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FEMA Planned to Leave New Orleans Poor Behind
Jessica Azulay
The New Standard
Emergency management officials predicted with remarkable prescience the effects of a massive hurricane hitting New Orleans; but they did little with their knowledge, other than plan to leave the poor behind.
Sep 4 - Failing a test is one thing, but failing a test after you have been given the answers is another type of failure altogether – especially when half a million lives rely on your ability to pass.
Last summer, having identified a hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the gravest potential disasters faced by the US public, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staged a mock storm scenario and brought dozens of government agencies together for planning.
During the five-day exercise, FEMA envisioned that the fictitious category 3 "Hurricane Pam" slammed into New Orleans, deluging the area in enough water to top the levees and flood the city. Groups representing approximately 50 government agencies worked out action plans in July 2004 to deal with search and rescue, establishing shelters, debris clean-up, pumping water out of the city and even getting schools back up and running after the storm.
Though officials involved in the scenario acknowledged that tens of thousands of residents would be without the means to evacuate New Orleans in the absence of government help, the Hurricane Pam scenario teams did not determine strategies for evacuating people ahead of time. Instead, officials predicted that only one-third of the city's residents would make it out in time and designed their response plan around that assumption.
At the end of the assessment, FEMA Regional Director Ron Castleman announced, "We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts."
Officials also pledged that hurricane planning would continue. Colonel Michael L. Brown, deputy at the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, put it this way: "Over the next 60 days, we will polish the action plans developed during the Hurricane Pam exercise. We have also determined where to focus our efforts in the future."
It is apparent from the general action plan released after the Hurricane Pam exercise and interviews with the press at the time that over a year before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, local, state and federal agencies were aware of the challenges they would face if a storm flooded the city.
For instance, they anticipated that failure to completely evacuate the entire city ahead of the storm would pose deadly consequences for those left behind. They also predicted that tens of thousands of residents would not leave the city, even under a mandatory evacuation order, because they would lack transportation. And they foresaw that those who stayed and managed to survive the winds and the flooding would be without emergency relief for several days.
Brown said that even if the action plan played out perfectly, the government would not be able to respond to all of people's needs in the event of a storm like the hypothetical Pam.
"Residents need to know they'll be on their own for several days in a situation like this," Brown said in a July 2004 interview with the New Orleans based Times Times-Picayune.
Though the Pam scenario plans did not address pre-emptive evacuation assistance, New Orleans officials told the Times-Picayune in July of this year that they would dedicate 64 city buses and 10 lift vans, as well as potentially school buses and Amtrak trains, to help people flee the city in the event of a serious hurricane threat. But they also acknowledged that would not meet the potential need.
.According to the Louisiana Transit Resource Guide, a state-government website, New Orleans has 364 city buses in its fleet. Why officials did not plan to dedicate more buses to an evacuation effort was not explained to the Times-Picayune.
Instead, in July, public officials began videotaping messages for distribution by DVD warning residents to begin making their own advance plans for emergency evacuation in case of a hurricane. According to the Times-Picayune, the messages,
which were to be released this September, informed New Orleans residents that they were to be largely responsible for their own safety.
"The primary message is that each person is primarily responsible for themselves, for their own family and friends," said Rev. Marshall Truehill in an interview with the Times-Picayune. Truehill heads Total Community Action, an anti-poverty organization orchestrating the videos.
The day before Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore, New Orleans Mayer Ray Nagin, in his mandatory evacuation order, granted city officials the authority to "commandeer any private property, including, but not limited to… vehicles that may be used to transport people out the area."
Despite this self-mandate, the city failed to actually provide a way out for those trapped with few resources and limited options.
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States Struggling With Katrina Refugees
By TODD LEWAN, Associated Press Writer
HOUSTON (AP) -- With a shattered New Orleans all but emptied out, an unprecedented refugee crisis unfolded across the country as governors and emergency officials struggled to feed, shelter and educate more than a half-million people dispossessed by Hurricane Katrina.
