Slidell starts process to condemn abandoned properties
By Christine Harvey
St. Tammany bureau
Terri and Terry Caye stood in the front yard of their home on Oak Lane in Slidell and watched as their grandson played with the family dog, chasing the animal with a garden hose and, every so often, hitting his mark. The scene is almost Rockwellian, save for the rotting, abandoned houses to their immediate left and right.
The couple spent the week or so after Hurricane Katrina gutting the bottom floor of their house, a task that comes naturally to most residents of the Palm Lake subdivision, which is prone to flooding after the slightest of storms. The two sets of neighbors in closest proximity to the Cayes, however, did not follow a similar path.
The elderly woman who owns the house at 3113 Oak Lane no longer lives in the city, and her most recent tenant moved shortly before the storm, Terry Caye said. Her daughters have visited the red brick house in the interim, he said, but haven’t made an effort to remove the moldy Sheetrock or the mud still caked on the living room floor.
A couple bought the house across from the Cayes on Bonfouca Drive about a month before the storm and returned at least once to survey the damage, Terry Caye said. While the couple moved some of the water-logged furniture into the back yard, the majority of the home’s contents remain where the floodwaters deposited them.
Such scenes are not unusual in Slidell.
The city’s Department of Building Safety has compiled a list of approximately 150 properties, primarily homes, that are in some form of abandonment. Officials are in the process of identifying the properties that have fallen into the greatest decay, with the worst of the worst appearing virtually untouched in the nine months since the storm.
"I have literally had teams out walking the city to get these counts,” said Mayor Ben Morris, noting that the number of worst offenders thus far totals 39. “Nothing has been done. It’s like (the owners) vanished. I’m getting ready to drop the hammer.”
Morris has directed his staff to start condemnation proceedings against the owners of the properties in the worst condition, which include the two adjacent to the Cayes. City Attorney Tim Mathison has identified the owners and any other interested parties through land records at the St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court’s office and sent certified letters to inform them of the city’s intentions.
In the meantime, officials are revisiting each of the properties on the list to determine whether any others merit condemnation, as well as whether any businesses meet the criteria.
Officials are concerned that these properties pose significant health and safety hazards, particularly with more families returning to south Slidell in recent months, a trend evidenced by the increasing number of FEMA trailers in any given neighborhood. City workers have marked homes that fall into this category with a red sticker.
Mathison said he plans to argue his case against the property owners before the City Council sometime in June, with the owners offered the opportunity to present testimony as to why their homes should not be condemned. In cases where officials cannot locate the interested parties, the city will hire an attorney to represent them.
After hearing the evidence, the council either will order the owners to tear down the properties or give them a certain number of days to make repairs, Mathison said. He added that officials are hoping FEMA will pay for the Army Corps of Engineers to demolish the homes at no cost to the homeowners.
Anyone who disagrees with the council’s decision may appeal the ruling to the 22nd Judicial District Court in Covington, Mathison said.
In some of the worst cases, doors are wide open and windows shattered, allowing easy access inside mold-infested homes. Trees have fallen through the roofs of others, sending splintered ceiling beams downward into kitchens and bedrooms, now littered with insulation and pine cones, in addition to upturned furniture and shattered china.
An open front door at a green cinderblock home on Lincoln Avenue reveals a moldy mess, including untouched Sheetrock and carpeting, and furniture upended by the floodwaters. While it’s obvious the home’s residents abandoned it long ago, someone apparently lived there for a time after the storm, judging by the empty MRE bags and a nearly full case of bottled water among the scattered debris just inside the front door.
In some parts of the city, residents are treated to blocks containing multiple abandoned homes. Four houses in the 2300 block of 8th Street haven’t been touched since the storm, though it appears by the absence of any furniture that three of the homes had been unoccupied for some time prior.
Three decaying homes in a row occupy the 3400 block of Front Street. While the white stucco house on the corner of Front and North streets has a relatively neat exterior, an open back door reveals a stinking kitchen replete with an open refrigerator tilted face-forward toward the floor.
The smell of gardenias in bloom can’t quite mask the odor emanating from two homes in the 200 block of Sun Valley Drive, where water lines mark the walls and holes in the roof caused by fallen trees serve as makeshift skylights.
In addition to the usual health and safety hazards that abandoned properties may pose, some residents worry harm could come in different ways.
A woman who lives next door to an abandoned house on Pinetree Street said the open front door is an invitation for squatters who roam the neighborhood, looking for a place to spend the night. She said she’s worried for her safety and avoids leaving her FEMA trailer out of fear that someone might break inside while she’s away.
And while the idea of living next door to an abandoned house doesn’t thrill Olive Street resident Dominic Ricca, he’s most concerned that one of his neighbor’s leaning pine trees could fall onto his roof. A dead tree caught the pine as the storm passed, but Ricca said the tree could snap at any time, hindering his family’s efforts to repair and sell their own flood-damaged home.
The vast majority of the properties on the condemnation list are homes, but at least one served the neighboring community as a church.
A healthy layer of dust covers the wooden pews at the House of Prayer on Fremaux Avenue, where moldy Sheetrock and ruined red carpet remain in place. Several of the church’s windows are broken, and the steeple that crowns the single-story building now tilts to the left.
Though officials are focusing most of their attention on properties abandoned in Katrina’s wake, they are taking the opportunity to eliminate some of the blight present in the city before the storm.
Mary Savoye lives on Reine Avenue next door to a home that officials declared unsafe for human occupancy almost two years ago. She said her former neighbor had mental problems, which caused him to light small fires in the house and defecate on the floor.
Officials covered the home’s door and windows with plywood at the time but didn’t clean it or remove its contents, leaving Savoye to wonder what kinds of health hazards the house must pose post-Katrina.
“I think they need to come out and quarantine it . . . before that stuff gets in the air,” she said. “I don’t want to end up sick.”
News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)
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Evacuation hotel rooms will be hard to find
By Rebecca Mowbray
Business writer
Finding an out-of-town hotel room to evacuate to this hurricane season is going to be tough.
New Orleans lodging facilities say they plan to start closing during storms, a move that will force the tens of thousands of local residents who used to ride hurricanes out in area hotels to book space farther afield.
Before Hurricane Katrina, there were 38,000 hotel rooms in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. The Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association estimates that about 90 percent of hotels around the area stayed open during storms, and most were filled with three people to a room.
In theory, that means an additional 100,000 “vertical evacuees” who used to ride out storms in local hotel towers could now be vying for the 40,000 other hotel rooms around the state.
Making matters worse, some New Orleans area businesses are making standing hotel reservations as part of their revised hurricane plans, and many people who live in hurricane zones are now booking rooms as soon as they see a blip on the Weather Channel.
“Absolutely. You can imagine how it’s going to be now,” said Bill Langkopp, executive vice president of the Louisiana Hotel and Lodging Association. “There’s 40,000 (rooms) spread out around the rest of the state. Is that enough? I don’t know.”
But tourism officials say it’s not so much a matter of whether there’s enough rooms, but how far people may have to drive. When rooms fill up around Louisiana, people simply continue driving to other states, Langkopp said.
The neighboring states of Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi have a combined total of more than 400,000 hotel rooms, according to Smith Travel Research Inc. and the Louisiana Hotel and Lodging Association. Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia offer another 339,000 hotels. But when a tropical storm or hurricane is approaching, some of those rooms are set aside for employees of various companies and industries.
Chain hotels such as the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, for example, have worked out deals with sister hotels in other places to receive employees and their families.
Fred Sawyers, general manager of the Hilton, said that families of employees will head to an evacuation hotel somewhere else in the region, while the Hilton employees will stay behind to evacuate and close the property before hopping on the road.
Langkopp said most chain hotels operating in New Orleans are doing the same thing, which could account for a significant number of rooms around the region being spoken for.
Meanwhile, hotel companies say they noticed last year that families are learning to call earlier to reserve rooms during tropical events. This is partially due to the fact that evacuees leave earlier to avoid getting stuck in traffic.
“What we’ve seen from ’04 to ’05 is, as people get more experienced, they tend to call earlier for reservations. I don’t think people are making the road trips that they have in the past because of traffic,” said Ross Buckley, director of hotel performance support for the Southeast and Caribbean at
InterContinental Hotels Group, which owns the Holiday Inn brand.
Last year, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts saw the highest traffic ever on its Web site before Katrina, as leisure and business travelers canceled reservations while and thousands of others battled for rooms as the path of the storm changed.
This year, hoteliers expect competition for rooms to be even fiercer.
“If anything gets into the northern Gulf, people are going to have their cars packed and running. No one’s going to put themselves in that situation again,” Buckley said.
To help people find rooms in a storm, the Louisiana Office of Tourism will turn its toll-free Louisiana Travel information number, 1-800-99Gumbo, into a resource for helping locals to find emergency lodging, as it did last year. The number will only help with hotel rooms during emergencies.
Angele Davis, secretary of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, said that the tourism office has links to hotels across the state so it can inform callers what areas are full and where rooms are still available. When Louisiana hotels fill up, the tourism office can link to other states to find available rooms.
Davis said that evacuees will likely have to drive to other states when storms threaten.
“I think we’re going to see the hotel rooms fill up, just like they did last time. First they’ll fill up in-state, and then in neighboring states that are not in the path of the storm,” Davis said. “I think the network that we have set up will help people find the nearest hotel, but the nearest hotel may not be in Alexandria or Baton Rouge or Lafayette. It may be in Oklahoma or Arkansas. People may have to drive further.”
Langkopp said that the hotel industry is also trying to make it easier for people to evacuate with pets. Many hotels waived their pet restrictions last year in the face of Katrina and Rita. This year, even more will probably do so, Langkopp said, because of the awareness of including pets in evacuation plans, but hotels will probably expect evacuees to place pet damage deposits to protect against damage.
“I think this year, they will waive the restrictions again, but I think they will ask the pet owner to accept a little more responsibility for damage,” Langkopp said.
Mike Right, vice president of public affairs for the auto club AAA, said it sounds like a smart decision for New Orleans hotels to close during hurricanes, but it’s anybody’s guess what the possibility of extra evacuees could mean for traffic and hotel availability throughout the region.
“It’s going to eat up some of the rooms,” Right said. “Certainly we won’t know for sure until it actually happens.”
Emergency preparedness officials say they haven’t really thought much about the impact that New Orleans hotels closing could have on the rest of the evacuation, but it’s the least of their concerns.
Mark Smith, spokesman for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said that with the population of New Orleans being less than half of what it was before Katrina, and with St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes being virtually empty, the state does not expect as many people to be involved in evacuations this year, even if many more evacuations are called.
“We really don’t expect additional people evacuating over the people evacuating last year. With New Orleans hotels closing, we view that as a good thing because fewer people will need to be rescued,” Smith said.
The state estimates that 300,000 shelter beds are needed for storm evacuations, Smith said. There will be 70,000 beds in Louisiana, Smith said, and the federal government will be expected to provide the remaining 230,000 beds in other parts of the country. “We will find places to put people,” Smith said.
Smith also questioned how many of the 100,000 people who stayed in hotels during previous storms were tourists who now would cut short their vacations rather than risk getting stuck in a New Orleans in a hurricane.
But Langkopp said that the hotel association says historically, hotels are filled with locals, not tourists, during storms. “Most tourists get out of dodge. What we know is that every plane fills up, every bus fills up, and every rental car gets rented. Very, very few tourists stay, especially when it starts getting close,” Langkopp said.
When Katrina hit, hotels were full. But when the water started to creep up Monday afternoon and Tuesday from the Army Corps of Engineers’ levee breaks, local guests jumped in their cars in left.
When Langkopp was coordinating requests for buses from Baton Rouge, there were only about 8,000 or 9,000 people stuck at hotels. If those people were visitors, it means that tourists comprised only about 10 percent of those who rode out the storms in hotels.
Jerry Sneed, a retired marine lieutenant colonel and planner with the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said the most important thing is that closing downtown hotels will keep people out of harm’s way and allow emergency preparedness officials to concentrate on tasks other than rescuing people.
The city isn’t worried about extra people evacuating when New Orleans hotels close, Sneed said, because the people who could afford to stay in New Orleans hotel towers during previous hurricane risks probably have cars and can afford to get themselves out of town in any future evacuations.
“We don’t see it as a problem. Most of the people who went to the hotels before had the finances. They will just get into the vehicles and leave the area. The ones that are the problems are those who don’t have the financial means to evacuate,” Sneed said. “The hotels closing down works to our advantage. It helps us push people out of the city.”
By Rebecca Mowbray
Business writer
Finding an out-of-town hotel room to evacuate to this hurricane season is going to be tough.
New Orleans lodging facilities say they plan to start closing during storms, a move that will force the tens of thousands of local residents who used to ride hurricanes out in area hotels to book space farther afield.
Before Hurricane Katrina, there were 38,000 hotel rooms in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. The Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association estimates that about 90 percent of hotels around the area stayed open during storms, and most were filled with three people to a room.
In theory, that means an additional 100,000 “vertical evacuees” who used to ride out storms in local hotel towers could now be vying for the 40,000 other hotel rooms around the state.
Making matters worse, some New Orleans area businesses are making standing hotel reservations as part of their revised hurricane plans, and many people who live in hurricane zones are now booking rooms as soon as they see a blip on the Weather Channel.
“Absolutely. You can imagine how it’s going to be now,” said Bill Langkopp, executive vice president of the Louisiana Hotel and Lodging Association. “There’s 40,000 (rooms) spread out around the rest of the state. Is that enough? I don’t know.”
But tourism officials say it’s not so much a matter of whether there’s enough rooms, but how far people may have to drive. When rooms fill up around Louisiana, people simply continue driving to other states, Langkopp said.
