slums will be condos and cluster homes; where the Lower Ninth stood, golf courses. Mayor Nagin has even proposed a law permitting casinos in most hotels. Ten years from now, if Nagin has his way, New Orleans may be Las Vegas South.

The city must first be made safe. That means rebuilding and upgrading the levee system. Engineers estimate the cost at $32 billion, but so far President Bush has committed only $2.6bn. There's a strong sense that Washington has already lost interest; congressmen speak freely of 'Katrina fatigue'. Without dependable levees, built to withstand a category 4 or 5 onslaught, New Orleans hasn't a hope. According to marine geologists, the cycle of disturbances that gave rise to Katrina and Rita (mere category 3s at landfall) is likely to last at least 10 more years, and another major hurricane seems a racing certainty. No one wants to rebuild their house just to have it levelled again. The uptown wealthy, whose mansions stand on higher ground, may feel secure, but the middle class has had enough: 74 per cent of buildings suffered serious damage; 115,000 small businesses are still out of commission; the city's population has shrunk to 70,000. Desperate for workers, Burger King is offering a $6,000 signing-on bonus, but there are few takers. Nagin keeps promising that all will be well. No one I've talked to believes him.

Nagin is a contentious figure. After the flood, when it became obvious that the city's disaster plan had been hopelessly inadequate and he might be held accountable, he posed as a firebrand, accusing the powers in Washington. He had a point: the performance of those in power was a crime. Government at every level failed utterly to help its own citizens in need, and it continues to do so. But Nagin's efforts have been nothing to brag about and his posturing fools few. 'Ray Nagin was never black until Katrina' is a popular line among his constituents. Formerly owner of the local cable-TV franchise, his loyalty has always been to business. He has made a show of organising televised forums on New Orleans' future, at which community leaders can berate each other to their hearts' content. The serious brainstorming, though, goes on at private luncheons beforehand, reserved for Nagin and the developers and demolishers who are the true powers behind his throne.

Nagin, like most of the city's black mayors, is light-skinned; the majority of project dwellers are dark. In a city where the 'brown paper bag test' has held sway for 200 years as a guideline to social status, this is no petty distinction. The reshaping of New Orleans, he seems to feel, is not a matter for the mass of its people. Like most things in America, it will be determined by dollars, and dark-brown dollars aren't many.

Hunters Field is a sacred spot. A scrubby tract in the shadow of the Interstate, it's the home of the Yellow Pocahontas, one of the most revered Mardi Gras Indian tribes, and a site of Super Sunday, perhaps the greatest day in the black calendar, when the tribes gather in full costume to pow-wow, make music, and party as only New Orleanians can. This is the heart of the Seventh Ward, rich in history and black culture. Before Katrina, I could look from here down St Bernard Avenue with its hole-in-the-wall bars, barbershops, used-clothing stores and social clubs, and it seemed no power on earth could snuff out the vitality here. Now, nothing stirs. The shops and bars are all boarded up, there is no power and no one is allowed to live in the houses. At the height of the flooding, the waters rose eight-foot deep and caused massive damage. Most homes that weren't destroyed are infected by mould. Yet, experts agree, the area can be salvaged. It would take a lot of money and commitment, but the Seventh Ward, unlike the Lower Ninth, isn't gone.

So far, there's scant sign of rebirth. In the first three months after Katrina, government agencies received 276,000 applications for home-improvement loans. Few have been processed as yet; of those that have, 82 per cent were turned down. At the present rate of bureaucratic foot-dragging, it will take 114 years to consider every case. A few citizens have set to work on gutting and restoring their houses, but the city has made no move to help. Nagin makes bold speeches, telling people to come on home. The trick is, they have no homes to come to. FEMA has thousands of trailers on hand, which could serve as temporary dwellings, but no black area has electricity, and white areas, which have, don't want trailer camps. As a result, most blacks who've returned are hunkered across the Mississippi in Algiers or out by the airport in Kenner. Shorty Brown Hustle is one of those in Algiers. Until a few weeks ago, he was staying with his mother in San Antonio. 'Still I got's to head back, I missed it too bad. The food and the music, the where-I-belong. San Antonio is fine, but it's not my place. New Orleans stinks, but this bitch is mine.'

That doesn't mean he's welcome. Before Katrina, the city had need of young black males; in the new blueprint, they're surplus to requirements, especially if, like B, they come from the streets. Law-abiding or not, they find themselves demonised. In the days after the hurricane, the level of looter-hysteria reached such heights that two groups of white uptowners, not content with arming themselves, rented Israeli commando units for protection. The widely reported snipers at Charity Hospital turned out to be imaginary. And when the losses to looting were totted up, some of the worst culprits turned out to be policemen.