In Texas, where nearly a quarter-million refugees have filled the state's relief centers, Gov. Rick Perry ordered emergency officials to airlift some evacuees to other states willing to take them. Among the states that have offered help are West Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan, Iowa, New York, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
"There are shelters set up in other states that are sitting empty while thousands arrive in Texas by the day, if not the hour," Perry said. "To meet this enormous need, we need help from other states."
Around the country, social service agencies, businesses, volunteer groups, military bases and other refugee shelters rushed to set up procedures to help Katrina's dispossessed obtain their Social Security checks, receive their medicines, get their mail, find missing relatives and pets, and enroll their youngsters in school.
"We want to get the children back in school as quickly as possible, whether they are staying with relatives, or friends or in a shelter," said Caron Blanton, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Education. Mississippi, like Alabama, Florida, Texas and other states, has pledged to open its schools to displaced children and waive normal entry requirements like immunization records and proof of residency.
In Fort Chaffee, Ark., relief workers turned the post where Elvis Presley entered the Army in 1958 into a processing center for refugees. There, the homeless were registered by the Social Security Administration, checked by doctors and given post office boxes.
Marion Landry, 84, held onto the walker of her sister, Fay Roberts, 81, as the bedraggled pair went through the registration process. They appreciated the need for paperwork - but really wanted a shower.
"I've worn the same set of clothes for three days," said Roberts. "My hair is sweaty. I don't look like this. Normally I'm very nice."
Meanwhile, a military base near Battle Creek, Mich., was transforming itself into a welcome station.
Up to 500 evacuees were headed for the Fort Custer Training Center, where volunteer cooks were readying meals at a mess hall normally for National Guard and military personnel from Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. Tables were stacked with towels, toiletries, T-shirts and other clothing and essentials. Medical personnel stood by to help, and clergy and attorneys were on call.
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said she would welcome the refugees stay permanently, if they wished. "Michigan is going to welcome these victims, these evacuees, with open arms and show them some Northern hospitality," she said.
In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency and released about $1 million to help victims of Hurricane Katrina as the first of up to 6,000 evacuees arrived Sunday. He also relaxed certain state transportation rules to speed up the building of temporary housing for the hurricane victims.
Refugees also began arriving in Arizona, which has agreed to take up to 2,500. They were greeted on the runway by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon.
Several people had to be helped off the plane and down the stairway to the tarmac, where pink, yellow, teal and black flip-flops had been set out for them.
Then, carrying garbage bags, backpacks and brown, shopping bags with their last belongings, the evacuees were led into the airport for physicals before boarding buses to the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
"We'll take care of them," Gordon said. "We'll make sure they know that the city cares."
In Denver, Qwest Communications set up a bank of at least 50 phones at a processing center so refugees could call their loved ones. Colorado state Rep. Debbie Stafford said she was trying to arrange long-term shelter, and also reunite some of the people with their cats and dogs.
State and local officials in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia and other states with a refugee influx began setting up programs to link refugees with employers. Business owners are trying to help, too.
In Richland, Miss., a fast-food restaurant hung fliers offering jobs at a shelter. A steel company sent employees to a shelter at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson to recruit new workers. And Craigslist, the Internet-based classified advertising service, was filled with job offers for victims willing to relocate.
Pene Long, who owns a spa in Richland, said she had given a stylist's job to a woman whose home in Biloxi was devastated. Long said she was going to hire nine more displaced people.
"I was getting ready to put a big ad in the paper, and I said, `Why would I do that?' There are tons of people out here looking for work," she said.
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Residents to Take in Needy Refugees, Nate Pardue
By NATE PARDUE
DOVER -Hurricane Katrina left thousands without homes.
Dane and Cinda Drasher have extra room in theirs.
It's the perfect fit.
"Sending money is wonderful and necessary, but we wanted to do more," Dane Drasher said. "It's time to come up with solutions to the problem. This is a solution."
The Drashers are just one of several local families who have taken to the Internet with offers to open their homes to those displaced by the hurricane last week.
With two grown children no longer living at home, the empty-nesters from Dover were becoming increasingly frustrated with the continual blame being placed on the government for its slow response to the Gulf Coast. Instead of joining the chorus of disappointment, the Drashers said they wanted to do something they felt would alleviate some of the pressure on emergency responders.