The neighboring states of Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi have a combined total of more than 400,000 hotel rooms, according to Smith Travel Research Inc. and the Louisiana Hotel and Lodging Association. Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia offer another 339,000 hotels. But when a tropical storm or hurricane is approaching, some of those rooms are set aside for employees of various companies and industries.
Chain hotels such as the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, for example, have worked out deals with sister hotels in other places to receive employees and their families.
Fred Sawyers, general manager of the Hilton, said that families of employees will head to an evacuation hotel somewhere else in the region, while the Hilton employees will stay behind to evacuate and close the property before hopping on the road.
Langkopp said most chain hotels operating in New Orleans are doing the same thing, which could account for a significant number of rooms around the region being spoken for.
Meanwhile, hotel companies say they noticed last year that families are learning to call earlier to reserve rooms during tropical events. This is partially due to the fact that evacuees leave earlier to avoid getting stuck in traffic.
“What we’ve seen from ’04 to ’05 is, as people get more experienced, they tend to call earlier for reservations. I don’t think people are making the road trips that they have in the past because of traffic,” said Ross Buckley, director of hotel performance support for the Southeast and Caribbean at
InterContinental Hotels Group, which owns the Holiday Inn brand.
Last year, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts saw the highest traffic ever on its Web site before Katrina, as leisure and business travelers canceled reservations while and thousands of others battled for rooms as the path of the storm changed.
This year, hoteliers expect competition for rooms to be even fiercer.
“If anything gets into the northern Gulf, people are going to have their cars packed and running. No one’s going to put themselves in that situation again,” Buckley said.
To help people find rooms in a storm, the Louisiana Office of Tourism will turn its toll-free Louisiana Travel information number, 1-800-99Gumbo, into a resource for helping locals to find emergency lodging, as it did last year. The number will only help with hotel rooms during emergencies.
Angele Davis, secretary of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, said that the tourism office has links to hotels across the state so it can inform callers what areas are full and where rooms are still available. When Louisiana hotels fill up, the tourism office can link to other states to find available rooms.
Davis said that evacuees will likely have to drive to other states when storms threaten.
“I think we’re going to see the hotel rooms fill up, just like they did last time. First they’ll fill up in-state, and then in neighboring states that are not in the path of the storm,” Davis said. “I think the network that we have set up will help people find the nearest hotel, but the nearest hotel may not be in Alexandria or Baton Rouge or Lafayette. It may be in Oklahoma or Arkansas. People may have to drive further.”
Langkopp said that the hotel industry is also trying to make it easier for people to evacuate with pets. Many hotels waived their pet restrictions last year in the face of Katrina and Rita. This year, even more will probably do so, Langkopp said, because of the awareness of including pets in evacuation plans, but hotels will probably expect evacuees to place pet damage deposits to protect against damage.
“I think this year, they will waive the restrictions again, but I think they will ask the pet owner to accept a little more responsibility for damage,” Langkopp said.
Mike Right, vice president of public affairs for the auto club AAA, said it sounds like a smart decision for New Orleans hotels to close during hurricanes, but it’s anybody’s guess what the possibility of extra evacuees could mean for traffic and hotel availability throughout the region.
“It’s going to eat up some of the rooms,” Right said. “Certainly we won’t know for sure until it actually happens.”
Emergency preparedness officials say they haven’t really thought much about the impact that New Orleans hotels closing could have on the rest of the evacuation, but it’s the least of their concerns.
Mark Smith, spokesman for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said that with the population of New Orleans being less than half of what it was before Katrina, and with St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes being virtually empty, the state does not expect as many people to be involved in evacuations this year, even if many more evacuations are called.
“We really don’t expect additional people evacuating over the people evacuating last year. With New Orleans hotels closing, we view that as a good thing because fewer people will need to be rescued,” Smith said.
The state estimates that 300,000 shelter beds are needed for storm evacuations, Smith said. There will be 70,000 beds in Louisiana, Smith said, and the federal government will be expected to provide the remaining 230,000 beds in other parts of the country. “We will find places to put people,” Smith said.
Smith also questioned how many of the 100,000 people who stayed in hotels during previous storms were tourists who now would cut short their vacations rather than risk getting stuck in a New Orleans in a hurricane.
But Langkopp said that the hotel association says historically, hotels are filled with locals, not tourists, during storms. “Most tourists get out of dodge. What we know is that every plane fills up, every bus fills up, and every rental car gets rented. Very, very few tourists stay, especially when it starts getting close,” Langkopp said.
When Katrina hit, hotels were full. But when the water started to creep up Monday afternoon and Tuesday from the Army Corps of Engineers’ levee breaks, local guests jumped in their cars in left.
When Langkopp was coordinating requests for buses from Baton Rouge, there were only about 8,000 or 9,000 people stuck at hotels. If those people were visitors, it means that tourists comprised only about 10 percent of those who rode out the storms in hotels.
Jerry Sneed, a retired marine lieutenant colonel and planner with the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said the most important thing is that closing downtown hotels will keep people out of harm’s way and allow emergency preparedness officials to concentrate on tasks other than rescuing people.
The city isn’t worried about extra people evacuating when New Orleans hotels close, Sneed said, because the people who could afford to stay in New Orleans hotel towers during previous hurricane risks probably have cars and can afford to get themselves out of town in any future evacuations.
“We don’t see it as a problem. Most of the people who went to the hotels before had the finances. They will just get into the vehicles and leave the area. The ones that are the problems are those who don’t have the financial means to evacuate,” Sneed said. “The hotels closing down works to our advantage. It helps us push people out of the city.”
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Audrey2Katrina
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Hurricane season 2006: Higher hopes, more supplies, no guarantees
Last Update: 6/1/2006 12:04:57 PM
(WASHINGTON-AP) June 1 -- The storm barrels ashore. Down go the power lines, the cell phone towers, perhaps even homes. But this time it's different.
People are out of harm's way. Generators chug to life. Water, cots, drugs and tarps are at hand. And federal officials, after months of careful planning, tap emergency communication systems allowing them to talk as the chaos unfolds.
Or so everyone hopes.
Washington is determined, in the hurricane season that starts Thursday, to be ready to help state and local disaster officials provide the emergency supplies and assistance that will be most needed when the storms sweep ashore.
But despite the toil, the billions spent, the supplies socked away and the wish in Washington to do better than in the season of Katrina and her siblings, no one takes complete comfort in the state of readiness for Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto or whichever tropical storms pack the biggest punch in 2006.
Nine months after the Katrina debacle, broad concerns remain about how nimbly the federal bureaucracy can react and deliver on one big intangible -- leadership in the thick of a hurricane's fury.
Last Update: 6/1/2006 12:04:57 PM
(WASHINGTON-AP) June 1 -- The storm barrels ashore. Down go the power lines, the cell phone towers, perhaps even homes. But this time it's different.
People are out of harm's way. Generators chug to life. Water, cots, drugs and tarps are at hand. And federal officials, after months of careful planning, tap emergency communication systems allowing them to talk as the chaos unfolds.
Or so everyone hopes.
Washington is determined, in the hurricane season that starts Thursday, to be ready to help state and local disaster officials provide the emergency supplies and assistance that will be most needed when the storms sweep ashore.
But despite the toil, the billions spent, the supplies socked away and the wish in Washington to do better than in the season of Katrina and her siblings, no one takes complete comfort in the state of readiness for Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto or whichever tropical storms pack the biggest punch in 2006.
Nine months after the Katrina debacle, broad concerns remain about how nimbly the federal bureaucracy can react and deliver on one big intangible -- leadership in the thick of a hurricane's fury.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Storm Surge Study
Last Update: 5/31/2006 10:48:02 PM
(Mobile) May 31 - The day after, when things had settled, the pictures we saw were devestating. Collapsed bridges, gutted buildings, and washed out roads. Hurricane Katrina leveled hundreds of miles of coastline from Alabama to Louisiana. Millions of dollars worth of property - gone.
So, how could a category 3 storm cause such destruction? Dr. Qin "Jim" Chen: "The killer is the storm surge and the damaging force is the waves on top of the surge." Dr. Jim Chen, a coastal engineer with USA in Mobile has researched Katrina's deadly storm surge. He says Katrina proved to us all that the way we build needs to be revamped. Dr. Chen, "One of the reasons, there was tremendous damage is because of the lack of coastal engineering programs."
Dr. Chen is now set out to do a multi-year study using new state of the art computer simulation to better predict waves and storm surge of future storms. The goal is to help save property and lives. His study should help determine how high we should build, how strong, and how far inland.
He'll share these results will be with residents, emergency responders, and civil engineers. Dr. Chen says, without adequate coastal engineering research and education, damage caused by future hurricanes will only continue to multiply.
Last Update: 5/31/2006 10:48:02 PM
(Mobile) May 31 - The day after, when things had settled, the pictures we saw were devestating. Collapsed bridges, gutted buildings, and washed out roads. Hurricane Katrina leveled hundreds of miles of coastline from Alabama to Louisiana. Millions of dollars worth of property - gone.
So, how could a category 3 storm cause such destruction? Dr. Qin "Jim" Chen: "The killer is the storm surge and the damaging force is the waves on top of the surge." Dr. Jim Chen, a coastal engineer with USA in Mobile has researched Katrina's deadly storm surge. He says Katrina proved to us all that the way we build needs to be revamped. Dr. Chen, "One of the reasons, there was tremendous damage is because of the lack of coastal engineering programs."
Dr. Chen is now set out to do a multi-year study using new state of the art computer simulation to better predict waves and storm surge of future storms. The goal is to help save property and lives. His study should help determine how high we should build, how strong, and how far inland.
He'll share these results will be with residents, emergency responders, and civil engineers. Dr. Chen says, without adequate coastal engineering research and education, damage caused by future hurricanes will only continue to multiply.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Corps says gaps, flaws caused levee system failure
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
The New Orleans area hurricane protection system "was a system in name only" that was compromised by Hurricane Katrina because it was incomplete, inconsistent in its levels of protection, and lacked levels of redundancy that would have limited the effects of flooding, the head of an Army Corps of Engineers' investigative team said in remarks prepared for delivery at a news conference this morning.
Ed Link, chairman of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, released the group's findings in a massive nine-volume report. Link warned that repairs have strengthened the parts of the levee system that failed, but that until undamaged parts of the system are improved, "the New Orleans metropolitan area remains vulnerable to any storm creating surge and wave conditions similar to those of Katrina."
Link said Hurricane Katrina exceeded the criteria, under which the levee system was designed, "but the performance was less than the design intent."
Thus, while a combination of record high storm surge and waves overwhelmed levees and levee walls in many areas, the devastation that it caused "was aided by incomplete protection, lower than authorized structures, and levee sections with erodible materials."
"While overtopping and extensive flooding from Katrina were inevitable, a complete system at authorized elevations would have reduced the losses," Link said.
He said that while the levees were designed to withstand a specific "standard project hurricane" that was not as strong as Katrina, "little consideration was given to the performance of the system if the design event or system requirements were exceeded."
"Incomplete sections of the system resulted in sections with lower protective elevations or transitions between types and levels of protection that were weak spots," Link said. "Given that hurricane protection is typically a series system, the failure of the weakest component causes the failure of the system."
A study of Katrina's effects found that more than 75 percent of the deaths caused by the storm were people over 60. The poor, elderly and disabled who were more likely to be victims also were the most likely to be living in the lowest elevations behind levees and were "the groups least likely to be able to evacuate without assistance," he said.
The majority of flooding in east bank New Orleans and in St. Bernard Parish, and half the area's economic losses, were the result of water entering through breaches in floodwalls and levees.
Losses and recovery also have been dependent on the depth of flooding, with areas with smaller depths already experiencing almost complete recovery, while areas with the deepest water have seen little recovery or reinvestment.
Katrina resulted in the loss of 25 percent of residential property values, which represents 78 percent of all direct property damage, Link said. Non-residential properties saw only a 12 percent loss in their value.
"Clearly, residential areas were more prone to flooding," he said.
The task force found that levee walls on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals and one wall on the Industrial Canal failed while surge water was well below the top of the floodwalls. The walls failed when the water pushed the walls enough to create a crack between them and levee soils, allowing the water to seep below the wall and push the walls aside.
Those failures indicate "a dilemma in engineering," Link said.
"While new pieces of knowledge were available over time that were relevant to the ultimate performance of the I-walls on the outfall canals, the pieces were not put together to solve the puzzle of the failure mechanism that occurred," he said. Those pieces included studies indicating such failures might occur that were not reviewed as the levees were being built, or afterward.
Link warned that there is not a system for upgrading designs to incorporate changes in engineering theory or the results of disasters like Katrina, exacerbated by the lack of cooperation between those designing and building levees and researchers studying their weaknesses.
"The focus on 'standards' may in fact also deter this process," Link said. "Standards imply stability and constancy, when in fact the concept of 'guidelines' may be more appropriate, allowing and encouraging customization and adaptation as new knowledge emerges."
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
The New Orleans area hurricane protection system "was a system in name only" that was compromised by Hurricane Katrina because it was incomplete, inconsistent in its levels of protection, and lacked levels of redundancy that would have limited the effects of flooding, the head of an Army Corps of Engineers' investigative team said in remarks prepared for delivery at a news conference this morning.
Ed Link, chairman of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, released the group's findings in a massive nine-volume report. Link warned that repairs have strengthened the parts of the levee system that failed, but that until undamaged parts of the system are improved, "the New Orleans metropolitan area remains vulnerable to any storm creating surge and wave conditions similar to those of Katrina."
Link said Hurricane Katrina exceeded the criteria, under which the levee system was designed, "but the performance was less than the design intent."
