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

[Audrey2Katrina]

OCEAN SPRINGS SMALL CRAFT HARBOR

Left in a jam

Slim options increase boating traffic

By BOB CRABTREE
SUN HERALD - 6/26/06

OCEAN SPRINGS - Since Hurricane Katrina, South Mississippians have grown accustomed to frequent traffic foul-ups. With warm weather, however, a new kind of traffic snarl has emerged - jams at the public boat ramps.

On weekends, the Ocean Springs Small Craft Harbor is a scene of steady confusion "Last summer we had overflow crowds on holiday weekends - Memorial Day, Fourth of July - where we had to have the police down here to control traffic. Now, it's every weekend," Harbor Master Johnny Hughes said.

According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, Jackson County is home to 25,389 registered boats while another 24,025 are in Harrison County. Unregistered boats and craft from out of state add to the problem, not to mention Katrina's battering of public boat ramps.

On weekends, the eight ramps available at the small craft harbor stay busy all day. Although the county has leased more land for parking and repainted nearly the entire lot for trailer use, vehicles and boat trailers are still parked as far away as Washington Avenue, nearly half a mile away.

The long walks, along with the occasional miscue at the ramp, can slow the launching process almost as much as the crowds. On one occasion, Hughes spotted a van parked in 4 feet of water, its windshield wipers forlornly batting back and forth, after the driver had apparently hooked up his boat without putting his vehicle in gear. "That slowed things down considerably," Hughes said.

Weekend boaters should come to the harbor prepared to be patient. Courtesy and good humor also make excellent shipmates. Delays to launch and retrieve vessels are almost a certainty.

Midmorning is probably the busiest, as early morning fishermen begin to return and pleasure boaters head out. Although the Ocean Springs Small Craft Harbor is convenient to the Sound and boasts one of the few operating bait shops on the Coast, boaters may want to consider using one of the other public boat ramps available in Jackson County, including Choctaw Marina, Mississippi 63 bridge, I-10 bridge, Roy Cumbest Bridge (Wade-Vancleave Road), Ward Bayou, Brittany Road, Old Fort Bayou, Gulf Park Estates and Octavia.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Officials do not want to see treatment facilities Wasting Away

The South Mississippi Sun Herald
By QUINCY COLLINS SMITH

June 25, 2006 We really don't want, especially at this time after the storm, to be the first. If we commit to it, we want to be very careful. Harrison County wastewater management officials are balancing repairs to hurricane-damaged wastewater treatment plants and are researching new treatment systems that could handle the county's potential growth.

Of Harrison County's six treatment plants, Keegan Bayou, Long Beach/Pass Christian and South Gulfport were substantially damaged during Hurricane Katrina, though none were damaged by more than 50 percent. For the three most affected plants, the estimated damage reached $11.8 million.

All treatment plants are in working condition but they are in 'Band-Aid form.' Repairs at the Keegan Bayou plant have been completed and the Harrison County Utility District is preparing bid specifications for other major repairs, said Kamran Pahlavan, Harrison County Utility Authority executive director.

Local partners with FOP Development Group, an Atlanta-based wastewater treatment management and operations firm, have worked for more than a year to bring subsurface wastewater treatment plants to the Coast. The plant, called VERTREAT, was developed by Vancouver-based NORAM Engineering and treats wastewater in a vertical, underground reactor.

Compared to traditional wastewater treatment plants on the Coast, VERTREAT requires less land, has higher automation and provides cleaner discharge and greater capacity, said Bob Sawyer, a Gulfport native and local FOP partner.

Sawyer said there is a dual urgency to bring the systems to the Coast because the plants are surge-, flood- and wind-resistant and can increase treatment capacity for impending commercial and tourism development.

Before and after Katrina, FOP representatives approached the Harrison County Utility Authority to implement a VERTREAT facility as a way to reduce the size and smell associated with treatment plants while making them hurricane-proof in protective buildings.

The formation of the Gulf Region Utility Authority opens the opportunity for more wastewater infrastructure investment planning. And while board members have not ruled out VERTREAT, they are concerned about its viability on the Coast.

Pahlavan said there are a lot of good things about VERTREAT's technology, but he is concerned about drilling in coastal areas and the system's ability to handle multiple pollutants handled in public wastewater systems.

If VERTREAT were to fail or pollute, the liability falls on cities and the utility authority.

'When we talk about domestic waste, it's a little more tricky,' Pahlavan said.

In D'Iberville, city officials said they cannot put their repair and expansion projects on hold for environmental studies of newer technology or for FOP to secure funding, City Manager Richard Rose said.

City officials in Gulfport and Biloxi want more information and have asked FOP to submit designs for engineering and Department of Environmental Quality review.

The utility authority has requested the state DEQ's pollution control officials research the suitability of VERTREAT's wastewater system for South Mississippi.

VERTREAT has been used in industrial applications, but not in many public wastewater systems in the country.

'One thing about VERTREAT is that there is no facility that uses this technology in our business,' Pahlavan said. 'We really don't want, especially at this time after the storm, to be the first. If we commit to it, we want to be very careful.'

Jerry Cain, director of DEQ's pollution control office, said his office does not recommend one technology over another, but it has recently reviewed VERTREAT as a legitimate technology.

Cain said despite frigid climates, plants in Alaska and Canada have used underground shaft technology successfully and EPA studies have supported the technology's claims.

Copyright © 2006 The South Mississippi Sun Herald, All Rights Reserved.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Long-lasting effects from Katrina start to emerge

By Ellen Ann Fentress
Clarion Ledger 6/25/06


On the Gulf Coast, keeping your sanity carries the same odds as keeping your house did last Aug. 29.

The Weather Channel lacks footage to show the quiet mental toll that prolonged recovery is bringing. Along with insurance disputes, FEMA, job changes and a new hurricane season, residents battle inner challenges. In demographics, new census figures just now are showing what locals have known for months. The same is true of the statistics beginning to appear that show the disaster's impact on mental health.

The suicide rate in Harrison County is triple the same time frame last year. So far, 16 people have committed suicide this year, compared to about five in 2005. Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove also hears reports that suicide attempts are up.

"There's a huge change in the psychic landscape. We've had our sense of safety and security shattered," said Steve Barrilleaux, psychologist at the Gulf Coast Mental Health Center.

REALISTIC FLASHBACKS

Of course, Katrina's emotional impact usually shows up on the stress scale far below suicide. As it was in New York after 9-11, insomnia is widespread, according to Barrilleaux. There was a reported 28 percent increase in sleeping pill prescriptions in New York after 9-11, and, on the Coast, CVS is seeing an increase in prescriptions filled in every one of its pharmacies, according to its area pharmacy supervisor Stacey Polito.

Simply living in a cramped trailer, as are 38,000 Mississippi households, is stress enough. Other signs of trauma range from repeated dreams of the mud and snakes of the initial cleanup to depression to full-blown post traumatic stress disorder, where Katrina replays in realistic flashbacks.

Indications are that divorce rates are up. Social-service workers see anecdotal evidence, and so does the Harrison County Chancery Clerk's office. Divorce filers come into the office saying their cases are Katrina divorces, reports staffer Janice Daams in Gulfport. She has noticed that while the population is down, the number of filings is not. It remains at about 75 monthly despite fewer residents.

Another kind of loss involves not damage to possessions, but damage to connections for emotional support. Families and friends are separated as many leave for jobs elsewhere. Senior citizens especially grieve as their children and grandchildren move away, Barrilleaux said.

The departing migrants suffer as well. "A hearty, resilient guy" had to move 700 miles away to keep his job. He was the last man Barrilleaux expected to seek psychological help. The man, however, located the VA hospital in his new city and started anti-depressants.

'WALKING TIGHTROPES'

Unsurprisingly, substance abuse seems up. Unemployment and cramped trailers aggravate the other factors of mental stress. The percentage of calls to the Gulf Coast Mental Health crisis line dealing with substance abuse are double pre-Katrina levels, according to center director Jeff Bennett.

At the low end of the stress scale are functioning people fighting frustration and irritation. "Most of us are walking tightropes, and it doesn't take much to slip," said a Biloxi woman. Since losing her house, she has stayed with different friends and often works 50 hours weekly at her job.

It must be said that some feel new energy. A Bay St. Louis 65-year-old woman had expected to retire before Katrina. She lost her home, and her sister died in the storm. "I did things I never would have attempted had it not been necessary - going into collapsing houses, driving a huge truck through foot-deep mud," she said. "The storm empowered me. I feel I could do almost anything now ... not recklessly but with assurance and purpose." She's decided to continue working. "I feel I have more that I can do now."