Many of the law enforcement squads remain. New Orleans, bizarrely, has become the safest city in America, its drug-dealers and killers scattered. Yet the climate of fear remains. 'We're an endangered species,' says Seventh Ward Snoop, B's partner in rap. 'They trying every trick in the book to make us gone, but this is my city too.' Though he has degrees in sociology and criminal justice, he works as a security guard at a downtown hotel. 'Ray Nagin keeps saying New Orleans is going to be the paradigm of a new city,' says Snoop. 'Paradigm of fucked is what it is.'

Common sense tells me he's right. But common sense and New Orleans are pretty much strangers, and deep down I'm not convinced that all is lost. This has always been a city of spirits, impervious to logic. Perhaps it's denial, perhaps survivor guilt, but I need to believe those spirits will yet find some way to outfox the real world.

For the moment, though, the sense of loss is overwhelming. One morning, I ask B to retrace his Katrina journey with me. The apartment complex where he started is under guard, but everything else - the ravaged wasteground by the overpass, littered with fast-food containers and water bottles; the shattered glass in the forecourt of Skate Country; the felled and twisted neon sign outside Capt Sal's; the whole of Chef Highway, mile on mile of desolation - has been left to its own devices. 'I guess the clean-up crews must be on their break,' says B. We drive along the interstate, taking the same route as the trucks that delivered him and his group to the Convention Centre. None of the areas below shows any sign of life till we reach the CBD (Central Business District), which is almost back to normal. The centre has been scrubbed clean, inside and out, but remains closed to visitors. B finds the spot where he squatted, those dreadful days and nights. He relives it - the bodies blocking the bathroom door, the snatched children, the old women dying in their faeces, the National Guardsmen laughing among themselves, the heat, the stench, the helplessness - and he cries.

· Nik Cohn's 'Triksta' is published by Harvill Secker at £12.99. To buy it at £11.99 with free UK p&p go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0885

    The day the music died, O, 15.1.2006, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1686412,00.html

New Orleans mayor invokes King legacy

Posted 1/14/2006 1:07 PM
Updated 1/14/2006 1:26 PM
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The mayor of New Orleans called on his struggling Saturday to unite in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy as it rebuilds its hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize from Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, in Oslo, back in Dec. 10, 1964.
AP/file

"He would want us to get together. He would want us to start over," Mayor Ray Nagin said during a news conference announcing events scheduled to honor the slain civil rights leader.

Civil rights activists and some members of the black community have been among the most outspoken critics of rebuilding proposals that would focus initial efforts on the least-damaged neighborhoods while delaying work on some of the hardest hit, such as predominantly black eastern New Orleans and the Ninth Ward.

Nagin said he is committed to seeing a diverse city rebuilt, and he hoped that this year's King celebrations, beginning Sunday, would focus on the legacy of King and Rosa Parks, as well as those who died as Hurricane Katrina hit the city on Aug. 29 and flooded its neighborhoods.

New Orleans, which before the storm was two-thirds black, cannot be allowed to change significantly in the rebuilding process, Nagin said.

"I'm focused on rebuilding one New Orleans for everyone," he said.

City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis said the call to unity through diversity was especially important this year, "as the city struggles to resurrect new hopes, new dreams."

She said the holiday marking the slain civil rights leader's birthday celebrates equity and justice at a time when many in the city are fighting for the right to return and to prosper in New Orleans.

    New Orleans mayor invokes King legacy, NYT, 14.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-14-new-orleans-mayor_x.htm

Legislators Eager for a Say

in Spending Louisiana Aid

January 14, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

BATON ROUGE, La., Jan. 13 - With a shower of federal dollars about to rain down on this state, jockeying is beginning here in the halls of the Louisiana Capitol over who will control the money.

In a place where eagerness to grab money is dampened only by its usual scarcity, the prospect of some $9 billion in quick Hurricane Katrina relief - half the state's normal budget - has whetted appetites. Even legislators normally wary of their colleagues' free-spending ways are nervous about being shut out.

On Friday, as Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's handpicked, 26-member recovery commission, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, made first plans for dividing up the money, a handful of state legislators hung around outside a committee room here. Some predicted fights over what they see as Ms. Blanco's propensity for hoarding the largesse.

The commitments Friday - $100 million in small-business loans, $141 million to repair state buildings and $100 million for infrastructure - were the first steps in reconstruction spending, which has lagged that in Mississippi, where officials had plans for that state's money weeks ago. Mississippi is giving outright grants of up to $150,000 to homeowners who did not have flood insurance.

The picture here is complicated by competing political interests, uncertain authority and far greater storm damage. Prospects for additional help - specifically, hoped-for federal reconstruction legislation many officials here see as a giant cure-all - appeared cloudier on Friday.

As he has previously done, Donald Powell, President Bush's Gulf Coast recovery chief, refused to commit himself to the legislation, in an appearance before the recovery authority. Sponsored by Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, the bill would pay off owners of ruined homes and lending companies holding worthless mortgages. The recovery authority's executive director, Andy Kopplin, called the bill "fundamental."

But the most Mr. Powell would say, when a commission member brought it up, was, "We share a common goal." Later, Mr. Baker called the bill's prospects "very good."

