Now watching a sneak preview of Ken McCarthy’s “The Katrina Myth: The Truth about a Thoroughly Unnatural Disaster.” Sandy Rosenthal of levees.org introduced it. 0 comments #
Day 1091: The Night Before Rising Tide
August 22, 2008 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, blogistas, federal flood, katrina, new orleans, rising tide conference
Although I want to shut it off and fall asleep on my keyboard, Rebirth Brass Band’s upbeat ”Four Leaf Clover” is playing in the background. I am exhausted from this week, but it’s time to gear up for this weekend’s Rising Tide conference. Go over to VirgoTex’s and read why what happened here three years ago still is a “Now! Now! Now!” wake-up call for America. Virgo is an American outside of New Orleans who gets it. That it’s never too late to turn our faces back towards the problems of this nation and face them head on, do the needful and become a superpower again, in the truest sense of the word. That it’s never too late to save ourselves. That it’s never too late to be real Americans.
… To most people going about their lives, sitting in front of their televisions, worrying about their own stuff, the disaster was over after a few weeks, when the water finally went down, when the news cameras left. In New Orleans, Katrina is still right now. Even after the changes that three years have brought, right now is a disaster. Entire communities disappeared. Families torn apart, spread all over the country. Schools, housing, crime, corruption, failure of government. The levees. The f-ing levees, inadequate before, being rebuilt at great cost, still inadequate.
There is much to do now, and when tomorrow and next month, and next year are now, in New Orleans there will still be much to do, and there will still be people in New Orleans doing it. Mostly all by themselves.
Day 1073: Findings Of The Latest New Orleans Index
August 4, 2008 - Filed Under federal flood, new orleans, recovery
The New Orleans Index Anniversary Edition: Three Years after Katrina
Greater New Orleans approaches the end of its third year of recovery from a position of strength, with the vast majority of its pre-storm population and jobs. But many recovery trends have slowed or stagnated in the past year as tens of thousands of blighted properties, lack of affordable housing for essential service and construction workers, and thin public services continue to plague the city and region. A strong federal-state-local partnership must continue to further the hard work of recovery, which is now well underway.
… The city may be confronting fully 65,000 blighted properties or empty lots. Rising rents, now 46 percent higher than before the storm, threaten the ability of many essential service workers to afford housing, as wages are not keeping pace. The labor market remains tight as the service and construction industries seek workers. The public service infrastructure in the city remains thin, especially public transit, which saw ridership grow by 45 percent in the past year. And, the latest maps from the Army Corps of Engineers suggest that a number of neighborhoods in the city remain at risk of six to eight feet of flooding from a “1 percent” storm, signaling the need to commit to a coastal restoration plan that goes well beyond levees.
65,000 blighted properties sit unremoved, while affordable housing is impossible to find and recovered neighborhoods are still at risk from flooding. People are coming back, however, which makes real recovery that much more urgent.
Note that the report uses the correct technical term “1 percent storm,” i.e. a storm that has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year. Not a “100-year storm,” which I heard an Army Corps of Engineers representative use on TV just last night when describing flood protection in surrounding coastal parishes. Read John Barry’s latest in which he explains why it is critical that we use proper, descriptive flood protection terminology, especially when a lot more Americans are only beginning to deal with the legal and financial, leave alone the physical and emotional, tolls of flooding.
Day 1027: The Canary Sings The Same Lament In Iowa
June 19, 2008 - Filed Under federal flood, government, midwest, new orleans
AP: Midwest flood victims feel misled by feds
“They all told us, ‘The levees are good. You can go ahead and build,’” said [Juli] Parks, who did not buy flood coverage because her bank no longer required it. “We had so much confidence in those levees.”
Commentary from D: “I’ve heard that before, here. Seems like New Orleans is the canary in the coal mine. Our infrastructure crumbles as the ill-advised war in Iraq continues unabated. $529,706,000,000.00 pissed into the sand so far. All that cash and lives wasted and still no Bin Laden.”
