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3 brief articles on Hurricane Katrina & Aftermath in New Orleans
 The 1st is a 3-year update by #’s,
 The 2nd is 6 months after Katrina (on evacuation)
 The 3rd is 1 year after (re-building process problems)
[NOTE: I made a number of cuts to reduce the length; the places are indicated by ….]
Article #1
Katrina, the Pain Index
By BILL QUIGLEY
August 25, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley08252008.html
0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10
billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block
Grant – compared to 116,708 homeowners.
0. Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing
apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing
Development.
0. Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed privately run
charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.
.008. Percentage of the rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by
August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied – a total of 82 finished out of
10,000 projected.
1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.
1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.
4. Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of
flooding as they were before Katrina.
10. Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly
occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.
11. Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.
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17. Percentage increase in wages in the hotel and food industry since before Katrina.
20-25. Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current
pace.
25. Percent fewer hospitals in metro New Orleans than before Katrina.
32. Percent of the city’s neighborhoods that have fewer than half as many households as
they did before Katrina.
36. Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.
38. Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.
40. Percentage fewer special education students attending publicly funded privately run
charter schools than traditional public schools.
41. Number of publicly funded privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of
total of 79 public schools in the city.
43. Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.
46. Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.
56. Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds than before Katrina.
80. Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.
81. Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the
complete costs to repair their homes.
300. Number of National Guard troops still in City of New Orleans.
1080. Days National Guard troops have remained in City of New Orleans.
1250. Number of publicly financed vouchers for children to attend private schools in New
Orleans in program’s first year.
6,982. Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.
8,000. Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal
government.
10,000. Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.
12,000. Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the
bridge has been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.
14,000. Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance
expires March 2009.
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32,000. Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving
the public school population less than half what is was pre-Katrina.
39,000. Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair
and rebuilding who have still not received any money.
45,000. Fewer children enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare in New Orleans than preKatrina.
46,000. Fewer African American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than
2003 gubernatorial election.
55,000. Fewer houses receiving mail than before Katrina.
62,000. Fewer people in New Orleans enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare than preKatrina.
71,657. Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.
124,000. Fewer people working in metropolitan New Orleans than pre-Katrina.
132,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New
Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.
214,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau current population estimate of 239,000 in New Orleans.
453,726. Population of New Orleans before Katrina.
320 million. The number trees destroyed in Louisiana and Mississippi by Katrina.
368 million. Dollar losses of five major metro New Orleans hospitals from Katrina through
2007. In 2008, these hospitals expect another $103 million in losses.
1.9 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina
damages that have not yet been delivered.
2.6 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina
damages that have not yet been delivered.
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New
Orleans. He’s a regular contributor to CounterPunch, and can be reached at
Quigley77@gmail.com
Article # 2
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Six Months After Katrina: Who Was Left Behind - Then
and Now
by Bill Quigley
Published on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Bill Quigley is a civil and human rights lawyer and Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans School of
Law. You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu
Introduction
Nearly six months ago, my wife Debbie and I boated out of New Orleans. We left five days after Katrina struck.
Debbie worked as an oncology nurse in a New Orleans hospital. She volunteered to come in during the hurricane so
that other nurses with children could evacuate.
There were about 2000 people huddled in the hospital - patients, staff and families of staff and patients. Plate glass
windows exploded in the lobby and on crosswalks and on several floors. Water poured in though broken windows,
ceilings, and down the elevator shafts. Eight feet of brown floodwater surrounded us.
The entire city immediately lost electricity. Soon the hospital backup generators located in the basement failed. No
lights. No phones. Even the water system stopped. No drinking water. No flush toilets.
… The gains of 21st century medicine disappeared. Over 40 people died in the hospital over the next few days as we
waited for help.
Now imagine an entire city with no electricity, water, food or flushing toilets and tens of thousands of people left
behind…
The Katrina evacuation was totally self-help. If you had the resources, a car, money and a place to go, you left. Over
one million people evacuated - 80 to 90% of the population. No provisions were made for those who could not
evacuate themselves. To this day no one has a reliable estimate of how many people were left behind in Katrina that in itself says quite a bit about what happened.