Meanwhile, attention was focused on the $9 billion Louisiana is certain to get. The governor was careful to call the Legislature a "partner" in doling it out. But outside the room, skeptical lawmakers were predicting a fight in a special session next month, with an energized Legislature seeking to rein in Ms. Blanco's recovery panel, which is made up of prominent Louisianians from many walks of life.

"We've been good-government-grouped to death," said State Representative Cedric Richmond, a New Orleans Democrat who is chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus.

Dismissing the idea that the recovery authority might be best trusted to handle such a large sum, Mr. Richmond said: "I think the Legislature is a great place. If it's coming through the state, I think the local representatives should have a lot of input." The governor's "past actions have not been inclusive at all," Mr. Richmond added.

In normal times, legislators in this poor state eagerly compete to build community halls, recreation centers or other amenities for their needy constituents. The final days of legislative sessions can be frantic with such maneuvering. Now, though, the stakes are far higher.

The money consists of some $6 billion that state officials say they will get in Community Development Block Grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and another $3 billion to rebuild properties to better withstand catastrophic hurricanes.

"I do have some concerns that if we flow it out to the Legislature, it's going to turn into the usual feeding frenzy," said State Senator John T. Schedler, a Republican from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

Still, Mr. Schedler added, "I think there ought to be some mechanism for us to have some voice."

Constitutional experts in the body insist that the Legislature alone can appropriate money.

"Being a businessman, I'm into accountability," said State Senator Walter J. Boasso, a Republican from St. Bernard Parish, the area hit hardest by the storm. Recovery authority members "don't have to answer to the public," Mr. Boasso said.

Authority officials insist there will be "consensus," as Mr. Kopplin put it: spending ideas will go to a joint legislative committee, which has to "bless them," he said. That panel is stacked with the governor's allies, her critics say. What is more, the spending proposals are then passed on to HUD by Ms. Blanco, and as for the money itself, "Congress gave it to the governor," Mr. Kopplin said.

One member of the recovery authority, Sean Reilly, recently described the body this way: "Its real teeth is in its oversight of the money."

Such talk seems certain to set up conflicts with the often pugnacious Legislature when it returns next month.

"I do not think the Legislature will sit idly by and allow the governor to distribute whatever federal dollars are received for the purpose of rebuilding the state," said State Senator John L. Dardenne, Republican of Baton Rouge.

"You do have a political dichotomy at work," Mr. Dardenne said. "We want decisions made by people who can be held accountable to the public. The public doesn't elect the Louisiana Recovery Authority."

    Legislators Eager for a Say in Spending Louisiana Aid, NYT, 14.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/national/nationalspecial/14spend.html

In New Orleans,

Bush Speaks With Optimism

but Sees Little of Ruin

January 13, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 12 - President Bush made his first trip here in three months on Thursday and declared that New Orleans was "a heck of a place to bring your family" and that it had "some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."

Mr. Bush spent his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees.

Mr. Bush's motorcade did pass some abandoned neighborhoods as it traveled on Interstate 10 into the city.

"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," the president told the local leaders at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, an independent group set up to attract business and tourism to the city.

Mr. Bush added that "for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans."

Mr. Bush, who appeared to be trying to spread optimism in a city that is years away from recovery, did not tell the group or the city's residents what many were hoping to hear: that he would commit the federal government to building the strongest possible levees, a Category 5 storm protection system.

Instead, on a day when the Bush administration revised the deficit upward to more than $400 billion and blamed it largely on Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush restated his support for spending $3.1 billion of federal money on building "stronger and better" levees.

Local engineers say those levees would protect against the 100-mile-an-hour winds of a Category 2 hurricane and the low barometric pressure of a Category 3 or weak Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina peaked as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico and hit land as a Category 3 storm.

The president ignored questions about the city's new rebuilding plan, introduced Wednesday night to enormous community criticism, and White House officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to offer opinions. The plan, which depends on nearly $17 billion more from the federal government, gives neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to attract sufficient numbers of residents or be bulldozed.

The federal government has so far authorized $85 billion in relief to the Gulf Coast, with $25 billion spent.

"We're not going to weigh in," Donald E. Powell, the president's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator, told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday morning. "It will be their plan."

In the meeting at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Mr. Bush sat between Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitchell J. Landrieu. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Democrat with whom Mr. Bush has a chilly relationship, was in The Netherlands looking at the country's flood-control system.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said that the president had not deliberately timed his visit on a day when Ms. Blanco was not in town, and that the White House had reached out to her but she had a scheduling conflict.

Ms. Blanco's press secretary, Denise Bottcher, said that Ms. Blanco would be returning to New Orleans on Thursday night, just hours after the president left the city, and that she was "disappointed" she had missed his visit.

From New Orleans, Mr. Bush traveled to Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Mississippi, where he viewed destruction along the Gulf Coast. He then headed for Palm Beach, Fla., for a closed-door $4 million fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee and Republican candidates at the home of Dwight Schar, a homebuilder and a co-owner of the Washington Redskins.