Thus, while a combination of record high storm surge and waves overwhelmed levees and levee walls in many areas, the devastation that it caused "was aided by incomplete protection, lower than authorized structures, and levee sections with erodible materials."
"While overtopping and extensive flooding from Katrina were inevitable, a complete system at authorized elevations would have reduced the losses," Link said.
He said that while the levees were designed to withstand a specific "standard project hurricane" that was not as strong as Katrina, "little consideration was given to the performance of the system if the design event or system requirements were exceeded."
"Incomplete sections of the system resulted in sections with lower protective elevations or transitions between types and levels of protection that were weak spots," Link said. "Given that hurricane protection is typically a series system, the failure of the weakest component causes the failure of the system."
A study of Katrina's effects found that more than 75 percent of the deaths caused by the storm were people over 60. The poor, elderly and disabled who were more likely to be victims also were the most likely to be living in the lowest elevations behind levees and were "the groups least likely to be able to evacuate without assistance," he said.
The majority of flooding in east bank New Orleans and in St. Bernard Parish, and half the area's economic losses, were the result of water entering through breaches in floodwalls and levees.
Losses and recovery also have been dependent on the depth of flooding, with areas with smaller depths already experiencing almost complete recovery, while areas with the deepest water have seen little recovery or reinvestment.
Katrina resulted in the loss of 25 percent of residential property values, which represents 78 percent of all direct property damage, Link said. Non-residential properties saw only a 12 percent loss in their value.
"Clearly, residential areas were more prone to flooding," he said.
The task force found that levee walls on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals and one wall on the Industrial Canal failed while surge water was well below the top of the floodwalls. The walls failed when the water pushed the walls enough to create a crack between them and levee soils, allowing the water to seep below the wall and push the walls aside.
Those failures indicate "a dilemma in engineering," Link said.
"While new pieces of knowledge were available over time that were relevant to the ultimate performance of the I-walls on the outfall canals, the pieces were not put together to solve the puzzle of the failure mechanism that occurred," he said. Those pieces included studies indicating such failures might occur that were not reviewed as the levees were being built, or afterward.
Link warned that there is not a system for upgrading designs to incorporate changes in engineering theory or the results of disasters like Katrina, exacerbated by the lack of cooperation between those designing and building levees and researchers studying their weaknesses.
"The focus on 'standards' may in fact also deter this process," Link said. "Standards imply stability and constancy, when in fact the concept of 'guidelines' may be more appropriate, allowing and encouraging customization and adaptation as new knowledge emerges."
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Audrey2Katrina
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Tenants vow to retake housing complex
Frustrated residents want to come home
Thursday, June 01, 2006
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer
Public housing residents, frustrated after nine months of waiting for any definitive plan to rebuild the complexes, said Wednesday they will take over at least one of the hurricane-shattered developments this weekend.
Housing and Urban Development officials appeared Wednesday at City Hall, but no one had any certain answers to a host of questions from City Council members and public housing tenants.
Thousands of families remain displaced after being forced from New Orleans by Katrina's floodwaters.
"I will go in and clean my house," said Karen Downs, a former St. Bernard complex resident now living in Baton Rouge while her children and mother stay in Houston. "I can repair anything. I'll put my hands together and work. I am tired. If it wasn't for the grace of God, I'd probably be gone from stress."
Downs, who has a federally subsidized apartment in Baton Rouge, said she has medical ailments that include heart trouble, and takes a bus from the state capital to New Orleans for treatment. But mostly, she misses her family, who lived together at the St. Bernard complex.
Enough is enough, she and other residents said Wednesday. They plan to take back their former homes at the 7th Ward complex this weekend, even if it means breaking through the razor-topped chain-link fence that the Housing Authority of New Orleans installed after Katrina.
"Guess what?" Downs said at the podium inside council chambers. "Saturday and Sunday, we're going to tear it (the fence) down."
No clear dates, plans
Donald Babers, the HUD official newly appointed as the one-person HANO board of commissioners, said he could give no clear dates or plans for the five traditional public housing complexes shut down by the storm. HANO had about 5,100 units occupied pre-Katrina, of its housing stock of 7,000 units.
"We have heard loud and clear that residents want to come home," Babers said, but he said he could not give a timeline for return. "We know decisions need to be made because of citizens in various cities. We are moving hastily on that."
Cynthia Wiggins, who leads the residents council at the Guste complex in Central City, said this weekend will mark the start of return -- with or without HANO help. "Come June 3, we're not going to wait," she said. "We're going to move forward to getting our complexes open."
Wiggins said New Orleans' recent spate of killings and gunplay, tied to the city's illicit drug trade, proves public housing tenants weren't the problem.
"Criminals really didn't live in public housing, which we knew," she said. "They did their business there."
About 980 families who lived in public housing have returned to New Orleans since Katrina. The rest have found temporary housing in Houston, Dallas, Memphis, Tenn., and other southern cities, where thousands of displaced families fear FEMA will cut off rental housing aid by the month's end.
HANO also had about 9,000 federal Section 8 housing vouchers in use before the storm, serving far more families that the traditional public housing units. But since Katrina, out of more than 5,000 vouchers issued, only about 1,000 have turned into leases.
Shaking from tears
"My two daughters and I are homeless," said Renell Carter, who spent part of her 30th birthday Wednesday pleading with city and HANO officials to reopen the Florida housing complex, where she lived until Katrina. "I've been down here since November. I was working. My rent was $212 and my house was beautiful. You got landlords who want to know if you're working. My job won't be back. I can't go back without a house. I'm living with someone else."
Minutes after speaking without hesitation, Carter took a seat in the audience. She began to shake from tears.
HANO is essentially a federal agency now. For years, after rampant mismanagement and scandal, it fell into federal receivership. But this week, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said that any decisions about New Orleans public housing will be made through his office in Washington, D.C.
Jackson has committed $154 million to rebuilding New Orleans' public housing, and says that HANO has filed 11 applications for low-income tax credits, a first step in reconstruction. Those 11 applications, HUD officials said Wednesday, will deliver 360 units to New Orleans, a pittance in the eyes of housing advocates.
City Council member Oliver Thomas, who led Wednesday's Housing Committee meeting, put HUD on notice.
"The next time we get together it will be unacceptable if we don't have answers to these questions," Thomas said. "Ultimately, what we are dealing with is human lives."
'Best of the Best'
Helen Lang, 76, who uses a motorized scooter to get around, arrived from Memphis before the meeting ended.
A Section 8 resident, Lang travels by train to attend public housing meetings. "I'm from the 9th Ward, I don't have a house anymore," Lang said. "I expect before I make 80 to be able to move back to New Orleans."
At least a dozen public housing residents attended Wednesday's meeting at City Hall, many wearing white T-shirts that said in red lettering, "Best of the Best," and listed the city's public housing complexes. The slogan is a reply to Jackson's recent statement that HANO only wants the "best" residents to return.
In New Orleans this week, Jackson softened his rhetoric a bit, but repeated that lawbreakers and loafers aren't wanted.
"If you're physically capable, you can work," Jackson said at a news conference Tuesday with Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin. "Clearly, they have a right to return. We're not encouraging those persons who are into drugs or gangbanging, if you want to call it, to come back. People in public housing deserve to be treated with the same respect as anyone else."
Nagin, who will be sworn in today for his second term, repeatedly talks of improving the city's public housing developments by creating "mixed income" communities and "de-concentrating" poor residents.
Reason for doubt
But promises of building more units like River Garden, the apartment complex that replaced the St. Thomas complex in the Lower Garden District, ring hollow for public housing residents.
River Garden, one of developer Pres Kabacoff's dramatic New Orleans revisionist projects, squeezed out thousands of poor families who were promised apartments in the new neighborhood. Of the River Garden units, 122 are reserved for public housing tenants who lived in the St. Thomas complex. But today there are fewer than 60 families from St. Thomas living at River Garden, said attorney Laura Tuggle, of the nonprofit New Orleans Legal Action Center. First responders and HANO staff are living in some units.
"Our people are suffering and they're being left behind in other cities, and facing the loss of temporary housing assistance," Tuggle said.
At the Fischer complex in Algiers, which just opened brand new single-family homes on land that once accommodated its high-rise building, residents are seeing promises dissolve, Tuggle said. Sixty residents qualified to move into two-bedroom units. The original plan called to reserve 20 of the two-bedroom units for public housing families.
"Now only one two-bedroom unit is for public housing," Tuggle said.
Kim Paul, a residents leader at the Iberville complex, said tenants are being locked out of their pre-Katrina apartments that are in move-in condition.
"When will the rest of Iberville reopen?" Paul asked. "At the end of the month, I'm going to Texas and get my people. "We're coming home."
Frustrated residents want to come home
Thursday, June 01, 2006
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer
Public housing residents, frustrated after nine months of waiting for any definitive plan to rebuild the complexes, said Wednesday they will take over at least one of the hurricane-shattered developments this weekend.
Housing and Urban Development officials appeared Wednesday at City Hall, but no one had any certain answers to a host of questions from City Council members and public housing tenants.
Thousands of families remain displaced after being forced from New Orleans by Katrina's floodwaters.
"I will go in and clean my house," said Karen Downs, a former St. Bernard complex resident now living in Baton Rouge while her children and mother stay in Houston. "I can repair anything. I'll put my hands together and work. I am tired. If it wasn't for the grace of God, I'd probably be gone from stress."
Downs, who has a federally subsidized apartment in Baton Rouge, said she has medical ailments that include heart trouble, and takes a bus from the state capital to New Orleans for treatment. But mostly, she misses her family, who lived together at the St. Bernard complex.
Enough is enough, she and other residents said Wednesday. They plan to take back their former homes at the 7th Ward complex this weekend, even if it means breaking through the razor-topped chain-link fence that the Housing Authority of New Orleans installed after Katrina.
"Guess what?" Downs said at the podium inside council chambers. "Saturday and Sunday, we're going to tear it (the fence) down."
No clear dates, plans
Donald Babers, the HUD official newly appointed as the one-person HANO board of commissioners, said he could give no clear dates or plans for the five traditional public housing complexes shut down by the storm. HANO had about 5,100 units occupied pre-Katrina, of its housing stock of 7,000 units.
"We have heard loud and clear that residents want to come home," Babers said, but he said he could not give a timeline for return. "We know decisions need to be made because of citizens in various cities. We are moving hastily on that."
Cynthia Wiggins, who leads the residents council at the Guste complex in Central City, said this weekend will mark the start of return -- with or without HANO help. "Come June 3, we're not going to wait," she said. "We're going to move forward to getting our complexes open."
Wiggins said New Orleans' recent spate of killings and gunplay, tied to the city's illicit drug trade, proves public housing tenants weren't the problem.
"Criminals really didn't live in public housing, which we knew," she said. "They did their business there."
About 980 families who lived in public housing have returned to New Orleans since Katrina. The rest have found temporary housing in Houston, Dallas, Memphis, Tenn., and other southern cities, where thousands of displaced families fear FEMA will cut off rental housing aid by the month's end.
HANO also had about 9,000 federal Section 8 housing vouchers in use before the storm, serving far more families that the traditional public housing units. But since Katrina, out of more than 5,000 vouchers issued, only about 1,000 have turned into leases.
Shaking from tears
"My two daughters and I are homeless," said Renell Carter, who spent part of her 30th birthday Wednesday pleading with city and HANO officials to reopen the Florida housing complex, where she lived until Katrina. "I've been down here since November. I was working. My rent was $212 and my house was beautiful. You got landlords who want to know if you're working. My job won't be back. I can't go back without a house. I'm living with someone else."
Minutes after speaking without hesitation, Carter took a seat in the audience. She began to shake from tears.
HANO is essentially a federal agency now. For years, after rampant mismanagement and scandal, it fell into federal receivership. But this week, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said that any decisions about New Orleans public housing will be made through his office in Washington, D.C.
Jackson has committed $154 million to rebuilding New Orleans' public housing, and says that HANO has filed 11 applications for low-income tax credits, a first step in reconstruction. Those 11 applications, HUD officials said Wednesday, will deliver 360 units to New Orleans, a pittance in the eyes of housing advocates.
City Council member Oliver Thomas, who led Wednesday's Housing Committee meeting, put HUD on notice.
"The next time we get together it will be unacceptable if we don't have answers to these questions," Thomas said. "Ultimately, what we are dealing with is human lives."
'Best of the Best'
Helen Lang, 76, who uses a motorized scooter to get around, arrived from Memphis before the meeting ended.
A Section 8 resident, Lang travels by train to attend public housing meetings. "I'm from the 9th Ward, I don't have a house anymore," Lang said. "I expect before I make 80 to be able to move back to New Orleans."
At least a dozen public housing residents attended Wednesday's meeting at City Hall, many wearing white T-shirts that said in red lettering, "Best of the Best," and listed the city's public housing complexes. The slogan is a reply to Jackson's recent statement that HANO only wants the "best" residents to return.
In New Orleans this week, Jackson softened his rhetoric a bit, but repeated that lawbreakers and loafers aren't wanted.
"If you're physically capable, you can work," Jackson said at a news conference Tuesday with Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin. "Clearly, they have a right to return. We're not encouraging those persons who are into drugs or gangbanging, if you want to call it, to come back. People in public housing deserve to be treated with the same respect as anyone else."
Nagin, who will be sworn in today for his second term, repeatedly talks of improving the city's public housing developments by creating "mixed income" communities and "de-concentrating" poor residents.
Reason for doubt
But promises of building more units like River Garden, the apartment complex that replaced the St. Thomas complex in the Lower Garden District, ring hollow for public housing residents.