"We were so sad listening to the news on Friday, hearing everyone say how bad a job our government was doing. We wanted to see what kind of impact we could make in a positive way," Drasher said.
The Drashers found the website homesforkatrina.org, one of several sites that let homeowners offer shelter to people left homeless by Katrina. The site requires posters and shelter-seekers to be screened in order to eliminate sex offenders and people with a violent history from the system.
Drasher and others like him admit it's probably difficult for people without homes to get Internet access, but it doesn't deter their desire to help.
Tight finances in the Echelberger household in Laconia made it impossible to send donations to the Red Cross, but an extra room and a roof overhead gave them something to offer Katrina's victims. The family is willing take on anyone they can fit in their house, with no limitations to the time they can stay.
"If it takes a year, it takes a year. If it takes two years, it takes two years," Kathi Echelberger said.
The idea to open her home came while working on another project influenced by the devastation in the Gulf, called the"Backpack Brigade," an effort to ship backpacks stocked with clothes and toiletries to the area.
While surfing the Internet, Echelberger came upon craigslist.org, which contains postings from thousands of people across the country offering free room and board to strangers.
Kris Moody of Barrington said she also used craigslist.org to make her home available to storm refugees.
Moody said she realized she lived in rural New Hampshire and couldn't "just jump in my car and go down there."
She said she particularly hopes to help women with children.
Moody said she hasn't thought much about how someone could travel to her home in Barrington, or what other issues she might encounter. She said it was more important to get the offer out now and worry about the details later.
"I care deeply about social justice, and am careful about where I give money and causes I support. This is a good cause and I'm doing whatever I can to help," Moody said.
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In Cheyenne - How to Donate for Hurricane Relief
Carpet Works has made arrangements to transport goods to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Those wishing to donate
should take their items (see list below) to the old Hancock Fabric Building, in Cheyenne Plaza, next to Hobby Lobby.
Hours are Monday thru Saturday from 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. This location will be available for several weeks.
Items requested are:
- Food - Non-perishables
- Water - bottled
- Clothing and shoes - all sizes infant to adult
- Bedding - blankets, sheets, sleeping bags, pillows, etc.
- Elderly supplies - canes, walkers, etc.
- Infant Supplies - diapers, formula
- Pet supplies - food, leashes, collars, carriers, etc.
- Diabetic supplies
- Hygiene supplies - soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, tooth brushes, toothpaste,
toilet paper, paper towels, moist towelets, no water hand cleaners, etc.
- Cleaning supplies - disinfectant wipes, etc.
- Eating utensils - paper plates, paper cups, plastic spoons, etc.
- Pots and pans
- Misc. items - candles, flashlights, batteries, radios, pens, office supplies for workers, garbage bags, etc.
- Medical supplies - Aspirin, Tylenot, Bandaids, Ace wraps, Cold tablets, Allergy medications, etc.
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In Case of Emergency (ICE) Programs
In California, there are two bills in the Legislature proposing
implementing the ICE (In Case of Emergency) program that has already begun in England after
terrorist bombed the subways this summer.
ICE is something you as citizens do to protect yourself and loved
ones. If ICE had been in place in the gulf states, it would make it
easier to identify bodies and connect loved ones.
Do it today, if you have a cell phone.
In your phone directory under name, enter the letters ICE. Then for
the telephone number enter the number of the person you want contact
in case of emergency or your death.
Emergency workers can look at your cell phone ICE number and get a quick
response in the advent you are unable to communicate or are dead.
After the bombings in England, search and rescue workers found dozens
of bodies and cell phones with no way of matching them.
If your state is not already proposing the ICE program, call or email
your representatives.
The Legislation would authorize rescue workers to use your cell phone
to access the ICE number, only.
It saves lives and it saves families grief.
You should do it on your home phone too if it has capability of
storing numbers.
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Doors for the homeless
DECADES OF experience with homelessness in Massachusetts have given advocates and policymakers a good idea of what works and what doesn't.
What succeeds is a package: help with housing, education, jobs, overdue bills --and with personal demons, from drug habits to crushing financial debt. The best way to deliver this help is through a web of partnerships that stretch across communities.