Who was left behind in the self-help evacuation?
In the hospital, we could not see who was left behind because we did not have electricity or TV. We certainly knew
the 2000 of us were left behind, and from the hospital we could see others. Some were floating in the street - face
down. Some were paddling down the street - helping older folks get to high ground. Some were swimming down the
streets. We could hear people left behind screaming for help from rooftops. We routinely heard gunshots as people
trapped on rooftops tried to get the attention of helicopters crisscrossing the skies above. We could see the people
trapped in the Salvation Army home a block away. We could hear breaking glass as people scrambled to get away
from flooded one story homes and into the higher ground of several story office buildings. We saw people
swimming to the local drugstore and swimming out with provisions. But we had no idea how many were actually
left behind.
The poor, especially those without cars, were left behind. Twenty-seven percent of the people of New Orleans did
not have access to a car. Government authorities knew in advance that ".100,000 citizens of New Orleans did not
have means of personal transportation." Greyhound and Amtrak stopped service on the Saturday before the
hurricane. These are people who did not have cars because they were poor - over 125,000 people, 27% of the people
of New Orleans, lived below the very low federal poverty level before Katrina.
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The sick were left behind. Some government reports estimated 12,000 patients were evacuated. I estimate at least an
additional 24,000 people - staff and families of patients - were left behind in the twenty-two hospitals which were
open at the time.
The elderly were left behind. The 280 plus local nursing homes remained mostly full. Only 21% evacuated and as a
consequence 215 people died in nursing homes, at least six people died at a single nursing home while they waited
four days for busses. The aged who lived at home also certainly found it more difficult than most to evacuate as they
were more likely to live alone, less likely to own a car and nearly half were disabled.
Untold numbers of other disabled people and their caretakers were also left behind. There were tens of thousands of
people with special needs in New Orleans.
A physician reported hundreds of people in wheelchairs were in front of the Convention Center. A comprehensive
study of evacuees in Houston shelters found one in seven physically disabled, 22% physically unable to evacuate,
23% stayed behind to care for someone physically disabled, and 25% had a chronic disease such as heart disease,
diabetes or high blood pressure. There were no provisions made for their evacuations.
Children were left behind. While there are no official estimates breaking out children left behind, I know from what
we saw during our evacuation that many, many children were among those left behind. About one-fourth of the
people living in the areas damaged were children, about 183,000 kids, including 47,000 children under the age of 5.
Over half of the children displaced were African-American and 30% of children in the damaged areas were poor,
nearly double the 2000 national census rate for child poverty of 16.6%. These children were almost twice as likely to
live in a female-headed home than children nationally.
Prisoners were left behind. Local prisons held 8300 inmates, most on local minor charges awaiting trial and too poor
to post bond. Thousands were left behind with no food, water, or medical attention. Jails depend on electricity as
much as hospitals do - doors of cells and halls and pods and entrances and exits are electronically opened and
closed. More than 600 hundred prisoners, one entire building, were left behind once the prisons were evacuated - left
in chest deep water, locked into cells.
Ultimately as many as 40,000 people took refuge in the Superdome which lost power, lost part of its roof, the water
system failed and the toilets backed up. Another 20-30,000 people were dropped off at the Convention Center.
Conditions at the Convention Center were far worse than at the Superdome because the Convention Center was
never intended to be used for evacuees it did not have any drinking water, food, or medical care at all. Ten people
died in or around the Superdome, four at the convention center.
Unfounded rumors flew about rapes and murders inside these centers - and the myth that rescue helicopters were
fired upon - have all been found to be untrue.. But those rumors so upset military and medical responders that many
slowed down demanding protection from the evacuees - only to be greeted by "a whole lot of people clapping and
cheering" when they arrived.
Debbie and I left the hospital after five days. Helicopters finally came and airlifted out many patients, their families
and staff. Others, like us, left in small fishing boats piloted by volunteers. The Coast Guard reported it rescued
33,000 people and the National Guard reported rescues of another 25,000 people. Louisiana Department of
Homeland Security said 62,000 people were rescued from rooftops or out of water - not including those already in
shelters. Many, many others, like us, were rescued by volunteers in boats and trucks.