William Faulkner wrote that the past is not dead; it's not even past. For generations, Mississippians have borne that out, whether they were shaped by the impact of the Civil War, Jim Crow, the Great Depression or the civil rights struggle.

History is shaping Mississippians once again. The clear-eyed residents of the Coast, rubbed raw though they may be, have something to say about the value of a plain day with loved ones, a roof and easy plans for the future. They are witness to how fleeting expectations can be, more fleeting than most of us are brave enough to think.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Miss. nursery growers get ready for hurricane season

6/26/2006, 10:17 a.m. ET
By ROYCE ARMSTRONG
The Associated Press


LUCEDALE, Miss. (AP) — Caught by surprise by the wrath of last year's hurricane season, the billion-dollar nursery industry in Mississippi is making some important changes.

"Everyone was caught unprepared for Hurricane Katrina," said Kerry Johnson, the Mississippi State University Extension Service area horticulturist serving the 11 southernmost counties, including George and Jackson. "We had never had a Katrina before. It was difficult to prepare for a storm of that size."

"The growers are about a $56 million industry in Mississippi," said Ken Hood, an agricultural economist with the Mississippi State University Agricultural Economy Department. "About 75 percent of the growers are in the southeast part of the state and along the Coast."

Hood said the industry suffered an estimated $17 to $19 million in losses statewide during the 2005 hurricane season. Most of that damage occurred in the six counties closest to the coast, with George County being among the hardest hit.

George County has the largest concentration of nurseries of any county in the state, said Johnson. There are between 45 and 50 nurseries in George County and 15 to 20 in Jackson County, he said.

Depending upon where they were, the nurseries suffered damage from three potential sources, Johnson said: flooding, wind and hot weather drying out the plants after the storm.

Growers have been working since Katrina to make sure they do not get caught with their plants down again.

John Miller, who operates Miller's Nursery near Escatawpa, suffered severe wind damage. Four of his greenhouses were destroyed and others were damaged. His watering system was also damaged.

"We had adequate generator power," Miller said, "but I have already made sure the generators have been tuned up and are ready for this year. We will also make sure we cut all of the plastic and shade cloth off our greenhouses and water down the plants heavy to try and keep them standing up."

"We suffered some real damage," Fred Croom said about his commercial and retail nursery operation near Rocky Creek, "just like everyone else. Once the storm was past, we needed to get water to the plants, but there was no electricity. We had a generator, but it wasn't big enough to power our irrigation pumps."

Croom owns and operates Croom Nursery and has since purchased more generators.

"We had a generator," said Marion Welford, who has been in the nursery business for 35 years. He owns and operates W & W Nursery, Inc. with his daughter and son-in-law. "But, we were down (unable to irrigate) for two days and we had plants that needed water within the first 36 hours after the storm. Those are the plants we ended up hauling off."

Welford said without two generators loaned by friends in Louisiana, he would have lost even more plants. As it was, he had to replace equipment sheds and greenhouses. He also had some plants that suffered salt damage caused by sea salt carried inland in the wind and rain.

In an effort to help growers better prepare for current and future hurricane seasons, the Extension Service and the George County Nursery Association recently met to share ideas for hurricane preparedness.

About 30 nurserymen attended the meeting, which focused on four main areas of concern: emergency power, federal crop insurance protection, post-disaster communications and using the Internet for critical financial records backup.

Jeff Howell, the owner and operator of Rocky Creek Nursery, Inc. near Lucedale and a member of the George County Nursery Association, shared some of the changes being made in his business.

"We have added larger generators to provide the necessary emergency power," he said. "We have also installed larger stationary gasoline and diesel fuel tanks along with purchasing portable fuel tanks.

"Those tanks may sit empty 11 months out of the year, but they will be filled if we think a hurricane is coming our way. We had fuel that was scheduled to be delivered to us right after the storm. It was coming from a distributor in Alabama, but the truck was commandeered by FEMA before it got here. FEMA paid for and took possession of the fuel. Fortunately, electrical power was restored to us shortly after that, or it could have really been a bad situation for us," Howell said.

Howell said another step his nursery has taken toward better hurricane preparedness has been simply to prepare a hurricane checklist to make sure they take care of all of the small details as well as doing the large things to prepare for the storm.

"The industry is older and wiser now," Johnson said. "I do not believe they will be caught unprepared again. They (the growers) are doing what they can to get ready."

The growers all agree that even with all of the preparations, their businesses are far from safe.

"You never know," said Welford. "No two storms are exactly alike. They can include wind, rain, hail and lightning. You have to prepare for a little bit of all of it."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Mobile Evacuation Map

Specifics available at Al.com

[Audrey2Katrina]

NEW YORK TIMES 6-27-07



FEMA spends $250,000 a month to store about 10,000 empty mobile homes at an airfield in Hope, Ark.

'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: June 27, 2006
NY Times online

WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement.

"The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Such an outcome was feared soon after Congress passed the initial hurricane relief package, as officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross acknowledged that their systems were overwhelmed and tried to create new ones on the fly.

"We did, in fact, put into place never-before-used and untested processes," Donna M. Dannels, acting deputy director of recovery at FEMA, told a House panel this month. "Clearly, because they were untested, they were more subject to error and fraud."

Officials in Washington say they recognized that a certain amount of fraud or improper payments is inevitable in any major disaster, as the government's mission is to rapidly distribute emergency aid. They typically send out excessive payments that represent 1 percent to 3 percent of the relief distributed, money they then ask people to give back.

What was not understood until now was just how large these numbers could become.

The estimate of up to $2 billion in fraud and waste represents nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June, or about 6 percent of total money that has been obligated.

"This started off as a disaster-relief program, but it turned into a cash cow," said Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, a former federal prosecutor and now chairman of a House panel investigating storm waste and fraud.

The waste ranged from excessive loads of ice to higher-than-necessary costs on the multibillion-dollar debris removal effort. Some examples are particularly stark.

The $7.9 million spent to renovate the former Fort McClellan Army base in Anniston, Ala., included fixing up a welcome center, clinic and gymnasium, scrubbing away mold and installing a protective fence between the site and a nearby firing range. But when the doors finally opened, only about 10 people showed up each night, leading FEMA to shut down the shelter within one month.

The mobile homes, costing $34,500 each, were supposed to provide temporary housing to hurricane victims. But after Louisiana officials balked at installing them inland, FEMA had no use for them. Nearly half, or about 10,000, of the $860 million worth of units now sit at an airfield in Arkansas, where FEMA is paying $250,000 a month to store them.

The most recent audit came from the Government Accountability Office, which this month estimated that perhaps as much as 21 percent of the $6.3 billion given directly to victims might have been improperly distributed.

"There are tools that are available to get money quickly to individuals and to get disaster relief programs running quickly without seeing so much fraud and waste," said Gregory D. Kutz, managing director of the forensic audits unit at the G.A.O. "But it wasn't really something that FEMA put a high priority on. So it was easy to commit fraud without being detected."

The most disturbing cases, said David R. Dugas, the United States attorney in Louisiana, who is leading a storm antifraud task force for the Justice Department, are those involving government officials accused of orchestrating elaborate scams.

One Louisiana Department of Labor clerk, Wayne P. Lawless, has been charged with issuing about 80 fraudulent disaster unemployment benefit cards in exchange for bribes of up to $300 per application. Mr. Lawless, a state contract worker, announced to one man he helped apply for hurricane benefits that he wanted to "get something out of it," the affidavit said. His lawyer did not respond to several messages left at his office and home for comment.

"The American people are the most generous in the world in responding to a disaster," Mr. Dugas said. "We won't tolerate people in a position of public trust taking advantage of the situation."

Two other men, Mitchell Kendrix of Memphis and Paul Nelson of Lisbon, Me., have pleaded guilty in connection with a scheme in Mississippi in which Mr. Kendrix, a representative for the Army Corps of Engineers, took $100 bribes in exchange for approving phantom loads of hurricane debris from Mr. Nelson.

In New Orleans, two FEMA officials, Andrew Rose and Loyd Holliman, both of Colorado, have pleaded guilty to taking $20,000 in bribes in exchange for inflating the count on the number of meals a contractor was serving disaster workers. And a councilman in St. Tammany Parish, La., Joseph Impastato, has also been charged with trying to extort $100,000 from a debris removal contractor. Mr. Impastato's lawyer, Karl J. Koch, said he was confident his client would be cleared.