    In New Orleans, Bush Speaks With Optimism but Sees Little of Ruin, NYT, 13.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/politics/13bush.html

New Orleans Commission

to Seek Overhaul of Schools

and Transit

January 11, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 10 - The commission devising a blueprint to reconstruct the city will propose on Wednesday a complete reorganization of the troubled school system, the elimination of a 76-mile shipping channel that was a prime cause of flooding after Hurricane Katrina and the creation of a new jazz district downtown.

The commission report, several members said, will also advocate building a 53-mile light-rail system crisscrossing the city, connecting neighborhoods with the airport, downtown and other commercial centers. That system would be in addition to a separate heavy-rail system that would link New Orleans with Baton Rouge and the rest of the Gulf Coast.

The light-rail system, estimated to cost $3 billion, is intended to help spark redevelopment in areas of the city that were flooded.

Toward that end, the plan calls on the city to enlist developers to build at least four communities of 1,000 or more houses at stops along the proposed light-rail lines.

The jazz district would be in the old Storyville section, north of the French Quarter, an idea championed by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, a member of the commission and the co-chairman of its culture committee.

The recommendations are among dozens in a sweeping seven-part report to be announced beginning on Wednesday by the Bring Back New Orleans Commission. Mayor C. Ray Nagin established the panel in September to plan the rebuilding.

Because the state and federal governments will have large voices in the process, many proposals may run into opposition, but the plan represents the city's first comprehensive effort to put itself back together.

The most controversial proposal, reported on Sunday by The New York Times, would have allowed residents to return soon to all sections of the city but within a year would close those neighborhoods that did not achieve a critical mass of residents. A leader of the commission, Joseph C. Canizaro, said Tuesday that members had modified that proposal over the last two days and now believed that no one should be allowed back into the most damaged neighborhoods until June.

City services will probably be more readily available then, Mr. Canizaro said, and the extra time will allow the city to identify who wants to return and set up planning teams for each neighborhood.

"My concern," he said, "is for people who have the money and we let fix up a place and then they find themselves sitting all by themselves without any neighbors around."

By Aug. 20, under the plan, the city should begin the neighborhood reconstruction and should begin acquiring property for public projects like expanding parks. Some low-lying neighborhoods may become parks or marshland if they do not attract enough housing development.

One measure of whether a neighborhood will succeed will be whether it has enough residents to justify a high school and two primary schools.

An essential element, Mr. Canizaro said, is forming the Crescent City Recovery Corporation, through which federal funds would flow. The corporation would have the power to buy and sell property for redevelopment, including the use of eminent domain, and could issue bonds.

Board members of the recovery corporation, to number seven to 15 under the plan, would be appointed by the president, the governor, the mayor and the City Council.

"If we don't get a reconstruction authority in place right away, we won't have a chance with implementation," Mr. Canizaro said.

To create such an agency, however, the city needs to amend its charter, he and others said.

As of midday on Tuesday, members of the commission and city workers were frantically cobbling together the components of a plan remarkable for breadth and scope. The commission was created to draw up a master plan to remake a city that suffered what was widely described as the worst urban disaster in the country's history.

The floodwater that covered 80 percent of the city caused half its houses to sit in four feet or more of foul, murky water for weeks, according to a draft of the final report, and it destroyed much of the public works in the city.

The commission has missed the Dec. 31 deadline that Mr. Nagin imposed. Members said releasing an overview of its plans this week should give the White House time to digest a blueprint certain to cost billions in federal dollars before President Bush delivers his State of the Union address on Jan. 20.

That assumes that Mr. Nagin formally adopts the commission's recommendations.

Some proposals like the light-rail system have been floated for years and are likely to be greeted with skepticism in Washington.

"We might be a little bit late, but we've tried to make this an inclusive process, and we've all been doing the best we can," the co-chairwoman of the commission, Barbara Major, said. "I'm always conscious of the fact that everybody that sits on that commission is also struggling to put their life back together."

Ms. Major has been living in temporary housing in Texas since the storm, a five-hour drive from New Orleans.

The commission early on created seven committees led by commission members with scores of volunteers as staff members. The seven areas are urban planning, education, culture, health and social services, infrastructure, government effectiveness and economic development.

Each will present the details of its plan over the next 10 days.

"There was a time I didn't know if this process would work, but it has," W. Anthony Patton, a member of the commission, said. "I'm feeling very good about things."

To improve a school system that has long ranked as one of the worst in the nation, the commission has endorsed a plan that breaks the district into clusters of 8 to 14 schools that will function as semiautonomous units, said Scott S. Cowen, chairman of the commission's education committee and president of Tulane University.

Before the hurricane, the district operated about 120 schools.

The networks of schools would have the freedom to determine everything from the length of school days to critical curriculum choices and teachers.

Now that public and private schools are beginning to reopen, a lack of livable housing is the main impediment to people returning. The commission will call on the city to return quickly to the market the thousands of blighted houses in a legal limbo because of tax and ownership problems.

