Happy 30th Birthday, NABJ!

Can it be, already?

On Monday, NABJ turns 30. Say it isn't so!

Click here after 12:01 a.m. Monday, Dec. 12, EST, to join the party!

Abu Ghraib All Over Again -- In New Orleans?

Racial slurs, and more alleged by inmates caught in New Orleans disaster.

More »

'That Could Have Been Us'

Struggling communities see selves in Katrina disaster

An organizer says people in underserved neighborhoods nationwide saw themselves in images of New Orleans residents stranded on rooftops. Katrina has pushed community groups to seek novel ways to provide for their own protection, rather than petitioning a government that may be unwilling or unable to help.

More »

A Geographic perspective on the hurricanes

In the frenzy of daily news coverage, an unlikely source emerges for "complete coverage" of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina: National Geographic.

Worth a look »

Texapocalpyse Now (aka How to Blow a Hurricane Out of the Water)

What a blast!

At least, that's what some thought would be the case for getting rid of pesky, disastrous hurricanes.

Not so, say the skeptics.

More »

Columnists of Color on Katrina's Many Dimensions

OK, so eventually, I was going to get around to compiling a bunch of these things. But, Richard was right on top of it again with his column today. (See Richard Prince's Journal-isms.) So, what can I say?

Happy reading:

Ronnie Agnew, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Miss.: 'Sea Coast Echo' still publishing on Katrina's rubble

Betty Bayé, Louisville Courier-Journal: Katrina and Pandora: Debate rages over role of race in slow response

Donna Britt, Washington Post: Choosing to Care And Comfort in Katrina's Wake

Sylvester Brown Jr., St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Let's focus on helping those in need

Yvonne Bynoe, The Black World Today: After Katrina: Is There Justice or Just Us?

Tammy L. Carter, Orlando Sentinel: Stress test: Not knowing the fate of friends

Tammy L. Carter, Orlando Sentinel: There's plenty of blame, let's fix things first

Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: Evcuees from New Orleans try to start over in a strange town

Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: What matters is helping evacuees, families get back together

Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: San Antonians' goodness far exceeds caller's venomous views

Desiree Cooper, Detroit Free Press: Storm shows poverty's ruin

Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: A failure of vision

Ralph De La Cruz, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: What Katrina dug up: years of neglect

Jack Duggan, New Pittsburgh Courier: The Louisiana Superdome of Shame

Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: Shell game at gas stations pays big

Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News: Can anyone explain the bizarre call to keep aid convoy in S.A.?

Bob Herbert, New York Times: No Strangers to the Blues

Nick Jimenez, Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times: Are we ready here for a Katrina-sized storm?

Chip Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: Police made their storm misery worse

Roy S. Johnson, Sports Illustrated: Katrina's devastation puts sports world in its place

Colbert I. King, Washington Post: Rebuilding the Gulf and Goodwill

Jerry Large, Seattle Times: Gulf poor left behind by Katrina and neglect

Errol Louis, New York Daily News: The ugly truth

Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com: White House's 'Blame Game' Spin Evidence of Our Manmade Disaster -- Bush

Sheryl McCarthy, Newsday: Katrina highlights Bush's incompetence

Byron McCauley, Cincinnati Enquirer: Next, place more focus on the Gulf Coast

Courtland Milloy, Washington Post: D.C.'s Compassion Stretches Only So Far

Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Many refuse to give up on city

Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: No prayers for the dead in New Orleans

Renee Mitchell, Portland Oregonian: Folks wrap up early Christmas for evacuees

Askia Muhammad, Washington Informer: Katrina The Terrorist and her Sponsor

Ruben Navarrette, San Diego Union Tribune: A blemish on his record

Terry M. Neal, washingtonpost.com: Hiding Bodies Won't Hide the Truth

Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: How to bring all of that mojo back to New Orleans

Les Payne, Newsday: Our modern-day 'Grapes of Wrath'

Steve Penn, Kansas City Star: Performer's 'Hurricane' was a help

Ken Parish Perkins, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: When the subject turns to race, tempers flare, spittle flies and civility goes on holiday

David D. Porter, Orlando Sentinel: Katrina exposes our vulnerability to chaos

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Cleaning up a town begins with a broom

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Journey shows nature's strength and our own

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Reassurance rings hollow, and questions loom

Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: A poor excuse for inaction

Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: TV makes the horror real

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: It's the Feds' Job

Cindy Rodriguez, Denver Post: After N.O., jobs and uncertainty

Ken Rodriguez, San Antonio Express-News: Where's the cash? Many evacuees still await financial assistance

Albor Ruiz, New York Daily News: Welcome aid from all, Bush

Anthony Asadullah Samad, The Black World Today: America Got Us Lookin’ “Real Crazy” Right Now

Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: The moral to the New Orleans story

Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Community support drives away despair

Stan Simpson, Hartford Courant: Hartford's Rajun Cajun Heads Home

Michelle Singletary, Washington Post: Lessons to Carry Away From Katrina

Cheryl Smith, Dallas Weekly: One African American Woman's Opinion

Elmer Smith, Philadelphia Daily News: A Call to New Orleans

Gregory Stanford, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Poverty a storm that batters the poor every day

Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Why many fear the other flood — black crime

Esther Wu, Dallas Morning News: Gulf Coast region rich with Asian-American history

What about the people?

Bryan Monroe/Knight Ridder
Arnold Blackstone "rescued" 30 pounds of meat he found in the freezer of a store that had been partially gutted by the storm. He then brought the meat back to the shelter and "cooked it right up" on a temporary barbeque near the outside wall of the gym.


I am just returning from South Mississippi, covering the worst of Hurricane Katrina at the point where her full force slammed the coast directly over Biloxi and Gulfport.

