Cleaning Up During and After the Hurricane

It appears that the New Orleans Police Department was busy cleaning up before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina hit. Officers are under investigation for stealing dozens of vehicles from a car dealership. Other officers are under investigation for looting. Former PD Chief Eddie Compass has tucked tail and ran, and Mayor Nagin thinks everything will be peachy keen. For them, it was business as usual.

Well, New Orleans will be safe in coming weeks and months not because of the New Orleans police department, but because there will be because national guardsmen and law enforcement from all corners of the US will be doing the job that the local cops should have been doing all along.

Mayor Nagin also thinks that the quickest way to recovery in New Orleans is to welcome the idea of casino gambling downtown. I don't buy it one bit. How about a real comprehensive look at the economy and making sure that the infrastructure is appropriate before committing to casinos.

In the meantime, a portion New Orleans' drinking water is now considered safe for consumption. That's a major step forward.

Tap water is drinkable once again across a broad swath of New Orleans' east bank.


That was the word from state officials on Thursday and a huge boost to the effort to repopulate a desolate city as quickly as possible.

For many families considering a return to New Orleans, the lack of water suitable for drinking and cooking was a major reason to stay away. Now the problem has disappeared on the city's east bank from the Jefferson Parish line to the Industrial Canal.

The lack of potable water several weeks ago was at the heart of U.S. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen's reluctance to embrace Mayor Ray Nagin's accelerated plan for repopulating the city.

Potable water is still not available in eastern New Orleans or the Lower 9th Ward, two of the neighborhoods hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Algiers has had drinkable water since before the storm.

The hurricanes have forced people to redefine normal.

FEMA is looking to rebid and re-contract numerous contracts after being criticized for the no-bid contracts. Here's a question. If we're rebidding these contracts, how much time is wasted on the contracting process that could have been spent actually fixing or doing whatever those contracts would have stated? I understand that there are serious concerns with the profits and costs that appear out of line with market prices, but how much of this re-contracting is simply political posturing. After all, we're hearing that billions that were allocated by Congress for hurricane relief hasn't even been spent.

We continue to hear that historic homes up and down the Gulf Coast were devastated by Katrina.

"It‘s a horrifying site," said Todd Sanders, a coordinator with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. "It‘s hard for me to put into words."

Other famous homes on the coast, with their large columns and wraparound porches, are simply no longer there.

The Longfellow House was built in 1850 and remains largely intact on Beach Boulevard in Pascagoula. The home, which took its name from a local legend that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once stayed there, now towers over the bare foundations where neighboring homes once stood.

But it will be up to local leaders and property owners whether the homes that were destroyed are rebuilt.

A dozen miles west of Biloxi, down a tree-lined gravel road in Ocean Springs, the family of late artist Walter Anderson sifted through what‘s left of two homes built in the 1830s. The artist‘s son, John Anderson, wiped his brow and said, "There‘s nothing left."

"You expect to see something, boards or something. But there‘s nothing there," he said in a soft voice.

An uprooted tree and scattered debris is all that‘s left on the site of the Dantzler House, which once faced the Gulf of Mexico with wide porches and tall white columns. It was home to a Mardi Gras museum.

The Brielmaier House, built in 1895 and home to the Biloxi Visitor‘s Center, was known for its Victorian woodwork and arched lattices before Hurricane Katrina leveled it.

"A lot of the collections in the house were moved before the storm, but the actual house is gone," Preziosi said. "Even if you rebuild one just like it, it‘s not his house. It‘s not the one he built."

Elsewhere, communities struggle with trying to rebuild their law enforcement and fire protection as their equipment was destroyed, along with everything else.

UPDATE:
There's now word of NOPD officers being investigated for beating the crap out of someone in the French Quarter. It was caught on tape. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

UPDATE:
Paul at Wizbang takes the LA officials to task for their continuing inanities in NOLA. He says the problem isn't out of state companies, but the lack of housing for locals that is the real problem. He notes that there are companies all over the place looking to hire people, and are even offering hiring bonuses, but there simply aren't people available to work because they're still displaced.

In other words, it's the infrastructure stupid! Get the infrastructure fixed, get the housing infrastructure fixed, and then we'll see the city really get back on its feet.

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