A program set up by the American Red Cross and financed by FEMA that provided free hotel rooms to Hurricane Katrina victims also resulted in extraordinary abuse and waste, investigators have found.

First, because the Red Cross did not keep track of the hundreds of thousands of recipients — they were only required to provide a ZIP code from the hurricane zone to check in — FEMA frequently sent rental assistance checks to people getting free hotel rooms, the G.A.O. found.

In turn, some hotel managers or owners, like Daniel Yeh, of Sugar Land, exploited the lack of oversight, investigators have charged, and submitted bills for empty rooms or those occupied by paying guests or employees. Mr. Yeh submitted $232,000 in false claims, his arrest affidavit said. His lawyer, Robert Bennett, said that Mr. Yeh was mentally incompetent and that the charges should be dismissed.

And Tina M. Winston of Belleville, Ill., was charged this month with claiming that her two daughters had died in the flooding in New Orleans. But prosecutors said that the children never existed and that Ms. Winston was living in Illinois at the time of the storm. The public defender representing Ms. Winston did not respond to a request for comment.

Charities also were vulnerable to profiteers. In Burbank, Calif., a couple has been charged with collecting donations outside a store by posing as Red Cross workers. In Bakersfield, Calif., 75 workers at a Red Cross call center, their friends and relatives have been charged in a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief.

To date, Mr. Dugas said, federal prosecutors have filed hurricane-related criminal charges against 335 individuals. That represents a record number of indictments from a single hurricane season, Justice Department officials said. Separately, Red Cross officials say they are investigating 7,100 cases of possible fraud.

Congressional investigators, meanwhile, have referred another 7,000 cases of possible fraud to prosecutors, including more than 1,000 prison inmates who collected more than $12 million in federal aid, much of it in the form of rental assistance.

Investigators also turned up one individual who had received 26 federal disaster relief payments totaling $139,000, using 13 Social Security numbers, all based on claims of damages for bogus addresses.

Thousands more people may be charged before the five-year statute of limitations on most of these crimes expires, investigators said.

There are bigger cases of government waste or fraud in United States history. The Treasury Department, for example, estimated in 2005 that Americans in a single year had improperly been granted perhaps $9 billion in unjustified claims under the Earned-Income Tax Credit. The Department of Health and Human Services in 2001 estimated that nearly $12 billion in Medicare benefit payments in the previous year had been based on improper or fraudulent complaints.

Auditors examining spending in Iraq also have documented hundreds of millions in questionable spending or abuse. But Mr. Kutz of the accountability office said that in all of his investigative work, he had never encountered the range of abuses he has seen with Hurricane Katrina.

R. David Paulison, the new FEMA director, said in an interview on Friday that much work had already been done to prevent such widespread fraud, including automated checks to confirm applicants' identities.

"We will be able to tell who you are, if you live where you said you do," Mr. Paulison said.

But Senator Collins said she had heard such promises before, including after Hurricane Frances in 2004 in which FEMA gave out millions of dollars in aid to Miami-Dade County residents, even though there was little damage.

Mr. Kutz said he too was not convinced that the agency was ready.

"I still don't think they fully understand the depth of the problem," he said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

NOPD triples weekend arrest tally

Guard, troopers help in roundup effort

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Times Picayune/NOLA.com
By Trymaine Lee
Staff writer

With the National Guard patrolling more deserted parts of the city, New Orleans police arrested 34 suspected felons during the weekend, nearly triple the usual tally, New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Warren Riley said Monday.

But Mayor Ray Nagin acknowledged an unsuspected hitch in implementing another part of the crackdown on crime, the juvenile curfew: difficulty tracking down the parents of some young curfew violators in post-Katrina New Orleans.

"The National Guard being here has allowed us to pull our officers in and flood areas of concern," Riley said of the successful weekend roundup of criminal suspects. Those "hot spots" include Central City and parts of Hollygrove and Algiers. About 300 National Guard joined patrols with NOPD officers last week in eastern New Orleans, parts of Lakeview, Gentilly and the decimated Lower 9th Ward, mainly to scout out the looting that has plagued those areas since the hurricane. In addition, 60 State Troopers have been deployed to New Orleans to assist local police.

The weekend's surge in arrests -- 34 for felonies, 29 on narcotics charges, 35 for municipal offenses and four for misdemeanors -- emboldened Riley to predict that crime rates would quickly start to fall. "This week you'll see a difference," he said.


Youth back, but not parents

Police detained 14 juveniles for breaking the 11 p.m. curfew imposed on Friday and Saturday nights. All but two of the juveniles were remanded to their parents. Two of the youths remained in police custody Monday because police were unable to locate their parents or legal guardians, Riley said.

Nagin said police picking up children who might have returned to the city without their parents is troubling, and he hopes it's not a trend law enforcement will have to continue dealing with.

"We're picking up kids whose parents are not here," Nagin said. "These kids are just out there. We have to give them a bath and feed them." Nagin said if the problem continues, the city and police department will have to develop both long- and short-term plans to house the juvenile curfew breakers.

"We just can't let them go until we find a parent," Riley said.

The curfew for anyone under the age of 17 begins Sunday to Thursday at 9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday at 11 p.m. The curfew ends daily at 6 a.m. Those same guidelines were in place during the bloody year of 1994, when then-Mayor Marc Morial instituted a curfew in response to a skyrocketing murder rate.

Asked to evaluate Riley's performance as police superintendent, Nagin said it's too early to pass judgment.


Rating the chief

"The Police Foundation, the FBI, even Gen. Honoré, all the people he's been working with have been pleased," Nagin said. "I say you give a chief a year before you give him a hard assessment. But so far, so good."

While expressing optimism that the NOPD, with an assist from State Troopers and the National Guard, will succeed in controlling crime, Nagin said that if the city's violent crime rates continue to climb, more extreme measures might be needed.

"We're going to continue to pound the public safety issue," he said. "I'm not necessarily against going back to a city-wide curfew, shutting the city down for a few hours" a day.

Nagin said early talk of a more stringent curfew for all residents, regardless of age, has met resistance from French Quarter merchants and the city's university community, who fear the move would send a message to the parents of college-age students that the city is not safe. Many local colleges and universities have struggled to attract freshman for the fall semester, Nagin said.


Bloody episode

Though in the works for months, the curfew and last week's deployment of the National Guard and Louisiana State Police came on the heels of the city's bloodiest episode of violence in a decade: the slaughter of five teenagers in Central City. Police said a gunman or group of gunmen fired upon an SUV the teens were driving about 4 a.m. near Josephine and Danneel streets.

Nagin said he'll be making an announcement this week that he hopes will bolster efforts to engage the city's youth during the summer months. Nagin said the city plans to open five public pools and resurrect summer recreation programs for up to 1,000 kids. The city also will be partnering with the YMCA, the YWCA, and several churches and schools to offer other summer programs.

In addition, the city's summer employment program will provide jobs for 500 kids, half the number provided with work last summer.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Judge: Governor erred in extending time for lawsuits

6/27/2006, 7:22 a.m. CT
The Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco exceeded her authority when she gave Louisiana residents additional time to file lawsuits after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a judge has ruled.
State District Judge Tim Kelley, who heard a suit last week involving ownership of a dog, also said the Legislature acted improperly when it retroactively ratified her order suspending the normal one-year time limit for filing civil suits.

"I do not believe the governor had the authority to suspend the laws of the state," Kelley said. "She does have the authority under the terms of the act to suspend the rules and regulations of various agencies of the state. But the courts are not agencies of the state."

The ruling only affects the single case in front of Kelley and could not be applied to other late-filed cases until an appeals court rules. But plaintiff attorney Jeff Nicholson said the ruling will be appealed to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal, which could issue a decision affecting all state courts in the region.

The Louisiana Supreme Court would have the final say on all lawsuits filed across Louisiana in state courts.

Citing the Homeland Security Act, Blanco suspended the one-year deadline for filing certain civil suits from Aug. 29 through Nov. 25. The Legislature extended the suspension until Jan. 3.

The decision was aimed at giving Louisianians a legal grace period in a time when courts, law firms and other aspects of the legal system were in chaos.

But in his ruling, Kelley said the Homeland Security Act gives the governor authority to change state agency rules and regulations "but does not extend to the laws of the state passed by the Legislature."

Since the ruling involved a private civil case, a decision on whether the state will get involved in the appeal rests with the governor's office, said Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general.

