News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)

[Audrey2Katrina]

Pass Christian Mayor Detracts Criticisms

From Gulf Coast News:

Pass Christian Mayor Billy McDonald says he is unfairly being criticized for not attending meetings. The 70 year old mayor says he is doing his job but he has serious health issues stemming from high blood pressure, made worse from post-Katrina stresses. Pass Christian was severely damaged by Katrina and recovery there is not making much headway. GCN will have more on this in an upcoming Special Report.

Voice of American News reports that former U.S. presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton have announced several grants to communities along the Gulf Coast that are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

The two former presidents made their announcement Friday in New Orleans at Kingsley House, a community outreach program that was one of the grant recipients. Altogether the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund gave $9.7 million to local governments and non-governmental organizations in the three states hit by Katrina: Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Former president Bush said the fund he and former president Clinton head was made possible by donations from millions of ordinary citizens.

The Bush-Clinton Fund awarded a $2 million grant to the city of Waveland, Mississippi, to bridge the gap between what federal funds provide and what the local community must pay to restore infrastructure. Waveland City Clerk Lisa Planchard told VOA, the restoration of water, sewage and electricity will allow many displaced people to return.

"They are hindered right now, because we do not have the infrastructure to accommodate the people who want to come back. They want to come home, but they just cannot," she explained.

While the donation helps Waveland meet its local share to receive a federal grant, it points out that this local match to receive the millions in federal assistance dollars is a serious problem, as GCN notes in its Special Report: "Where is the Money?"

[Audrey2Katrina]

Reaching Out From Ground Zero

What Waveland Needs Eight Months After Katrina

From GulfCoastNews:

Waveland was the very city in the path of Katrina’s devastation, the one along the eastern eyewall that was literally obliterated. Miles of slabs stand where antebellum houses once stood. Twisted, ghoulish trees stand where green and flourishing branches once covered the beaches. For all intents and purposes, Waveland should no longer exist. Thanks to the stalwart nature of tough coastal Mississippians, Waveland won’t go quietly into that good night…

By Mark Proulx-Special to GCN Filed 4/25/06 Updated 5/5/06 GCN

There is no Bay St. Louis without Waveland…the two are as inseparable as meat and potatoes, scrambled eggs and grits, bread and butter. What surprised me was that in talking with people in Waveland, I found they had not heard of Gulf Coast News or the amount of relief and donations we’ve been getting Bay St. Louis as a result of covering the hardest-hit area along the Gulf Coast after Katrina. Some things really do stop at the city line.

Kathy Pinn is the PR Director for the City of Waveland and has been in contact with GCN regarding the City of Waveland and its needs. It is a disturbing tale she tells, now nearly eight months after the disaster, but is one that needs telling. She is succinct, yet complete in her descriptions of how Waveland has fared in the interim. As you can tell by her story and the following needs list, these aren’t people with a hand out looking for charity, per se. These are proud people who “ain’t taking it lying down” and who need a hand getting to their feet.

In Kathy’s own words:

Waveland, Mississippi, Rising Above the Storm With the Help of Many

“The face of Waveland has changed drastically since the winds and waters of Katrina devastated our small seaside community. Nearly every home, business, & public building was either ripped off its foundation or dramatically flooded. This leaves Waveland, Mississippi, with every school, public building and home to either be totally renovated because it was flooded or rebuilt from the ground up.

Many of our residents are not here now, but the ones who are here have a resolve to rebuild. This has been their home, and for many, for generations. A lot of the buildings have been here over 100 years. This is our home and we want to stay.

People First

The main focus for Waveland is to get people back into their homes and with the generous help of many not-for-profit organizations this is becoming a reality. Most people can't even afford building materials much less pay for the labor. So groups that come to help us rebuild are a valuable commodity. And donations of building supplies top on our needs list.

City Needs

The City is currently operating without its tax base. We are a sales tax based community with our sales tax gone for months after the storm. We are happy to say that businesses are beginning to return and even new ones have formed so as we approach the future we do see a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's a little dark in here right now.

The City needs funds to keep its employees. It's bad enough to have lost everything you own without losing your job, too. Luckily, most of our employees still call Hancock County home, so we do have nearly all of our employees still with us.

Our infrastructure has been totally compromised, so, 100% of the infrastructure south of the railroad tracks in Waveland will have to be replaced. All water, sewer and gas lines must be replaced. FEMA requires that we pay 10% of the costs. Before we can even begin the process of going out for bids, we have to have 5% of the total cost in our bank account. UPDATED INFORMATION>>>The latest estimates are that $22 million will be needed to do the reconstruction south of the railroad tracks. They are still assessing the needs for north of the railroad tracks. FEMA has a 90-10 match and MEMA will give us 5% of that if we have the other 5% which would be approximately $1.1 million. Also we relied on gas service for City revenues. This 10% match is required for all public buildings and roadways that must be rebuilt.

Some Good News

We have been the recipient of many generosities. More than I could every imagine. No one ever in their wildest dreams could put themselves in a position of being in the middle of the worst natural disaster to hit the United States. And then to be a ground zero for this monumental event. For most people asking for help does not come easy. We have been fortunate in that people foresaw our needs even before we did.

We no longer have people living in tents. And although people have complained about FEMA and FEMA trailer life, we do have a place to put our heads at night. The longer you live in a trailer, the more stress develops. The quarters are cramped. For most they are living on a homesite that most be rebuilt and seeing your life's belongings totally destroyed is not an easy thing.

We have seen marvelous people from all over the country who understand our plight and have come to help. It's just that it's such a massive undertaking. There is still so much need. I hate living in one of the "neediest" cities in the United States, but our needs are real.

My Personal Story

My husband and I owned the Old Waveland Drug Store building in the old downtown on Coleman Avenue. We spent the last few years renovating the building and establishing an antique and gift shop -- That Cute Little Shoppe. We thought we had figured the whole retirement thing out. Our life was great! We had wonderful family and friends that were a daily part of our lives and we lived in a place we loved.

Our home and business was close to the beach and was one of the many that was totally obliterated by Katrina. Forty years of our life --- gone. We were one of the lucky ones, though, we did have insurance. It was not easy getting it though and we are still fighting for some of it. But physically and financially we are good. Emotionally we are doing pretty well, too.

It's harder for most than it is for us, so we are very grateful and thank God every day.

Something to Warm the Heart

What warms my heart is that so many have anticipated that we would need sustained help and have been persistent in their aid. We were in a position at first of not being aware of what we would need beyond survival needs.

Volunteers have come from all over the country. They have given up vacation time to come and help. They bring us supplies and manpower (oops-also, womanpower). One of the most beautiful sights is to see a young person who could be out having fun, helping an elderly person clear their home or yard or put up a fence, or paint, or plant a tree. These are such beautiful signs of hope, not only, that we will be alright in the short term, but that our country will also be alright in the long term.

[Audrey2Katrina]

RACE TO THE FINISH

White voters may hold the key to winning the mayoral runoff

Sunday, May 14, 2006
By Frank Donze
Staff writer Times Picayune:

New Orleans is a majority black city that hasn't elected a white mayor in 28 years. It may choose to sustain that record Saturday by returning incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin to office, rejecting his runoff opponent, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who is white. But if so, ironically, it may well be white voters -- a swing faction -- who control the outcome.

Nagin might seem to have the shorter road to victory. Last month he swept to the head of a 22-candidate primary field with a surprisingly strong 38 percent of the vote, compared to 29 percent for Landrieu.

But with a week to go, political handicappers say the race is too close to call. If there is an edge, analysts give it to Landrieu based on the numerical nuances underlying both candidates' primary performances.

White voters in the primary largely rejected the political status quo. More than six in 10 opted to support nontraditional alternatives to either Nagin or Landrieu.

