NYT: Wearying Wait for Federal Aid in New Orleans

Wearying Wait for Federal Aid in New Orleans

By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: December 3, 2005

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 2 - They are the faces and voices of a city's desperation. Stepping wearily up to a Federal Emergency Management Agency help center here, all have a similar story of ruin in the past, anxiety over the future and frustration in the present, suffered differently each time.


DeLois Kramer and her 7-year-old daughter, Katlyn, making their way to a FEMA help center in New Orleans Friday. "We're almost begging them, 'Please, bring this trailer before Christmas,' " Ms. Kramer said.

Young, middle-aged and old, these citizens of New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and now urgently seeking government assistance, spoke Friday of sleeping in a truck and on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that never seems to come. Trickling into the crowded center in the Uptown neighborhood here - hoping for a trailer, a loan, cash, anything - they were grimly resigned to waiting, and waiting some more.

"You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day," said Myrna Guity, 43, whose import business was wiped out by the storm, along with her home in New Orleans East. "You get no answers to your questions. They're evasive. You're constantly 'pending.' What are you going to be doing, 'pending' for the rest of your life? I've lost everything."

-snip-
Adding to their anxiety is what these citizens describe as a frustrating paper chase through the bureaucracy of FEMA: repeat visits for help that always seems to be just one or two documents away, but the documents FEMA demands are often ruined, stored in flooded houses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/national/nationalspecial/03fema.html?hp&ex=1133672400&en=ccd0bf0ad2ca42b5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

"She and her daughter have a floor to sleep on, with "extended relatives," 70 miles away in St. Gabriel. But they must leave early each day; the relatives are increasingly "agitated," Ms, Kramer said. Every day mother and daughter are on the road, in a car packed with their clothing, going from help center to help center. "I'm very frustrated. And it's starting to take a toll on her," Ms. Kramer said, gesturing toward Katlyn.

"Are we being punished?" the little girl asks her.

Rosemary Varnado, 59, and her husband, Charles, 63, a truck driver, slept in one of his rigs for 25 days. It was a "miserable" experience, Ms. Varnado said, "just horrible." She has high blood pressure and an intestinal problem. Their home in the Lower Ninth Ward was destroyed in the flood, and now they are seeking a trailer. "We've been waiting, and waiting," Ms. Varnado said.

"Why is it taking so long? They don't know the suffering we've had to go through," she added. "We're suffering, but they are moving slow. We have no clothes, no nothing."

Ms. Varnado, who worked as a nurse's assistant, said emphatically: "We are people that have worked and paid taxes, all our lives. That's the important thing." '

People from everywhere sent clothes. What happened to the clothes?

Probaby sitting molding in a field far away from the people who need them. All the big groups Red Cross, Salvation Army etc said DO NOT SEND CLOTHING.

But it did keep you busy and now you can say you did something about NOLA. NOT.

Grow up America. We should have spent our time making sure that the people who lost their jobs got part of the cleanup jobs. Only 5% of the workforce cleaning up and rebuilding are local. Kids that have been poor all their life don't need another f...n Toys for Tots teddy bear they need their parents to have jobs and schools that give them a chance to climb out of poverty and dispair.

Because I certainly don't.

Nonstop propaganda on how "we are making a difference bringing Democracy to Iraq" on local TV. So many local soldiers have died this week.

And then my cousins husband who I have had suppers with at my Uncles in Warren OH. Al'Julani fed the baby and cut their little girls meat for her is now headed for torture someplace and there is nothing anyone can do about it. He knows less about Al Queda than I do. His Jewish employer said so. My Uncle who was very much against this marriage said so and two judges said so but the DOJ needs meat and they take anyone anytime and nobody even replied to the post. His case has been on LBN several times. I just got the message he was gone before it hit the MSN this time.

If Wellstone was alive I would have pled this case but they murdered him and Coleperson just sent me a reply to a complaint about the Bush lies to get us into war saying I misunderstood and a bunch of other lies.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5505796&mesg_id=5505796

Sometimes goods can help but things are so screwed up here that it was a wasted effort. I am just the messenger, sorry.

The only way I would feel better is if I could crush every one of those damn RW hacked voting machines and put the SOSs in jail who threw elections, OH, FL MN etc. They led to the Gulf Coast disasters, the deaths in Iraq of good soldiers and my cousins husband sent to be tortured.:cry:

This nation has been under fascist rule since 2000. There has been no justice here. I don't know when there will be.

If Patrick Fitzgerald slays these dragons, I'll vote for him to be anything he wants to be.

Published - December, 3, 2005

Records show FEMA was set up for Florida before storms struck
Memos don't shed light on reimbursements

Melanie Payne and Jeff Cull
mpayne@news-press.com


Government lawyers on Friday released Federal Emergency Management Agency documents, including memos sent to the White House that they had tried to keep secret for more than a year.

Although portions of the documents were removed, they showed that FEMA early on decided to give Florida a significant increase in the usual reimbursement costs of a disaster.

The documents also showed that the agency was mobilizing for the disaster and allocating money to Florida before the bands of the first of four deadly hurricanes struck the state on Aug. 13, 2004.

The documents, which included FEMA memos and "talking points," did not shed any new light on how the government decided to reimburse Floridians for 2004 hurricane damage. The News-Press in Fort Myers and other media -- including the Pensacola News Journal -- had reported the reimbursement process immediately following hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne.

FOIA request

The government made the documents available in response to a court order that granted a Freedom of Information Act request made by The News-Press. The newspaper, along with two other Gannett dailies -- Florida Today and the News Journal -- sued FEMA to see copies of the documents and other related disaster information.


snip


http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051203/NEWS01/512030332/1006


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1963153&mesg_id=1963153

:sarcasm: That seems to be the underlying theme to the Bush administration...

And do you think he is going to draw attention to yet another one of his failures by actually helping New Orleans? He'll do what he always does: pose, say empty words and do nothing. Help, if any, will be too little too late, and difficult to get. The sad truth is the people of the Gulf Coast, Louisiana & the Crescent City are on their own. Bush will try to avoid it, dodge it, sweep it under the carpet, in the hopes that media attention will turn elsewhere. The only real help America could give to New Orleans is labor- actually going there and rebuilding the city, then going there for vacations, etc., to restart the city's tourism based economy.

This is entirely Bush's failure. I believe that this is the one concrete reason Bush should be removed from office.

the illegal invasion of a country that was no threat to the US would be the first in my mind. This is surely right up there.

Welcome to DU azureblue.