The governor's office could not be reached for comment early Tuesday.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Lawsuits expected in N.O. gutting law

City to try to enforce Aug. 29 date but will respect property rights

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Times Picayune/NOLA.com
By Bruce Eggler
Staff writer

Don't necessarily look for the city to start seizing and gutting droves of mold-infested homes when a deadline for owners to clean them expires at the end of August.

Despite the health and sanitation problems the moldering properties can cause, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Monday that the city is likely to face court challenges when it tries to gain access to the properties, not unlike the resistance it faced a few months ago when trying to demolish homes that had floated onto public roadways.

Although the city is "going to try to enforce" the law, Nagin said it will respect property owners' rights. He also promised to be especially sensitive to senior citizens, who may face special difficulties trying to clean up their property.

The New Orleans City Council passed a law in April setting a deadline of Aug. 29, the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, for homeowners to clean, gut and board up flooded homes or risk having the city seize and clean or even demolish them.

Nagin said he doesn't know how many flooded homes remain untreated since Katrina or how many the city will have the resources to deal with.


Impediments to recovery

The ordinance setting the Aug. 29 deadline was approved 7-0 by the council. It was introduced by former Councilman Jay Batt, who said he was concerned that many residents were doing nothing to fix up ravaged, mold-infested houses that could become environmental hazards, discouraging owners of nearby homes from moving back or making repairs and thereby retarding the recovery of whole neighborhoods.

The ordinance says "every owner of a dwelling or dwelling unit shall be responsible for mold remediation, cleaning, gutting and properly securing the premises of all properties" damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita "in a manner so as to render the premises environmentally sound and not open to the public."

If owners do not complete this work by Aug. 29, the law says, their buildings will be "declared to be public nuisances and shall be abated by repair, rehabilitation, demolition or removal."

In passing the law, the council said a committee would be established "to review hardship cases and possible exceptions." When notices are sent to owners alerting them that their property is being considered for designation as a public nuisance, they are to be informed of the appeal process, the law says.

Nagin neither signed nor vetoed the ordinance, choosing to let it become law without his signature.


Focus on western N.O.

He said Monday that he initially was "pretty skeptical" about the Aug. 29 deadline, thinking it should be extended because it would come at a time of great psychological stress for storm victims. But as the rebuilding process has proceeded, he said, he has become more aware of the serious problems that an untreated home can cause for neighbors.

When enforcement efforts start, Nagin said, emphasis will be placed on neighborhoods west of the Industrial Canal, not on eastern New Orleans.

"We have the power to declare (properties) blighted," he said. "We can be very aggressive with that. The people I'm going to be sensitive to are senior citizens. If we can figure out something to do there, everybody else is fair game."

But based on the city's experience early this year in trying to demolish some of the most severely damaged houses in the Lower 9th Ward and other hard-hit neighborhoods, Nagin said, he anticipates a flood of lawsuits from homeowners and activist groups when the city starts trying to enforce the Aug. 29 deadline.

The city announced plans in December to demolish buildings in the most flood-ravaged neighborhoods that had been pushed off their foundations and were blocking rights of way and otherwise impeding recovery efforts, but a lawsuit filed by homeowners and activists halted work until March.

Residents in the Lower 9th Ward accused the city of failing to provide fair notice before sending in the wrecking crews. The city settled the lawsuit and agreed to a list of rules for notification that included publishing legal notices in The Times-Picayune and on the city's Web site.


Property rights at issue

Based on that precedent, City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields said Monday that she thinks the city would be able to turn back any legal challenges to its authority to deal with houses it labels "public nuisances."

However, she noted, owners have the right to due process, and Nagin predicted that "you're going to see every legal beagle from around the country come down here and try to make us jump through some hoops.

"The issue is one of property rights, and this is a big state for property rights," he said. "How do we go into someone's house without their permission?"

There also are questions, Nagin said, about whether declaring a home blighted would affect the owner's right to receive money under the state's multibillion-dollar Road Home housing program, which will give homeowners grants of up to $150,000 for uninsured, uncompensated damages so they can repair, rebuild or relocate. If a blight declaration interferes with owners' getting the state money, it could end up slowing rather than speeding rehabilitation of their buildings.

Of the 125,000 homes damaged by Katrina, Nagin said, the number whose owners have yet to remediate the effects of flooding could be anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent. He said he doesn't know how many of those houses the cash-strapped city would be able to deal with after Aug. 29, even if it decides to ignore all of eastern New Orleans, at least initially.


Exemptions approved

On May 25, at the final meeting for four departing members, the council agreed to set aside the Aug. 29 deadline for much of the Lower 9th Ward.

It passed an ordinance proposed by Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis declaring that all owner-occupied homes, plus all "residential rental property" owned by people 65 or older, in about two-thirds of the Lower 9th Ward "shall be deemed to be hardship cases" and thus "eligible for exceptions to the remediation requirements" imposed by the April law.

The exemptions apply to the section of the Lower 9th Ward bounded by St. Claude Avenue, the Industrial Canal, Florida Avenue and the St. Bernard Parish line. The rest of the neighborhood, between St. Claude and the river, was not as badly devastated by Katrina's floodwaters as the part north of St. Claude.

Willard-Lewis' proposal was backed by the community group ACORN.

At the council's June 8 meeting, ACORN leaders proposed declaring homes in the entire Lower 9th Ward to be hardship cases and thus eligible for exceptions to the law. They also suggested postponing the deadline citywide from Aug. 29 to one year after the city officially notifies the owners of homes and apartments of their duty to clean and gut their properties.

The council has taken no action on those suggestions.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Laura Bush touts the power of schools and their libraries

Rebuilding is a must, she says

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Times Picayune/NOLA.com
By Leslie Williams
Staff writer

Rebuilding hurricane-ravaged schools -- and their libraries -- is an absolute necessity, Laura Bush told the American Library Association conference in New Orleans on Monday.

Bush, a former elementary school librarian, said schools are a huge part of the Gulf Coast's recovery from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. She spoke at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where more than 16,000 educators have gathered.

"Never have state school officials . . . had to restore entire school districts as fast as they can without a tax base to finance the reconstruction," said Bush, who insisted "each of these new schools must have a new school library."

"Until there are schools for children, families won't return home. And for the many children who stayed on the Gulf Coast after losing their homes and all their possessions, their school is their only comfort left," Bush said on her seventh post-Katrina trip to the New Orleans area.

She has visited Oct. 11, Dec. 10, Jan 26, March 8, April 10 and May 31, when she attended a conference titled: "Rebirth: People, Places and Culture in New Orleans."

Although no report was immediately available about the status of school libraries in New Orleans, a post-Katrina assessment of the city's 110-year-old public library system -- 13 branches and nearly 800,000 holdings -- revealed eight branches were destroyed; about 80 percent of the system's 213-person staff was laid off; 320,000 books and other holdings were lost; and property tax revenue is expected to drop more than 50 percent.

In all, the damage topped $26 million.

Replacing hundreds of damaged or destroyed school libraries along the Gulf Coast -- and the accompanying loss of millions of books, printed materials, technology resources and archival materials -- is a daunting task that will not be accomplished without the support of corporate, foundation and private entities, Bush said.

Dick Robinson, chief executive officer of the publishing company Scholastic, and David Perdue, chief executive officer of Dollar General, will issue a call to action to corporations and foundations nationwide, encouraging them to take steps toward committing money and resources to rebuild and revitalize school libraries throughout the region, Bush said.

A former librarian at Dawson Elementary School in Austin, Bush has helped rebuild Gulf Coast school libraries via the Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries Gulf Coast School Library Recovery Initiative.

"And the task is huge," she said. "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 1,121 private and public schools in the Gulf Coast region were damaged or destroyed."

The basic cost of building a book collection for an elementary school is about $50,000; the cost for a secondary school library is more than $100,000.

"As schools rebuild, they're eager to have these resources," she said, noting that "last month the Laura Bush Foundation awarded its first round of grants totaling $500,000 to 10 schools in Louisiana and Mississippi."

The American Library Association shares this commitment to rebuilding Gulf Coast libraries, she said. It has raised nearly $300,000 to help libraries restore materials and collections.

"During this conference, many ALA members are giving their time and energy to local libraries left understaffed by the hurricanes," Bush said.

She described the restoration of Gulf Coast libraries as a long-term endeavor requiring well-trained librarians who must be recruited and educated.

To that end, Bush announced an award by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences' Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program of more than $20 million "to support almost 3,900 library-science students at 35 universities."

During her keynote address Monday, Bush spoke of the extraordinary determination of local educators, specifically citing St. Bernard Parish public schools Superintendent Doris Voitier for not waiting to hear from the Federal Emergency Management Agency before rebuilding a school in Chalmette after Katrina.

