The way it really is. Please take the time to read.

[myred]

A close friend of mine is working on a FEMA contract. I talked with him yesterday and he told me that all was not well. He is in Mississippi. Yahoo news, as of now has this article from the Washington post on there site. It sums up everything I was told yesterday by my friend. Here is the link, but because the way "things go away" here is the artical from the yahoo site and it is a Washington post article.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/washpost/200509 ... s_recovery

Article:
Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, red tape and poor planning have left thousands of evacuees without basic services, according to local and state officials, public policy experts and survivors themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of people from New Orleans and Gulf Coast communities have fled, sometimes to neighboring states and beyond, moving in with friends and family or into shelters, public housing and hotels funded by the Red Cross. With little guidance from federal and state governments -- and no single person or entity in charge of the overall operation -- cities and counties have been left on their own to find survivors homes, schools, jobs and health care. A patchwork of policies has resulted, causing relief agencies to sometimes work at cross-purposes.


President Bush has promised a range of new initiatives to help the evacuees, including $5,000 grants to help the unemployed find jobs, a voucher program for students and more money for state Medicaid programs. But while Bush's promises of additional help have been welcomed, the initial efforts to provide for the evacuees has sometimes been disjointed, confusing and ineffective, local officials said:


· In Houston, some housing shelters have been located so far from the center of town that it has become difficult for evacuees to find jobs.


· In Mississippi, people waiting for promised housing in the form of mobile homes or trailers found themselves in a Catch-22 situation: Even as local officials said they were waiting for FEMA to provide the shelters, officials at the federal agency said they were waiting for local officials to provide the right locations.


· In Mobile, Ala., careful plans by school administrators to cope with a certain number of evacuee children from Mississippi and Louisiana were disrupted when a fax last week gave officials 48 hours' notice that hundreds of additional evacuees were on the way.


· Some services have not reached their targets: At the Dallas convention center free legal resources for evacuees were hardly being used, partly because no one had told survivors how to think through what their legal needs might be.


· Public assistance programs for evacuees are going to vary widely, depending on welfare policies in individual states, meaning that evacuees who happened to be transported to one state are likely to receive very different benefits than those in others.


"I don't see much evidence of overall planning and guidance," said Richard Murray, a public policy expert in Houston, which is hosting thousands of evacuees.


In an e-mail, Murray, who is director of the University of Houston's Center for Public Policy, wrote: "Couple a multi-state disaster of Katrina's magnitude, (including some of the poorer and less well-governed states in the union), add on a dysfunctional federal bureaucracy that had deteriorated in recent years, and a chief executive whose motto seemed to be, until yesterday, the buck stops there, and we get a helluva mess."


As the effort evolves, increasing numbers of federal agencies are getting involved, and officials are hopeful of improved performance. FEMA, which is in charge of organizing immediate assistance in disasters, has set up a housing command. The Department of Education is focused on schooling, the Environmental Protection Agency on making sure evacuated areas are safe to return to, while the Department of Health and Human Services handles health care.


Bush said in a speech to the nation Thursday that Americans "have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency." In his radio address yesterday, the president said that more than 500,000 evacuee families had received emergency help to pay for clothing, food and other essentials. "They will receive broader help in the future," he promised, adding that states that have provided schooling and health care to displaced people will be reimbursed by the federal government.


What complicates the overall relief effort is the fact that officials still lack hard answers to even the most basic questions about displaced survivors: Exactly how many are there, and where are they located? State officials in Louisiana and Mississippi initially guessed that more than 1 million people were homeless, but no one is really sure, and efforts to develop a more accurate tally have been hampered by logistical problems.


In his Thursday speech, Bush implored evacuees to call the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Red Cross to register themselves, because "we need to know who you are." Bush was referring to people such as Steve Lacourt, whose mobile home in Pass Christian, Miss., washed away.


Lacourt has tried to do just what the president asked -- for more than a week. One night, the 42-year-old mechanic said, he drove to a highway overpass, where his cell phone got some reception, and speed-dialed the toll-free numbers for FEMA and the Red Cross for six hours straight, from 8 in the evening until 2 in the morning.


He could not get through.


Survivors such as Louise Dilsenroth and Sandra Brent, who has diabetes, have had similar problems in Mississippi. The women spent hours last week waiting in line to get a number that would allow them to enter a Red Cross facility to speak with an official. Brent said she had spent three days so far, trying to get a number. She has not had access to insulin since the hurricane hit.


Lacourt, the mechanic, said he has used up two tanks of gas driving around the region looking for housing assistance. A rumor of help in Laplace, La., turned out to be false. In Ocean Springs, Miss., FEMA officials working out of a former Kmart gave him FEMA's toll-free number again.

"That's completely useless," he said he told them.

"That's all we can do," he said he was told.

Other missteps have spilled into the relief program: FEMA chartered cruise ships, at a cost of around $200 million, to house evacuees -- but many survivors refused to board, partly because living on a ship would have made it hard to find jobs and schooling. After leaving thousands of berths empty, FEMA is housing relief workers on them. Last week, after New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin jubilantly announced that Children's Hospital was reopening immediately, he was contradicted a short while later by a hospital official.