Conversely, an analysis of the April 22 election results shows that about nine of 10 African-American voters chose either Landrieu or, by a far larger margin, Nagin.

Barring a significant increase in voter turnout or a seismic shift in voting patterns, neither of which is expected, that leaves the two runoff survivors to battle for the 34 percent of voters -- the majority of them white -- who backed the also-rans.

It's looking like a tough sell for either candidate, both of whom are Democrats.

"Courting white voters is very difficult for them," said Ed Renwick, director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics. White voters "didn't want either of these guys," he said. "So it won't be easy to convince them."


Challenging task


The challenge is especially big for Nagin. A review of heavily black and heavily white precinct returns by consultant Greg Rigamer indicates Landrieu received about 30 percent of the white vote, while Nagin collected about 6 percent, a precipitous drop from the 90 percent white support he garnered in the runoff four years ago against Richard Pennington, the city's former police chief, who also is African-American.

Predictably, the city's painfully slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina has fed widespread dissatisfaction with the current political leadership -- especially among white voters, according to public opinion surveys. That's why they looked to less conventional choices in the first round of mayoral balloting, the surveys show.

Of the more than 60 percent of the white voters that the runoff combatants did not corral, the bulk went for the third-place finisher, Audubon Nature Institute CEO Ron Forman, or lawyer Rob Couhig, who ran fourth. Neither Forman nor Couhig has ever held elected office, and both campaigned to the right of Nagin and Landrieu.

For white voters looking for cues from their favored candidates, there is no clear message.

Forman, a self-described moderate Democrat who has spent most of his adult life as a Republican, has thrown his support to Landrieu. Couhig, a conservative Republican, is backing Nagin. Both of them are white. Lawyer Virginia Boulet, a white newcomer who finished fifth, has remained neutral.

While political observers are reluctant to predict which way white voters who went with a loser last time will go Saturday, they don't expect many of them to stay home.

"A lot of them may vote without a lot of enthusiasm, but they will vote," said University of New Orleans political scientist Susan Howell. "They are chronic voters."

Since the race is considered a referendum on Nagin's performance, Howell offers a theory that Landrieu may have a slight advantage when it comes to attracting votes that went to candidates such as Couhig, Forman and Boulet, who promoted bolder agendas. After all, those people voted for someone other than the incumbent.

"If you're disenchanted with the job Nagin has done and the pace of the recovery, even though Landrieu is untested, I think it's an easy step to say, 'I will vote for the challenger and see if he can do any better,' " Howell said.


Widespread appeal


While Landrieu ran second in the primary, the results showed that he was the only candidate with significant crossover appeal, collecting about 24 percent of black support to complement his third of the white vote.

If Nagin is to avoid the ignominy of becoming the first sitting New Orleans mayor to be turned out of office in 60 years, this much is certain: He must increase his share of the white vote drastically.

The formula for a Nagin victory hinges on how Saturday's turnout breaks along racial lines.

In the primary, African-Americans comprised 53 percent of voters, and white voters, 42 percent. Voters of other races made up the remaining 5 percent.

Assuming that the runoff's outcome falls within those parameters, Nagin would need at least about 72 percent of the black vote and about 22 percent of the white vote.

Political handicappers say Nagin's chances of achieving the former seem better than the latter.

"The mayor appears to have lost his base in the white community," said veteran political consultant Ron Nabonne, an African-American who is not working for either mayoral candidate. "To go from single digits to the low 20s certainly seems like an impossible task.

"But conventional wisdom is on its head right now. No one expected Nagin to have such a big lead in the primary."


Growing his base


Nagin's only alternative to tripling -- or quadrupling -- his share of the white vote is to expand the electorate, particularly among African-American voters, that gave him votes last month by a wide margin.

With tens of thousands of black voters still displaced across the nation, that task remains as formidable as it was in the primary, when black turnout was 31 percent. In a typical New Orleans mayoral election, the percentage of black voter participation usually runs in the low to mid-40s.

But if early voting results from satellite locations across the state are any indication, turnout Saturday won't deviate much from the 38 percent showing in the primary. In fact, the number of voters who cast ballots in person last week or voted by mail was nearly identical to the number who did so in the primary.

Aware of the challenge, Nagin wasted little time before making a play for the white supporters who had abandoned him in the primary.

Minutes after the polls closed, Nagin was questioning the "business-friendly" credentials of his opponent, and on the stump, Nagin has tried relentlessly to tie his opponent to the "politics of the past."

Landrieu, the scion of a political family -- his father, Moon Landrieu, was the city's last white mayor; his sister is U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu -- spent 16 years in the state House before winning the lieutenant governorship in 2003. He has countered with criticism of what he calls Nagin's "lone wolf" approach to governing, saying it has alienated Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the Legislature and Congress and jeopardized speedy delivery of aid to the financially crippled city.


Fund-raising dries up


Nagin's loss of white support has not been limited to the voting booth. The mayor also has lost most of the financial backing from the white business community that flocked to him four years ago after he finished at the head of a primary ballot that included three seasoned politicians.

Nagin entered 2006 with a healthy war chest of $1.3 million, all of it raised before Katrina, when he seemed to have a lock on re-election.

Between Jan. 1 and the primary, he added about $275,000.

That total pales in comparison to the fund-raising success of Landrieu and Forman. Landrieu has pulled in $3.24 million since January, much of it from former Nagin supporters, according to finance reports filed with the state. Forman amassed more than $2 million for his primary run, tapping many of those same sources.

While Nagin's fund-raising effort has quickened since the primary, his total since January remains at about $500,000 -- a sixth of Landrieu's war chest.

As a result, Landrieu has been able to sustain a continuous presence on television. Nagin had limited himself to radio until last week, when he began airing a TV spot that featured Couhig singing his praises as an "honest," pro-business mayor.

Incumbency carries a huge advantage, however, and Nagin has effectively employed the authority of the mayor's office to summon the news media almost daily on a range of topics.

For his part, Landrieu has used paid advertisements to highlight the array of endorsements he has received from elected officials, including some from surrounding parishes, ministers and even the Republican Party, which backed the conservative former City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson in the primary.


Hitting the airwaves


Landrieu also has unleashed a series of spots featuring white and African-American "neighbors" bemoaning the lack of progress in removing debris and abandoned cars and boats from the city's streets more than eight months after the hurricane.

Those spots are at the heart of a runoff campaign that has largely ignored the slight policy differences between the candidates to focus on which of them has the skills and leadership qualities to rebuild a broken city.

Howell of UNO says she thinks Landrieu's ads have been effective because "they speak to anxieties, fears and worries" of New Orleanians.

"The spots are reflective of what people are feeling and thinking," she said. "They're not heavy, substantive pieces, but that's not what voters are looking for right now. Voters are looking for someone they can trust, someone who they believe can help them."

When Nagin was asked whether he feels the "neighbors" series of ads cast him as ineffective and whether he intends to answer them, the mayor said he believes voters understand that state and federal red tape have hamstrung the recovery.

"Mitch is a certain style, and he's going to do what he has to do," Nagin said. "We'll respond to the things we think may take hold, and on other things we'll just let him continue to spend his money."

While it might seem odd to some that Nagin and Landrieu have not offered voters many differences in terms of how they will address the city's myriad problems, Silas Lee, a pollster and Xavier University sociologist, said there is method to the madness.

"This rebuilding business is a very sensitive issue," Lee said. "I think in some cases, they're trying to withhold some of the bad news, particularly when it comes to which areas might not be rebuilt right away.

"It's a delicate balancing act. You want to attract voters without offending voters."

