August 29, 2007
Katrina, Two Years Later
Today is the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's appearance in New Orleans. The storm eventually killed more than 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi and raised many questions about infrastructure of levees and the federal response. President Bush spoke in New Orleans today (text here) where the Times-Picayune printed an editorial asking the President to treat New Orleans fairly: "Nobody wants to have to compete for disaster relief. But that is what Louisianians have had to do in the two years since Hurricane Katrina struck."
NOLA.com has a blog, Katrina: Two Years Later and New Yorker Siege, who grew up in New Orleans and whose family was in the city when Katrina hit, has been keeping this blog about NO progress, operation:eden. Here are sections about Katrina from the state of Louisiana, the Times-Picayune (which has an archive of its reporting), CNN, NY Times and NOAA (for climate data). You can also watch NOVA's Storm That Drowned a City online and most, if not all, newscasts are live from New Orleans. CNN's Anderson Cooper has a two years later look on 360 tonight at 10PM.
Photographs of a home and the Alfred Lawless High School in the Lower Ninth Ward by Tien Mao
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CYNICAL STORM
The Bush roared in again,
Dispelling all the birds
And parting all the seas,
A hot tornado of words.
maybe instead of asking for handouts 24/6 (and taking off on sunday) for the last two years, new orleansians could've been, oh i dunno, REBUILDING the freaking city. nails and a hammer. nails. and. a. hammer.
that's how it USED to be done, by gum. now we got building codes to follow. codes schmodes. these people need infrastructure. NOW. might as well start putting in the reps while you still can.
um, my guess is a lot of people are working on rebuilding... but you know, that costs money.
#3, here's a question: insurance companies have given homeowners XXX
For a great book on hurricanes, I recommend "Isaac's Storm" by Erik Larson.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, exactly how useless are Mayor Nagin and the New Orleans City Council?
Whatever happened to the money insurance companies gave to these people to rebuild if they wanted to? Lobster dinners?
Red tape and jumping hoops for locals equal only 1 billion being spent in the last two years. That just six percent of funds ava.
A darn shame - really. But hey, even the South Bronx was eventually rebuilt, and during the Reagan Administration, no less. Well, actually most of the credit, I believe goes to Mayor Koch.
god bless new orleans.
new orleans ≠ new york city