"There was one blitz where FEMA was giving debit cards, which was not a good idea because it started rioting in Houston," said Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, who has criticized the lack of guidance and help from state and federal authorities. Miller said her city had been relying on private charity to help thousands of evacuees but warned that it could not last.

"When Congress approves $12 billion in two to three days of the hurricane, and two weeks later, none of the communities whose population has swollen by 25,000 has received any of that money, you have to wonder what is going on," she said. "Is it a bureaucratic problem? It sounds like it is."

Bruce Hunter of the American Association of School Administrators, who has heard from numerous school superintendents in the hardest-hit states, said many school districts in Louisiana and neighboring states are struggling to cope with the tide of evacuees.

"The federal government really hasn't provided much of anything," he said.

Harold Dodge, superintendent of schools in Mobile County, Ala., said he had tried to convey to state and federal officials the challenges he faced after nearly a thousand evacuee children from Mississippi appeared in Mobile.

Alabama requires four years of English, math and science to meet the state graduation standards. Mississippi requires only three years. Dodge also worried about being stigmatized by federal authorities for any drop in test scores. The superintendent said a lack of planning and foresight had left him dealing with constantly changing scenarios.

"I don't know whether someone sitting way up there is saying let's disperse them in an orderly fashion," he said of the evacuees.

"This is one of the few times I couldn't get my arms around an issue," he said. "Every time I thought I had my arms around it, it got away from us. We are in a constant state of flux."

In Houston, now home to about 125,000 evacuees in shelters, private homes and subsidized apartments, the understanding from the start was that the city and its suburbs were on their own in dealing with evacuees.

Local leaders used their own buses, convention center and sports stadium, along with shelters, hotels and private apartments, to serve evacuees as they navigated a thicket of applications for traditional federal benefits, from food stamps to unemployment insurance.

But many evacuees now find themselves in apartment complexes at remote edges of the city, in no man's lands near the airport or in industrial parks near oil refineries. They are without cars, or constantly getting lost, in one of America's most car-dependent cities.

Mary Joseph, 63, a custodian from Violet, La., in a new apartment in Northland Woods off Beltway 8, is 17 miles from downtown: "We spend $30 for gas every few days, and we don't know where we are going."

Dallas Mayor Miller said she believed Bush understood the disconnect between government intentions and the execution of the relief efforts.

" George Bush stepped up and said, 'We didn't handle this well, and we are going to fix it,' and I believe that," she said. "I hope the people under him can do him justice."

Starkman reported from Mississippi, Vedantam from Washington. Staff writers Evelyn Nieves in Mississippi, Lisa Rein in Houston, Sylvia Moreno in Austin, Kevin Merida in Dallas, Ceci Connolly in New Orleans and Peter Slevin in Chicago contributed to this report

[CajunMama]

From what I have heard and gathered, the evacuees here in Lafayette have nothing but praise for what our community has done for them. They aren't looking to blame someone for what happened...they are out looking for work...companies have advertised on tv for job openings. Our city of about 125,000 has a guesstimated 40,000 evacuees which now puts our population at 165,000. We are not complaining...we keep on giving. Our traffic has become a nightmare...yes we complain about that but then we remember how lucky we are to have our own roof over our head and a job to go to in the morning. Our schools with overcrowded classrooms are more overcrowded...but we will deal with it and carry on. We have stepped in and made the best out of this horrid situation for both the evacuees and ourselves. No wonder everyone who comes to Lafayette falls in love with it.

[myred]

The help from local communities and the rest of the private sector has been outstanding. We, up here PA. in one school district has "adopted" an AL. school district. We are raising funds to send to this one AL. district to help offset there costs for the extra students they are recieving. The fed. Gov. is to slow for all these folks. People are suffering and it upsets me to know that the super power of the world is screwing up on our own turf.

[artist]

just once it would be really nice to see something reported on all the good things that are happening posted here. And don't tell me there aren't many things that are good.

[MSRobi911]

ok artist you want good things, I can tell you a few that have happened to us.

It started with my brother and sister who live in Florida, the school where my nephew goes to school collected money, toys, clothes and food to send over to us, his mom's work one of the junior colleges in Fort Walton Beach did the same thing. My sister works at a hospital and so does her husband, both hospitals collected new clothes, money, toys and food and SHOES and sent them over, not just once, but three times. Both my sister and my brother have brought pickup trucks full pulling trailors that were full behind them with things. The bad thing, Red Cross won't take it...they say they can't accept it if it didn't come from them....so thank the good Lord for churches! So many churches in this area have opened their doors and are serving hot meals and giving out food, clothing, toys, cleaning supplies, water, shoes, etc. you wouldn't believe it. If it wasn't for the churches there would be nothing but water and ice from FEMA and I laugh when someone says the RedCross......my mom who is 78 went at 6:30 am to stand in line when the place opened at 8:00 am ...she got in the door at 9:30 and left at 10:30.......she said they had three different lines and one was for senior citizens and it was longer than any of the other ones. And don't bother trying to call that phone number you never get through.