[pelican13]

Katrina fresh in mind, Alabama prepares for next hurricane season

GARRY MITCHELL

Associated Press

MOBILE, Ala. - Donnie Buckalew's popular Argiro's deli and convenience store on the Mobile Causeway has twice been reduced to rubble by fierce hurricanes. Now he has given up on the storm-battered location, but he's not quitting.

By the June 1 start of hurricane season, Buckalew plans to be serving breakfast and sandwiches in his new deli, relocated across the highway from the site devoured by Katrina.

"It's above the floodplain," Buckalew said, looking down from the stairs leading up to his new building - a remodeled bait shop.

Alabama's two coastal counties, Mobile and Baldwin, and its beach resorts are taking steps to protect residents and property after back-to-back years of destructive hurricanes. The Alabama coast has more and more to protect: Some 564,000 residents live in Mobile and Baldwin counties, which have combined real estate valued at $46 billion.

Like hurricane veterans in these parts who know when to flee and how to prepare for storms, Buckalew feels confident he'll survive the next one - even if his deli doesn't.

So does Pete Huff of Saraland, whose 43-foot shrimp boat Miss Emily has weathered three hurricanes, held fast by a 250-pound anchor in the Mobile Delta.

Huff recently waited on customers at Shirley's bait shop near Argiro's, counting out two dozen bait shrimp for a fisherman, who wasn't making predictions about the next hurricane season, which lasts through November. "Who knows? Got to sit and wait," he said.

For most of the wait, the Mobile Bay scenery is alluring.
Dotted with seafood restaurants, the Causeway, a laid-back boat launch and fishing strip connecting Mobile and Spanish Fort beneath the Interstate 10 bridge over Mobile Bay, becomes a dramatic flood scene during hurricanes.

And Katrina's flooding on Aug. 29 was relentless, engulfing the Causeway while swirling up to the windows of cars in nearby downtown Mobile.

"The only thing left was a slab," Ray Lee said of Katrina's damage to his R&R Seafood, Buckalew's neighbor.

After other hurricanes, Lee said he cleaned up with a power wash. After Katrina, he needed a bulldozer.

Lee operates a shrimp boat and has been selling seafood from a portable building since Katrina.

In an interview, he muscled big loads of boiled crawfish into bags for his waiting customers and talked about his plans to open a restaurant on the Causeway this year. It will be built higher in hopes of avoiding flood damage - a popular strategy for coping with storms along the Alabama coast.

George Bradley, 78, who had a 35-year career as a National Weather Service meteorologist here, lives near the Mobile Airport and has confidence in today's hurricane warning system.

He said Katrina - much larger than killer Camille - was a "good wakeup call" for getting prepared for the next hurricane.

"Maybe we'll be better prepared," he said.

Bradley's friends still call him "the man who brought us Camille," because he worked weather radar on Aug. 17, 1969, when Hurricane Camille slammed the Mississippi coast.

"I was watching it on the scope when it got just below the mouth of the Mississippi River and made a turn up on us," said Bradley, who retired in 1982.

Katrina's floodwaters damaged downtown Mobile and left major destruction in Bayou La Batre, where some buildings buckled by surging floodwaters still await repairs. Wind damage occurred far up the west side of the state.
Nine months after the hurricane, displaced storm victims live in 1,493 government-issued trailers. Mobile County had 1,405 of that total and Baldwin County had 58, a FEMA spokesman said. The rest were in nine other counties.

State emergency officials have nearly $6 million available for hurricane response and other disaster needs. That figure includes $2 million this year for power outages at critical facilities, such as water and sewage treatment plants.

Walt Dickerson, director of the Mobile County Emergency Management Agency, said his agency has tried to identify the weaknesses in the system to secure state and federal assistance for improvements.

But he said several task forces appointed five months ago are making recommendations that should have the county prepared in the event of a hurricane and the huge task of evacuation.

After Katrina, Dickerson expects it will be easier this year to get people to evacuate. New evacuation plans include opening at least a dozen sites where buses will pick up evacuees headed for shelters, including some outside Mobile County. The buses will remain at the shelter until it's safe for a return drive, he said.

Also, a shelter for evacuees with medical needs is prepared to handle 200 people - double the number who checked into a special needs shelter last year at a high school in Mobile, said Lisa Hudley, a nurse and emergency preparedness coordinator for the county health department said.

Gov. Bob Riley said there are 25 junior colleges between Montgomery and Mobile that could become hurricane shelters.

Near the coast, the potential shelters include Bishop State Community College in Mobile, Faulkner State Community College in Baldwin County, and the aviation branch of Enterprise Ozark Community College in Mobile.

Riley said he would rather evacuees take shelter at the colleges than go to National Guard armories because services are better at the schools.

Riley said he also would like to see generators at grocery stores so that the stores could quickly reopen after a hurricane.

"You can't expect to live on MREs," he said, referring to the military-issued meals-ready-to-eat distributed to Katrina victims.

On the coast, Dauphin Island's west end sand dunes were leveled and will not be repaired in time to block a hurricane wave surge this year. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach completed beach renourishment projects since Hurricane Ivan struck in September 2004.

Orange Beach City Administrator Jeff Moon said a reverse 911-call system went into effect in Baldwin County last year to alert residents about evacuations. Orange Beach also has revised its evacuation zones, using lessons learned from Ivan and Katrina, Moon said.

Orange Beach purchased property a few miles north of the beach to build an emergency operations center, but it's not expected to be completed until 2007, Moon said.

"We purchased 80 acres for a business park and about 5 acres of that will be for the emergency operations center," Moon said.

In Gulf Shores, city administrator Ernie Smith said the city is applying for a grant to build a community shelter that would house 1,000 evacuees. The city's fire station will be moved to 11 acres near the airport. But officials decided not to move City Hall, which had been vulnerable to Ivan.

"When the fire station is torn down, we'll build an addition to City Hall and move public works into the new building," Smith said.

He said new building codes are expected to result in less damage to beachfront condominiums.

"They should withstand hurricanes better," Smith said.
__________________

[Audrey2Katrina]

Thanks for that contribution, Pelican! Keep us up on what's developing over in Alabama!


A2K

[Audrey2Katrina]

Few changes in evacuation plan

By Meghan Gordon Time Picayune
West Bank bureau

Crediting last year's contraflow system with keeping 1.3 million people safe from Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Monday that residents of metropolitan New Orleans would see few changes in the state's phased evacuation plan this hurricane season.

Blanco unveiled the state's disaster guide for southeast Louisiana, whose sole revision is a strict caution to the tens of thousands of people living in travel trailers or mobile homes that they are vulnerable to all levels of storm-force winds.

She warned the displaced residents that removing Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers would violate federal law and asked private trailer owners who want to tow their belongings to leave the area before officials start formal evacuations.


Absent from Blanco's announcement, which came two weeks ahead of the start of hurricane season, were specific sites for sheltering evacuees outside southeast Louisiana, a step much anticipated by local governments who plan to use public buses to send residents without transportation to state-approved locations north of Interstate 12.

Col. Jeff Smith, director of the state Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said he is still negotiating with three sites, one each in northwest, northeast and south-central Louisiana. He said the sites could hold a combined total of up to 15,000 people, 5,000 more than the state's goal of finding shelter for 10,000 evacuees.

Blanco's announcement also made no reference to the compromised levee system protecting New Orleans, which caused Mayor Ray Nagin on May 2 to tell residents to expect to evacuate much more frequently than they have in previous years. He said he would order evacuations for hurricanes as weak as Category 2.

Nagin declined to comment on the state plan Monday.

Staged exit

Using the same phased system as it has in previous years, the state's plan calls for coastal areas and those south of the Intracoastal Waterway to start evacuating 50 hours before the outer edge of hurricane is predicted to reach land. The plan indicates that those communities remain vulnerable to a Category 1 and stronger storm.