"She just billed FEMA after she rebuilt her school," said Bush, who also tossed a bouquet to school librarian Marianne Higginbotham and her students at the Second Street Elementary School in Bay St. Louis in Mississippi.

As students fled from homes destroyed by Katrina, the boys and girls -- indoctrinated by Higginbotham -- took their library books with them and kept them as they moved from one location to another. Ultimately, the books were returned safely to the Second Street Elementary School library.

The conference for the American Library Association, the oldest and largest library association in the world, began Thursday and ends Wednesday.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Police hunt suspect in deadly crime spree

Slidell man is wanted in killing, carjacking, bank robbery

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Times Picayune/NOLA.com
By Paul Rioux
St. Tammany bureau

Authorities launched an intensive manhunt for a gunman who robbed a Slidell bank Monday morning, two days after allegedly killing a man in a botched drug deal and carjacking another man in what detectives called an increasingly desperate and dangerous one-man crime spree.

Brandon Larkin Twillie, 24, is wanted on several felony warrants, including first-degree murder in connection with the previously unpublicized slaying of Thomas Cousin, 18, who was gunned down early Saturday on a street north of Slidell.

Detectives said Twillie carjacked a man at gunpoint later that morning at a nearby gas station, driving off in a gold 1995 Mazda 626. That vehicle was used as a getaway car in an armed robbery Monday morning at the Statewide Bank branch at 300 W. Gause Blvd. in Slidell, police said.

"This guy is becoming increasingly reckless and sloppy," Sheriff Jack Strain said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "Generally when criminals become more desperate, they become more deadly."

The Sheriff's Office and Slidell police dispatched dozens of officers and detectives to search for Twillie, who served time in prison after a string of arrests on drug and theft charges in the late 1990s.

The two agencies called the news conference to alert the public after linking Twillie to the 10 a.m. bank robbery.

A masked man wielding a handgun burst into the bank's lobby and ordered the four tellers to step back from their cash drawers. The man jumped over the counter and cleaned out the drawers, filling a bag with an undisclosed amount of money, Slidell police Capt. Rob Callahan said.

The gunman sped away in a gold sedan, heading north on Carnation Street, Callahan said.

The license plate on the getaway car matched that of a gold Mazda 626 stolen Saturday about 10:30 a.m. at the Chevron station at 101 Brown's Switch Road near U.S. 11. The gas station is a few blocks from where Cousin was killed, nearly seven hours earlier.

Strain said detectives believe Twillie, who matches a description of the shooter and carjacker, hid in the surrounding woods after the shooting and stole the car hours later to flee the area.

Fatal shooting

Cousin was shot in the back Saturday about 3:45 a.m. outside a house in the 37400 block of East Hillcrest Street, a couple of doors from where he lived.

"We are confident it was the result of a street-level drug deal," Strain said. "For whatever reason, Twillie shot him in the back for the narcotics."

Cousin, who died at the scene, was killed by a bullet that passed through his chest, said Mark Lombard, chief investigator for the coroner's office.

Cousin's parents said they believe their son was killed in a robbery after he won a large amount of money at a dice game.

"It wasn't a drug deal gone bad," said Terry Vincent, Cousin's stepfather. "It was a robbery gone bad. Everyone in the neighborhood has been talking about how they fought over how the money was divided after the dice game."

Neighbor Brandi Walker said she held a towel to Cousin's chest to try to stop the bleeding after someone pounded on her door and asked her to call 911.

"He took three breaths and died in my arms," Walker said.

She said a woman who lives next door reached into Cousin's pocket after he died and removed a large wad of bills. Walker said the woman told her that she planned to give the money to Cousin's mother, Catherine Revere, but Revere said she has not received it.

Revere described her son as a polite young man who always turned the other way when he saw trouble coming.

"He was a good child," she said. "Everybody has been calling to say what a kind, good-hearted person he was."


Armed and dangerous

Twillie, whose last known address is 37161 W. Hillcrest Drive, a few blocks from where the shooting occurred, was sentenced to three years in prison in October 1999 after pleading guilty to burglary and auto theft charges, according to records at the St. Tammany Parish courthouse.

He was booked with three counts of narcotics possession in January 2005. He pleaded guilty to a single count and received a five-year suspended sentence in May 2005, according to the records.

Although Strain warned the public that Twillie should be considered armed and dangerous, the sheriff waited more than 48 hours to publicize the murder and carjacking, citing "investigative purposes."

"We believe it's important to exhaust some leads before going public," he said. "We don't want to tip our hand and reveal how we outsmart suspects."

He said detectives believe Twillie remains in the area.

"We have marshaled tremendous resources to try to catch this guy," he said. "We know we have a limited amount of time to capture him before he has a chance to disappear into the fabric of our nation."

[Audrey2Katrina]

City cuts deal on debris pickup

Work could begin this week, official says

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Times Picayune/NOLA.com
By Gordon Russell
Staff writer

Hoping to silence a growing chorus of gripes about New Orleans' disheveled appearance, Mayor Ray Nagin announced Monday that the city will pay a private contractor to pick up the rotting piles of mingled storm debris and household trash that litter curbsides throughout the city.

Meanwhile, city officials plan to solicit new bids for household garbage pickup in the next two weeks, a topic that has also generated innumerable complaints since Hurricane Katrina. The city's longtime trash hauler, Waste Management of Louisiana, has limited pickups to once a week since resuming service, but many residents say the company has had difficulty keeping up with even that reduced schedule.

Sanitation Director Veronica White said the household garbage contract, which expires in December, had an annual value of about $19 million before Katrina, and is worth about half that now. She said the city hopes to move to an automated or semiautomated collection system with the new contract.

In the deal announced Monday, J.N.E. Enterprises Inc. of New Orleans will collect the debris that the Army Corps of Engineers and Waste Management refuse to pick up. White said the company could begin work later this week. The firm submitted the lowest of seven responsive bids received by the city by Friday. According to documents provided by White, J.N.E. will provide three crews costing a total of $266,400 per month.

An eighth firm, Unique Pressure Washing, had said it could provide a single crew for $9,000 per month, but the bid was tossed out because it was unrealistically low, White said.

Under the terms of the bid, J.N.E. will be required to have its three teams in the field for 10 hours each day, seven days a week. Each team will have, at minimum, two dump trucks, a garbage truck, a front-end loader and five laborers who will be responsible for cleaning the property after the heavy lifting is done, White said.

The crews will begin working in the city's "most populated areas," city officials said. They will focus on picking up refuse for which federal contractors are not responsible, in particular debris that contains household waste.

While the Corps of Engineers figures that about 5 million cubic yards of debris remain on city streets, White said she could not estimate how much of that would be left by corps contractors because it has been inappropriately mingled with household waste.

Though the city remains in dire financial straits, officials said Monday that the City Council has appropriated for the debris pickup up to $5 million of unspent money from a $150 million federal disaster loan the city received last year.

The decision to hire a private firm to provide what Nagin is calling a "tactical trash force" stemmed from a belief that certain kinds of trash are falling through the cracks in the city's effort to clean itself up.

While Waste Management is responsible for picking up household trash curbside, the company is required to pick up only two large containers per household per week, an amount that some residents say doesn't keep pace with reality.

And while the corps is still in charge of the removal of storm-related and construction debris in the city, its contractors will not pick up such material if it is mingled with household garbage, such as food.

The result is that large and smelly piles of refuse linger in many neighborhoods, leading trash to become a major issue in the recent mayoral campaign.

Lawyer Rob Couhig, who finished fourth in the primary and went on to become a Nagin adviser, was present at Monday's announcement. Couhig has said he will serve Nagin in a voluntary capacity for several months in hopes of jump-starting progress in a variety of areas, including the city's unkempt appearance.

The need for the pickup service owes in part to residents' failure to properly segregate their garbage, White said.

"We're trying to educate people," she said.

While the corps is no longer making regular passes through neighborhoods, the agency is still picking up debris upon request, corps spokesman Jim Pogue said. Those who need their debris picked up can call the city's 311 hot line, Pogue said.

Also, White said that residents can bring their own household garbage, including hazardous material, to any of three drop-off sites, free of charge. The sites are 2301 Hendee Court in Algiers; 2826 Elysian Fields Ave.; and the intersection of the I-10 Service Road and Crowder Boulevard.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Shipping conglomerate moving to Mobile port

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Mobile Press Register AL.com
By ANDREA JAMES
Business Reporter

International Shipholding Corp. said Monday that it will relocate its headquarters from New Orleans to Mobile, bringing with it 150 jobs.