The devastation there was beyond words. Homes were crushed as the waters rushed in. Massive waterfront casinos were tossed aside by the winds and the waves, lifted from their beachfront moorings and moved across the street as if they were children's toys.

And the people...

Hundreds wandered the streets of Biloxi, looking for loved ones. Hundreds more huddled in shelters and in the remains of their homes, without water, food, power or phone. The situation was desperate. People tended to do desperate things.

More >>

FEMA Needs to Tell People What It Intends for Their Homes

I had a fairly thorough look through the FEMA website, and no where could I find any mention of any plans to tell people FEMA's intentions for their homes. There are instructions for registering a claim with FEMA, but it is not clear to me what FEMA does for you once your claim is registered. Is this simply a mechanism for receiving aid money? Or does their attention to your claim involve keeping you updated on whether they plan to tear down your neighborhood? Anyone know?

Over the weekend, a reader made what seemed to me a really good suggestion, though I didn't yet understand at the time how good a suggestion it was:

Please consider contacting the USGS to have updated satellite photos made available for New Orleans citizens, their families and friends - so that the conditions of their neighborhood can be evaluated from their distant locations while awaiting permission to return home. This may take weeks. It would put many minds at ease (or make the worst known, not better, but less harsh than the wait to see it firsthand).

Make it so, Kathryn. Use what contacts and influence you have to make this idea understood as an important technical tool and its use as a social service.

This will also help FEMA recovery efforts.

There aren't enough satellite and aerial images publicly available to accomplish what he suggests. But the general idea, that the US government needs to provide people information about their homes, is a good one.

Clearly, some of the houses are a total loss and need to be torn down. On some portions of satellite images houses formerly aligned in neat rows now look like they were casually dropped and haven't been lined up yet. Those homes are gone. There is no question that they need to be replaced. But many others, some in quite deep water, may well be reparable. The question is this: How much of New Orleans does FEMA plan to restore, and how much does it plan to simply replace. And if the houses are replaced with something else, are they to be replaced for their original owners? Or will the land be taken by eminent domain and redistributed?

One thing I did find on the FEMA site was a news release detailing the FEMA time-line for federal funding of "debris removal":

State and local governments will be reimbursed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency for 100 percent of Hurricane Katrina eligible debris removal costs incurred during the sixty days following President Bush’s federal disaster declaration, from August 29 through October 30th, 2005.

Examples of eligible clean-up include removal of debris from public rights-of-way to ensure safe passage and debris removal from public property to eliminate health and safety hazards.

Removing the massive debris left by Hurricane Katrina is a cooperative effort between local communities, state governments, federal governments, and state and federal agencies.

It's not clear to me whether this time-line applies (or even could be applied) to the cleanup of New Orleans. But now that Michael Brown is out of the way, presumably some plan for the future of New Orleans is coming together.

Whole neighborhoods will need to be torn down entirely. We know this. It's obvious from up there in orbit where Digital Globes satellites live. But how many neighborhoods? And who will decide? Will FEMA tell you in advance if your house is to be razed, or only after the fact? FEMA needs to make its plans public as soon as possible.

The data tying specific New Orleans addresses to GPS coordinates and aerial and satellite images exists. I've been using it all week. FEMA needs to provide us with their overlay for the map of New Orleans before they start the bulldozers. My personal recommendation to whomever is now in charge of the restoration of New Orleans is that as soon as they have a map showing what areas of the city the plan to tear down, that they release it to the public and to the media so that it can be integrated into the same tools the public has been using to check on the storm damage to their homes. Specifically, I would like to see a publicly published map that could then be integrated into the Google Maps and Google Earth interfaces. Also, FEMA should license this same technology, for use on its own website, to create an Internet site where people can type in their addresses and receive a detailed report on what FEMA plans for the area.

If FEMA goes in with the bulldozers and starts razing areas without either informing the property owners and residents, nor allowing them back in to get their possessions, there will be mass panic. I hope that whoever takes over for Michael Brown has the sense to do better than that.



UPDATE: For those certain that what I'm describing just isn't FEMA's job, Josh Marshall explains how, now that FEMA has screwed up, they've had their mandate expanded to include administering reconstruction:

Fully $50 billion of those recovery and reconstruction funds passed by Congress today are going to FEMA. FEMA is going to administer those funds. That is just friggin' crazy.

Even if FEMA were still a model government agency, as it was by most accounts in the 1990s, this would still be a really, really bad decision. As the title says, FEMA is an emergency management agency, not a reconstruction agency. It doesn't have the organizational structure or competence to run the economy of a significant chunk of the United States for the foreseeable future, which is what this amounts to. . . .

And all that of course would all apply if FEMA were a well-run agency. But obviously, it's not. It's currently run by a crew of political hacks. The agency itself -- if its recent performance is any example -- is in deep disarray. It's become thoroughly politicized. And there are already very credible claims that it has used its disaster relief funds to advance narrowly political agendas. And then add on top of that what we've seen this administration do with the contracting mess in Iraq. Contracting cronyism defines this administration. And we're giving $50 billion to one of its most cronyfied outposts.

This is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen, a truly terrible idea.

More

From one Katrina survivor: 'Refugee' fits

SOMEWHERE IN LOUISIANA--I am a refugee. As someone who had to flee her city in the face of an oncoming, terrifying Hurricane Katrina, that humbling realization came after church last Sunday.

A nice man and his wife overheard me telling friends I didn't know what I was going to do next. He introduced himself, handed me a blue business card and said, "I'm a Vietnam vet. My wife and I have an extra bedroom. It's not fancy but you can stay, free."

I am a middle class, middle age, well-educated, well-traveled journalist. But he saw only my immediate past. If you are from New Orleans or the Gulf Coast, everyone around here knows you are one of this country's newest of refugees.

More »