It's About the Infrastructure

Recovering from Katrina, Rita, and Wilma is going to take time, but the priorities must be on infrastructure. Railways, roads, bridges, tunnels, water, sewage, sanitation, and electrical systems must all be restored or replaced.

The railway CSX is going to be spending $250 million to repair and replace tracks throughout the Gulf Coast. Getting that piece of infrastructure repaired will speed the recovery process.

Meanwhile, the Louisiana Attorney General is issuing subpoenas relating to deaths at various medical facilities and nursing homes in the aftermath of Katrina. 34 people were killed at the St. Rita's Nursing Home and the owners were charged with negligent homicide. Other facilities may be facing similar charges, particularly for aiding in euthanizing patients, which is illegal in Louisiana.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. has issued 73 subpoenas in an investigation into allegations that euthanasia may have taken place at one of the hospitals flooded by Hurricane Katrina, he told CNN Wednesday night.

The subpoenas were served on employees of all levels at Memorial Medical Center, which is owned by Tenet Healthcare, because "cooperation, lately, has not been as good as I had hoped," Foti said.

The subpoenas require that people appear before investigators for questioning.

"Some people were not coming forward. We learned Tenet sent out a letter that had a chilling effect," Foti said. "We had no choice but to issue these subpoenas."

The cost to replace one hospital in New Orleans is estimated at $395 million or $285 to repair it. For a single hospital.

For Charity, south Louisiana's only trauma center which was shut down by Hurricane Katrina, repairs would cost 65 percent of the replacement costs.

It would be an even higher percentage — 68 percent — for University Hospital: $172 million to replace it and $117.5 million to fix, he said.

At Charity, which held the trauma center, the basement — holding the morgue, electric systems and pumps — filled during the floods. Administrators say it is no longer fit for hospital use.

Also, we're hearing more and more about how obvious the problems with the levees were. That's yet another piece of infrastructure in Louisiana that must be repaired or replaced.

Conditions suspected of causing the 17th Street Canal levee wall failure that flooded much of New Orleans should have been obvious to the engineers who designed the structure, a team of LSU researchers said after viewing documents obtained by The Times-Picayune.

The team said the soil analyses of the levee and the ground beneath it show a picture of such weak support that failure of the wall under maximum loads was almost a given for the design that the Army Corps of Engineers chose to use: a single wall of steel sheet pile that was not driven to reach below the bottom of the canal.

Mississippi is trying to get federal funding for repairing and replacing US 90 instead of deferring routine work elsewhere to complete the repairs. Also, recovery in Waveland, MS is still quite slow despite pledges to move quicker. The area still doesn't have basic services restored - and that's nearly two full months after the hurricane hit.

UPDATE:
Photos from South Florida showing the widespread damage - some minor - some not so minor. Cross-posted at Mudville Gazette.

UPDATE:
A Federal memo slams Gov. Blanco for delays in collecting bodies of those killed by Katrina.

The 38 pages of e-mail between FEMA representatives and Pentagon officials contradict the contention by Louisiana's Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, two weeks after Katrina hit on Aug. 29, that the federal government was moving too slowly to recover the bodies.

They also underscore ongoing political tensions between the Republican Bush administration and Democratic state and local officials over the botched response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people in Louisiana. They were released by a House panel that many Democrats have shunned, chaired by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., that is investigating the government's sluggish preparations and reaction to the storm.

The memos indicate that morgues were not ready to receive bodies until Sept. 7 _ two days after the first memo complaining about Blanco's inaction, and nine days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

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