What hurts is the state's chronic shortage of affordable housing. But communities are still finding ways to cope.
In Worcester, the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance is trying to put itself out of business by addressing the root causes of homelessness. Families who go to the alliance find two pools of help: what the agency offers and what Worcester as a community offers.
Prevention is stressed. This means people get help negotiating with landlords, navigating housing court, or paying security deposits. Elderly owners of vacant apartments get loans so they can renovate units and rent them to needy families. Elderly residents in their own homes get help with repairs so they can stay in them. Contractors do the work, and homeowners pay only for the materials.
''We stay accountable to families," says Grace Carmark, the alliance's executive director. She says the group relies on a strong network to fill the gap between incomes and housing costs.
Churches raise money. Businesses pitch in. Rotman's, the furniture company, backs the alliance's furniture bank, helping move items from donors' homes into warehouses and on to needy people. Businesses support the alliance's annual walk against homelessness, which this year raised $85,000. The walk keeps people aware of the problem and confident that there are solutions.
At Worcester's Family Health Center, homeless patients get medical treatment and social services. The mix works because it's less stigmatizing to seek help in a healthcare setting, says Dr. Linda Weinreb, the program's medical director and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
One brutally common problem: More than 90 percent of homeless mothers have been victims of violence, Weinreb says. These families move frequently. They have high rates of chronic illness. And many mothers suffer from depression, which can harm their own and their children's ability to thrive.
Staffers at the health center help parents become well enough to manage the demands and stresses of poverty, because emotional and physical health makes it easier for mothers to buffer their children against economic instability. Trauma recovery is a priority. Teams help with housing, school issues, and transportation. Staffers focus on families' strengths where they find them: in parents' love for their children or their efforts to get their child good healthcare.
''People change when they succeed," Weinreb says, so strengthening families helps ensure that the benefits of healthcare will stick.
In Worcester, homeless single adults can find health care and housing help at the Community Healthlink program, where there's a ''no wrong door policy." Clients who come in for help with anything get access to everything, including mental and physical health services, detox programs, and housing help.
''No one is developing low-income housing for this population," says Larry Gottlieb, Healthlink's vice president of homeless and detox services, referring to disabled clients who live on Supplemental Security Income and may have only $7,200 in annual income, considerably less than the federal poverty level of $9,570. So, in addition to healthcare, the program uses money from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to help people find housing and pay their rent. Healthlink does outreach in shelters, and once people are housed, there are continuing support services that help people remain stable. Gottlieb says 75 to 80 percent of clients who get help with housing stay in their homes for a year -- a benchmark that is an indicator of likely long-term stability.
This kind of effort works only when people in the community are willing to come to the table. In Worcester they are. That's the conclusion of a recent report on prevention from the Boston Foundation and the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, which also notes that ''even those politicians who could not easily be considered liberal have shown themselves to be ever-present in the battle against homelessness in Worcester."
As a smaller city, Worcester has an easier time pooling resources. By contrast, Boston has neighborhood success stories of helping the homeless. But Mayor Menino is asking his senior staff to create ''a citywide chorus of advocacy, effective outreach, and case management," according to Jim Greene, head of the city's Emergency Shelter Commission.
At the state level, meanwhile, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and the state's commissioners of welfare, housing, and mental health all deserve credit for pursuing better ways to prevent and end homelessness.
Missing are more state and federally funded vouchers, the subsidies that help people pay rent. These vouchers let people get a foot in the door of high-priced housing markets. Having the stability of a home is a key step toward gaining financial independence.
Massachusetts should boost prevention. The state's Residential Assistance for Families in Transition program, or RAFT, which helps families pay back rent and overdue utilities, recently got a boost, growing from $2 million to $5 million, a vital improvement. The RAFT program should expand further to cover homeless individuals. Stopping homelessness before it happens is cheaper than addressing it afterwards, and it works. The efforts identify people who probably also need long-term help climbing the workforce ladder so they can forgo public aid -- permanently.
People may always face or fall into homelessness. But communities could do a better, faster job of helping them.