The federal government will be asked to pay the $12 billion cost of compensating homeowners who lost their houses.

By rehabilitating abandoned houses in sections with little or no flooding or demolishing them and building anew, the commission estimates that the city could house an additional 37,000 people.

The plan calls on the authorities to close the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shortcut from the river to the coast that slices through a corner of the city. Known as Mr. Go, the byway cost $92 million to construct and was heralded as a critical economic driver when it opened to great fanfare in the 1960's.

It was also a major source of the water that flooded the eastern, predominantly black half of New Orleans when the storm surge roared up from the Gulf Coast.

Officials at the Port of New Orleans have defended the byway as a critical segment of the regional shipping industry. But local officials have reached a consensus that it should be closed. For years, it has been little used, and it serves as a conduit for destructive saltwater into freshwater wetlands.

"There are no easy decisions here," Ms. Major said. "So whatever decisions are made, I can guarantee there will be some people who are unhappy."

    New Orleans Commission to Seek Overhaul of Schools and Transit, NYT, 11.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/national/nationalspecial/11plan.html

New Orleans restaurants

hungry for workers

Mon Jan 9, 2006 5:51 PM ET
Reuters
By Michael Depp

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - More than four months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans' famed restaurant industry is hungry for chefs and staff to keep the kitchens humming.

Only a third of the devastated city's eateries have reopened since the August 29 storm, according to the Louisiana Restaurant Association, and many are operating with only 30 to 40 percent of their pre-Katrina staff.

Those thinned-down staffs are working long hours as chefs and restaurateurs try to keep their battered businesses alive.

"In order to expand further, we need more employees to return," said Tom Weatherly, a spokesman for the LRA.

He estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 restaurant workers would come back to work immediately but for one major impediment - they don't have anywhere to live.

"We've got to have temporary housing to get the industry going," said Dickie Brennan, who owns three French Quarter restaurants.

Two of those, Palace Cafe and Bourbon House, have reopened, but both face staffing shortages. Bourbon House is down nearly a quarter of its staff, and Palace Cafe has only been serving lunch because it is operating with less than half of its pre-storm help.

One short-term solution - a "hospitality village" in the Algiers neighborhood - is in the works. That plan calls for 300 Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers that would house restaurant workers on a parcel of land under a city bridge.

Restaurant workers who have been able to return to New Orleans have found a job market that greatly leans in their favor. The LRA reports an average wage increase of 20 to 40 percent for managers, servers, cooks and dishwashers.

Rising labor costs, coupled with increased food prices, insurance rates and leases, all cut into a profit margin that wasn't very large even before Katrina, Weatherly said.

Meanwhile, chefs and restaurant owners are dealing with other obstacles, chiefly supply problems.

"Fresh produce and things like that are more of a challenge than they used to be," said Shawn Whalen, a chef at Martin Wine Cellar in Metairie, Louisiana. He said his suppliers blame delays on staffing problems of their own, especially a shortage of drivers.

Another impediment is most restaurants have yet to be compensated by their insurers for business interruption, the LRA said, leading to a shortage of cash.

"People are just trying to hold on to what they have while they're waiting for their insurance settlements," he said.

In the meantime, workers can get up to a $5,000 signing bonus for taking a job at a fast food restaurant.

"We don't know if it's going to stay at that level," Weatherly said. "We may see some of these businesses end up closing even though they're extremely busy right now."

    New Orleans restaurants hungry for workers, R, 9.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-01-09T225118Z_01_KWA981693_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-RESTAURANTS.xml

Delery Street

A Commitment to Marriage,

and to New Orleans

January 9, 2006
The New York Times
By DEBORAH SONTAG

HOUSTON - Charles Reddick of Delery Street in New Orleans is a big, gruff, no-nonsense man who could not be called a sentimentalist. This fall, when he finally proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Jacqueline Journee, he told her that he was too busy working to get her a ring. She bought her own.

A New Year's Eve wedding seemed like a starry-eyed idea for such a pragmatist. But deep down, beneath the Bad Boy T-shirt that often encases his belly, Mr. Reddick, 46, is something of a softy - and never more so than since his large extended family lost everything but their lives to Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Reddick, a roofer, feels responsible for all of them. With the fate of their ravaged Lower Ninth Ward uncertain, they have spent the last four months displaced and disoriented, their lives at a standstill. Mr. Reddick wanted to provide a jolt of joy, some Marvin Gaye and deviled eggs and dirty dancing, before the real planning for the future began.

And so, beneath a glowing heart-shaped arch beside the clubhouse pool in a staid Houston subdivision, the couple, in ivory tuxedo and flowing wedding gown, took their vows before some 100 elegantly attired evacuees from New Orleans. As midnight approached, the tears, hugs, bumps and grinds built to an emotional catharsis, with resolutions to use the hurricane as a catalyst for positive change.