Approximately 40 hours ahead of a hurricane's landfall, all areas south of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River's west bank, from Algiers west to Lake Charles, should evacuate, according to the storm plan. The plan considers these areas vulnerable to Category 2 and stronger storms.

New Orleans' east bank, East Jefferson Parish, parts of the River Parishes and St. Tammany Parish below Interstate 12 would evacuate 30 hours before the hurricane's onset. These areas are vulnerable to a slow-moving Category 3 and stronger storms.

Mark Smith, spokesman for the state emergency office, said that even though the state plan considers the east bank of New Orleans vulnerable to Category 3 storms and stronger, residents should heed the advice of local leaders.

"The bottom line is we don't want anybody to stay in the city when the parish government recommends an evacuation," Smith said. "If (Jefferson Parish) President (Aaron) Broussard or (Plaquemines Parish) President (Benny) Rousselle or any of the other parish presidents say it's time to go, you need to go."

Last year, Broussard broke ranks from the state's staged evacuation, calling for an early evacuation of the parish when Hurricane Dennis threatened. He defended the action by saying he didn't want his residents leaving town after dusk. St. Bernard Parish officials, though, chastised him for potentially putting their residents in jeopardy.

Blanco said she has no doubt that local leaders would cooperate this hurricane season to announce evacuation orders that allow the most vulnerable communities plenty of time to leave the area.

"I think that everyone will follow the plan," she said.

Contraflow unchanged

Blanco said the contraflow system, which doubles the lanes traveling out of the New Orleans area by blocking inbound traffic, would remain identical to last year's routes. Developed by State Police and the Department of Transportation and Development in 2004, the system received an overhaul after its first test during Hurricane Ivan created a parking lot on many routes away from the city.

DOTD spokesman Mark Lambert said he expects to see improvements along the routes that clogged in the Katrina evacuation, such as U.S. 90 from Westwego to Lafayette, which was snarled by traffic lights operating on regular cycles and by officers stopping evacuees to allow local traffic to cross the highway.

Lambert said the best way to avoid a nightmare evacuation is to leave early.

"You're going to have a huge chunk of people who are going to wait until we say you have to get out of here, and then they're going to hit the road at the same time," Lambert said.

Ultimately, Blanco said, the state's best opportunity to save lives during future storms rests in the hands of individuals who must take the personal responsibility to get their families away from southeast Louisiana. She urged them to study the evacuation maps, develop a family plan, leave early and pack a disaster supply kit now.

"Please do not gamble with your safety. Do not gamble with your children's safety," Blanco said. "Please do not plan to risk riding out the storm in your homes. ... No game of hurricane roulette is worth the risk."

Evacuation guides distributed by the state and the American Red Cross contain maps for contraflow and the phased evacuation, recommendations for trailer dwellers and a list of disaster supplies. The free brochures are available at Red Cross chapters, the Home Depot, Lowe's and Wal-Mart stores and select post offices and libraries.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Debris pickup in southeastern St. Tammany Parish extended

From NOLA.com

Residents in the unincorporated areas of southeastern St. Tammany Parish will have another two weeks to get hurricane debris to the curbside for final collection.

A “final pass” to pick up debris was to begin Monday with residents told to have their debris by the road or streetside by that day to ensure collection.

But Parish President Kevin Davis extended the start of the final collection to May 30 for residents of the unincorporated areas living in the following postal zip codes: 70445, 70458, 70460 and 70461.

“I’ve asked our debris hauler to give the citizens in the hard-hit southeastern area of the parish a little more time to get their debris to the street,” Davis said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Link to contraflow map and evacuation routes--2006

From Metro New Orleans Area:

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/wide/?/hurricane/content/contraflow.html

[Audrey2Katrina]

Pass Christian at a Crossroad


Mayor's Experience Key to the City's Survival



By Keith Burton - GulfCoastNews.com Filed 5/15/06

Nine months after Katrina, if there is any city that may cease to be a city at all, it is Pass Christian. Its mayor is currently under fire for being absent from meetings and redevelopment is not occurring.

Like Waveland and Bay St. Louis, Hurricane Katrina left Pass Christian desolate, but perhaps more so than anywhere else. The Pass lost 100 percent of its public buildings, including City Hall, the police station and library. It also lost 100 percent of its businesses and nearly 80 percent of all the homes in the city. All of this a devastating blow to the city's tax base and income.

Pass Christian’s Mayor Billy McDonald said that out of a population just over 7,000 people, the city now has only 2,500 people and the numbers are not growing.

McDonald has been sharply criticized for being absent a short while after the hurricane, and since then, not attending some city council and public meetings. Just this past Sunday, the Sun Herald newspaper’s editors penned a sharply critical editorial calling for the 70-year old McDonald to resign, accusing him of “incompetence.” This editorial misses what is truly the issue.

Pass Christian is a city that may not survive; its damages are too severe. McDonald, who has more than 30 years of experience in local government, including being a longtime Harrison County supervisor, knows government, and is certainly not incompetent. But he also sees his city as it is now, and realizes the reality of its future. The problem is that he is ill, and suffers from high blood pressure, which threatens his health.

Residents of the historic community of Pass Christian are in turmoil too. They lost their homes, they livelihoods and perhaps their future. They are distraught and want answers. But those answers are grim. Real leadership is called for in such times, but name calling and finger pointing will do nothing for the city, and the Sun Herald’s editors should know that.

If the city is to survive, it needs to use the most of its leadership and talent. There is a role then for the mayor, despite his illness, and a role for others willing to take up the challenge, but to criticize and point fingers is not leadership, or a solution for what faces the city.

GCN spoke with Mayor Billy McDonald this past Saturday by telephone. The mayor was articulate, deeply hurt from some of the comments being made about him, and very much concerned about the future of Pass Christian. He was certainly not a man consumed about himself, but very realistic about what he can do and not do.

Everyone has commented on how much better Mississippi has handled the post-Katrina crisis than Louisiana. The most salient point is that it is Mississippi’s tremendously experienced political leadership that has been the reason behind that success, if even that word is suitable for the crisis.

What most people that do not follow government closely often fail to understand, and this apparently is true of the Sun Herald, is that the most critical decisions are made behind the scenes, in one-on-one meetings and the telephone. Only the most experienced political leaders have the type of networking experience that can get what needs to be done in government accomplished. Novice political watchers and newly elected public officials do not have the skills to handle even routine governmental issues, and in a crisis situation, even less so. They don’t have a Rolodex with the extensive contacts as would a seasoned politician.

Mayor McDonald has that experience and it has worked well for Pass Christian since he has been in office. Before he took office, Pass Christian was nearly in bankruptcy. Under his administration, the city grew and paid down its debts and was in sound financial shape just prior to Katrina.

But Katrina’s fury didn’t spare the city. Pass Christian was as much part of “Ground Zero” as Bay St. Louis and Waveland.

McDonald has spent his career in public service and loves his city. But he also loves his wife and family and he knows his health is at risk. And it is a wise man, not an incompetent one, that knows how to serve when faced with the crisis the city is now in.

Since the storm, the city’s Board of Aldermen meetings have often been contentious as residents, upset with what has happened, are worried about what their governing leaders will do. It is not just the mayor that has missed meetings, there have also been meetings where some of the aldermen were absent and a quorum could not be held. Regardless, the meetings would spike the blood pressure of a perfectly healthy man.

For the most part in government, public meetings are more theater than where real decisions are made. The meetings are important, but in the end, a Board of Aldermen’s meeting is just that, a meeting for the Board of Aldermen. State law, nor practicality, requires the mayor to be present at every meeting.

One alderman had to resign since the pressures of his job and family were too great for him to serve. These are the conditions that challenge any small town government. The Sun Herald’s editors cited the resignation of the alderman as if his resignation was due to McDonald, a terrible example of journalism for the lie that it implied.