The shipping conglomerate operates about 15 subsidiaries, including the former Mobile company Waterman Steamship Corp., according to Erik L. Johnsen, a president of several subsidiaries whose family founded the company.

Johnsen said the company considered Gulf Coast ports from the Texas-Louisiana border to Alabama and chose Mobile partly because the state, port and local governments offered an incentives and financing package worth more than $23 million.

"We're very pleased with the county, the city and the state's incentive package," Johnsen said. "It clearly played an important role in us choosing Mobile."

The corporation's offices will occupy two floors of the RSA Tower, which is under construction downtown and will be the tallest building in the state.

International Shipholding will become the fourth publicly traded company with headquarters in Mobile and the only company based here that trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

The announcement holds the promise of new business for the Alabama state docks, which is already in the midst of its largest expansion ever. A key subsidiary of International Shipholding will bring 90 ships per year through the Mobile ship channel to a new $19 million terminal, according to state docks Director Jimmy Lyons.

"This company will provide a foundation for us to get some other headquarters," Mobile Mayor Sam Jones said Monday. "We are just elated."


CG Railway One of International Shipholding's largest subsidiaries, CG Railway Inc., cannot continue to operate in New Orleans because the man-made Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet is closed to deep-draft ships, according to the Port of New Orleans.

A dispute over that channel's role in allowing the city to flood during Hurricane Katrina leaves the channel's future in doubt.

CG Railway offers a specialized service that connects rail lines in Mexico to the Gulf Coast by using ships to ferry rail cars. Two ships regularly traverse the route carrying beer, chemicals, forest products, textiles and steel.

"Anytime that we can have a direct linkage to Central, South America or Mexico, it really does play into our trade efforts and our trade goals," said Alabama Development Office Director Neal Wade.

CG Railway plans to spend $12 million to $14 million adding a second deck to its ships, which will double capacity, Johnsen said.

Before opening shop in New Orleans, CG Railway had operated in Mobile for about three years but was pushed out by construction on the new $300 million Choctaw Point container terminal. The state of Louisiana enticed CG Railway with $15 million in infrastructure improvements, plus incentives from New Orleans' city and port.

Two months after CG Railway completed its move from Mobile, Katrina struck on Aug. 29.

CG Railway's return to Mobile should increase local ship traffic by about 9 percent, Lyons said.

While valuable to the port and Alabama businesses, that move alone brings only about 15 jobs -- not enough to justify a large state incentives package. So the state made its offer contingent on International Shipholding's relocation to the Port City, according to Wade.

"The fact that we've got a corporate headquarters coming into Alabama is really important to us," he said.


$23 million in aid


A $19 million, two-tier terminal will be built for CG Railway at the north end of the Alabama state docks on the Mobile River. The state will pay about $10 million, with the docks financing about $9 million, Lyons said.

The docks plans to recoup its money over time through fees paid by CG Railway.

The Retirement Systems of Alabama offered to buy out the deep-sea shipping company's lease in New Orleans, plus offered a long-term competitive rate for leasing space in the RSA tower, Lyons said.

Other incentives in the package include $1 million each from Mobile County and the city of Mobile, plus $2 million from the state for employee training and other incentives.

The operation could boost port revenue by $3 million per year, or 1.6 percent of the total docks budget., Lyons said. Docks officials estimate that CG Railway will spend up to $5.5 million per year in Mobile on goods and services, and up to $1 million per year in local ship yards. International Shipholding also plans to build a warehousing and distribution center on docks property, Lyons said.

About 80 spinoff maritime jobs will be created by the added business, Lyons said.

Johnsen said the company hopes to be operating in Mobile fully by the end of the year.

"We will ask all of our employees to join us," Johnsen said. "I think that becomes a personal decision for each individual to make."

"It's a new chapter in our life," added Johnsen, who lost his home in New Orleans to the storm.

Shares of International Shipholding (NYSE: ISH) jumped 9 cents Monday, to close at $13.18, giving the company a market value of $81 million.

ON THE NET

The company's three flag logo can be found here:

http://www.intship.com/

[Audrey2Katrina]

Colleges to be shelters

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - Mobile Press Register/AL.com
By DAVID FERRARA
Staff Reporter

The following 38 community colleges were named Monday by Gov. Bob Riley as sites that will serve as emergency shelters during future hurricane evacuations. (Note: Some schools have shelters at multiple locations.)

Alabama Southern Community College in Thomasville

Enterprise-Ozark Community Colleges in Enterprise and Ozark

James H. Faulkner State Community College in Bay Minette

Reid State Technical College in Evergreen

Two George C. Wallace Community Colleges in Eufaula and one in Dothan

Lurleen B. Wallace Community Colleges in Andalusia, Opp and Luverne

Central Alabama Community Colleges in Alexander City and Childersburg

Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City

Jefferson State Community College in Birmingham

Jefferson State Community College Scrushy Campus in Birmingham

T.A. Lawson State Community Colleges in Birmingham and Bessemer

Marion Military Institute in Marion

Two Shelton State Community Colleges in Tuscaloosa

Southern Union State Community Colleges in Wadley, Opelika and Valley

George Corley Wallace State Community College in Selma

Athens State University in Athens

Bevill State Community Colleges in Sumiton, Fayette and Hamilton

John C. Calhoun Community College in Tanner

J.F. Drake State Technical College in Huntsville

Gadsden State Community College in Gadsden

Northeast Alabama Community College in Rainville

Northwest-Shoals Community Colleges in Muscle Shoals and Phil Campbell

Snead State Community College in Boaz

Two Wallace State Community Colleges in Hanceville

[Audrey2Katrina]

GCN Recovery News Report

UPDATE

This report will constantly be updated as information becomes available
Updated 6/27/06 10:11 AM

Waveland, so badly devastated by Katrina, will soon see some business relief. The city's Super Wal-Mart is nearly ready to be reopened after being gutted from the hurricane. The store has been open, first operating out of a tent, and later from a portion of the building. Also, a new Lowe's home supply store is nearing completion and will open in a few weeks.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many affordable rental properties on the Coast that it's almost impossible for thousands of displaced renters to find places to live. And those that do find an apartment or home are seeing rental prices skyrocketing as much as 30 to 50 percent more than prices prior to the storm. FEMA says 157,914 owner-occupied homes in Mississippi were destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The department says 20,283 multi-unit structures were damaged or destroyed, and 42,187 rental homes were damaged or destroyed. The storm also wiped out about 2,700 public housing units. Meanwhile, property owners are finding it hard to rebuild as building materials and insurance costs have also risen.

[Audrey2Katrina]

2 killed were arguing in middle of I-10 lane

By MARGARET BAKER 6/27/06
Sunherald.com

JACKSON COUNTY - Two Pascagoula residents killed while walking along a three-lane stretch of Interstate 10 on Sunday were arguing in the moments leading up to their deaths just west of the Ocean Springs exit, according to the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

"Witnesses stated that the two appeared to be arguing in the road," state Highway Patrol Sgt. Joe Gazzo said Monday, though he could not provide any other details.

Whatever the case, a westbound 1995 Honda Civic struck 23-year-old Navy security officer Delisha Chriswell and active reservist D'Wayne Vaughn, 27, while they were walking in the middle of the interstate's far left lane. Their vehicle was parked three lanes over in the emergency lane, where motorists usually park when they have car trouble.

Their vehicle was not hit, and investigators have had the car towed to determine if there was a problem.

"We just don't know right now," Gazzo said.

At the scene of the 4:30 p.m. accident, Chriswell's body was discovered in the road near the interstate's median. Vaughn was found in the back seat of a vehicle that had a shattered rear window and windshield.

"It's the weirdest wreck I think I've ever seen," Jackson County Coroner Vicki Broadus said Monday.

Investigators spent Monday trying to reconstruct the accident scene to confirm that Vaughn was thrown in such a way that his body crashed through the windshield of the car that hit him.

The Honda that hit Vaughn and Chriswell was totaled in the crash, though driver Joseph Cavalier of Gonzales, La., and a passenger suffered no injuries.

"The people that hit them were just going down the road," Gazzo said Monday. "They weren't expecting to see anybody in the middle of the road."

The investigation is continuing, but Gazzo said no foul play is suspected and no charges are pending.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Buses will help Coast clear out

Evacuation planners urge registration now

By DON HAMMACK
Sunherald news 6/27/06

GULFPORT - New evacuation transportation plans will rely on public transit and school buses moving people with limited transportation from community staging areas to a central location and then north to Jackson.