"We done cried our tears, and now it's time for a fresh start," said Vendetta Lockley, Mr. Reddick's cousin and a revenue audit manager for the State of Louisiana.

A fresh start will not be easy, but many Lower Ninth Ward homeowners find themselves at a potential turning point. In the coming week, the Bring Back New Orleans Commission of Mayor C. Ray Nagin is expected to recommend that the city reopen all neighborhoods to rebuilding, including low-lying, hard-hit areas like the Lower Ninth Ward, a tight-knit black community with one of the city's highest homeownership rates. The Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group advising the mayor's commission, had recommended that New Orleans concentrate its rebuilding on higher ground, deferring reconstruction of heavily inundated areas. But city leaders distanced themselves from that advice in December after it sparked protest from residents who feared it would create of a blueprint that eliminated black neighborhoods.

When Mr. Reddick composed a game plan for his family late last year, he was guided by his gut belief that the Lower Ninth Ward would end up being revived by the determination of its residents. At once faithful and practical, he was unwilling to entertain the idea that "the hood" might die, yet cautious enough to wait out the coming public debate on the subject before throwing down a new foundation for his family's life.

Since October, Mr. Reddick has been working around the clock in the New Orleans area, rebuilding other people's homes in neighborhoods that are likely to survive. He employs more than a dozen male relatives, and they all support dozens of women and children living temporarily in Houston.

Mr. Reddick has settled on a kind of two-phase plan. First, he will bring his family back to the New Orleans area by next summer even if it means living in outlying areas, in trailers or rental properties at first. "The most important thing is to be back in New Orleans," Mr. Reddick said. "My mom is not getting any younger, and she wants to spend the rest of her time on earth in the place that she calls home."

Then, within a year or so, they will all move back to Delery Street, where he will have remade his modest childhood home into a two-story house big enough for several generations of Reddicks. "We will be one of the first families back," Mr. Reddick said.

Putting this plan into action is certain to be complex, especially if the city adopts the mayor's commission's recommendation that hard-hit areas be given only a year to repopulate or face closing.

Mr. Reddick might be brash and optimistic enough to forge ahead under such conditions (although he said he doubted the one-year limit would ever be imposed). But some of his neighbors said that they would be skittish.

"I tell you one thing," Isabell Moore, a retired special education teacher, said recently, standing in front of her Delery Street house, which has a "No Bulldozing" sign. "I'm not putting any money into this place if they're going to tell me to get out in a year."

As her sons carted out wheelbarrows of destroyed possessions, Ms. Moore cupped a hand to her ears. "Listen. The birds are back, which means life is returning," she said. "Well, they're crows, but crows are birds."

Ms. Moore said she would move to another neighborhood in New Orleans if necessary. "But anywhere we go, we'll need help to start over," she said.

Like many, the Moores did not carry flood insurance, and their homeowners' insurer does not seem willing to pay them anything, having decided that the extensive damage to their house was caused solely by flooding. The Moores have maintained that insurance policy for 42 years and say they will fight the decision.

Financially, the Reddicks are in a better position because so many in their family are in the building trade and because Lvinia Reddick, Mr. Reddick's 68-year-old mother, carried limited flood insurance in addition to homeowners' coverage.

Her house was insured by the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a nonprofit company. Shortly before Christmas, Jason Norwood, the insurance adjuster, met Mr. Reddick there. Mr. Norwood's car featured a "Re-defeat Bush" bumper sticker, and the Reddick house featured a red city sticker that proclaimed it unsafe.

"They'd have been better off with no homeowners' insurance and full flood," Mr. Norwood said. "There was roof damage, and water rained in. But then the flood came and wiped away the evidence, and the insurance companies tend to say it was all flood. I'll try to get everything paid for."

Lvinia Reddick has already been offered $35,000 in flood insurance. She would collect more than $100,000 if her homeowners' policy paid her the maximum.

Living in a Houston townhouse with two other retirees, Lvinia Reddick has been in and out of the hospital since the hurricane, unable to travel to New Orleans. Her son has been itching to demolish her house, but she would not let him. "I just got to see it for myself, even if it ain't pretty," she said.

Finally in New Orleans shortly before Christmas, Lvinia Reddick, wearing hoop earrings and rubber boots, stood in shock before her collapsing house in the ghostly wasteland of her lifelong neighborhood. There was a moment of silence, and then she wailed to the heavens. Relatives kept her from crumbling to the ground.

"Little Charles," she shrieked, addressing her son, whose late father was known as Big Charles, "you didn't tell me it was this bad. Oh, Lord, have mercy."

Mr. Reddick, who as far back as late September had informed his mother that the house was destroyed, folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. He looked stern but he was whispering, "You're going to get your house back, baby."

Lvinia Reddick's niece, Deborah Lockley Wilkes, a high school physics teacher in Houston, took her arm, suggesting that they draw up floor plans for a dream house "with a Jacuzzi and the works, girl."

"I don't want a Jacuzzi," Lvinia Reddick said. "I just want my little house with my little fence and my little neighbor to chat with."