River Garden, one of developer Pres Kabacoff's dramatic New Orleans revisionist projects, squeezed out thousands of poor families who were promised apartments in the new neighborhood. Of the River Garden units, 122 are reserved for public housing tenants who lived in the St. Thomas complex. But today there are fewer than 60 families from St. Thomas living at River Garden, said attorney Laura Tuggle, of the nonprofit New Orleans Legal Action Center. First responders and HANO staff are living in some units.
"Our people are suffering and they're being left behind in other cities, and facing the loss of temporary housing assistance," Tuggle said.
At the Fischer complex in Algiers, which just opened brand new single-family homes on land that once accommodated its high-rise building, residents are seeing promises dissolve, Tuggle said. Sixty residents qualified to move into two-bedroom units. The original plan called to reserve 20 of the two-bedroom units for public housing families.
"Now only one two-bedroom unit is for public housing," Tuggle said.
Kim Paul, a residents leader at the Iberville complex, said tenants are being locked out of their pre-Katrina apartments that are in move-in condition.
"When will the rest of Iberville reopen?" Paul asked. "At the end of the month, I'm going to Texas and get my people. "We're coming home."
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Gulf Coast Network UPDATE: 6/1/06
Nine months after Katrina, FEMA reports that More than 102,000 people are housed temporarily in more than 38,000 FEMA-provided travel trailers and mobile homes, including the more than 2,800 units compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act....Pass Christian Mayor Billy McDonald says he will resign over health issues...Crime is soaring in Hancock County say officials...Volunteers from around the country say they are shocked at the conditions on the Coast nine months after Katrina...FEMA has agreed to extend right-of-entry to help owners remove homes destroyed by Katrina. The new ROE deadline is June 15th. The old deadline expired in February...Gulfport officials are being charged with price gouging by residents over building permit fees, the highest on the Coast... Insurance companies are raising wind coverage rates to unprecedented levels... The State Insurance Commission will hold a public hearing on the windpool insurance rate increase June 5th in Jackson... Many Coast homeowners in despair as insurers refuse to pay for Katrina damages... FEMA reports that debris removal along the three Coast counties is nearing completion. Rental rates for even modest homes skyrocketing on Coast...The Coast is still in relief mode not recovery nine months after Hurricane Katrina. 6/1/06 9:34 AM
Nine months after Katrina, FEMA reports that More than 102,000 people are housed temporarily in more than 38,000 FEMA-provided travel trailers and mobile homes, including the more than 2,800 units compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act....Pass Christian Mayor Billy McDonald says he will resign over health issues...Crime is soaring in Hancock County say officials...Volunteers from around the country say they are shocked at the conditions on the Coast nine months after Katrina...FEMA has agreed to extend right-of-entry to help owners remove homes destroyed by Katrina. The new ROE deadline is June 15th. The old deadline expired in February...Gulfport officials are being charged with price gouging by residents over building permit fees, the highest on the Coast... Insurance companies are raising wind coverage rates to unprecedented levels... The State Insurance Commission will hold a public hearing on the windpool insurance rate increase June 5th in Jackson... Many Coast homeowners in despair as insurers refuse to pay for Katrina damages... FEMA reports that debris removal along the three Coast counties is nearing completion. Rental rates for even modest homes skyrocketing on Coast...The Coast is still in relief mode not recovery nine months after Hurricane Katrina. 6/1/06 9:34 AM
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Group works to restore tombs
Cemetery damaged by hurricane
By QUINCY COLLINS SMITH
D'IBERVILLE - Eight of the city's deceased residents will be returned to tombs later this week as crews repair and replace Hurricane Katrinadamaged tombs at the Quave Cemetery.
Five new tombs will encase eight caskets, which were scattered about the small, family cemetery when the hurricane removed them from their original tombs. Officials with the Harrison County Coroner's Office are scheduled to return the bodies later this week.
With funding approval from FEMA and MEMA, the city awarded the project to Fortress Personal Mausoleums in Jackson County.
Quave is one of the oldest cemeteries in the community; some of the headstones date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Generations of Quaves, Seymours, and Fourniers are buried here.
"The Quave Cemetery had extensive damage," said D'Iberville Fire Capt. Jay Williams who spearheaded the project. "It needed someone to take care of it."
Rocky Smith, who lives on his mother's family's estate north of the cemetery, said the damage was devastating, but the new tombs give the families of those buried there some peace of mind.
Don Magallanes, Fortress owner, grew up in the D'Iberville-Biloxi area and wanted to help the city.
"It's pretty devastating to come to the cemetery and your family is gone," Magallanes said. "We wanted to do this project."
City Manager Richard Rose said officials wanted to honor the original wishes of the families of the deceased by placing the caskets back in tombs instead of in the ground. With the portion of Fortress Personal Mausoleums' time and resources donated, the project was affordable at roughly $20,000.
"We wanted to make sure that even though their tombs were destroyed that's what they needed to go back in," Rose said.
The public is welcome to attend a small ceremony Friday afternoon after the caskets are placed in the tombs, Rose said.
Cemetery damaged by hurricane
By QUINCY COLLINS SMITH
D'IBERVILLE - Eight of the city's deceased residents will be returned to tombs later this week as crews repair and replace Hurricane Katrinadamaged tombs at the Quave Cemetery.
Five new tombs will encase eight caskets, which were scattered about the small, family cemetery when the hurricane removed them from their original tombs. Officials with the Harrison County Coroner's Office are scheduled to return the bodies later this week.
With funding approval from FEMA and MEMA, the city awarded the project to Fortress Personal Mausoleums in Jackson County.
Quave is one of the oldest cemeteries in the community; some of the headstones date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Generations of Quaves, Seymours, and Fourniers are buried here.
"The Quave Cemetery had extensive damage," said D'Iberville Fire Capt. Jay Williams who spearheaded the project. "It needed someone to take care of it."
Rocky Smith, who lives on his mother's family's estate north of the cemetery, said the damage was devastating, but the new tombs give the families of those buried there some peace of mind.
Don Magallanes, Fortress owner, grew up in the D'Iberville-Biloxi area and wanted to help the city.
"It's pretty devastating to come to the cemetery and your family is gone," Magallanes said. "We wanted to do this project."
City Manager Richard Rose said officials wanted to honor the original wishes of the families of the deceased by placing the caskets back in tombs instead of in the ground. With the portion of Fortress Personal Mausoleums' time and resources donated, the project was affordable at roughly $20,000.
"We wanted to make sure that even though their tombs were destroyed that's what they needed to go back in," Rose said.
The public is welcome to attend a small ceremony Friday afternoon after the caskets are placed in the tombs, Rose said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
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State still scrambling to find storm shelters
But officials say more locations are being lined up for evacuees
Saturday, June 03, 2006
By James Varney
Staff writer
With Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff concerned that Louisiana has not arranged enough spaces to shelter evacuees, state officials said this week that they are trying to boost the number of shelter slots available to residents in case a strong storm gathers in the Gulf of Mexico, puts New Orleans in its cross hairs, bears down on the wounded city and forces another evacuation.
The state has space for about 55,000 residents in shelters around Louisiana, according to a recent news release from Gov. Kathleen Blanco.
Her administration separates those shelters into three categories. The first, called "parish-identified shelters for general population," are sites such as school gymnasiums and other public buildings that would house smaller groups of evacuees. Those shelters can accommodate 55,000, the release says.
Next on the list are "state-identified, medical special-needs shelters." That group, which covers people who need access to electricity for life-saving medical equipment, "will provide safe haven to over 2,000," Blanco says.
The third category, "state-identified critical transportation-needs shelters," are large sites that could take thousands of evacuees at a time, officials said. Only one such site has been publicly named, the State Farm Building in Monroe. That building, which the state hopes to turn into the new Delta Community College, will be able to house 6,000 evacuees.
Blanco says other sites are under consideration and that Louisiana officials are "well on our way to growing this number to over 10,000 spaces." One spot, officials said, could be the Cajundome in Lafayette.
Not enough space
It remained unclear Friday if the more than 8,000 slots identified at the State Farm building and special-needs shelters are included in the 55,000 total slots the governor has advertised.
But whether the total is 55,000 or more than 63,000, the figure appears disconcertingly low when weighed against the 180,000 to 200,000 residents that Katrina sent packing, according to current state estimates. It's somewhat reassuring to remember the number is far from fixed, said Cleo Allen, spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services.
"While a few of the 39 'host' parishes have not yet responded with sites, they have responded to let us know that it is because their assessments are still ongoing," Allen wrote in an e-mail. "We maintain that capacity is still very fluid because sites continue to be assessed."
Thanks, but no thanks?
The state is eager to boost numbers, at least in part because the federal government considers the current total inadequate. Earlier this week, Chertoff fretted at a meeting at The Times-Picayune that the shelter total, which he pegged at 60,000, was insufficient.
Chertoff said some small municipalities, once part of the shelter solution, must have removed themselves from consideration this year, thereby shrinking the pool of available beds. He said the total figure was disappointing for two reasons. On the one hand, it may prove insufficient to meet the state's emergency needs, and on the other, it reflects an unwillingness to throw open every gym and community college during a crisis.
"Based on the numbers, I can only conclude reluctance," Chertoff said.
State officials and nonprofit leaders active on the shelter front cited more mundane causes for the slow buildup, and they noted that other possibilities remain, including out-of-state options that proved so critical after Katrina. Nevertheless, with officials unable to define a comfort zone for available shelters, Louisiana has entered the 2006 storm season somewhere between alarm and serenity.
"It would be naive of me to say I'm not concerned, because there are so many unknowns, so many variables," said Kay Wilkins, executive director of the Southeastern Louisiana Chapter of the American Red Cross. "Things appear to be going good on some days, and some days it's not."
That said, neither Wilkins nor her governmental counterparts blame reluctance.
"There's no town saying it won't have New Orleanians, but it gets a little more complicated in terms of whether they will," Wilkins said.
Sites ruled out
For one thing, all shelters south of Interstate 10, or south of Interstate 12 in St. Tammany Parish, are out. Storms' paths are too unpredictable, and their destructive power is too great for such locations to be considered safe, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said. Similarly, officials cite the unpredictability of hurricane paths as the chief reason the complete shelter list remains secret: Authorities do not want people racing to a site that might be closed for a particular storm.
The list was further reduced by a decision to seek only places that could house 100 or more people, a new level that makes more sense from a post-storm logistics standpoint, officials said. During Katrina, groups of people showed up in dozens of locations, and many makeshift shelters were simply overwhelmed.
Another prosaic reason for a potential host to balk is time. Unlike in previous years, when shelters were expected to accommodate displaced residents for perhaps two or three days, the Red Cross is now asking for a potential 14-day stay. That two-week stretch, coupled with at least another week for cleanup and repairs, means some smaller towns or parishes could lose the use of key buildings for the better part of a month during the summer or school year, a hit too big for some to take, Wilkins said.
"The issue is not 'we don't want evacuees,' " said Denise Bottcher, Blanco's spokeswoman. "It's really a matter of taking away a huge part of a city or town's commerce."
So far there is no evidence that the experiences of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have made a Louisiana town or parish less hospitable if people displaced by hurricanes come knocking, officials say.
"There's not one parish that's said, 'We will not open shelters,' " said Terri Ricks, an undersecretary at the Department of Social Services who is a shelter point person.
So the search for places where displaced New Orleans area residents can sleep on cots in neat rows and eat Army rations delivered by the truckload continues.
"In some cases now, we're reaching out to faith-based communities, too, that might have large buildings," Wilkins said. "We're always trying to find additional spaces with new partners."
But officials say more locations are being lined up for evacuees
Saturday, June 03, 2006
By James Varney
Staff writer
With Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff concerned that Louisiana has not arranged enough spaces to shelter evacuees, state officials said this week that they are trying to boost the number of shelter slots available to residents in case a strong storm gathers in the Gulf of Mexico, puts New Orleans in its cross hairs, bears down on the wounded city and forces another evacuation.
The state has space for about 55,000 residents in shelters around Louisiana, according to a recent news release from Gov. Kathleen Blanco.
Her administration separates those shelters into three categories. The first, called "parish-identified shelters for general population," are sites such as school gymnasiums and other public buildings that would house smaller groups of evacuees. Those shelters can accommodate 55,000, the release says.
Next on the list are "state-identified, medical special-needs shelters." That group, which covers people who need access to electricity for life-saving medical equipment, "will provide safe haven to over 2,000," Blanco says.
The third category, "state-identified critical transportation-needs shelters," are large sites that could take thousands of evacuees at a time, officials said. Only one such site has been publicly named, the State Farm Building in Monroe. That building, which the state hopes to turn into the new Delta Community College, will be able to house 6,000 evacuees.
Blanco says other sites are under consideration and that Louisiana officials are "well on our way to growing this number to over 10,000 spaces." One spot, officials said, could be the Cajundome in Lafayette.
Not enough space
It remained unclear Friday if the more than 8,000 slots identified at the State Farm building and special-needs shelters are included in the 55,000 total slots the governor has advertised.
But whether the total is 55,000 or more than 63,000, the figure appears disconcertingly low when weighed against the 180,000 to 200,000 residents that Katrina sent packing, according to current state estimates. It's somewhat reassuring to remember the number is far from fixed, said Cleo Allen, spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services.
"While a few of the 39 'host' parishes have not yet responded with sites, they have responded to let us know that it is because their assessments are still ongoing," Allen wrote in an e-mail. "We maintain that capacity is still very fluid because sites continue to be assessed."
Thanks, but no thanks?
The state is eager to boost numbers, at least in part because the federal government considers the current total inadequate. Earlier this week, Chertoff fretted at a meeting at The Times-Picayune that the shelter total, which he pegged at 60,000, was insufficient.