Coast Transit Authority will oversee and implement the plan in Harrison County when emergency managers call for evacuations, but the bulk of the vehicles to be used will be school buses. Meeting points will be announced for each city and in the county.

School buses from local districts will shuttle people to a central area where buses arranged for by MEMA will take them upstate. If FEMA does not provide charter buses, school buses from across Mississippi arranged by the State Department of Education will take them upstate.

The plans received special attention from Gov. Haley Barbour, who worried about folks who'd lost their cars and trucks to Hurricane Katrina.

"But we still think they're much better off if they use their own transportation if they have it," said Mike Womack, who Monday was named MEMA's interim director effective Saturday, when Robert Latham retires. "But if they don't, if they have a friend or family member that they can ask now, they're much better off if they develop their own transportation plan."

CTA will augment the evacuation efforts in Harrison County by getting people who lack the ability even to get to the staging areas. Regardless, it wants people to preregister so planning efforts can continue.

"They can go ahead and start calling us immediately for transportation," CTA Executive Director Kevin Coggin said. "It's very important we establish as best we can the number of people we're going to be dealing with so we know what kind of resources we need to have."

Womack said MEMA's plans are being drawn up to move 5,000 people, a figure they admit is probably higher than it will need.

Harrison County Emergency Management Director Joe Spraggins estimates 1,000 to 1,500 people might need the service in his county.

Similar programs are being implemented in Hancock and Jackson counties, which are also preregistering people. Hancock County Emergency Management Director Brian Adam thinks his numbers could be 250 to 800, and Butch Loper, his counterpart in Jackson County, anticipates 1,000 users.

"What's going to be the true test is the first case," said Loper.

Jackson County evacuees would be taken to the Meridian area. Residents from Harrison and Hancock counties will be evacuated to the Jackson area, with Vicksburg as a backup.

"They'll have nurses on the bus, security on the bus," Spraggins said. "They'll have qualified bus drivers to get people to that point. Then, they'll have security and everything there. It's a good deal for people and it's at no cost."

State Education Superintendent Hank Bounds will address the state's superintendents at their meeting Wednesday. The Education Department has to gather information from the districts to ensure they can provide the buses with minimum disruption once the new school year starts.

They'll also be on the hook to provide school nurses and security and maintenance personnel.

"The logistics of that are quite a task to get your hands around," he said.

He said even the threat of a tropical storm would cause problems this year with 38,000 trailers being used by area families.

A recent MEMA survey to gauge the need for this service didn't collect contact information from respondents, so officials in all three counties stress that people who think they'll need the service should register now.

That doesn't mean they'll be ruled out down the road, however.

"If a storm comes and somebody calls our number, we'll take care of them," said Coggin.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evacuation preregistration

People with transportation problems that would prevent them from evacuating are being encouraged to preregister for plans being put in place:

• Harrison County: Coast Transit Authority, 896-8080.

• Hancock County: Emergency Operations Center: 466-8200 or 463-1035.

• Jackson County: Erin Lee, 762-2455.

[Audrey2Katrina]

'Chaos' stymies Katrina response

Health workers at odds

By Chris Joyner
Clarionledger.com 6/27/06


Special to The Clarion-Ledger

U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Vin Le (left) and Lt. Cmdr. Robert Guardiano, both medical staff stationed aboard the Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort, welcome a young girl before treating her at Biloxi.

Confronted with the nation's deadliest hurricane, Mississippi's public health system unraveled as communication systems went down, plans fell apart and time and material were wasted, emergency responders and others on the Gulf Coast said.

As Hurricane Katrina barreled toward the Mississippi Gulf Coast, state health officials dispatched ambulances to evacuate many of the estimated 68,000 chronically ill and disabled patients living in south Mississippi - then pulled the vehicles back a day before the storm struck.

They gained access to federal pharmaceutical supplies to help Coast victims - then wouldn't release them to physicians trying to help their patients.

As medical supplies and health-care volunteers flooded into the state, no one coordinated the efforts. Frustrated volunteers set up wildcat clinics, leading to some areas getting more than enough help and others none at all.

"It was chaos. No other way to describe it," said Tina Stewart, a Gulf Coast nurse who volunteered to help following the storm. "There has been for years this divide between Jackson and the Coast. (Following Katrina) you had the Health Department in Jackson trying to manage a disaster on the Coast."

Now in a new hurricane season, Steve Delahousey, medical disaster officer for Harrison County, said he is concerned many of the flaws that plagued the response to Katrina have not been addressed. For instance, there is no designated hurricane shelter for special-needs patients such as those with disabilities or evacuees with chronic diseases. And even if there were such a shelter, Delahousey said he can't find out who would staff it.



J.D. Schwalm/The Clarion-Ledger

Jim Craig, health protection director for the state Health Department, says lessons were learned from the destructive power of Katrina. He says the efforts made to quickly identify and contain disease outbreaks after Hurricane Katrina were successful.

"I don't know how to get that information," he said. "I keep calling the Department of Health and I can't get an answer."

The state Health Department has commissioned the North Carolina Institute for Public Health to produce a report on its response to Hurricane Katrina. The Health Department is approaching Katrina as a learning opportunity, said Mary Davis, evaluation services director for the institute.

"One of the things I give Mississippi credit for is they said they wanted an objective review," she said.

Danny Miller, deputy director of the Health Department, praised communication and coordination with local authorities as hallmarks of the department's response to the storm.

"Could we have responded better? Well, sure. I think everybody acknowledges (that) when you have the benefit of hindsight. But given the magnitude of that disaster, these folks really stepped up and obviously our communication and ability to coordinate and get our staff to perform," he said. "It proved that the things we are doing and structures we have put in place are working."

Davis said the report, which was conducted for free, is based on more than 100 interviews with emergency workers from Mississippi and across the nation, more than 600 interviews with community members, and an online survey that drew 300 responses.

Logistical problems - like access to gasoline and deployment of emergency resources - were problems in the response, she said.

Other findings might be a little more unexpected. For instance, although much attention was devoted to preventing bacterial outbreaks, such as E. coli infection from damaged water infrastructure, Davis said those were not among the big health impacts from Katrina.

"The real problem is dealing with chronic illness," she said.

Delahousey, an executive with American Medical Response in Gulfport, said the Health Department sent 40 ambulances into the Gulf Coast to assist in the evacuation, but on Aug. 28, as the storm approached, the state ordered them to pull back.

"The evacuation was not over," Delahousey said. "Perhaps we should have left, too, but we couldn't."

Delahousey used private ambulances from other states to complete the evacuation.

Jim Craig, health protection director for the state Health Department, said the ambulances were pulled back to protect them for use after Katrina made landfall.

"It was made very, very clear to us that this was a killer storm," he said.

Craig said he was aware some private ambulances continued working after those 40 ambulances were pulled back, but he said other state ambulances continued to work on the Coast until high winds forced them to take shelter at Stennis Space Center.

PHARMACY SUPPLIES

After the storm, the Health Department was given access to the federal Strategic National Stockpile of pharmaceuticals, but Delahousey said he could not find out what was available. Instead he was told to submit a list of needs, but those requests just went into a "black hole," he said.

"I would never hear back whether I would get it," he said. "I just couldn't find out what they had."

In addition, much of the millions of dollars of donated medical supplies that poured into the Coast was misdirected.

"They would stop at some checkpoint and would be directed to volunteer clinics, and we didn't know where they were," Delahousey said.

The seeming randomness resulting in hoarding of drugs in some areas of the Coast and scarcity elsewhere.

Craig said the state's use of the stockpile was hailed as a model for other states. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which controls the secretive stockpile, gave the state the rare designation of "green" status to access the drugs, he said.

CDC spokesman Von Roebuck would not confirm the state's status to use the stockpile but said a green designation is not meant as a grade on performance.

"That status is a point in time. It could mean that they set up a clinic in a certain way," he said. "It really shouldn't be used as a total preparation type of thing."

After the storm, volunteer doctors and nurses from throughout the nation flooded Mississippi only to be stymied because the Health Department had no plan for using them or verifying their credentials.

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association and former secretary of the Maryland health department, said he experienced similar trouble following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon. Thousands of medical professionals volunteered to help, and while the situation did not need that much help, the state was unprepared to deal with the influx.

"People are pretty annoyed and pretty frustrated when you take their names and don't use them," he said.

As a result, the Maryland health department developed a model for quickly credentialing medical volunteers.