Some people never made it out of metropolitan New Orleans. February 2006 reports from the Louisiana Department
of Health and Hospitals show 1,103 bodies were recovered from the storm and flood, with over 2,000 people still
reported missing. About 215 people died in local hospitals and nursing homes.
Where did the survivors end up? According to FEMA, evacuees ended up all over - applications came in from
18,700 zip codes in all 50 states - half of the nation's residential postal zones. Most evacuee families stayed within
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250 miles of New Orleans, but 240,000 households went to Houston and other cities over 250 miles away and
another 60,000 households went over 750 miles away.
Who ended up in shelters? Over 270,000 evacuees started out in shelters. The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health surveyed 680 randomly selected adult evacuees in
Houston shelters on September 10-12, 2005. The results of that survey illustrate who ended up in shelters:
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64% were renters
55% did not have a car or a way to evacuate
22% had to care for someone who was physically unable to leave
72% had no insurance
68% had neither money in the bank nor a useable credit card
57% had total household incomes of less than $20,000 in prior year
76% had children under 18 with them in the shelter
77% had a high school education or less
93% were black
67% were employed full or part-time before the hurricane
52% had no health insurance
54% received their healthcare at the big public Charity Hospital
The people who were left behind in Katrina were the poor, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, children, and prisoners
- mostly African-American.
[Dunn cut rest of article, to instead go to a 1 year update]
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Article #3
Trying to Make It Home New Orleans a Year After Katrina
By BILL QUIGLEY, New Orleans .
August 22 , 2006
Published by: http://www.counterpunch.org/
[Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at
Quigley@loyno.edu ]
Bernice Mosely is 82 and lives alone in New Orleans in a shotgun double. On August 29, 2005, as Katrina hit the
Gulf Coast, the levees constructed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers failed in five places and New Orleans filled with
water.
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One year ago Ms. Mosely was on the second floor of her neighborhood church. Days later, she was helicoptered out.
She was so dehydrated she spent eight days in a hospital. Her next door neighbor, 89 years old, stayed behind to care
for his dog. He drowned in the eight feet of floodwaters that covered their neighborhood.
Ms. Mosely now lives in her half-gutted house. She has no stove, no refrigerator, and no air-conditioning. The
bottom half of her walls have been stripped of sheetrock and are bare wooden slats from the floor halfway up the
wall. Her food is stored in a styrofoam cooler. Two small fans push the hot air around….
Thousands of people like Ms. Mosely are back in their houses on the Gulf Coast. They are living in houses that most
people would consider, at best, still under construction, or, at worst, uninhabitable. Like Ms. Mosely, they are trying
to make their damaged houses into homes.
New Orleans is still in intensive care…. We remain in serious trouble. Like us, you probably wonder where has the
promised money gone? …
Housing
… Hundreds of thousands of people from the Gulf Coast remain displaced. In New Orleans alone over two hundred
thousand people have not been able to make it home.
Homeowners in Louisiana, like Ms. Mosely, have not yet received a single dollar of federal housing rebuilding
assistance to rebuild their severely damaged houses back into homes.
Over 100,000 homeowners in Louisiana are on a waiting list for billions in federal rebuilding assistance through the
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. So far, no money has been distributed.
Renters, who comprised most of the people of New Orleans before Katrina, are much worse off than homeowners.
New Orleans lost more than 43,000 rental units to the storm. Rents have skyrocketed in the undamaged parts of the
area, pricing regular working people out of the market. The official rate of increase in rents is 39%. In lower income
neighborhoods, working people and the elderly report rents are up much higher than that. Amy Liu of the Brookings
Institute said “Even people who are working temporarily for the rebuilding effort are having trouble finding
housing.”
Renters in Louisiana are not even scheduled to receive assistance through the Louisiana CDBG program. Some
developers will receive assistance at some point, and when they do, some apartments will be made available, but that
is years away.