Chertoff said some small municipalities, once part of the shelter solution, must have removed themselves from consideration this year, thereby shrinking the pool of available beds. He said the total figure was disappointing for two reasons. On the one hand, it may prove insufficient to meet the state's emergency needs, and on the other, it reflects an unwillingness to throw open every gym and community college during a crisis.
"Based on the numbers, I can only conclude reluctance," Chertoff said.
State officials and nonprofit leaders active on the shelter front cited more mundane causes for the slow buildup, and they noted that other possibilities remain, including out-of-state options that proved so critical after Katrina. Nevertheless, with officials unable to define a comfort zone for available shelters, Louisiana has entered the 2006 storm season somewhere between alarm and serenity.
"It would be naive of me to say I'm not concerned, because there are so many unknowns, so many variables," said Kay Wilkins, executive director of the Southeastern Louisiana Chapter of the American Red Cross. "Things appear to be going good on some days, and some days it's not."
That said, neither Wilkins nor her governmental counterparts blame reluctance.
"There's no town saying it won't have New Orleanians, but it gets a little more complicated in terms of whether they will," Wilkins said.
Sites ruled out
For one thing, all shelters south of Interstate 10, or south of Interstate 12 in St. Tammany Parish, are out. Storms' paths are too unpredictable, and their destructive power is too great for such locations to be considered safe, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said. Similarly, officials cite the unpredictability of hurricane paths as the chief reason the complete shelter list remains secret: Authorities do not want people racing to a site that might be closed for a particular storm.
The list was further reduced by a decision to seek only places that could house 100 or more people, a new level that makes more sense from a post-storm logistics standpoint, officials said. During Katrina, groups of people showed up in dozens of locations, and many makeshift shelters were simply overwhelmed.
Another prosaic reason for a potential host to balk is time. Unlike in previous years, when shelters were expected to accommodate displaced residents for perhaps two or three days, the Red Cross is now asking for a potential 14-day stay. That two-week stretch, coupled with at least another week for cleanup and repairs, means some smaller towns or parishes could lose the use of key buildings for the better part of a month during the summer or school year, a hit too big for some to take, Wilkins said.
"The issue is not 'we don't want evacuees,' " said Denise Bottcher, Blanco's spokeswoman. "It's really a matter of taking away a huge part of a city or town's commerce."
So far there is no evidence that the experiences of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have made a Louisiana town or parish less hospitable if people displaced by hurricanes come knocking, officials say.
"There's not one parish that's said, 'We will not open shelters,' " said Terri Ricks, an undersecretary at the Department of Social Services who is a shelter point person.
So the search for places where displaced New Orleans area residents can sleep on cots in neat rows and eat Army rations delivered by the truckload continues.
"In some cases now, we're reaching out to faith-based communities, too, that might have large buildings," Wilkins said. "We're always trying to find additional spaces with new partners."
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Audrey2Katrina
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Jefferson officials chastise corps
It's time to level with the public, they say
Saturday, June 03, 2006
By Kate Moran
East Jefferson bureau
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard and other local leaders plan to send a stiffly worded letter to the Army Corps of Engineers next week with this message: We will no longer be the bearers of your bad news.
Broussard said Friday that the corps needs to start leveling with the public about how its plans to close floodgates in the weakened 17th Street Canal -- a measure designed to protect neighborhoods from catastrophic storm surge -- could lead to collateral flooding from rain.
The clamor for the corps to release documents or hold weekly press conferences began this week, when the agency abruptly revised the timeline for increased pumping capacity that it had promised to east bank neighborhoods when the floodgates are closed and the amount of rain that can be pumped into the compromised canal is constricted.
After pledging for months to move 6,000 cubic feet of water per second in September -- 40 percent less than the maximum drainage capacity when the gates are open -- the corps announced this week that it could provide only 2,800 cfs of drainage capacity by the height of storm season in August and September.
The 6,000 cfs goal might not be attainable until next hurricane season, corps officials said.
Local leaders were incensed that the corps saved the announcement for the first week of hurricane season, after they had visited dozens of neighborhood groups to explain to anxious residents how the reduced pumping capacity would affect streets in Old Metairie and Old Jefferson.
Formula for disaster
"We think this formula is tailor-made for disaster," Broussard said. "The corps is going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that to minimize the risk in the Hoey's drainage basin," a 10,000-acre area that includes Old Metairie, Old Jefferson and the Uptown and Broadmoor neighborhoods in New Orleans.
Broussard continued, "We as elected officials should not be trying to paraphrase critical information that deals with technicalities of corps projects."
The parish president admonished the corps to release written evaluations explaining how closing the 17th Street Canal floodgates could contribute to flooding from rainfall. He also said the corps should distribute the emergency protocols that govern at what wind speed and water levels engineers will lower the gates.
The gates will remain open during normal downpours, but will close in advance of hurricanes to block storm surge from entering the canal, officials have said.
Councilwoman Jennifer Sneed said she requested that the corps hold weekly news conferences, given that the information the corps had passed to her has become quickly outdated. She noted that federal engineers had promised to install 6,000 cfs of drainage capacity in September as recently as last Friday, during a corps-led tour of the 17th Street Canal.
Frustrated and angry
"I am very, very frustrated and very angry that there seems to be new goals, new dates and new plans, and residents of Jefferson Parish are not fully informed," Sneed said. "I am not going to be the person to disseminate their information."
Jim Taylor, a spokesman for the corps' Task Force Guardian, said it has been holding "frequent" meetings with elected leaders, community groups and reporters.
"We have been very transparent in everything we have done to help rebuild the city and restore the hurricane protection system," Taylor said.
He and other corps brass said this week that the temporary pumps interact in a complex manner, and that it takes time to build an effective drainage system.
"What is really important to remember is the gates at the outfall canals may never be closed" if no major hurricanes hit New Orleans, Taylor said. "In the last 40 years, they would have been closed only three times."
Jefferson leaders met Friday with the corps and with officials from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board to discuss how city, suburban and state land would be kept dry when floodgates are closed at the mouth of the canal.
The Jefferson delegation wants to transform a low-lying section of Interstate 10 under the Mounes Street railroad overpass to a retention pond that would collect water during a hurricane -- when no cars are on the road anyway -- to keep it out of vulnerable neighborhoods.
The department had wanted to pump that water into the 17th Street Canal to keep the highway dry for emergency vehicles moving into New Orleans after the hurricane had passed.
It is not possible to keep neighborhoods and the highway dry as long as long as the drainage capacity of the canal is reduced.
Representatives from Jefferson, New Orleans and the state agreed to convene with engineers next week to figure out how the interstate might be allowed to flood in the brief period after the evacuation is complete, but before relief vehicles need entry into the city.
"We were talking about the interval when the interstate is a ghost town," Jefferson Parish Councilman Tom Capella said. "I feel comfortable that when the evacuation is over and everybody is out, it is the time to protect property."
It's time to level with the public, they say
Saturday, June 03, 2006
By Kate Moran
East Jefferson bureau
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard and other local leaders plan to send a stiffly worded letter to the Army Corps of Engineers next week with this message: We will no longer be the bearers of your bad news.
Broussard said Friday that the corps needs to start leveling with the public about how its plans to close floodgates in the weakened 17th Street Canal -- a measure designed to protect neighborhoods from catastrophic storm surge -- could lead to collateral flooding from rain.
The clamor for the corps to release documents or hold weekly press conferences began this week, when the agency abruptly revised the timeline for increased pumping capacity that it had promised to east bank neighborhoods when the floodgates are closed and the amount of rain that can be pumped into the compromised canal is constricted.
After pledging for months to move 6,000 cubic feet of water per second in September -- 40 percent less than the maximum drainage capacity when the gates are open -- the corps announced this week that it could provide only 2,800 cfs of drainage capacity by the height of storm season in August and September.
The 6,000 cfs goal might not be attainable until next hurricane season, corps officials said.
Local leaders were incensed that the corps saved the announcement for the first week of hurricane season, after they had visited dozens of neighborhood groups to explain to anxious residents how the reduced pumping capacity would affect streets in Old Metairie and Old Jefferson.
Formula for disaster
"We think this formula is tailor-made for disaster," Broussard said. "The corps is going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that to minimize the risk in the Hoey's drainage basin," a 10,000-acre area that includes Old Metairie, Old Jefferson and the Uptown and Broadmoor neighborhoods in New Orleans.
Broussard continued, "We as elected officials should not be trying to paraphrase critical information that deals with technicalities of corps projects."
The parish president admonished the corps to release written evaluations explaining how closing the 17th Street Canal floodgates could contribute to flooding from rainfall. He also said the corps should distribute the emergency protocols that govern at what wind speed and water levels engineers will lower the gates.
The gates will remain open during normal downpours, but will close in advance of hurricanes to block storm surge from entering the canal, officials have said.
Councilwoman Jennifer Sneed said she requested that the corps hold weekly news conferences, given that the information the corps had passed to her has become quickly outdated. She noted that federal engineers had promised to install 6,000 cfs of drainage capacity in September as recently as last Friday, during a corps-led tour of the 17th Street Canal.
Frustrated and angry
"I am very, very frustrated and very angry that there seems to be new goals, new dates and new plans, and residents of Jefferson Parish are not fully informed," Sneed said. "I am not going to be the person to disseminate their information."
Jim Taylor, a spokesman for the corps' Task Force Guardian, said it has been holding "frequent" meetings with elected leaders, community groups and reporters.
"We have been very transparent in everything we have done to help rebuild the city and restore the hurricane protection system," Taylor said.
He and other corps brass said this week that the temporary pumps interact in a complex manner, and that it takes time to build an effective drainage system.
"What is really important to remember is the gates at the outfall canals may never be closed" if no major hurricanes hit New Orleans, Taylor said. "In the last 40 years, they would have been closed only three times."
Jefferson leaders met Friday with the corps and with officials from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board to discuss how city, suburban and state land would be kept dry when floodgates are closed at the mouth of the canal.
The Jefferson delegation wants to transform a low-lying section of Interstate 10 under the Mounes Street railroad overpass to a retention pond that would collect water during a hurricane -- when no cars are on the road anyway -- to keep it out of vulnerable neighborhoods.
The department had wanted to pump that water into the 17th Street Canal to keep the highway dry for emergency vehicles moving into New Orleans after the hurricane had passed.
It is not possible to keep neighborhoods and the highway dry as long as long as the drainage capacity of the canal is reduced.
Representatives from Jefferson, New Orleans and the state agreed to convene with engineers next week to figure out how the interstate might be allowed to flood in the brief period after the evacuation is complete, but before relief vehicles need entry into the city.
"We were talking about the interval when the interstate is a ghost town," Jefferson Parish Councilman Tom Capella said. "I feel comfortable that when the evacuation is over and everybody is out, it is the time to protect property."
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Audrey2Katrina
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New St. Bernard medical facility seeing 90 patients a day
The newly-opened St. Bernard Parish Health Center is seeing 85-90 patients daily, parish officials say.
The health center, which opened in a 22,000-square-foot building at the parish's Disaster Relief Center on West Judge Perez Drice in Chalmette Tuesday, is financed by FEMA, parish government and a large donation from Chalmette Refining, a parish news release says. It has 12 exam rooms, instead of the six that were in the triple-wide trailer office that parish medical officials had been working out of.
Michael Pisciotta, administrator of the facility, said the center is now seeing 85-90 patients a day and is open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Sundays. The phone number at the center is (504) 271-8952.
There is now a treatment room and EKG, lab work and radiology services will
shortly be available, he said. “We’re growing with the parish by increasing
services as the need arises,’’ Pisciotta said. He also said the health center is treating an increasing number of people suffering injuries such as lacerations while working on their homes in St. Bernard. There also an increasing number of patients with respiratory problems from exposure to irritants.
Also, Dr. Bryan Bertucci, the parish coroner, said he is also seeing a number of patients with some form of depression because of the problems associated with the storm recovery effort. Physical symptoms can often be a product of the emotional distress they endure, he said.
The newly-opened St. Bernard Parish Health Center is seeing 85-90 patients daily, parish officials say.
The health center, which opened in a 22,000-square-foot building at the parish's Disaster Relief Center on West Judge Perez Drice in Chalmette Tuesday, is financed by FEMA, parish government and a large donation from Chalmette Refining, a parish news release says. It has 12 exam rooms, instead of the six that were in the triple-wide trailer office that parish medical officials had been working out of.
Michael Pisciotta, administrator of the facility, said the center is now seeing 85-90 patients a day and is open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Sundays. The phone number at the center is (504) 271-8952.
There is now a treatment room and EKG, lab work and radiology services will
shortly be available, he said. “We’re growing with the parish by increasing
services as the need arises,’’ Pisciotta said. He also said the health center is treating an increasing number of people suffering injuries such as lacerations while working on their homes in St. Bernard. There also an increasing number of patients with respiratory problems from exposure to irritants.
Also, Dr. Bryan Bertucci, the parish coroner, said he is also seeing a number of patients with some form of depression because of the problems associated with the storm recovery effort. Physical symptoms can often be a product of the emotional distress they endure, he said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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D-Day Museum changes its name
To the boom of a 37-mm anti-tank gun, officials of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans officially changed the institution’s name Friday to the National World War II Museum.
The name change reflects official designation by Congress as the country’s World War II museum, as well as the steady broadening of the museum’s educational mission.
Recognizing the crucial role played by New Orleans-manufactured landing boats during the invasion of France by allied forces, the D-Day museum was founded in 2000 under historian Stephen Ambrose’s leadership.
Directors of the Warehouse District museum plan a $282 million expansion as part of a long-term effort to explore all facets of the war. They have scheduled an early-2007 groundbreaking for a theater that will feature a film about the war produced and narrated by actor Tom Hanks, a key museum supporter.