“I think a lot of the criticism against me is political,” McDonald said. “When my blood pressure spikes, I don’t go the meetings or go into my office. But when I am not in, I call my office often up to eight to ten times a day.”

McDonald understands that people are upset since the hurricane. “People are uptight, but I didn’t cause the storm. There is only so much I can do legally.”

McDonald says he is working has hard as possible, and so are the city’s employees. He said that help is limited from Harrison County, which typically provides assistance to the county’s small cities.

“They are in financial trouble too since the hurricane,” McDonald said. But they are helping where they can.

The state has also not been as helpful as citizens might think. “We have received very little help from the state, McDonald said.

What many people don’t understand is that small towns operate with very little excess cash. Their budgets are set with virtually no additional funds except to pay salaries for city workers, the utility bills and for limited public services and city debt. After a major disaster, while some immediate financial help comes in, the cities do not have the funds to pay for emergency conditions. The federal help requires local communities to pay up to 10 percent local match to draw down emergency money. This ten percent is not included in the federal emergency money.

McDonald said the city has enough money to operate this fiscal year, but not next year, which begins in October. “We lost almost all of our businesses and homes and next year, unless something happens, we will not be able to pay salaries or our bills,” McDonald told GCN.

McDonald said that the city can borrow up to $10 million from the Mississippi Development Bank, but he said, “We have no way to pay it back.”

Said McDonald, “It is going to take years for Pass Christian to recover.”

[Audrey2Katrina]

Replay feared if big storm hits

Corps says levees would be overtopped

Tuesday, May 16, 2006 Times Picayune
By Mark Schleifstein
and Sheila Grissett%%par%%Staff writers

The repair of levees and floodwalls broken or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina is on track, but the system still won't be high enough to prevent flooding by a similar storm this year, a senior Army Corps of Engineers official said
"If another Katrina were to occur tomorrow, you're going to have 6 feet of water overtopping some levees," Don Resio told members of a National Academies of Science committee reviewing the corps' investigation of the levee failures. "The levees will hold but you're still going to have some amount of water inside the levees."

John Christian, a Woburn, Mass., consultant and member of the Academies of Science committee, questioned why the region's levee system hasn't been treated as if it were a series of dams, which would require more stringent safety standards.

"What you're dealing with here is a lot closer to a dam," he said. "A dam with hundreds of thousands of people downstream."

Resio, a senior researcher at the corps' Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., explained that the agency is studying how to protect the New Orleans area from hurricanes even larger than Katrina. But until Congress provides authorization to build something safer, he said, the refurbished levee system will remain susceptible to overtopping.

"It's clear that Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane protection cannot be built within the existing (levee) footprint," Resio said. "And you've still got to wrestle with what the nation wants to invest in overall protection of southeast Louisiana. Whether its a combination of levees, a frontal barrier system or just an evacuation system."

The National Academies committee, made up of members of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, is conducting a review of the corps' Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force's investigation into the causes of the levee system's failures during Katrina.

Monday's meeting will be the last before the corps task force issues its draft final report June 1.


Gauging the dangers

That report will contain nine volumes, task force chairman Ed Link said, and will be released to the public even if a complete assessment of risks of the levee system is not complete.

David Daniel, chairman of an American Society of Civil Engineers panel that is reviewing the task force's work, said the risk assessment should be completed even if it delays release of the report.

"Because of the potential importance of the risk assessment work, including the impact on people's judgment about how safe it is to return to the New Orleans area, the (engineers' panel) believes that it is essential that (the task force) take the risk assessment work to a high level of technical defensibility before releasing the findings," Daniel said.

"We think the worst thing IPET could do is put out a risk assessment that has more questions than answers. We want to see them take the time needed to do it thoroughly," he said.

To create the risk assessment, a task force team must take the results of running 2,000 hypothetical hurricanes through a supercomputer to show what areas would most likely flood and how deep.

Link warned repeatedly that while the corps risk assessment data can be used by residents or city leaders for planning, it's not designed as a forecasting tool.

For example, he said, it can't be used to predict when or where another levee breach might occur. Where models show that breaks would happen under specific combinations of surge, wind, and forward speed, the results will be incorporated into a master risk map, he said.

"We're working now on how to take all these numbers and turn them into clear information that the public can use," Link said. "We'll probably end up with a kind of red-yellow-green map that can help (people and governments) make plans and decisions."

Much of Monday's daylong meeting revisited the reasons why the levee system was designed in such a way that many of its pieces and parts failed during Katrina.

G. Wayne Clough, chairman of the academies committee and president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said there are "a number of things we're still in the dark on," including the status of levees and levee walls that did not fail during the storm.

The corps has begun an effort to reconsider all of its existing levees, and a preliminary report is due in early summer.

Link agreed that untested parts of the levee system do pose concerns, but said efforts are being taken to reduce the risk to those areas, such as the construction of gates at the ends of the 17th Street, Orleans and London Avenue canals, and bolstering sections of suspect wall in East Jefferson.

He said current repairs are incorporating lessons learned during the forensic investigation: Levee walls are being raised to authorized heights and designed to assume that water could rise to the top of the walls during a hurricane.

The design also will assume that there's a potential for the kind of failure the task force team says occurred at the 17th Street and London Avenue canals. Those walls failed, the task force said, when the water in the canals pushed concrete walls out, allowing water to flow into a gap, pushing beneath sheet piling until the water pressure overwhelmed the soil and shoved the walls out.

That risk is being offset by building a berm on the land side of the canal wall to offset the pressure of the water, or by building a relief well that will allow water leaking through the levee to escape harmlessly, Link said.


Voices of dissent

However, not everyone agrees with the task force's theory on how those two levee walls failed.

Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and the leader of a Louisiana team of engineers and researchers conducting an independent investigation into the levee failures, said their research indicates the walls failed because the soils beneath them gave way, the result of inadequate design in the combination of earthen levee, metal sheet piling and concrete wall.

Raymond Seed, a civil engineer at the University of California at Berkeley and a leader of a 36-member team of engineers and scientists conducting their own independent investigation of the levee failures with financing from the National Science Foundation, said the 17th Street Canal wall failure can be blamed on a thin layer of slick clay that test borings failed to detect when the levee was being built.

Seed said the clay acted like jelly in the middle of a peanut butter sandwich, allowing the earth to slide when water pressure reached a breaking point.

The irony, he said, is that the clay and the layer of leaves, sticks and branches above it may have been deposited there by a much earlier hurricane. His team has collected pollen samples from leaves to test to determine when the layer was deposited.

Meanwhile, the corps issued the executive summary of a report Monday on the causes of the failure of levee walls along the Industrial Canal. It said three of four breaches were caused by water topping levee walls and eroding the inside of the earthen levees, causing the walls to fail.

The fourth section of wall, on the northeast side of the Industrial Canal, which was the first to fail, was not topped, the new report said. Instead, the corps described water rising in the Industrial Canal forcing the levee wall and sheet piling on which it was built to crack away from the earthen levee, providing a path for water to reach beneath the structure and shove it aside.

"It thus appears that the north breach occurred before overtopping, and that this breach was the source of the first influx of water into the 9th Ward," the report said.

In his presentation to the academy committee, Link said an analysis of the Orleans Avenue canal, including scale model testing conducted in Vicksburg, indicated that its design was better than the levee walls at other canals. The walls there are built on a broader base, and testing indicated that it could withstand water all the way to the wall tops without failing, he said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Covington subdivision moves forward on lots aimed at retirees, empty nesters

By Richard Boyd
St. Tammany bureau

Developers of The Savannahs subdivision in Covington have obtained initial city approval for development of 125 lots in the final two phases of the five-phase development.

The final stages will focus on smaller, affordable homes targeted for empty nesters and retirees, the developers said.

