In many areas, life has been reduced to a pile of junk.
Elsewhere, relief efforts for communities decimated by Katrina continue. Bismarck, ND is holding a charity auction for Slidell, LA. FEMA has finally opened up a center in Slidell, though FEMA officials note that federal assistance has been pouring into the parish since the storm hit:
To date, FEMA has 12 centers open in Louisiana to assist Hurricane Katrina victims.
By day's end Tuesday, workers assisted between 400-450 people.
"We're helping those who haven't been able to access the '800' phone line, don't have computer access or have questions about the process," said FEMA spokesman Mark Heimann.
The U.S. Small Business Association is also on hand to provide business owners who suffered damage from the storm with information on low interest loans. And representatives of state, federal and voluntary agencies are available to provide materials about various assistance programs available to individuals and business owners, he said.
"It has taken us longer to get set up in St. Tammany Parish because our manpower is stretched so thin," Heimann said.
But just because the area has not had a Disaster Recovery Center up and running doesn't mean FEMA has been absent locally, he noted. To date, approximately 91,447 applications have been processed parishwide, at least 36,000 of which were received from homeowners in the Slidell area.
"FEMA has issued over $107 million in St. Tammany Parish," Heimann said. "That's a pretty impressive amount of money and is reflective of the behind the scenes work that's been done so far."
Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; hurricane rita; katrina aid; new orleans, rita, galveston, lake charles.
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