Beginning June 11, the museum will add Sunday to what had been a Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule since Hurricane Katrina, reflecting a steady rise in attendance since the storm. Attendance averaged 700 people a day before Katrina, when the museum was open seven days a week. In December, when the museum first opened after the storm, attendance averaged 97 people, and has climbed to 389 in May, officials said. Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Thursday, when the closing time is extended to 7 p.m.
To the boom of a 37-mm anti-tank gun, officials of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans officially changed the institution’s name Friday to the National World War II Museum.
The name change reflects official designation by Congress as the country’s World War II museum, as well as the steady broadening of the museum’s educational mission.
Recognizing the crucial role played by New Orleans-manufactured landing boats during the invasion of France by allied forces, the D-Day museum was founded in 2000 under historian Stephen Ambrose’s leadership.
Directors of the Warehouse District museum plan a $282 million expansion as part of a long-term effort to explore all facets of the war. They have scheduled an early-2007 groundbreaking for a theater that will feature a film about the war produced and narrated by actor Tom Hanks, a key museum supporter.
Beginning June 11, the museum will add Sunday to what had been a Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule since Hurricane Katrina, reflecting a steady rise in attendance since the storm. Attendance averaged 700 people a day before Katrina, when the museum was open seven days a week. In December, when the museum first opened after the storm, attendance averaged 97 people, and has climbed to 389 in May, officials said. Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Thursday, when the closing time is extended to 7 p.m.
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Audrey2Katrina
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GCN: Gulf Coast Network Update:
updated 6/3/06
Government officials from Sweden will be visiting Pass Christian Monday as part of an assessment of how that nation can help with housing needs here...Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and Senator Trent Lott announced a major $44-million federal grant to completely rebuild the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport...Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr is the talk of the town for exaggerated comments made in speech in Connecticut... Nine months after Katrina, FEMA reports that More than 102,000 people are housed temporarily in more than 38,000 FEMA-provided travel trailers and mobile homes, including the more than 3,000 units compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act....Pass Christian Mayor Billy McDonald says he will resign over health issues...Crime is soaring in Hancock County say officials...FEMA has agreed to extend right-of-entry to help owners remove homes destroyed by Katrina. The new ROE deadline is June 15th...The State Insurance Commission will hold a public hearing on the windpool insurance rate increase June 5th in Jackson...The Coast is still in relief mode not recovery nine months after Hurricane Katrina. 6/3/06 8:17 AM
updated 6/3/06
Government officials from Sweden will be visiting Pass Christian Monday as part of an assessment of how that nation can help with housing needs here...Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and Senator Trent Lott announced a major $44-million federal grant to completely rebuild the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport...Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr is the talk of the town for exaggerated comments made in speech in Connecticut... Nine months after Katrina, FEMA reports that More than 102,000 people are housed temporarily in more than 38,000 FEMA-provided travel trailers and mobile homes, including the more than 3,000 units compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act....Pass Christian Mayor Billy McDonald says he will resign over health issues...Crime is soaring in Hancock County say officials...FEMA has agreed to extend right-of-entry to help owners remove homes destroyed by Katrina. The new ROE deadline is June 15th...The State Insurance Commission will hold a public hearing on the windpool insurance rate increase June 5th in Jackson...The Coast is still in relief mode not recovery nine months after Hurricane Katrina. 6/3/06 8:17 AM
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Audrey2Katrina
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Pascagoula Gallery of Katrina Photos:
http://www.cityofpascagoula.com/pascagoula_after_katrina.htm
This is a link to the City of Pascagoula's own website, and some of the Katrina Photos they've got in their gallery.
http://www.cityofpascagoula.com/pascagoula_after_katrina.htm
This is a link to the City of Pascagoula's own website, and some of the Katrina Photos they've got in their gallery.
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Location: Metaire, La.
University of South Alabama Student Kidnapped
Last Update: 6/4/2006 1:05:30 PM
Police are looking for two people accused of locking a University of South Alabama student inside the trunk of his own car. It happened during a carjacking early Friday morning.
Authorities say the graduate student from Nigeria was visiting his girlfriend in one of the Delta Dormitories when all of a sudden two armed men approached him in the parking lot, made him get into the trunk of his car, and drove off with him inside.
Campus police say the armed men drove the student's Honda Accord --- with him still locked inside the trunk --- all the way to a BP gas station at the corner of Old Shell and Hillcrest Roads. Somehow, the student managed to pop the trunk and free himself, even though his car doesn't have an automatic truck release. Authorities say he then ran to a pay phone outside the BP station and called 911. Meantime, the suspects sped away.
The whole incident will undoubtedly have some students looking behind their backs more often. "I walk to class by myself, I walk to the laundry room by myself at night and I don't worry about people coming to get me,” said senior finance major Amy Maxwell.
"Sometimes I feel so safe I just don't lock my car at all. Well, things like this make you want to think twice,” said Ibrahim Hasan, a junior finance major at the University of South Alabama. Hasan also lives in the Delta Dormatories.
The student was not injured. His car has since been returned. Experts say you too can learn a valuable lesson from his horrific experience by learning to use your emergency trunk release system. Most trunk release buttons are easily accessible. "It is a little T-shaped pull-type handle. It glows in the dark, it has a little picture on it so if you are trapped in the trunk, you should be able to see it," said Greg McCown of McConnell Automotive.
Last Update: 6/4/2006 1:05:30 PM
Police are looking for two people accused of locking a University of South Alabama student inside the trunk of his own car. It happened during a carjacking early Friday morning.
Authorities say the graduate student from Nigeria was visiting his girlfriend in one of the Delta Dormitories when all of a sudden two armed men approached him in the parking lot, made him get into the trunk of his car, and drove off with him inside.
Campus police say the armed men drove the student's Honda Accord --- with him still locked inside the trunk --- all the way to a BP gas station at the corner of Old Shell and Hillcrest Roads. Somehow, the student managed to pop the trunk and free himself, even though his car doesn't have an automatic truck release. Authorities say he then ran to a pay phone outside the BP station and called 911. Meantime, the suspects sped away.
The whole incident will undoubtedly have some students looking behind their backs more often. "I walk to class by myself, I walk to the laundry room by myself at night and I don't worry about people coming to get me,” said senior finance major Amy Maxwell.
"Sometimes I feel so safe I just don't lock my car at all. Well, things like this make you want to think twice,” said Ibrahim Hasan, a junior finance major at the University of South Alabama. Hasan also lives in the Delta Dormatories.
The student was not injured. His car has since been returned. Experts say you too can learn a valuable lesson from his horrific experience by learning to use your emergency trunk release system. Most trunk release buttons are easily accessible. "It is a little T-shaped pull-type handle. It glows in the dark, it has a little picture on it so if you are trapped in the trunk, you should be able to see it," said Greg McCown of McConnell Automotive.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Four lightning strikes in Mobile destroy 2 homes, injure 2
Last Update: 6/4/2006 1:04:59 PM
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - Lightning strikes destroyed two homes and injured two people as storms passed through Mobile County.
Patrick Caine, 24, was apparently struck by lightning Friday afternoon as he brought garbage cans and a lawnmower in from his front lawn in Theodore, said Mike Cooney, Caine's friend.
When Caine grabbed the lawnmower in his front yard, he saw a flash of light before waking up later on his back, said Cooney, who relayed Caine's story to the Press-Register for a Saturday story. Cooney said Caine experienced some pain in his arm but didn't even drop the drink in his hand.
"Didn't spill a drop!" Cooney said.
Caine's green lawn has a brown spot the size of a softball where the lightning apparently struck.
Natalie Mathews was on the phone at Azar's Uniforms when she heard a pop, followed by pain in her jaw and spine. Mathews, 37, said she otherwise feels good.
Two houses, only blocks apart in the same subdivision, burned when lightning struck nearby trees Friday.
Clarissa Mosley and her two grandchildren were inside the house at 6509 Creekwood Court heard a loud boom, followed by flames burning the living room curtains, Mosley said. Mosley was treated for smoke inhalation. The others were unhurt.
No one was at 6613 Gaslight Lane when a similar lightning strike burned the home there.
Last Update: 6/4/2006 1:04:59 PM
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - Lightning strikes destroyed two homes and injured two people as storms passed through Mobile County.
Patrick Caine, 24, was apparently struck by lightning Friday afternoon as he brought garbage cans and a lawnmower in from his front lawn in Theodore, said Mike Cooney, Caine's friend.
When Caine grabbed the lawnmower in his front yard, he saw a flash of light before waking up later on his back, said Cooney, who relayed Caine's story to the Press-Register for a Saturday story. Cooney said Caine experienced some pain in his arm but didn't even drop the drink in his hand.
"Didn't spill a drop!" Cooney said.
Caine's green lawn has a brown spot the size of a softball where the lightning apparently struck.
Natalie Mathews was on the phone at Azar's Uniforms when she heard a pop, followed by pain in her jaw and spine. Mathews, 37, said she otherwise feels good.
Two houses, only blocks apart in the same subdivision, burned when lightning struck nearby trees Friday.
Clarissa Mosley and her two grandchildren were inside the house at 6509 Creekwood Court heard a loud boom, followed by flames burning the living room curtains, Mosley said. Mosley was treated for smoke inhalation. The others were unhurt.
No one was at 6613 Gaslight Lane when a similar lightning strike burned the home there.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Corner groceries, restaurants, radio, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are serving up
Growth is robust in Biloxi, Gulfport
By JOSHUA NORMAN
Sun-Herald 6-4-06
Coast's Latin flavor
HARRISON COUNTY - Locals are experiencing not just an explosion in the Latino population, but a growing opportunity for residents to get a taste of the creature comforts of millions of Latin Americans.
There are at least five grocery/corner stores catering specifically to Latinos, nearly a dozen Mexican restaurants, a Spanish-language radio program and talks of opening new businesses continue daily in Harrison County, said Andy Guerra, president of the Gulf Coast Latin American Association.
"They're quite prosperous," said Guerra, adding that Katrina did slow down growth for pre-storm Latino business owners, but just slightly. "They're slowly getting to where they want to be."
The population surge of Latinos in Biloxi, Gulfport and other Coast cities is not just providing an opportunity for Latino business owners, either. It is also giving traditional businesses like Wal-Mart, the Coast Transit Authority and Home Depot a whole new cash-heavy demographic to tap into.
Most Wal-Marts and the Home Depot now feature Spanish-language sections and the Coast Transit Authority is planning to produce bilingual schedules soon, Guerra said.
For business owners who were there before the storm - like the Diaz family that has run the La Bamba Latin Store on Judge Sekul Avenue in Biloxi for more than two years - the surge in the Latino population has allowed them to both expand the store itself and open new ones elsewhere.
Just three weeks ago, a satellite La Bamba store opened on Irish Hill Drive.
"We had one money transfer company (available in the store) before the storm," said Martin Diaz, whose six siblings, three nephews and parents all help run the family business. "Now, we have four companies."
Mexican restaurants were popular pre-Katrina, especially among military folks who develop a taste for the food in the American West, and now they are usually filled to capacity with both immigrants and locals crowding tables, said Enrique Vega, owner of El Rancho Mexican Restaurant on Pass Road in Biloxi.
"The Latino community is losing their fears," Vega said, adding that this may be contributing to the rise in the number of Latino-owned businesses in the area.
Do not expect that trend to slow, either, said Vega, who is opening a second restaurant in Gulfport before the year is over and may add another one in Biloxi next year.
Diaz said this is all too true, and to expect the kinds of Latino businesses opening to change, too.
"People are definitely staying here with families," Diaz said, adding that this will increase demand for things other than tortillas and queso blanco. "I'm not saying we're not going to open another one."
Growth is robust in Biloxi, Gulfport
By JOSHUA NORMAN
Sun-Herald 6-4-06
Coast's Latin flavor
HARRISON COUNTY - Locals are experiencing not just an explosion in the Latino population, but a growing opportunity for residents to get a taste of the creature comforts of millions of Latin Americans.
There are at least five grocery/corner stores catering specifically to Latinos, nearly a dozen Mexican restaurants, a Spanish-language radio program and talks of opening new businesses continue daily in Harrison County, said Andy Guerra, president of the Gulf Coast Latin American Association.
"They're quite prosperous," said Guerra, adding that Katrina did slow down growth for pre-storm Latino business owners, but just slightly. "They're slowly getting to where they want to be."
The population surge of Latinos in Biloxi, Gulfport and other Coast cities is not just providing an opportunity for Latino business owners, either. It is also giving traditional businesses like Wal-Mart, the Coast Transit Authority and Home Depot a whole new cash-heavy demographic to tap into.
Most Wal-Marts and the Home Depot now feature Spanish-language sections and the Coast Transit Authority is planning to produce bilingual schedules soon, Guerra said.
For business owners who were there before the storm - like the Diaz family that has run the La Bamba Latin Store on Judge Sekul Avenue in Biloxi for more than two years - the surge in the Latino population has allowed them to both expand the store itself and open new ones elsewhere.
Just three weeks ago, a satellite La Bamba store opened on Irish Hill Drive.
"We had one money transfer company (available in the store) before the storm," said Martin Diaz, whose six siblings, three nephews and parents all help run the family business. "Now, we have four companies."
Mexican restaurants were popular pre-Katrina, especially among military folks who develop a taste for the food in the American West, and now they are usually filled to capacity with both immigrants and locals crowding tables, said Enrique Vega, owner of El Rancho Mexican Restaurant on Pass Road in Biloxi.
"The Latino community is losing their fears," Vega said, adding that this may be contributing to the rise in the number of Latino-owned businesses in the area.
Do not expect that trend to slow, either, said Vega, who is opening a second restaurant in Gulfport before the year is over and may add another one in Biloxi next year.