In receiving tentative approval from the city’s’ Planning & Zoning Commission on Monday, developer Kenneth Lopiccolo said the 125 homesites will be 50 to 60 feet wide and from 115 to 150 feet deep, reflecting a response to what he and partner Nathan Watson of Watson Developments see as a growing market demand. Lopiccolo said there is an increasing demand in St. Tammany Parish for smaller, more affordable homes in a created community of retirees and those leaving their larger homes and bigger yards after their children have left home.

The developers will have to obtain preliminary and final subdivision approval, but a review of their applications for the final two phases by City Planner Nahketah Bagby did not reveal any major hurdles they will have to cross. Technically, what developers obtained Monday was approval of an amendment to the original plans for the final two phases to increase the number of homesites from 102 to 125.

Lopiccolo on Tuesday said the houses will be in the $200,000 range. “Our data tells us the retirees and empty nesters want new, upscale homes but they want them somewhat smaller and smaller lots now to cut back on the maintenance,” he said.

The Savannahs, bordering on River Road and Bollfield Drive and adjacent to River Glen subdivision, was initially approved as a five-phase development of 259 lots in 1999 after the city annexed the land. But Lopiccolo said when phases four and five are fully developed the subdivision will have 282 homesites. The first two phases of 51 and 36 lots, respectively, are developed, and last month commissioners gave preliminary approval for phases 2A of 18 lots and phase 3 of 52 lots. The final two phases will be developed together and expanded from the original request for 102 lots.

Lopiccolo said the 18-lot phase 2A has large homes on estate size lots, and phase 3 has large homes on large lots.

The Savannahs is being built on 104 acres zoned as a Planned Unit Development allowing the variances in house and lot sizes but Bagby said all five phases are below the allowed density of eight units per acre, averaging 2.7 units per acre.

The last two phases will include development of alleys to reduce on-street parking along a newly developed street to be called Pinewood Drive and alleys to reduce parking on Knoll Drive and Buckhome Place. The developers will change the name of Cottage Green Street to Branch Crossing Drive and create a green space border along the street.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Chamber of Commerce expo set for Wednesday in Chalmette

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The St. Bernard Parish Chamber of Commerce’s Back to Business Expo will be Wednesday from 4-7 p.m. at the Nunez College auditorium in Chalmette, according to a parish news release.

Admission is free and refreshments will be served. Call 504-250-6121 to reserve a place.

Representatives of parish government’s office of Community Development and the Sheriff’s Office will have the latest on permits, zoning, licensing and insurance.

Also, Chamber members whose businesses are open in St. Bernard will be able to display up-to-date information and hours of operation, as well as catch up with old customers and learn about development in the parish. Non-members will be able to join the Chamber for free. There are no dues to join the Chamber in 2006.

[Audrey2Katrina]

In another step toward recovery, St. Bernard Parish begins summer sports registration

In another small step toward recovery, St. Bernard Parish is now registering kids who want to play baseball and softball in parish leagues. This is the first recreational sport offered by the parish since Hurricane Katrina slammed the region last August.

More than 40 kids were signed up Monday for boys baseball and girls softball on the first day of registration that will continue through May 31, St. Bernard Parish President Henry “Junior’’ Rodriguez said in a parish news release. Rodriguez said holding sports leagues again is another way of getting back to normal in St. Bernard.

The registration, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday in the Parish Information Center trailer behind the parish government complex, is for youth age 5-17, according to John Metzler Jr., director of the parks and recreation department.

A draft of players by coaches will be held at 5 p.m. on May 30 at the Information Center, which can be reached at (504) 278-4296.

All games will be played at Vista Park in Chalmette, where the fields are being readied. All children who have been registered should report to Vista Park at 10 a.m. on June 3 to meet with officials.

The seasons are scheduled to begin June 10. Players should check with coaches for scheduled times

[Audrey2Katrina]

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill Announce July 5th "Soul2Soul II" Show in New Orleans to Benefit Gulf Coast Hurricane Relief Efforts

GCN

100% of Net Proceeds from Concert to be Contributed to Katrina Relief Efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi

Concert Marks Official Launch Of Tim and Faith’s Neighbors Keeper Foundation; 501(c)(3) Officially Established To Provide Direct Funds And Goods For Those In Need

From: Publicists for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill via GCN's Perry Hicks Filed 5/12/06 GCN

Tickets are set to go on-sale Friday, May 19th at 10:00AM at all Ticketmaster outlets for the country’s fastest selling, #1 most requested concert ticket (according to Ticketmaster) of 2006 – Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s “Soul2Soul II” Tour appearance in New Orleans at the New Orleans Arena on July 5th. One hundred percent of the net proceeds from the concert will be donated by Tim and Faith’s newly established Neighbors Keeper Foundation, to organizations, which will be determined at a later date, which are in need of goods, services and finances to assist individuals still suffering from the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. Fan club and Club SuperSoul members can find out more about presale ticket availability and auctions next week at http://www.faithhill.com or http://www.timmcgraw.com. Tickets will also be available via AOL Tickets at http://www.aol.com/tickets.

It’s intended for the concert, which will take place on July 5th at 7:30PM at the New Orleans Arena, to bring together New Orleans residents, as well as all those from the surrounding areas, in the spirit of renewal. As part of that effort, organizers have lowered the usual “Soul2Soul II” Tour ticket prices to between $20 and $85 and Tim and Faith have insisted on distributing half the floor seats to volunteers in the area who have worked tirelessly over the past nine months since Katrina first hit the region on August 29th, 2005. The floor seats are being donated by longtime McGraw sponsor Bud Light, which according to Tim Schoen, Vice President, Sports and Entertainment Marketing for Anheuser-Busch, is proud to join Tim and Faith and the Neighbors Keeper Foundation in the event, and to provide this unique thank you to the many volunteers in the area.

“We will not stop, we will not forget, we will not quit, until we see our friends, our families and our neighbors returned to the lives that they once knew,” said Tim and Faith in a joint statement. “We hope to give everyone who comes out a few hours to just enjoy.”

“Soul2Soul II” launched to unanimous critical praise and sold-out audiences thus far in Columbus, Chicago, Detroit and Grand Rapids. Fans and critics alike have been blown away by the tour’s unique in-the-round set design which has put fans closer than ever to the action guaranteeing great seats from anywhere in the house. The show features the songs that have become synonymous with Tim and Faith’s careers, as well as some never before seen musical performances.

More than 60 million albums sold, six Grammy Awards, 17 American Music Awards, 22 Country Music Association Awards and 16 Academy of Country Music Awards, 11 #1 albums and more than 35 #1 singles, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are not just country music’s reigning first couple, they are each, in their own right, one of their generation’s most successful performers.

The “Soul2Soul II” Tour is being presented by The Hershey Company. Fans of Hershey's and Tim and Faith share a love for great music and chocolate, creating a winning combination for the Soul2Soul II tour.

The Neighbor’s Keeper Foundation:

The Neighbor’s Keeper Foundation provides funding for the purchase of goods and/or services designed to directly impact those in need. Established in 2006, it mandates a commitment to adults and children deprived of basic humanitarian services or programs, either as a result of natural disaster or social status. The Neighbor’s Keeper Foundation accepts private and public funding resources, which are used to assist people in need of proper health care and/or educational services, adequate food, clothing and/or shelter. It relies solely and exclusively on the kindness of our neighbors, those in our own communities and those in our hearts. The Neighbor’s Keeper Foundation is a 501(c)(3) founded by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Holloway calls special meeting on flood-elevation issue

City of Biloxi News:

Mayor A.J. Holloway, armed with a State Ethics Commission opinion okaying Councilmember Ed Gemmill to vote on proposed new flood elevations, has called a special meeting of the City Council for Tuesday at 11:30 a.m., when the mayor hopes councilmembers will vote to approve the FEMA-recommended flood elevations.