Ok, back to good things. Local fire departments and police departments in Virginia and North Carolina sent an 18 wheeler full of police uniforms and fireman's "turn out gear" along with food, personal hygene products, underwear, clothers, NEW CLOTHES, NEW SHOES, baby things, towels, pots and pans and I could go on and on, that 18 wheeler was packed to the rim! It was sent directly to the Sheriffs office because they heard it had 5 feet of water inside it and they lost 47 patrol cars and I can't tell you how many of the deputies houses were totally destroyed or just had 3-5 feet of water in them. These men and women worked 72 hours straight before any of them went home and then they were back in 6 hours for 18 more hours and that continued until last Sunday when they went back to regular 12 hour shifts. Oh I can't forget the Chaplain from one of Georgia's Sheriffs Office that drove up with his truck loaded and a trailor behind him with supplies and water too and he has been here for two weeks and is coming back with more supplies and more people to help. People from all over the country are coming to the local churches and going around and helping people cut out wet sheet rock and pull up carpet and clean yards and repair roofs and all kinds of things for free.

One personal note for my family is that the FBI National Police Academy and the Florida Chapter of the graduates of the FBI NA collected donations and sent each graduate that was displaced cash money........my husband and I both cried.

The outpouring of love and careing and I don't know a lot of more words to describe the GOOD things that people have done for us just has us speachless and humble at times. If not for these good people, we would be in trouble for sure. FEMA has done nothing and the Red Cross has done very little, but the Lord will provide and he has in this county. You don't hear a lot about Pacagoula/Moss Point or Jackson County in the news but we were hit pretty hard here and were without communications for about four days. The only thing that worked was people that had Cellular South cell phones and that was not all the time. We had a few tragic deaths but there could have been so many more. Listening to the stories of some of the people that stayed in the houses close to the beach is just unreal. I can't imagine what they went thru. I know how I felt when the ground floor of the courthouse had five feet of water in it and it was six feet outside and we had three more floors we could go up...I can't imagine being in a single story house when all that water came in......

Enough...but rest assured that good things happen every day and lots of times they overshadow the bad things!

Mary

[chrisnnavarre]

"But many evacuees now find themselves in apartment complexes at remote edges of the city, in no man's lands near the airport or in industrial parks near oil refineries. They are without cars, or constantly getting lost, in one of America's most car-dependent cities."

I hate to say it but these folks may want to start looking for once again an evacuation bus out of a major U.S. city.

[artist]

Mary - thanks so much for posting. Glad to see some of the good that is being done. I know your lives have been devastated by all that has happened but do hope that humanities general kindness that has stuck its head up can help to give you all hope for a better tomorrow. My prayers are with each of you and so wish there was more we could do to ease your suffering.

[Stephanie]

I believe that azskyman has posted a thread discussing the different good things that have been happening. Alot of people, myself included have been posting links to stories. You might want to check that one out also artist.

[Ixolib]

While I'm sure there are those who are in dire straits, my personal story is one where good seems to be the norm rather than the exception. Within two days of Katrina, we had delivered virtually to our front door water, food, and clothes. And by that time, all of those staples were running in short supply. The Red Cross, Salvation Army, churches, my employer, my car insurer (GEICO) and even FEMA and my home insurer (sorta) have been wonderful. To this day, we still get two hot meals delivered straight to our home every day by either the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. Now THAT is what I call service!!

In after-thought to the whole Katrina episode, here are my only regrets: The lack of gasoline in the beginning to run generators and the failure of the communication system (specifically cell phones). I believe all else is up to the individual(s) to handle as effectively as possible on thier own. If we are going to choose to live in a hurricane-prone area, we must accept the fact that initial survival is up to US, not the government. Help got here in due time, and will continue to pour in as long as the need exists. But Katrina is an exceptional challenge to the "authorities". To expect them to respond absolutely perfectly, or even half that, is probably expecting way too much. Except for those who truly cannot help themselves (and I know there are many), the rest of us need to take care of our own needs up front, and let the government help where - and when - they can.

I believe my only "future" regret is going to be when my SF adjustor tells me they're not gonna pay for any of my "surge" damage - even though it was absolutely caused by a hurricane. But, I'll bet they're still gonna be looking to collect that 2% hurricane deductible!!

[artist]

thanks so much for sharing your story Ixolib!
It is so heartwarming. So sorry for you r loss but congratualte you in your spirit!

[Cookiely]

There are good people trying to help. My sister and her husband have three children. Both my sister and her husband are on medical disablility which barely covers their needs. They live in Alabama and through their church they organized a car wash and sold cookies and lemonade. They picked up people at the shelter and took them home for a meal (my sister is a great cook so I know they enjoyed it). They gave them the cash they made at the car wash. I know so many children in Tampa who have collected hundreds of dollars at their lemonade stands to send to the Red Cross.