Diaz said this is all too true, and to expect the kinds of Latino businesses opening to change, too.
"People are definitely staying here with families," Diaz said, adding that this will increase demand for things other than tortillas and queso blanco. "I'm not saying we're not going to open another one."
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Audrey2Katrina
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Pass resident rallies help for her home
Fellow students come from N.H.
By JOSHUA NORMAN
Sun Herald 6-4-06
PASS CHRISTIAN - University of New Hampshire student Donna Blanchard had a tattered photo in her hands, with a hole in one side and watermarks and dirt everywhere else.
She had dug it out of a debris pile on the side of Hickory Street and handed it to Verina Robiller as if it were a thousand-dollar bill - which is to say, carefully.
"It's my nephew, Blake," Robiller, 20, said. "We lost all our pictures."
Leaving home can be a hard thing to do for any young person, but it can be especially bad if they leave home in its hour of greatest need.
There was little choice for Robiller, a lifelong Pass resident forced to transfer to the University of New Hampshire when her University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast campus was ruined during Hurricane Katrina.
Robiller came back last week though, with 20 or so of her newest New Hampshire friends, a $1,600 check for the city of Pass Christian and a nagging at her conscience to quell.
Finding Blake's photo on her mother's now-empty lot was just the tip of the iceberg in a week filled with innumerable small acts that meant the world to someone.
"That's the one thing about leaving, I felt like I was abandoning my hometown," said Robiller, who will graduate from UNH with a degree in family studies this December. "I love this place."
The return began in a human development class one day, Robiller said, when she was wearing a T-shirt that read "Katrina blew my house away."
Several students and the professor took notice, Robiller said, and the next thing she knew she was standing before a class of 80, telling the story of Pass Christian and Hurricane Katrina.
Dan O'Hara, 20, a history major, took a special interest in her story.
He approached Robiller and several months later, here they were with 18 classmates, full funding for their trip, and a little left over for the city itself, all of which was raised on campus.
"The hardest thing to grasp is the destruction," said O'Hara, adding that the recent bad flooding in New Hampshire seemed paltry by comparison.
Standing in the home where her mom, Louise Robiller, raised her was hard for Robiller, but the satisfaction of having helped her town some and of showing a group of strangers what happened to her home made the pain bearable.
"If you live on the other side of the country, it's hard to grasp that it's not old news here," Robiller said.
Fellow students come from N.H.
By JOSHUA NORMAN
Sun Herald 6-4-06
PASS CHRISTIAN - University of New Hampshire student Donna Blanchard had a tattered photo in her hands, with a hole in one side and watermarks and dirt everywhere else.
She had dug it out of a debris pile on the side of Hickory Street and handed it to Verina Robiller as if it were a thousand-dollar bill - which is to say, carefully.
"It's my nephew, Blake," Robiller, 20, said. "We lost all our pictures."
Leaving home can be a hard thing to do for any young person, but it can be especially bad if they leave home in its hour of greatest need.
There was little choice for Robiller, a lifelong Pass resident forced to transfer to the University of New Hampshire when her University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast campus was ruined during Hurricane Katrina.
Robiller came back last week though, with 20 or so of her newest New Hampshire friends, a $1,600 check for the city of Pass Christian and a nagging at her conscience to quell.
Finding Blake's photo on her mother's now-empty lot was just the tip of the iceberg in a week filled with innumerable small acts that meant the world to someone.
"That's the one thing about leaving, I felt like I was abandoning my hometown," said Robiller, who will graduate from UNH with a degree in family studies this December. "I love this place."
The return began in a human development class one day, Robiller said, when she was wearing a T-shirt that read "Katrina blew my house away."
Several students and the professor took notice, Robiller said, and the next thing she knew she was standing before a class of 80, telling the story of Pass Christian and Hurricane Katrina.
Dan O'Hara, 20, a history major, took a special interest in her story.
He approached Robiller and several months later, here they were with 18 classmates, full funding for their trip, and a little left over for the city itself, all of which was raised on campus.
"The hardest thing to grasp is the destruction," said O'Hara, adding that the recent bad flooding in New Hampshire seemed paltry by comparison.
Standing in the home where her mom, Louise Robiller, raised her was hard for Robiller, but the satisfaction of having helped her town some and of showing a group of strangers what happened to her home made the pain bearable.
"If you live on the other side of the country, it's hard to grasp that it's not old news here," Robiller said.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Book isn't closed on city finances
Optimistic forecasts generate skepticism
Sunday, June 04, 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt
Staff writer Times-Picayune
How long will the city of New Orleans remain broke?
Local officials provided two starkly different answers to that question when they met with a group of bankers April 6 to sell them on the idea of lending the crippled city $150 million to avert financial collapse.
Under a fairly conservative scenario, in which just 60 percent of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population returns to the city by 2010, the next five years will be fairly bleak. Unable to cover the cost of providing basic services through local taxes and other revenue, the city will finish each year in the red, piling up a crushing deficit of $601 million over the five-year period, the local officials said.
But under their more optimistic scenario, which envisions robust recovery and record-setting property tax collections, New Orleans' books will be close to balanced within two years. By 2010, when the population reaches an estimated 333,000, or 75 percent of its pre-Katrina base, the city would generate a modest budget surplus of about $64 million.
John Kallenborn, local president of JPMorgan Chase Bank, said he and the other bankers who have committed to the $150 million deal buy what he calls the "rosy" scenario. The five banks have agreed to terms with Mayor Ray Nagin, but the proposed loan also must be approved by the New Orleans City Council and the State Bond Commission.
"Internally, we have signed on to the more optimistic case for revenues," said Kallenborn, who has led the financing effort and whose bank has agreed to cover $55 million of the loan. "But it is very important that they maintain discipline on expenses. If they get wacky on that, we're going to have a problem that will be very hard to solve."
'Extremely enthusiastic'
Despite the bankers' faith in New Orleans, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about which path the city's economy is taking. While New Orleans got off to a surprisingly strong start this year, with sales tax collections outpacing even the most optimistic predictions, there is widespread skepticism about some of the major assumptions the city is making.
Demographers take issue with the city's best-case population estimates, which are the driving force behind the revenue gains. They say the slow pace of recovery could prompt many of those who have returned to pull up stakes. Although some population experts say the city could have as many as 300,000 people by 2010, they also say it is possible that New Orleans could be home to just 210,000 residents.
"These projections look extremely enthusiastic," said Elliott Stonecipher, a demographer and political scientist in Shreveport, about the city's presentation to the bankers.
Local assessors are equally skeptical. They question projections that show the city raking in $63 million in real estate taxes by 2008 -- $10 million more than the city collected in 2004. Assessor Erroll Williams, whose 3rd District includes nearly half the homes in New Orleans, said he thinks it will take at least five years for property tax collections to reach pre-Katrina levels.
Default could loom
New Orleans Finance Director Reggie Zeno, whose office created the projections, said the city did the best it could under challenging conditions.
"We are trying to do a crystal ball of the future when we have no trends to base this on," Zeno said. "There will be give and take within all of these revenue items. It might be that property taxes don't meet our projections, but there may be another revenue source -- such as sales taxes -- that exceeds our projections. And that is really the bottom line."
The issue of which set of projections is right could be important three years from now, when the loan comes due. If the city's recovery has been greatly delayed, New Orleans could default on the loan and face the prospect of involuntary bankruptcy, according to Peter Kessenich, an Atlanta financial adviser who has been guiding the city's efforts to secure bank financing.
But that's not a big concern right now. In fact, Kessenich said, recent reports from the city's Finance Department suggest that some of the most exuberant predictions are too tame.
In April, for instance, the city collected $10.8 million in sales taxes, nearly twice the conservative forecast of $5.8 million. Through the first four months of the year, sales tax collections totaled $30.6 million, off 23 percent from the same period last year but well ahead of schedule -- thanks in part to home-repair purchases and replacement of flooded vehicles.
If stores and services continue to ring up this kind of business, the city stands to haul in as much as $87 million in sales taxes this year, which would be slightly above the best-case prediction of $81 million. Sales taxes are an important bellwether of the local economy, and they represent the city's single largest source of revenue.
That's not the only good news, according to Jerome Lomba, the city's chief economist. By April 30, the city also had met its 2006 target for collecting franchise fees, which are the local taxes that show up on utility bills, such as those from Entergy New Orleans, Cox Communications or BellSouth.
The city projected franchise fees at $11.4 million this year, which it reached by the end of April. The fees reflect usage; the more a service is used by local residents, the more they pay in franchise fees.
"That is very good news," Lomba said.
Unclear picture
However, Lomba said, those figures could be somewhat misleading. Though most utility companies pay their fees each month, BellSouth prepaid its 2006 fees of $5.5 million in January, which means the city isn't quite as far ahead as the raw numbers indicate. Still, he said, utility usage remains much higher than expected.
Though city officials are banking on large increases in both franchise fees and sales taxes, their biggest hope is that property taxes will soar thanks to an unprecedented amount of construction tied to Hurricane Katrina. Altogether, real estate taxes account for one-fourth of the additional revenue the city expects to collect under its best-case financial plan.
"The properties are going to increase in value because of the renovation activities," Lomba said. "The housing stock that has been renovated will actually be better than the housing stock that existed pre-Katrina."
Over the past nine months, the city has issued a total of 33,778 residential building permits representing nearly $2 billion worth of construction work, according to Mike Centineo, the city's director of safety and permits. Another 2,013 commercial building permits have been issued.
Before Katrina, the city typically issued about 6,000 residential permits annually.
Rebuilding pace questioned
Lomba said most of that new construction should quickly show up on the property tax rolls, generating millions of dollars in additional tax revenue for the city in 2007 and 2008. By 2010, he said, the city could collect as much as $93 million in real estate taxes, a 75 percent increase over 2004 collections.
But Williams doesn't buy it. Though the city has handed out as many as 800 building permits a day in recent weeks, Williams said that hasn't yet translated into a wave of new construction.
"A lot of people are going to let their houses sit there for the next two to three years," Williams said. "Some are waiting to settle up with their insurance companies. Others are waiting for the contractors to lower their prices. But that's not going to happen until the market adjusts."
Williams said assessors also are handicapped by a lack of information from City Hall. Though they used to get weekly permit reports on construction activity, those reports haven't been delivered since Katrina, even though Williams said city officials promised to start providing the information in April.
"Normally, if someone finishes a renovation, the city issues a certificate of occupancy and we get a printout of all the permits issued and the ones that were completed," Williams said. "But that ain't happening. And until we iron out that problem, this process is going to be much slower."
Centineo said he is aware of the problem and is working on getting the information to assessors.
Reassessments planned
Lomba said assessors shouldn't be waiting on City Hall to reassess property. He noted that the city's seven assessors face an August 2007 deadline to reassess all residential property, after the Louisiana Tax Commission found widespread inequities in local housing values. That reassessment was originally due this August, but the Tax Commission recently agreed to extend the deadline considering the scope of the additional work generated by Katrina.
Williams said city officials shouldn't automatically assume that the reassessment will lead to dramatically higher values. In January, local assessors announced they had written down the value of taxable property in New Orleans by 54 percent because of hurricane-related damage. Since then, many property owners have shown that they deserved even bigger tax breaks, Williams said.
"People are bringing in evidence that the devastation is greater than what we provided for," Williams said. "We may have given a guy a 50 percent write-down, and he is showing it is gone altogether."
Williams said it will take two to three years for things to sort themselves out.
Census urged
Given the lack of consensus on the city's financial situation, some experts said the city should try to get more reliable information on where things stand before attempting a look into the future.
When asked about New Orleans' current population, Lomba said it is 200,000 to 250,000. That's far too wide a range to use for meaningful population studies, Stonecipher said. He noted that a study done by Rand Corp. estimated that the city's population was 155,000 in March and would reach about 198,000 by September.
Stonecipher is urging city officials to pay for their own census, which he said would cost less than $1 million but would provide an irrefutable starting point for economic forecasting.
"We ought to be asking ourselves: Why are we satisfied with sophisticated guesswork when we can do better?" Stonecipher said. "I think the answer is obvious: The (New Orleans) government is afraid of what it will show. And there is no need for that. Whatever it shows, it shows. I don't think we should be assuming the worst here."
Even without hard data, however, Stonecipher said he is "very skeptical" about the city's population estimates, which show the population climbing from 258,352 in 2007 to 333,386 in 2010.
Though a sudden influx of affordable housing could help quickly repopulate large swaths of the city, Stonecipher said it is equally likely that the slow pace of recovery will lead to a steady decline in population.
"Obviously, intervening events are going to throw all of these numbers way off," he said. "They could be thrown off in a positive direction, but I could argue just as strongly that we are going to be past 2010 before such an event takes place. And if we are, we aren't going to have 333,000 in 2010. You may have 260,000. And you may have 210,000 if a bunch of people get tired of all the problems we already know about."
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said he also questions the city's optimism. He doesn't see the city's population topping 300,000 by 2010, and he said even that much growth would require a nearly perfect level of local, state and federal cooperation in the city's recovery.
"All of the stars have to be lined up the right way for this to happen," he said.
Optimistic forecasts generate skepticism
Sunday, June 04, 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt
Staff writer Times-Picayune
How long will the city of New Orleans remain broke?
Local officials provided two starkly different answers to that question when they met with a group of bankers April 6 to sell them on the idea of lending the crippled city $150 million to avert financial collapse.
Under a fairly conservative scenario, in which just 60 percent of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population returns to the city by 2010, the next five years will be fairly bleak. Unable to cover the cost of providing basic services through local taxes and other revenue, the city will finish each year in the red, piling up a crushing deficit of $601 million over the five-year period, the local officials said.