The council has declined to vote on the measure since February, instead proposing a watered-down version of the FEMA-recommended flood elevations, which are designed to reduce the damage from storms and flooding. The council had hoped to have the matter on the agenda last week when another snag arose.

The delay surrounded whether Ward 6 Councilmember Gemmill could vote on the issue, since he and thousands of others who lost their homes would quality for increased cost of compliance or “ICC” grants of up to $30,000. Gemmill lost his north Biloxi home to Hurricane Katrina.

This morning, the State Ethics Commission ruled that the ICC grant “is clearly designed not to benefit the recipient but to help cover the increased cost of complying with heightened elevations.”

[Audrey2Katrina]

Firefighters battling large fire on Mississippi riverfront

May 17, 2006

New Orleans firefigfhters battling a five-alarm blaze at two abandoned Port of New Orleans wharfs along the Mississippi riverfront this morning, working to keep the flames from spreading to more than a dozen railroad tanker cars nearby.

The fire began this morning at the Orange Street Wharf and extended to the Market Street Wharf, both of which were in the process of being torn down by private contractor D.H. Griffin, said port spokesperson Chris Bonura. Once torn down, the area is supposed to be the site of parks and a meditation area, he said.

The contractor had been issued a “hot permit,” which allowed them to use torches to help tear down the structures, Bonura said. He was unsure exactly which instruments workers were using there this morning.

Helicopters were dumping large buckets of water onto the blaze and boats along the river were helping multiple fire engines shoot water onto the flames. Firefighters from as far as LaPlace were called in to contain the fire.

It was unclear what was inside the tanker cars located about 100 yards away from the fire, but fire officials were trying to keep heat away from that area. Three ladder trucks were position between the fire and the tanker cars and were spraying water on the tankers and the ground around them.

By 10:30 a.m., officials appeared to be getting the blaze under control. Flames were no longer visible, although massive amounts of gray smoke continued to billow up from the site.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Jefferson Parish trailer evacuation plan

Wednesday, May 17

A trailer evacuation plan for Jefferson Parish residents during serious weather that falls short of a full-scale evacuation was announced Wednesday by Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard.

Those residents will be able to stay in one of two shelters, one in East Jefferson and one on the West Bank, Broussard said.

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials have said the travel trailers are not secure enough to withstand hurricane-force winds.

Residents on the east bank would take shelter at Girard Playground, 5300 Irving St., Metairie, and residents on the West Bank would take shelter at PARD Playground, 5185 Eighty Arpent Road, Marerro.

Deano Bonano, the parish's emergency operations director, said the sheltering plan would only go into affect for tornados and other storms with severe winds higher than about 50 mph, according to a press release issued Wednesday by the parish.

Bonano, according to the release, said the parish would announce a different plan for trailer dwellers seeking refuge from tropical storms and hurricanes.

"It is not safe to ride out any significant storm weather in a FEMA trailer or any other type of mobile home," Bonano said.

Residents also could retreat to their damaged homes if they are structurally sound, staying in an interior room away from open windows and doors, Bonano said.

The announcement comes two weeks before the June 1 start of hurricane season as tens of thousands of displaced people live in the temporary homes that aren't designed to withstand high winds. Bonano said the parish has 16,000 FEMA trailers and an unknown number of private mobile homes parked at homes and businesses.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Residents on the east bank would take shelter at Girard Playground, 5300 Irving St., Metairie,

Bonano said the parish has 16,000 FEMA trailers and an unknown number of private mobile homes parked at homes and businesses

Sorry... I just HAVE to comment on this... living in the area... Girard Playground AT BEST, could hold maybe 200 people (and that would be monstrously uncomfortable)...there are at LEAST 25,000 people staying in trailers on the east bank (East Jefferson)... unless they come up with a better plan than this, it is yet another disaster waiting to happen.

A2K[/quote]

[Audrey2Katrina]

Subtleties separate candidates on crime and law enforcement

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

By Michael Perlstein
Staff writer --Times Picayune

Crime and law enforcement are tricky issues in any political campaign. They are usually hot-button topics for voters, but candidates almost always agree on the basics: Crime is a scourge that should be curtailed, police should be strongly supported and well-paid, judges and prosecutors should be held accountable for their actions.

The race between Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu is no different. At a debate Monday night at Loyola University devoted to criminal justice issues, the candidates spent more time agreeing with each other than picking at differences.

But just below the surface, a subtle fault line could be sensed from candidates' cautious but well-informed answers. Nagin believes that the city is on the right track in combating its historically high crime rate. Landrieu expressed frustration that violence has been creeping back as the city repopulates.

"One of the startling things about post-Katrina life in the first month was to walk around and get the sense of what it felt like that was so different than before," Landrieu said. "Pre-Katrina New Orleans was a dangerous place. Not just for the previous three years, but for a very long time. We have never really been able to quite come to grips with violent crime. I think we have the opportunity to do that now."


By the numbers


Recently released first-quarter crime statistics show that, indeed, violent crime is on the upswing after an unprecedented lull following the city's mass evacuation and virtual military occupation on the heels of Katrina.

During the last three months of 2005, only 115 violent crimes were reported to police, a figure that more than doubled during the first three months of 2006 when 364 violent crimes were reported. Especially disturbing to residents is the return of the city's perennial scourge: homicide. While there were only 17 killings in the first three months of 2006, there were 13 killings in April, a figure that matches the city's pre-Katrina murder rate on a per capita basis.

At Monday's debate, when asked about the return of murder and violence, Nagin downplayed the numbers and expressed confidence in several initiatives put in place by the Police Department in the past few months.

"As the population has come up, there starts to be a little uptick in the murder rate, but if you convert that on a per capita basis . . . and you compare that to pre-Katrina, murder is down almost 50 percent," Nagin said. "There are some hot spots and we are starting to see some activity in certain sections of the city. As we do that, we're deploying our resources in a very unique way."

When it was his turn to respond, Landrieu pounced on Nagin's calculations.

"I think the murder rate is just as high as it was," Landrieu challenged. "If it's better, it's only marginally better."

"Look at the facts and statistics," Nagin shot back.


Residents concerned


Like so many questions involving statistics, the question of the city's current murder rate is not clear-cut. Comparing the first quarter of 2006 with the same period of 2005, and using high-end estimates of the city's current population, the murder rate appears to be down. But isolating the month of April, and using lower estimates of the population, New Orleans apparently has returned to its infamous ranking as one of the nation's most murderous cities.

Whatever benchmark is used, there is no denying the growing concern among residents as reports of shootings and killings creep back into the news. At the debate, Nagin indicated his plan to attack the problem by maintaining his current game plan.

That plan starts with keeping Police Superintendent Warren Riley, who was elevated to the top spot after Eddie Compass was nudged aside by Nagin just four weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Nagin gave Riley credit for responding quickly to post-Katrina crime trends by unleashing the SWAT unit to patrol hot spots, adding seasoned veterans to the detective bureau and forming an intelligence bureau to track the city's worst offenders.

Nagin even warned against another short-order change at the top of the Police Department, saying experts recommend giving "a police chief at least a year before making a change. You're going to disrupt the whole environment once again, and you might take a step back before you take a step forward."

"We keep looking for a savior in a police chief, but it's much bigger than that," Nagin said, referring to the need to address social ills such as a the city's historically underperforming public school system.

When it was his turn to offer a vision of the Police Department, Landrieu didn't rule out keeping Riley, but he said the incumbent chief would have to earn the post by beating out other candidates in a national search.

"I intend to take a fresh look," Landrieu said. "I've said I'm going to do a national search, and I invite Chief Riley to be a part of that search if he wants to."