Many volunteers who showed up at the Harrison County courthouse were turned away. Some frustrated medical volunteers set up wildcat clinics - a system that left some areas unserved while doctors competed for patients in other areas.

"In looking at the assets down there, some of them were not used effectively," said Stephen Guillot, director of the Middle Tennessee Medical Reserve Corps at Vanderbilt University, which sent medical personnel and supplies to the region.

LACK OF COORDINATION

Compounding the problem was lack of coordination between state Health Department workers and local emergency responders.

"We didn't know where they were going," Delahousey said. "We would go out and find a hospital set up that we didn't know about."

Craig said it is up to local governments to identify and direct "self-deployed" volunteers. "It's almost impossible for that placement to be coordinated at a state level," he said.

While Craig said the state department stood ready to help local governments verify the credentials of volunteers, Stewart said that often appeared to devolve into a turf battle with "too many chiefs and not enough Indians."

Craig said he realized there were some concerns in the initial days following the storm about verifying the expertise of volunteers. He said Mississippi is working with other Southeastern states to share credentialing information ahead of time, essentially creating lists of pre-screened volunteers.

"Logistics always fail" during a massive crisis like Katrina, Benjamin said. Public health systems need to do more real-time drills and take pains to determine "who is in charge and who is accountable," he said.

Guillot said the state needs to take the problems with the response to Katrina and use it as an opportunity to improve. For instance, the public health system should have redundant communication systems.

"We have HAM radios at hospitals around the state," he said of the Tennessee approach.

Craig said some 40 Health Department employees in Mississippi have been training in HAM radio operation since Katrina.

North Carolina is a good place to go for advice, too, Davis said. She said disaster preparedness became a cornerstone of the state's public health system following Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Rains before the storm soaked the North Carolina coast, and when Floyd dumped 15 to 20 more inches of rain on the state, water systems failed, roads washed away and caskets in coastal cemeteries floated to the surface. In the days following the storm, officials struggled to get health personnel to where they were needed, and communication between local and state officials was poor.

When Hurricane Isabell hit the state four years later, North Carolina's system of public health was prepared. And preparation is the key, Davis said.

"The right question is are you ready to address what is in front of you?" she said.

"Floyd was a wake-up call" for North Carolina, she said.

This hurricane season might determine if Katrina served the same role for Mississippi.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Drugs linked to four "gangland-style" slayings near Slidell

NOLA.COM Archives 6/27/06


Investigators load the last victim's body into a coroner's SUV after a quadruple homicide

The shooting deaths of four people in their mobile home near Slidell Tuesday night was drug-related, St. Tammany Parish authorities said Wednesday.

Sheriff Jack Strain and Coroner Peter Galvan described the crime as a gangland-style execution. All four victims had been shot at least once in the head, they said.

The victims were identified late Wednesday morning as Roxann Agoglia, 36; her longtime boyfriend Eric Perreand, 39; their daughter Erica Agoglia, 16; and Perreand’s nephew Andrew Perreand, 15.

Investigators at the Country Club Mobile Home Park called the shooting the deadliest homicide case in St. Tammany Parish in at least the past 25 years. The trailer park is located off Robert Road, about a half-mile north of Brown’s Switch Road outside the Slidell city limts.

Deputies launched a manhunt for two gunmen and were canvassing the trailer park for witness accounts or other clues Wednesday morning.

Strain declined to elaborate on the drug connection to the shootings but said it was not a random crime. The shooting rampage was the latest in a rash of high-profile crimes across St. Tammany within the past week.

The sheriff called on state officials to commit more resources to State Police Troop L, headquartered near Mandeville. Troop L is sorely understaffed, and putting a full complement of troopers on St. Tammany’s busy state and federal highways would free up sheriff’s deputies from traffic-related duties and enable them to concentrate on other needed law enforcement efforts, Strain said.

Roxann Agoglia and Eric Perreand had ended their longtime relationship early last year, but they got back together after Hurricane Katrina, authorities said. Perreand had lived on Citrus Drive in eastern New Orleans, but after the couple reconciled he moved in with Agoglia in the Slidell-area trailer park, authorities said.

Another woman and her daughter were in another part of the trailer when the carnage erupted and survived unharmed.

The woman and her daughter heard the gunshots and stayed out of sight until long afterward, according to sources familiar with the case. When they thought it was safe, they emerged to find the four victims shot to death, and the woman called 911.

Deputies responded to the 911 call between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. and discovered the killings, sheriff’s spokesman George Bonnett said.

Strain said investigators were questioning the woman and child found in the trailer, and the woman made the 911 call.

In the 10 years he’s been sheriff, Strain said, “this is the first time we’ve had four victims of a homicide by a single perpetrator.” Strain did not elaborate, however, on who investigators believe committed the crime.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Criminal court needs more judges, Orleans DA says

By Gwen Filosa Times Picayune/NOLA.com 6/28/06
Staff writer

With more than 6,000 open criminal cases looming over the New Orleans court system, District Attorney Eddie Jordan said Wednesday that the parish may need more judges to handle the growing backlog.
“There is a huge backlog of cases,” Jordan said. “Additional judges may be helpful in resolving this problem, because obviously we cannot try all the cases that are to be tried this year with the judges that we currently have, and the schedule they have today. Six judges holding court every other week and only holding court from basically 9 to 5.”
Only the Louisiana Supreme Court can appoint temporary judges.
Ten months after Hurricane Katrina drowned most of New Orleans and exacerbated the city’s under-financed, overloaded and problem-plagued criminal court system, Jordan announced, in a wide-ranging news conference, that his office has crafted a plan to ensure his office works effectively and efficiently with the police department on all cases.
The current schedule that judges have, Jordan said, is that half of the dozen sections meet every week and then take a week off. Criminal District Court, which re-opened post-hurricane June 1, has several courtrooms that aren’t repaired yet.
Jordan’s statement comes one day after Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a gradual, yet imminent, merger of New Orleans civil and criminal courts.
The merged courts will be known as the 41st Judicial District Court on Jan. 1, 2009. The state Supreme Court will continue a study on the number of judges needed for the New Orleans court and all courts in the state while the merger is being phased in.
“There are certain things within total control of police and prosecutors,” Jordan said, standing beside Police Superintendent Warren Riley, former state Attorney General Richard Ieyoub and a number of top prosecutors. “Those are things we are going to work on. We can’t say what the courts or the public defender will do. We’re going to have to get our act together.”
Ieyoub, recently tapped to serve as Mayor Ray Nagin’s liaison with the criminal justice system, said he met with Jordan’s staff, police department heads and others Wednesday to hammer out snags in the relationship between police and prosecutors.
“This has been a great first step, moving forward to correct any inefficiencies in the system,” Ieyoub said.
Jordan said his office will review cases to find those it can move, but the most serious charges, including murder and armed robbery, do not appear to be in danger.
“We will be able to produce witnesses in violence cases,” Jordan said. “That is why there has been no wholesale dismissal of violence cases.”
Riley vowed to improve the department’s long-running problem with officers failing to show up for court hearings. “Some are due to negligence and some to a failure of subpoenas,” Riley said. “Things have to be done to make the criminal justice system work better. We have many more meetings we must have.”
The strained court system post-Katrina has a number of problems that Jordan has no control over, such as the struggling public defender program that has about 25 attorneys instead of the 70 on staff before Katrina hit on Aug. 29. At least 800 pre-trial inmates are scattered about Louisiana, some as far away as a five-hour drive, because the parish prison’s capacity is at about 1,600 instead of the pre-storm 7,000.
Security issues have limited the hours that criminal district court is open — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with the public shut out from noon to 1 p.m. each day. The reason is that inmates can no longer be brought in through the “docks” at the rear of most courtrooms, which run directly from the fenced-in parish prison complex.
The flood-damaged Orleans Parish Prison building is in such disrepair that inmates must be brought into the courthouse at Tulane Avenue and South Broad Street through public entrances. Security requires that the public not mix with the inmates, court officials said. Only six inmates at one time are allowed to sit in a courtroom.
Jordan on Wednesday also repeated some historic complaints that the District Attorney’s office had for years, including the starting salary for trial attorneys, who make $30,000 a year, plus benefits. City attorneys start at $50,000, while Jefferson Parish starts its attorneys at $40,000.
Another measure that could strengthen criminal cases, Jordan said, would be to install videotape technology at the jail so that police could record their interviews with suspects.
“The ultimate objective here is to make sure our system functions more effectively,” Jordan said. “We are the critical agencies in leading the effort to make our system a better system. We have a plan in place.”