Can Juli Parks afford to rebuild, much less leave America? Will she, like everyone affected by our collective crumbling, ever regain the faith in this nation that is essential for recovery and progress? No country will move forward without the will and heart of its people, both now being stomped on left, right and center.
Day 1011: Does Cake Float?
June 4, 2008 - Filed Under federal flood, government, katrina, new orleans, photographs
McCain’s speech in Kenner last night (which Fanboy Stybbie got autographed). By the way, Kenner is not New Orleans.
“When Americans confront a catastrophe they have a right to expect basic competence from their government.”
Yes, basic competence in serving photo op with fake presidential birthday cake.
Day 1000: It’s Day 1000
May 24, 2008 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, federal flood, new orleans, recovery
How far along in the recovery process did you think New Orleans would be a thousand days out from the Flood?
AP: Hurricane Victims Added To Housing Bill - “By a 74-5 vote, the Senate approved an amendment by Mary Landrieu D-La., to ensure that residents of Louisiana and Mississippi who receive home rebuilding grants don’t have to pay taxes on them.” Michael Homan breathes a sigh of relief. 3 comments #
Day 947: 31 Months After, A Drive Through New Orleans
April 1, 2008 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, family & friends, federal flood, katrina, new orleans, photographs, recovery
Ms. Maisnon just departed after a very long weekend in New Orleans. Visiting from San Francisco, our sister city in character and characters, she spent a lot of Saturday with D and me. Like any good American, she was determined not to stay in the Quarter and wanted to see some parts of the city that flooded and how they have changed over the years.
Everywhere we went were people bent over working on their homes, brick by brick, wall by wall, leaf by leaf. Hear me correctly, I said people. No cranes, no government-led earthmovers and pavers. Just regular folks and miles of broken-down infrastructure around them.
Our drive took us first to the Lower Ninth and Arabi, where, for an hour, we maneuvered the potholes, questioned the stability of the new Industrial Canal wall and marveled sadly at houses untouched and that had fallen onto themselves. Somewhere at the corner of Deslonde and Missing Street Sign, Maisnon suddenly got a better feel for the place - the empty, overgrown lots that once bore houses - and just how barren it is now compared to almost three years ago. There were folks on almost every block working on their property, each of these individual people or small groups working on the only house on an entire block of devastation. This is a big part of why I didn’t take many pictures on this drive (the other reason was I didn’t know what of the million possible choices to take pictures of). If some woman were to pull up to my house, yank out her little digital camera and take pictures of me putting in my new front path, I’d put one of those red bricks right in her windshield. There’s a fine line between seeing what you’ve got to see and turning it into a tourist attraction. Let me note here that I stopped on Florida Avenue to give Maisnon an idea of what the deepest portion of a drained-swamp-turned-into-residential area looks like and that there was indeed an elderly gentleman putting in a red-brick front path that worked its way towards a house that wasn’t there. Nope, not even a solitary concrete block with which to raise it. One’s got to start somewhere at property reclamation, though, and my hat is off to this old man.
Next, we drove towards downtown and into Central City. This neighborhood has to be the most underrated in New Orleans mostly due to its crime rate, but is not in the American vernacular to the same extent as Lakeview or Lower Ninth Ward. It’s older, more historic and possesses an architectural beauty that shines brighter than most of the other flooded New Orleans neighborhoods, yet gets short shrift. Maisnon and I saw old New Orleans shotgun-style architecture that is waiting to be bought, renovated and loved by someone, but not many are so motivated by the prospect of living in the Triangle Of Death. Kudos to Poppy Brite who has made a home there and tries so hard to give her area a voice. It’s way past time the Times Picayune hosted a column entitled The View from Central City.
Then up Claiborne into the Broadmoor neighborhood which I pointed out as part of the bowl within the bowl, but where the neighborhood association bravely works in the name of people, place and all a neighborhood association should be. We stopped at the Arts Market at Palmer Park where Maisnon bought some prints and I window-shopped for a while. By then, it was lunchtime, so down St. Charles we went to pick up Senor D. Following a short wait outside and a short downpour during that wait, lunch was delicious po-boys at Liuzza’s By The Track in MidCity.
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