At that moment, a car rolled slowly down the street, its passengers taking photographs and notes. "That's all you see back here," Mr. Reddick said. "Nothing but white folks who want our land."

Jimmy Slack, a relative and a New Orleans police officer who had shown up to offer moral support, climbed back into his squad car. Driving away, he blasted Aaron Neville singing "Please Come Home for Christmas" over his loudspeaker. Lvinia Reddick startled, then threw back her head and roared with laughter. And just like that, she was ready to move on.

Mr. Reddick treated his relatives to a feast at the Bourbon House in the French Quarter, and the retirees worried about their salt consumption as they chatted over seafood platters about where they might be able to hook up trailers.

After his mother headed out of town, Mr. Reddick sighed with relief. "I'm glad she came," he said. "Now I'm going to tear her house down."

Asked why he did not wait for the authorities to demolish it instead, Mr. Reddick said that he was just too impatient. "I want to see some kind of movement," he said. "I'm getting everybody else's house together and doing nothing on my own."

Mr. Reddick has been living in a cousin's house near the airport with eight male relatives who work for him. He has so fully employed the men in his large family as well as family friends that he recently brought in some Mexican roofers from Houston to help out.

"And we haven't even scratched the surface yet," Mr. Reddick said, as he drove in a red pickup with a license plate holder that read "Pure Pleasure Truck." "Most people in town haven't gotten their insurance money yet."

Mr. Reddick was heading to an appointment in Plaquemines Parish, where his father's family came from. "My granddaddy's buried under that shade tree," he said casually, pointing out the window. "Do you know Leander Perez? The big segregationist? Well, my people were Perez's" workers, he said, although he used a more stinging term. "The slave quarters right there? That was my grandfather's house."

The late Leander Perez, the political boss of Plaquemines Parish for decades before his death in 1969, was indeed a notorious opponent of desegregation.

Talking as he drove from roofing site to roofing site, eager to sign off on his remaining jobs so that he could head to Texas for his wedding, Mr. Reddick turned uncharacteristically reflective. He acknowledged that he had, in a way, been energized by the hurricane. It has made him shoulder his familial responsibilities, take his business more seriously and appreciate what he has, he said.

"Honestly?" he said. "Katrina's taking me to the next level."

Several days after the wedding, Marna David, a friend in New Orleans, asked Mr. Reddick about the festivities. He said something like, " 'Yup, got it done,' " she said.

By then, Mr. Reddick was already back on rooftops. "Just saw Charles today, dragging his whole crew around again," Ms. David said in an e-mail message on Friday. "Sounds like things are just jumping for him. Funny how life works."

    A Commitment to Marriage, and to New Orleans, NYT, 9.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/national/nationalspecial/09street.html

Plan Would Open

All New Orleans for Rebuilding

January 8, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 7 - The city's official blueprint for redevelopment after Hurricane Katrina, to be released on Wednesday, will recommend that residents be allowed to return and rebuild anywhere they like, no matter how damaged or vulnerable the neighborhood, according to several members of the mayor's rebuilding commission.

The proposal appears to put the city's rebuilding panel on a collision course with its state counterpart, which will control at least some of the flow of federal rebuilding money to the city.

The primary author of the plan, Joseph C. Canizaro, said teams of outside experts would try to help each neighborhood return to normal, and those communities that drew enough people to justify the expense of city services would be permitted to grow.

But ultimately, those areas that fail to attract a critical mass of residents in 12 months will probably not survive as residential neighborhoods, Mr. Canizaro said, and are likely to end up as marshland as this city's population declines and its footprint shrinks.

People who rebuild in those areas will be forced to leave, according to the proposal. Though such a requirement would be emotionally wrenching, the commission will propose a buyout program to compensate those people at the market price prior to Hurricane Katrina, but it is not clear whether there will be federal financing for such a program.

Assuming the commission's recommendations are formally adopted by Mayor C. Ray Nagin, the plan would effectively defer for a year one of the most contentious issues in the city's struggle to recover from the flooding that followed the hurricane: the fate of the most heavily damaged and flood-prone neighborhoods.

Many residents of low-lying neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East have said they are determined to rebuild their ravaged blocks, while some experts have argued that such areas are better returned to marshland for safety and economic reasons. Some civic leaders who had hoped the mayor's panel, the 17-member Bring Back New Orleans Commission, would take a firm stand on the issue expressed disappointment.

"There are some very tough decisions that have to be made here, and no one relishes making them," said Janet R. Howard, chief executive of the Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit policy organization based in New Orleans. "But to say that people should invest their money and invest their energies and put all their hope into rebuilding and then in a year we'll re-evaluate, that's no plan at all."

At least one member of the state panel, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, has echoed that sentiment.

"Someone has to be tough, to stand up and to tell the truth," Sean Reilly, a member of the state commission, said in a speech earlier this week. "Every neighborhood in New Orleans will not be able to come back safe and viable."

