Aftermath - Rita and Katrina

Laurence Simon has collected links to other local Texas and Louisiana bloggers who were in the epicenter of the Hurricane Rita landfall, Houston, Galveston, and other nearby communities. The cleanup begins. Thankfully, other than the 24 senior citizens who were evacuating to Dallas on bus who were killed when their bus caught fire, there doesn't appear to be any loss of life from Rita.

I was talking with a source yesterday who had listened in on a conference call with the State Treasurer of Mississippi discussing Katrina relief. Mississippi's fiscal situation isn't nearly as bad as it could have been. The feds have provided aid via FEMA and an interstate compact fund has also provided aid to communities affected. Tax revenues from the casinos totalled $500,000 a day, but that only represents about 4% of the annual budget. The casinos are apparently in better shape than earlier report and only two need to be completely rebuilt. I think that is a bit of overreaching and the damage has put some of the casinos out of commission for significant periods of time. The Mississippi legislature will be considering the idea of changing the gambling law to permit onshore gambling halls, as opposed to the current law that requires gambling be offshore (barges or riverboats).

Damage in Beaumont, TX, is bad, but not severe or catastrophic. However, Port Arthur was flooded out, cut off from elsewhere because the main road was washed out. Groves, Texas was badly damaged. Gov. Perry of Texas calls on people to wait a few days before returning home, so that roads and other significant hazards can be cleared.

In a sigh of relief, many of the refineries came through the storm okay. Valero's facility in the area, however, was damaged and it will not be back on line for about two weeks. The other refineries will be coming back on line in the next 3-4 days. Oil platforms in the Gulf also appeared to make it through this storm okay.

UPDATE:
The Lake Charles, LA area was badly damaged. Southwest Louisiana was badly hit. Lots of significant coastal flooding.

UPDATE:
This is a story definitely worth watching. Apparently there were quite a few prisoners in Louisiana prisoners who appear to have been abandoned while they were still incarcerated.

The sheriff of Orleans Parish, Marlin N. Gusman, did not call for help in evacuating the prison until midnight on Monday, August 29, a state Department of Corrections and Public Safety spokeswoman told Human Rights Watch. Other parish prisons, she said, had called for help on the previous Saturday and Sunday. The evacuation of Orleans Parish Prison was not completed until Friday, September 2.

According to officers who worked at two of the jail buildings, Templeman 1 and 2, they began to evacuate prisoners from those buildings on Tuesday, August 30, when the floodwaters reached chest level inside. These prisoners were taken by boat to the Broad Street overpass bridge, and ultimately transported to correctional facilities outside New Orleans.

But at Templeman III, which housed about 600 inmates, there was no prison staff to help the prisoners. Inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch varied about when they last remember seeing guards at the facility, but they all insisted that there were no correctional officers in the facility on Monday, August 29. A spokeswoman for the Orleans parish sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch she did not know whether the officers at Templeman III had left the building before the evacuation.

According to inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they had no food or water from the inmate’s last meal over the weekend of August 27-28 until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29, the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable stench.

“They left us to die there,” Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Boyz have come up with a way to pay for the reconstruction and relief efforts, all while providing a budget surplus. You can agree or disagree with their priorities, but it shows that there are people thinking seriously about these issues.

UPDATE:
Louisiana wants up to $20 billion for the levees. How much of that money will actually go to the levees and hwo much of it is going to be skimmed for other purposes? I ask that only because we've seen the local levee boards diverting monies that could have gone to improve levee protection throughout Louisiana for other civic projects.

Mayor Nagin is calling for a phased reintroduction of people back into New Orleans. Businesses that are in areas that were not affected by the flooding will be allowed back in to assess damages.

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who is in charge of the federal disaster effort in the city, sounded a cautionary note Sunday about any return to New Orleans. The city can continue allowing business operators to return to unaffected areas of the city and letting residents return to the West Bank and the Algiers area, Allen said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“Where the mayor needs some thoughtful approach to is the areas that have been reflooded and the areas that may remain uninhabitable for safety, health and other reasons,” the admiral said. “And I think a timetable associated with that still needs to be worked out.”

Estimate of complete levee repair: June
The Corps of Engineers estimates the city’s system of levees will not be completely repaired until June. With a month left in the hurricane season, there’s no guarantee that another storm will not undo the next round of hard work to bring New Orleans back to life.

Elsewhere in the city, flooding continued from lesser levee problems, heavy rain and Lake Pontchartrain, which lapped over the seawall on Friday and remained above its normal level.

The renewed flooding in the Ninth Ward brought a stoic response from many locals helping to clean up a pub on St. Charles Avenue.

Meanwhile, the damage assessment in Texas and Southwest Louisiana continues.

About 500 people were rescued from high waters along the Louisiana coast in the immediate aftermath of the storm and emergency calls were still coming in from far-flung areas near the Gulf of Mexico.

"The flooding is still extensive," said Michael Bertrand of the Vermilion Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness, adding that water was actually creeping into areas that were spared flooding Saturday. "We'll be going back through there to see if there's anybody left."

During a helicopter tour, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, whose Cajun roots run deep in the region, got her first look at the hardest-hit areas.

In Cameron Parish, just across the state line from Texas and in the path of Rita's harshest winds east of the eye, fishing communities were reduced to splinters, with concrete slabs the only evidence that homes once stood there. Debris was strewn for miles by water or wind. Holly Beach, a popular vacation and fishing spot, was gone. Only the stilts that held houses off the ground remained.

A line of shrimp boats steamed through an oil sheen to reach Hackberry, only to find homes and camps had been flattened. In one area, there was a flooded high school football field, its bleachers and goal posts jutting from what had become part of the Gulf of Mexico.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; hurricane rita; katrina aid; new orleans, rita, galveston, lake charles, levee; beaumont; port arthur; levee breach.