In the face of the worst affordable housing shortage since the end of the Civil War, the federal government
announced that it refused to allow thousands of families to return to their public housing units and was going to
bulldoze 5000 apartments. Before Katrina, over 5000 families lived in public housing – 88 percent women-headed
households, nearly all African American.
These policies end up with hundreds of thousands of people still displaced from their homes. Though all ages,
incomes and races are displaced, some groups are impacted much more than others. The working poor, renters,
moms with kids, African-Americans, the elderly and disabled – all are suffering disproportionately from
displacement. Race, poverty, age and physical ability are great indicators of who has and who has made it home.
… Texas also tells part of the story. It is difficult to understand the impact of Katrina without understanding the role
of Texas – home to many of our displaced... Texas recently surveyed the displaced and reported that over 250,000
displaced people live in the state and 41 percent of these households report income of less than $500 per month.
Eighty-one percent are black, 59 percent are still jobless, most have at least one child at home, and many have
serious health issues.
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… In Louisiana, there are 73,000 families in FEMA trailers. Most of these trailers are 240 square feet of living
space. More than 1600 families are still waiting for trailers in St. Bernard Parish. FEMA trailers did not arrive in the
lower ninth ward until June – while the displaced waited for water and electricity to resume…
Until challenged, FEMA barred reporters from talking with people in FEMA trailer parks without prior permission –
forcing a reporter out of a trailer in one park and residents back into their trailer in another in order to stop
interviews. …
Trailers are visible signs of the displaced. Tens of thousands of other displaced families are living in apartments
across the country month to month under continuous threats of FEMA cutoffs. …
Health and Healthcare
Early this month, on August 1, 2006, another Katrina victim was found in her home in New Orleans, buried under
debris. The woman was the 28th person found dead since March 2006. A total of 1577 died in Louisiana as a
result of Katrina.
A friend of mine, a lawyer with health insurance and a family physician, went for an appointment recently at 11am.
The office was so crowded he had to sit out in the hall on the floor to wait his turn for a seat in the waiting room.
Three hours later he met his doctor. The doctor thought might have a gall stone. The doctor tried to set up an
ultrasound. None were available. He ordered my friend to the emergency room for an ultrasound. At 4pm my friend
went to the hospital emergency room, which was jammed with people: stroke victims, young kids with injuries,
people brought in by the police. At 5am the next morning, my friend finished his ultrasound and went home. If it
takes a lawyer with health insurance that long to get medical attention, consider what poor people without health
insurance are up against.
Half the hospitals open before Katrina are still closed. The state’s biggest public healthcare provider, Charity
Hospital, remains closed and there are no current plans to reopen it anytime soon. Healthcare could actually get
worse. Dr. Mark Peters, board chair of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans said within the next two
to three months, “all the hospitals” will be looking seriously at cutbacks. …
Jobs
Before Katrina, there were over 630,000 workers in the metropolitan New Orleans area – now there are slightly over
400,000. Over 18,000 businesses suffered “catastrophic” damage in Louisiana. Nearly one in four of the displaced
workers is still unemployed. Education and healthcare have lost the most employees. Most cannot return because
there is little affordable housing, child care, public transportation and public health care...
Tens of thousands of migrant workers, roughly half undocumented, have come to the Gulf Coast to work in the
recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions and plenty
of work. Some paid money up front for the chance to come to the area to work. Most of these promises were broken.
A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity, other live out of cars. At various
places in the city whole families are living in tents. Two recently released human rights reports document the
problems of these workers.
Immigrant workers are doing the dirtiest, most dangerous work, in the worst working conditions. Toxic mold, lead
paint, fiberglass, and who knows what other chemicals are part of daily work. Safety equipment is not always
provided. Day laborers, a new category of workers in New Orleans, are harassed by the police and periodic
immigration raids. Wage theft is widespread as employers often do not pay living wages, and sometimes do not pay
at all. Some of the powers try to pit local workers against new arrivals – despite the fact that our broken Gulf Coast
clearly needs all the workers we can get…
Public Education
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Before Katrina, 56,000 students were enrolled in over 100 public schools in New Orleans. At the end of the school
year there were only 12,500. Right after the storm, the local school board gave many of the best public schools to
charter groups. The State took over almost all the rest. By the end of the school year, four schools were operated by
the pre-Katrina school board, three by the State, and eighteen were new charter schools.