Andy Kopplin, executive director of the state commission, declined to comment on the specifics of the city's report, which "hasn't been formally presented to us."

But he said his agency, when doling out federal dollars, would favor plans that emphasized safety and the wise use of precious resources.

"We want to make sure they invest in a smart way that provides a good return on investment," Mr. Kopplin said, adding that at the same time plans should be "true to the aspirations of local communities."

Mr. Canizaro, a prominent real estate developer here, acknowledged the possibility that Hurricane Katrina could spell the death of more than one New Orleans neighborhood. He cited a study by the Rand Corporation that estimated that in three years the city would have a population of no more than 275,000, down more than 40 percent from its pre-hurricane population of 465,000.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure if you're only going to have 40 or 50 percent of your original population, then there's going to be shrinking in the amount of land that's going to be needed," Mr. Canizaro said.

Yet deciding which neighborhoods should not be rebuilt involves far more than the cold rationale of geographic and demographic data, Mr. Canizaro said, especially considering the historic racial tensions in New Orleans. The hurricane devastated the lives of white and black alike, but the waters that roared though much of the city disproportionately flooded its predominantly black eastern half.

"Unfortunately, a lot of poor African-Americans had everything they own destroyed here," Mr. Canizaro said. "So we have to be careful about dictating what's going to happen, especially me as a white man. What's important is we give people an opportunity to determine their future, as best we can."

Under the proposal, teams of planners, financial experts and others from around the country will be helping residents to rebuild. It is not clear, though, that people who choose to return to devastated neighborhoods will find much to surround them. The city has not yet promised a full array of services to every neighborhood, and there may be no grocery stores or schools for miles.

It is not even certain that lenders will agree to grant mortgages in those neighborhoods without some guarantees that residents will be there for longer than a year.

Many of the most important details in the plan, including how the city will determine when a neighborhood has reached critical mass and can survive, will not be released until next week.

All week, members of the commission and the city staff have been frantically cobbling together the various elements of the rebuilding plan, which has already slipped past its Dec. 31 deadline. It is now scheduled to be released on Wednesday, which members say should give the White House time to digest the redevelopment blueprint, certain to cost billions in federal dollars, before President Bush delivers his State of the Union address on Jan. 20.

The final report, as described by several commissioners, will include a number of ideas designed to stimulate the city's economy and culture, including a proposal to construct a light rail system and a plan to establish New Orleans as a world center of neuroscience research.

The commission will also recommend that the city create a redevelopment authority to serve as a land bank for blighted or abandoned properties and a vehicle through which federal funds will flow.

By creating an independent authority appointed by elected officials on all levels of government, several commissioners say, they hope to insulate the redevelopment process from politics.

The most contentious issue, however, will be the redevelopment of neighborhoods. That battle began in earnest in November, when the Urban Land Institute, a prominent planning group based in Washington, proposed that the city temporarily ban redevelopment of properties in those areas hardest hit by flooding, including large tracts of New Orleans East, the Lower Ninth Ward and Lakeview.

The suggestion was immediately rejected by residents of those neighborhoods and their political representatives. Last month, the City Council passed a nonbinding resolution stating that residents should be free to rebuild immediately wherever they choose.

The notion that residents have a right to rebuild anywhere proved too starry-eyed for Alden J. McDonald Jr., a member of the mayor's commission and the chief executive of Liberty Bank and Trust, the city's largest black-owned bank. Though most of the bank's customers lived in the most damaged parts of town, and though Mr. McDonald himself owns a home in New Orleans East, he said it would be cruel to encourage people to move back "without first giving them all the facts."

Mr. McDonald said he was particularly concerned about what planners call the "jack-o'-lantern syndrome," where there are large gaps between homes on a given block.

"We really need to ask what kind of community it will be if there aren't adequate services, if there aren't grocery stores and other things that people need to make a community worth living in," he said.

Mr. Canizaro, who as chairman of the commission's planning committee has found himself at the center of this debate, floated a compromise proposal at a commission meeting in mid-December: let people rebuild anywhere they want, then re-evaluate progress in three years. That way the market, and not planners, would determine which neighborhoods would come back.

The general sentiment, however, was that three years was too long, so Mr. Canizaro countered by shrinking the evaluation period to a year.

Critics of his plan say that if the city floods again in the near future, damaging rebuilt neighborhoods in the same places, there will be little sympathy and few federal dollars. But Mr. Canizaro said the prospect of a fortified flood control system, promised by the Bush administration, made him confident that the city would not suffer the same devastation from a storm similar to Hurricane Katrina.

That confidence, however, is far from universal. Michael M. Liffmann, the associate executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant College at Louisiana State University, which studies land-use issues along the Gulf Coast, said most experts agreed that roughly one-quarter to one-third of the city should not be rebuilt because those areas lie dangerously below sea level.

"There are parts of New Orleans that are not fit for human habitation," Mr. Liffmann said. "They never were and never will be. But these are as much social calls as they are scientific ones."