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A New Life, a Long Way From Home
By Janet I. Tu
Seattle Times staff reporter
When the Haynes family fled their home in New Orleans two Sundays ago, they had no idea that a little more than a week later, they would be starting anew in Seattle.
Gone are the everyday anchors of their lives: They still don't know where some of their family members are. Their lifelong home is most likely destroyed. And their jobs no longer exist.
Joseph Haynes Sr., his wife, Emma Haynes, their two grown sons and a family friend drove into Seattle on Sunday, one of the first families fleeing the Hurricane Katrina devastation to arrive in this region.
"I'm hoping in God that we can settle down," said Joseph Haynes, who, until this week, was a mechanic and pastor of a nondenominational church.
Two weeks ago, they were in their home in the West Bank area of New Orleans, keeping an eye on TV news coverage of the storm -- "just concerned at first," said Emma Haynes, 52, who owned a wig salon back home. But when they realized how ferocious the storm would be, they decided to leave, "thinking it would just be a few days."
They each packed a few items of clothing and, with their friend Earl Mosby, left New Orleans in two cars.
They drove first to Houston, but all the hotels were booked up from others escaping the storm, so they drove on to Dallas. There, they found that many hotels were doubling their prices because of the hurricane, but they finally found a relatively inexpensive hotel and stayed for several days.
Then the levees were breached and their hometown flooded. They had to make a choice. "We really didn't want to go to the Astrodome," where thousands of evacuees were staying, Emma Haynes said. "But we knew we couldn't keep paying the hotel amount every night."
They called their third son, who is in Seattle, had been homeless and is working with the Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP), a local community-service agency, to get a permanent home of his own.
CAMP told the Haynes family it could help with temporary housing, food and other needs. For now, CAMP is putting the family up at a hotel on Aurora Avenue, while they search for more permanent housing. Staff members said they will help the family apply for public assistance and other programs to help them get re-established.
Community partners that CAMP works with are supplying hot meals for the family for now; items from CAMP's clothing bank are available should they need it. The family arrived without cold-weather clothes, as "it was not our intention to come this far," said Joseph Haynes.
In the meantime they worry about the many cousins, aunts and uncles they've yet to hear from in New Orleans.
"It hurts, having to leave everything behind," Emma Haynes said.
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Buy a Piece of Art and Contribute to WCH's Building Expansion Fund
Artist Gary Crook has donated 60 of his paintings to be used by WCH as a fundraiser for the Building Expansion Fund.
Click here to see more photos of donated paintings.
Send your bid to: wch@vcn.com or come by 907 Logan Avenue.
The first part of the expansion program will put a shower and a washer and dryer into the Welcome Mat area, and
make the present bathrooms handicapped accessible, and replace the windows, that do not open, with windows that will open. Future expansion plans include an addition that will allow for
expansion of the clothing closet and the Art From The Streets Program, and provide more space in the Welcome Mat. For questions,
or to donate call 307-634-8499 or come by 907 Logan Avenue. Click here for more information.
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Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless Donates to Hurricane Relief
The Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless donated blankets, pillows, foam cups and plates, toothpaste, shaving cream, mustard, ketchup, relish, jelly and other condiments as well as clothing
and office/school supplies to the Cheyenne hurricane relief project. Donations are being sent on September 7 and 9 and will continue for
several more weeks. The donation site is in Cheyenne Plaza next to Hobby Lobby. For those that think by doing this WCH is cutting short clothing and other items needed by the homeless here
in Cheyenne, you're wrong. WCH is continually blessed by those in the Cheyenne Community (we like to share these blessings with others less fortunate and this brings us more blessings) and we often have
a surplus of items that can be passed on to others in need -- and even tho' in Mississippi these people ARE homeless and in greater need
than those we see here in Cheyenne.
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Wyoming Winds is published by the Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless
907 Logan Avenue
Cheyenne, WY 82001-5247
phone: 307-634-8499
fax: 307-634-9089
email: wch@vcn.com
Views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless, its staff or board.
Editor for this issue: Virginia Sellner.
Copyrights revert back to the author upon publication.
WCH is a 501(c)(3) all volunteer non-profit agency depending upon the community for funding.
© 2005.
Articles from other papers are published with permission of the paper listed with the article.
**In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.**
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