But under their more optimistic scenario, which envisions robust recovery and record-setting property tax collections, New Orleans' books will be close to balanced within two years. By 2010, when the population reaches an estimated 333,000, or 75 percent of its pre-Katrina base, the city would generate a modest budget surplus of about $64 million.
John Kallenborn, local president of JPMorgan Chase Bank, said he and the other bankers who have committed to the $150 million deal buy what he calls the "rosy" scenario. The five banks have agreed to terms with Mayor Ray Nagin, but the proposed loan also must be approved by the New Orleans City Council and the State Bond Commission.
"Internally, we have signed on to the more optimistic case for revenues," said Kallenborn, who has led the financing effort and whose bank has agreed to cover $55 million of the loan. "But it is very important that they maintain discipline on expenses. If they get wacky on that, we're going to have a problem that will be very hard to solve."
'Extremely enthusiastic'
Despite the bankers' faith in New Orleans, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about which path the city's economy is taking. While New Orleans got off to a surprisingly strong start this year, with sales tax collections outpacing even the most optimistic predictions, there is widespread skepticism about some of the major assumptions the city is making.
Demographers take issue with the city's best-case population estimates, which are the driving force behind the revenue gains. They say the slow pace of recovery could prompt many of those who have returned to pull up stakes. Although some population experts say the city could have as many as 300,000 people by 2010, they also say it is possible that New Orleans could be home to just 210,000 residents.
"These projections look extremely enthusiastic," said Elliott Stonecipher, a demographer and political scientist in Shreveport, about the city's presentation to the bankers.
Local assessors are equally skeptical. They question projections that show the city raking in $63 million in real estate taxes by 2008 -- $10 million more than the city collected in 2004. Assessor Erroll Williams, whose 3rd District includes nearly half the homes in New Orleans, said he thinks it will take at least five years for property tax collections to reach pre-Katrina levels.
Default could loom
New Orleans Finance Director Reggie Zeno, whose office created the projections, said the city did the best it could under challenging conditions.
"We are trying to do a crystal ball of the future when we have no trends to base this on," Zeno said. "There will be give and take within all of these revenue items. It might be that property taxes don't meet our projections, but there may be another revenue source -- such as sales taxes -- that exceeds our projections. And that is really the bottom line."
The issue of which set of projections is right could be important three years from now, when the loan comes due. If the city's recovery has been greatly delayed, New Orleans could default on the loan and face the prospect of involuntary bankruptcy, according to Peter Kessenich, an Atlanta financial adviser who has been guiding the city's efforts to secure bank financing.
But that's not a big concern right now. In fact, Kessenich said, recent reports from the city's Finance Department suggest that some of the most exuberant predictions are too tame.
In April, for instance, the city collected $10.8 million in sales taxes, nearly twice the conservative forecast of $5.8 million. Through the first four months of the year, sales tax collections totaled $30.6 million, off 23 percent from the same period last year but well ahead of schedule -- thanks in part to home-repair purchases and replacement of flooded vehicles.
If stores and services continue to ring up this kind of business, the city stands to haul in as much as $87 million in sales taxes this year, which would be slightly above the best-case prediction of $81 million. Sales taxes are an important bellwether of the local economy, and they represent the city's single largest source of revenue.
That's not the only good news, according to Jerome Lomba, the city's chief economist. By April 30, the city also had met its 2006 target for collecting franchise fees, which are the local taxes that show up on utility bills, such as those from Entergy New Orleans, Cox Communications or BellSouth.
The city projected franchise fees at $11.4 million this year, which it reached by the end of April. The fees reflect usage; the more a service is used by local residents, the more they pay in franchise fees.
"That is very good news," Lomba said.
Unclear picture
However, Lomba said, those figures could be somewhat misleading. Though most utility companies pay their fees each month, BellSouth prepaid its 2006 fees of $5.5 million in January, which means the city isn't quite as far ahead as the raw numbers indicate. Still, he said, utility usage remains much higher than expected.
Though city officials are banking on large increases in both franchise fees and sales taxes, their biggest hope is that property taxes will soar thanks to an unprecedented amount of construction tied to Hurricane Katrina. Altogether, real estate taxes account for one-fourth of the additional revenue the city expects to collect under its best-case financial plan.
"The properties are going to increase in value because of the renovation activities," Lomba said. "The housing stock that has been renovated will actually be better than the housing stock that existed pre-Katrina."
Over the past nine months, the city has issued a total of 33,778 residential building permits representing nearly $2 billion worth of construction work, according to Mike Centineo, the city's director of safety and permits. Another 2,013 commercial building permits have been issued.
Before Katrina, the city typically issued about 6,000 residential permits annually.
Rebuilding pace questioned
Lomba said most of that new construction should quickly show up on the property tax rolls, generating millions of dollars in additional tax revenue for the city in 2007 and 2008. By 2010, he said, the city could collect as much as $93 million in real estate taxes, a 75 percent increase over 2004 collections.
But Williams doesn't buy it. Though the city has handed out as many as 800 building permits a day in recent weeks, Williams said that hasn't yet translated into a wave of new construction.
"A lot of people are going to let their houses sit there for the next two to three years," Williams said. "Some are waiting to settle up with their insurance companies. Others are waiting for the contractors to lower their prices. But that's not going to happen until the market adjusts."
Williams said assessors also are handicapped by a lack of information from City Hall. Though they used to get weekly permit reports on construction activity, those reports haven't been delivered since Katrina, even though Williams said city officials promised to start providing the information in April.
"Normally, if someone finishes a renovation, the city issues a certificate of occupancy and we get a printout of all the permits issued and the ones that were completed," Williams said. "But that ain't happening. And until we iron out that problem, this process is going to be much slower."
Centineo said he is aware of the problem and is working on getting the information to assessors.
Reassessments planned
Lomba said assessors shouldn't be waiting on City Hall to reassess property. He noted that the city's seven assessors face an August 2007 deadline to reassess all residential property, after the Louisiana Tax Commission found widespread inequities in local housing values. That reassessment was originally due this August, but the Tax Commission recently agreed to extend the deadline considering the scope of the additional work generated by Katrina.
Williams said city officials shouldn't automatically assume that the reassessment will lead to dramatically higher values. In January, local assessors announced they had written down the value of taxable property in New Orleans by 54 percent because of hurricane-related damage. Since then, many property owners have shown that they deserved even bigger tax breaks, Williams said.
"People are bringing in evidence that the devastation is greater than what we provided for," Williams said. "We may have given a guy a 50 percent write-down, and he is showing it is gone altogether."
Williams said it will take two to three years for things to sort themselves out.
Census urged
Given the lack of consensus on the city's financial situation, some experts said the city should try to get more reliable information on where things stand before attempting a look into the future.
When asked about New Orleans' current population, Lomba said it is 200,000 to 250,000. That's far too wide a range to use for meaningful population studies, Stonecipher said. He noted that a study done by Rand Corp. estimated that the city's population was 155,000 in March and would reach about 198,000 by September.
Stonecipher is urging city officials to pay for their own census, which he said would cost less than $1 million but would provide an irrefutable starting point for economic forecasting.
"We ought to be asking ourselves: Why are we satisfied with sophisticated guesswork when we can do better?" Stonecipher said. "I think the answer is obvious: The (New Orleans) government is afraid of what it will show. And there is no need for that. Whatever it shows, it shows. I don't think we should be assuming the worst here."
Even without hard data, however, Stonecipher said he is "very skeptical" about the city's population estimates, which show the population climbing from 258,352 in 2007 to 333,386 in 2010.
Though a sudden influx of affordable housing could help quickly repopulate large swaths of the city, Stonecipher said it is equally likely that the slow pace of recovery will lead to a steady decline in population.
"Obviously, intervening events are going to throw all of these numbers way off," he said. "They could be thrown off in a positive direction, but I could argue just as strongly that we are going to be past 2010 before such an event takes place. And if we are, we aren't going to have 333,000 in 2010. You may have 260,000. And you may have 210,000 if a bunch of people get tired of all the problems we already know about."
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said he also questions the city's optimism. He doesn't see the city's population topping 300,000 by 2010, and he said even that much growth would require a nearly perfect level of local, state and federal cooperation in the city's recovery.
"All of the stars have to be lined up the right way for this to happen," he said.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
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New Orleans' Times Picayune:
EDITORIAL: Beyond batteries and water
Sunday, June 04, 2006
New Orleans area residents are far more aware of their vulnerability at the start of this hurricane season than they've been in the past, whether they're living in a house that made it through Katrina unscathed or in a trailer standing in front of a flood-ruined home.
Despite efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bring the area's battered hurricane protection system back to pre-Katrina strength by June 1, everything isn't in place. Floodgates and interim pumps at the 17th Street and London Avenue canals won't be finished until July. The corps said this week that it won't be able to provide maximum pumping capacity at those locations until Oct. 31 or even later -- next year.
Ideally, everything broken by Katrina would be fixed before we face another threat. But even if that had been accomplished, there could be other weak spots -- ones that won't be revealed until another powerful storm hits.
What we do know is worrisome enough. Subsidence is worse than initially thought: the land is sinking and with it the levees. The damage Katrina inflicted on coastal wetlands and barrier islands has left us with a weaker shield.
Even if no hurricane strikes this year, heavy rains are a concern, given the state of pump station motors throughout New Orleans. The corps plans to spend $40 million to rewind every pump motor that sat in corrosive saltwater, but that work won't be finished until September 2007.
The forecast that calls for an active hurricane season, our geography and the precarious state of this region following Katrina are enough to make the next six months a tense time. But an increased sense of vulnerability is only part of post-Katrina reality. We also enter this hurricane season battle-hardened and wiser.
No one who lived through those terrible days during and after Katrina will dismiss the importance of preparedness. Local, state and federal officials have learned from what happened last year, and so have ordinary citizens.
The changes that emergency planners have made are the most obvious. People who lack transportation will have more options for getting to safety. Plans are in place to move them out by bus, plane and train rather than leaving them stranded in the Superdome or Convention Center without power, plumbing or adequate food and water. National Guard troops will be on standby to drive buses in case drivers bolt.
In Jefferson Parish, officials have scrapped a plan that moved pump operators 100 miles away in advance of Katrina -- a policy that resulted in widespread flooding. From now on, they'll be housed in safe rooms instead, and Kenner and the parish have worked to cross-train workers.
The government at all levels has devised plans and backup plans. Individuals and families need to do the same, starting with the most important plan of all: a plan to evacuate.
History shows that storms like Katrina come later in the season, not in June, and that's good. It means that it's not too late to get ready, but it is high time to get started, especially for people in FEMA trailers who will have to evacuate even during tropical storms.
After Katrina, we should all know what's most important: preserving lives. The basics aren't a mystery: people need a ride, a route, a destination, a point of contact. They need to know what to grab before they go, from paperwork to prescription drugs to pet carriers.
It may be a long time before anyone has to put those plans into play, or it could be next month -- no one knows. What we do know is that the season is here, we are vulnerable, and we had better be ready.
EDITORIAL: Beyond batteries and water
Sunday, June 04, 2006
New Orleans area residents are far more aware of their vulnerability at the start of this hurricane season than they've been in the past, whether they're living in a house that made it through Katrina unscathed or in a trailer standing in front of a flood-ruined home.
Despite efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bring the area's battered hurricane protection system back to pre-Katrina strength by June 1, everything isn't in place. Floodgates and interim pumps at the 17th Street and London Avenue canals won't be finished until July. The corps said this week that it won't be able to provide maximum pumping capacity at those locations until Oct. 31 or even later -- next year.
Ideally, everything broken by Katrina would be fixed before we face another threat. But even if that had been accomplished, there could be other weak spots -- ones that won't be revealed until another powerful storm hits.
What we do know is worrisome enough. Subsidence is worse than initially thought: the land is sinking and with it the levees. The damage Katrina inflicted on coastal wetlands and barrier islands has left us with a weaker shield.
Even if no hurricane strikes this year, heavy rains are a concern, given the state of pump station motors throughout New Orleans. The corps plans to spend $40 million to rewind every pump motor that sat in corrosive saltwater, but that work won't be finished until September 2007.
The forecast that calls for an active hurricane season, our geography and the precarious state of this region following Katrina are enough to make the next six months a tense time. But an increased sense of vulnerability is only part of post-Katrina reality. We also enter this hurricane season battle-hardened and wiser.
No one who lived through those terrible days during and after Katrina will dismiss the importance of preparedness. Local, state and federal officials have learned from what happened last year, and so have ordinary citizens.
The changes that emergency planners have made are the most obvious. People who lack transportation will have more options for getting to safety. Plans are in place to move them out by bus, plane and train rather than leaving them stranded in the Superdome or Convention Center without power, plumbing or adequate food and water. National Guard troops will be on standby to drive buses in case drivers bolt.
In Jefferson Parish, officials have scrapped a plan that moved pump operators 100 miles away in advance of Katrina -- a policy that resulted in widespread flooding. From now on, they'll be housed in safe rooms instead, and Kenner and the parish have worked to cross-train workers.
The government at all levels has devised plans and backup plans. Individuals and families need to do the same, starting with the most important plan of all: a plan to evacuate.
History shows that storms like Katrina come later in the season, not in June, and that's good. It means that it's not too late to get ready, but it is high time to get started, especially for people in FEMA trailers who will have to evacuate even during tropical storms.
After Katrina, we should all know what's most important: preserving lives. The basics aren't a mystery: people need a ride, a route, a destination, a point of contact. They need to know what to grab before they go, from paperwork to prescription drugs to pet carriers.
It may be a long time before anyone has to put those plans into play, or it could be next month -- no one knows. What we do know is that the season is here, we are vulnerable, and we had better be ready.
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