Day 18 AM: Going Back!, EPA Reports Thus Far, Plaquemines Parish, More Google Maps

Nagin On Phased Re-Entry: In today’s state-of-the city address, New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, said that New Orleans “would begin the reopening process, making portions of the city available to about 182,000 residents.”

The schedule for re-entry includes:

• Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 17 & 18 – Business owners in Algiers, CBD, French Quarter and Uptown with ID and proof that they live or work in the area.
• Monday, Sept. 19 – Algiers Residents with ID.
• Wednesday, Sept. 21 – Residents in zip code 70115 Uptown (including the Garden District’s “leafy streets”) with ID.
• Friday, Sept. 23 – Residents in zip code 70118 Uptown with ID.
• Monday, Sept. 26 – Residents in the French Quarter and the rest of the CBD with ID.

Hooray!!! Once the computer is away and I get some coffee, it’s time for a victory dance. Not that I can go back to live for three or four months, what with working for a multinational and all, but I am very happy for New Orleans! Without people who love the city and want to be there, we cannot start the healing and rebuilding process.

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EPA Testing So Far: Testing on four different affected materials – floodwater, air, post-drainage sediment, and Lake Pontchartrain water – shows “extremely high amounts of E. coli and fecal coliform, both of which indicate the presence of human and animal feces that could contain dangerous bacteria or viruses.”

The nascent testing program has already been doused with criticism that the sampling methods are “bogus” and insufficient because –

a) no benzene, gasoline octane booster, was found; this troubles an internal EPA investigator

b) biologists and contamination specialists are of the opinion that it’s not enough to check for the aforementioned coliforms; “neither of those organisms is a particularly good marker when it comes to predicting the presence of harmful bacteria and viruses in water as brackish as what flooded New Orleans.”

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Plaquemines Parish: A letter (via Yashvinee Narechania) from Kerry M. St. Pe, Program Director at the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program underpins the need for responsible rebuilding that will let some land back to marsh and tidal flooding. Some of the pictures in the slideshow are painful – my heart goes out to St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes.

“The eastern half of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary was destroyed and we are very busy. Pray for us. See the attached PowerPoint slideshow from my home Parish. If media contacts you, send them directly to me. I have a few things to say, and I’m becoming irritated by some of the incredible stupidity I’m seeing going out of Louisiana in the media. We will try to keep you informed with things on our website.”

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More Google Maps: Google Maps users have been going out of the way to pinpoint the displaced and destruction using this relatively-new technology.

Google Maps Mania has put up several including displaced victims of the disaster, flooding, shelters and one listing in particular that shows every major levee breach right after the hurricane.

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Addendum On Insurance Companies: The hurricane, i.e. wind damage, started it all, not random flooding. Henceforth, every insurance company, which does not pay money out in a time of need, is condemned straight to the bottommost rung of hell. When these poor people have paid in hard-earned money, any money, through all of their home-owning lives, you help them out by, at the very least, giving them what they paid in! Now get off my planet!