Katrina Roundup

Work has begun to repair the I-10 causeway between New Orleans and Slidell. This is excellent news, since that is a major artery in and out of New Orleans from the East. It will only be a temporary fix and a complete repair project will be let out for contract next year.

The article has additional information about other infrastructure issues throughout Louisiana, including environmental impacts and dewatering issues.

Presidnet Bush will be making a televised address this evening and outline a reconstruction plan. Oh, and Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, will be releasing his own set initiatives. Perhaps he's going to give everyone vouchers of other people's money to resettle in Dallas. Was that too harsh? Probably not - he bought a house in Dallas, which suggests that his stake in the rebuilding and welfare of New Orleans residents isn't as great as it should be.

Nor was the task of recovering all of the dead in New Orleans complete, though the count is far lower than some earlier projections.

The death toll stood at 711 with 474 in Louisiana, 218 in Mississippi and another 19 deaths in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.

But recovery was spreading across the region.

Officials in Jefferson Parish, which curls around New Orleans from the west to the south, said two more towns, Kenner and Harahan, would open to residents on Thursday.

Officials in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish east of the city said business owners there could return on Thursday to check on their properties.

Nagin was the progenitor of those high figures, which were repeated ad nauseum (10,000 dead). Did he learn nothing of the 9/11 attacks where the press was figuring that the toll would be 10,000, 25,000 or more - based on how many people could be in the WTC - but Mayor Guiliani sidestepped the issue delicately and with grace by stating that the toll will be more than we can bear. It diffuses the issue and doesn't overstate or understate the seriousness of the issue. What remains to be seen is how many of those deaths were preventable (if at all), though we know that at least two people who owned the St. Rita's Nursing Home (the Manango's) are facing 34 counts of negligent homicide for failing to evacuate the nursing home before the storm hit.

UPDATE:
A Mississippi resident writes to Instapundit about the disaster response in that state and comes to the conclusion I made after the storm hit. All those people who speak of fast response know absolutely nothing about the logistics of trying to clear access routes to the disaster zone. Literally hundreds of miles of roads had to be cleared of obstacles before anyone could get through. Prepositioned supplies in places like Mobile and Biloxi were destroyed. Local police department facilities, like in Waveland, ceased to exist as the storm surge toppled everything in its path.

Also, President Bush is expected to touch on the subject of class and race in the disaster response, given that many in New Orleans (and the race/class baiters) seem to think that the slow response was driven by those factors. I think that's a mistake, that it gives credence to the likes of Al Sharpton and others who are nothing more than demogogues and use race as a prop and backdrop to their own personal aggrandizement.

UPDATE:
How should Gulf Coast reconstruction be paid for? Simple. Ask every member of Congress to give up one piece of pork for his or her district. IBD suggests that just one piece from each district could easily reach a huge sum that can be translated into hurricane relief swiftly.

UPDATE:
More nursing homes are coming forward detailing deaths at their homes that occurred during or as a result of Hurricane Katrina. This is on the heels of the criminal investigation into St. Rita's Nursing Home where 34 patients died during the hurricane.

The new reports suggest that at least 61 patients died in four New Orleans-area nursing homes after their operators ignored a mandatory evacuation order a day before Hurricane Katrina hit. The owners of 15 other nursing homes contacted by The New York Times said they had successfully evacuated hundreds of patients from their homes.

A total of 53 nursing homes were evacuated in the New Orleans area, but it is unclear how many of them were evacuated before the storm.

Sadly, many of those deaths may have been avoided had state and local authorities pressed those homes to evacuate sooner, and those homes should have evacuated sooner on their own, once the voluntary evaucation order was given.

The attorney general, Charles C. Foti Jr., was investigating reports that 14 people died at the Lafon Nursing Facility of Holy Family in New Orleans, said his chief spokeswoman, Kris Wartelle.

"We're trying to make sure the criminal justice system still works in this case," Ms. Wartelle said. "It is such a horrendously horrible thing, and it's so important to these families."

It's also important to consider the actions of the state and local authorities who permitted this situation to devolve as it did.

It should also leave people wondering about the emergency plans at facilities around the country and whether the facilities are capable of evacuating their patients if the need arose. Are the plans workable and does everyone know whose responsibility it is to make sure those patients are evacuated? Can families find out what those plans are when deciding where to situate their loved ones for nursing care? Are all workers at these facilities trained to deal with evacuation procedures? Should facilities be ranked and scored on emergency procedures? I seem to think the answer to that is a qualified yes. The more information people have about the care provided by a facility, the better. However, increased regulation will mean increased costs that get passed on to the families and taxpayers.

By most accounts, the St. Rita's home was considered to be well run before Hurricane Katrina hit. Consider that a wake-up call.

UPDATE:
The French Quarter is expected to reopen next week. That's tremendous news, considering all the doom and gloom reports the media had been pushing since the city was flooded. There's going to be serious cleaning up involved, but parts of the city will be back in business before you know it.

The same can't be said for other parts of the Gulf Coast. There simply isn't anything to go back to. Waveland was especially hard hit.

UPDATE:
NASA's Gulf Coast facilities made it through the storm relatively well. In fact, they quickly became relief centers for the area.

Stennis opened its doors to residents evacuating their homes, and some 3,000 people crowded into the office buildings for safety. It also became a staging ground for relief workers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency under coordination by the United States Forest Service and Florida relief agencies.

An instant city sprang up, with vast tents crammed with cots, trucked-in showers and an enormous cafeteria. The workers fanned out across southern Mississippi, patching roofs, clearing roads and handing out 26 million pounds of ice, 3.7 million gallons of water and more than two million precooked meals.

An instant city? I thought the federal response was slow. Someone isn't telling the truth, or is belatedly coming around to the realization that the federal response was not what the media wanted it to be in the first few days - it was much faster than anyone realized because everyone was fixated on New Orleans and not the logistical nightmare of trying to bring relief to 90,000 square miles.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin makes a compelling argument that former FEMA director Brown deserved his demotion and forced resignation.

I don't need any convincing that Blanco and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin performed poorly. But let's face it: FEMA's performance under Brown was a joke. Just read Brown's own words in today's New York Times.

Start with his admission that he did not ask for federal active-duty troops to be deployed to New Orleans on the night of Monday, August 29, because "he assumed his superiors in Washington were doing all they could."

According to FEMA's web site, FEMA's mission is to "lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident." As director, it was Brown's job to manage the federal response, including the deployment of federal active-duty troops. Given that, his apparent lack of interest in DoD's response seems odd at best, grossly negligent at worst.