Landrieu said he would choose his top cop with input from national law enforcement leaders, the local FBI chief, U.S. attorney and community groups. He also expressed a more sweeping approach in other areas of law enforcement, even if he and Nagin overlapped in some of their views.


Views overlap


For example, Landrieu and Nagin each said they support consolidation of the criminal and civil sheriffs' offices. But Nagin drew the line against merging criminal and civil court, while Landrieu said he would support merging the finances of the two court systems.

On the issue of endorsing candidates for Criminal Court judge, Nagin said he supports public scrutiny of a judge's track record, but said he would leave it to the public to decide whom to keep on the bench. Some Criminal Court judges have been criticized for issuing lenient bail to violent repeat offenders.

"Once the information gets to the public, the electoral process will take care of itself," Nagin said.

Landrieu, however, said he wouldn't hesitate to target certain judges, whether it means openly campaigning against them or establishing standards to bring them in line with the rest of the bench.

"I do intend to get involved in political races. . . . The mayor can use a bully pulpit," Landrieu said.

When asked to deliver his closing remarks at the criminal justice debate, Landrieu again voiced a willingness to rock the status quo, even if he didn't delve into specifics.

"We got used to tolerating a certain level of crime," he said. "If we weren't the top murder rate, it was OK. Well, we can't tolerate that anymore. We have to get our sights set back on doing much better than the national average. . . . We have not gotten this piece right in this city. We have just not gotten it right. It is not a knock on anybody, but it is a full frontal recognition that we have a long way to go."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Pair end up debating moderators instead

Landrieu, Nagin struggle to strike hopeful tone for city

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
By Brian Thevenot
and Gordon Russell%%par%%Staff writers

In a nationally televised mayoral debate Tuesday, Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu ended up debating less with one another than with the two moderators, Chris Matthews of "Hardball" and WDSU's Norman Robinson, who grilled both candidates harshly on such subjects as whether New Orleans should be rebuilt at all.

Not surprisingly, both candidates believe the city they hope to lead should be rebuilt, despite extended arguments to the contrary put forth by Matthews and at one point, referring to specific neighborhoods, by Robinson.

"They're going to think it's crazy," Matthews said at one point, referring to citizens outside New Orleans and their view of using federal tax money to reconstruct a city below sea level.

The slate of questions -- often more like accusations -- seemed geared to a national audience, which Matthews suggested largely opposed the rebuilding of the city, or at least blame local politicians for the bungled, plodding post-Katrina rescue and rebuilding efforts. Only occasionally did the moderators' questions elicit differences between the candidates that might matter to local voters.

At one point Matthews sparred with Landrieu, for instance, on the question of whether the federal government bears responsibility for the failed levee system, which has been under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers for nearly 80 years.

"Nobody out there thinks the problems are with the levees," Matthews asserted, but rather with corrupt local officials.

He then called the political history of Landrieu's family a "legacy of inaction," naming his father the former mayor and his sister the U.S. senator.

"The Corps of Engineers designed and engineered the levees. It's a federal responsibility. You can't put that off on the people of New Orleans," Landrieu shot back. "So you're pushing this off on the federal government then," Matthews said. "If it's all federal, why would you want to be mayor?"


Immigration, passion

Matthews hit on other topics that seemed designed more for viewers in Washington, D.C., than in New Orleans, including the federal debate about immigration.

He asked Nagin, for instance, whether the flood of cleanup and construction workers in the city contained illegal immigrants. Nagin responded that "some" probably were in the country illegally. The mayor said he believed local workers could handle most if not all of the massive rebuilding task, an assertion Matthews challenged.

Landrieu jumped in with a jab at Matthews: "I don't think you can ask us to solve the immigration problem for America with all the problems we have," he said.

Robinson, the local anchor, also seemed bent on arguing with the candidates rather than having them argue with one another. In one exchange with Nagin, he accused the mayor of simply "giving up" and lacking "passion" during the campaign, then argued with Nagin when he denied it.

"A lot of voters have opined that you've lacked passion, passion in your debates," he told Nagin, who interrupted him with a denial.

Robinson continued: "People in Lakeview don't see you taking a passionate stance about rebuilding. They say you're running this race like a normal race. Why are you so laid- back?" he said.

"I'm not laid-back," Nagin said.

"No, in your debates you've been very laid-back," Robinson said, adding that Nagin had given up.

"How can I have given up when I ran first in the primary?" Nagin said.

Robinson then attacked Nagin's invitation for residents of flooded neighborhoods to return, suggested he was "immoral" because he wouldn't live there himself. "People are scared to death," Robinson said. "How can you responsibly and morally tell people to build in the Lower 9th, New Orleans East, or Gentilly or even Lakeview? You know if you had a house in the East, you wouldn't be rebuilding."

"Yes, I would," Nagin countered. "I would be rebuilding. I'm comfortable with what's going on there."

Dollars, debris

Before the sparring with the moderators, during which Nagin and Landrieu at times appeared, oddly, on the same side, the candidates appeared poised to go at one another. Nagin suggested early in the forum that Landrieu's prolific fund-raising -- more than six times that of his own -- suggested he was in the pocket of powerful national interests.

Landrieu fired back, saying that perhaps Nagin should view his lack of fund-raising as evidence that he has done a poor job.

Occasionally, the questions and the discussion zeroed in on the sorts of issues more likely to spark local interest. For instance, Landrieu, as he has throughout the campaign, blamed Nagin for the slow pace of debris and vehicle removal as well as garbage pickup. Although debris removal is overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, Landrieu said that a much higher proportion of the storm debris has been picked up in other hard-hit parishes, and implied Nagin is to blame for the slow pace in New Orleans.

Nagin responded that the responsibility for most of those tasks lies with the federal government. With regard to the removal of abandoned cars, he said FEMA had initially agreed to handle it, then backed away. While he acknowledged that city efforts to hire a contractor stalled, he said the city had nonetheless managed to get 8,000 cars towed away.

"There's no magic wand you can just wave," he said. "What we've seen is incremental improvement."


Philosophical choice?

Matthews at one point sought to bring out the differences in the candidates' political philosophies, suggesting Landrieu is a traditional Democrat more inclined to support social programs and Nagin is a business-minded Democrat more willing to make tough but unpalatable decisions.

Landrieu spurned the analysis, saying that being mayor at this point is a "meat and potatoes" job in which the ability to accomplish things matters much more than ideology.

"At the end of the day, it's about leadership style and getting things done," he said.

Nagin, meanwhile, accused Landrieu of running a "copycat" campaign devoid of any fresh ideas. He boasted of his creation of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission within a month after the storm, and said no one suggested seeking Landrieu's input in putting together the panel's recommendations.

"Nobody thought about Mitch Landrieu being a key player," Nagin said. "His name never came up."

Matthews mused at one point that voters might be better off electing Nagin, who won't be able to run for re-election in four years, than Landrieu, whom he suggested might be forced to keep voters happy to run for re-election. "Aren't you putting yourself in a position where you have to make people keep liking you?" he asked.

Landrieu disagreed, saying he would "serve as if this is the last office I'm ever going to hold."

But over and over, Matthews tried to draw out the candidates' positions on national issues unlikely to be of much relevance to local voters.

For instance, he asked several questions about President Bush's handling of Katrina. Both Landrieu and Nagin sought to criticize the president gently, but at the same time claimed they would be able to work with him despite their differences.

Likewise, Matthews asked the two to discuss their feelings about U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., considered perhaps the leading presidential contenders for their respective parties in the 2008 elections.

Not surprisingly, given that both Landrieu and Nagin are Democrats -- and given that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the city by about a 7-1 ratio -- both men said they preferred Clinton. It was unclear how the question related to the mayor's race.