After thirty-two years of collective bargaining, the union contract with the New Orleans public school teachers
elapsed and was not renewed and 7500 employees were terminated…
Criminal Legal System
Consider also our criminal legal system. Chaka Davis was arrested on misdemeanor charges in October 2005 and
jailed at the Greyhound station in New Orleans in October of 2005.
Under Louisiana law, he was required to be formally charged within 30 days of arrest or released from custody.
Because of a filing error he was lost in the system. He was never charged, never went to court, and never saw a
lawyer in over 8 months – even though the maximum penalty for conviction for one of his misdemeanors was only 6
months. His mother found him in an out of town jail and brought his situation to the attention of the public
defenders. He was released the next day.
Crime is increasingly a problem. In July, New Orleans lost almost as many people to murder as in July of 2005, with
only 40 percent of the population back. There are many young people back in town while their parents have not
returned. State and local officials called in the National Guard to patrol lightly populated areas so local police could
concentrate on high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. Arrests have soared, but the number of murders remain
high. Unfortunately, several of the National Guard have been arrested for criminal behavior as well – two for looting
liquor from a home, two others for armed robbery at a traffic stop.
Criminal Court District Judge Arthur Hunter has declared the current criminal justice system shameful and
unconstitutional and promises to start releasing inmates awaiting trial on recognizance bonds on the one year
anniversary of Katrina. The system is nearly paralyzed by a backlog of over 6000 cases. There are serious evidence
problems because of resigned police officers, displaced victims, displaced witnesses, and flooded evidence rooms.
The public defender system, which was down to 4 trial attorneys for months, is starting to rebuild…
In the suburbs across the lake, Sheriff Jack Strain told the media on TV that he was going to protect his jurisdiction
from “thugs” and “trash” migrating from closed public housing projects in New Orleans. He went on to promise that
every person who wore “dreadlocks or che-wee hairstyles” could expect to be stopped by law enforcement. The
NAACP and the ACLU called in the U.S. Justice Department and held a revival-like rally at a small church just
down the road from the jail. Though the area is over 80 percent white, the small group promised to continue to
challenge injustice no matter how powerful the person committing the injustice. Recently, the same law enforcement
people set up a roadblock and were stopping only Latino people to check IDs and insurance. I guess to prove they
were not only harassing black people?
Finally, a grand jury has started looking into actions by other suburban police officers who blocked a group of
people, mostly black, from escaping the floodwaters of New Orleans by walking across the Mississippi River bridge.
The suburban police forced the crowd to flee back across the two mile bridge by firing weapons into the air…
Where Did the Money Go?
Everyone who visits New Orleans asks the same question that locals ask – where is the money? Congress
reportedly appropriated over $100 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion was allocated to
temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of
Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6
billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion
was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.
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One hour in New Orleans shows the check must still be in the mail.
Not a single dollar in federal housing rehab money has made it into a hand in Louisiana. Though Congress
has allocated nearly $10 billion in Community Development Block Grants, the State of Louisiana is still
testing the program and has not yet distributed dollar number one...
A lot of media attention has gone to the prosecution of people who wrongfully claimed benefits of $2000 or more
after the storm. Their fraud is despicable. It harms those who are still waiting for assistance from FEMA.
But, be clear - these little $2000 thieves are minnows swimming on the surface…
How did a company that did not own a truck get a contract for debris removal worth hundreds of millions of dollars?
The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver of early Katrina federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of
Pompano Beach, FL, which received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi from Army
Corps of Engineers.
The paper reported that the company does not own a single dumptruck! All they do is subcontract out the work.
Ashbritt, however, had recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had
been run by Mississippi Governor and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also
trucked $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004.
How did a company that filed for bankruptcy the year before and was not licensed to build trailers get a $200 million
contract for trailers? Circle B Enterprises of Georgia was awarded $287 million in contracts by FEMA for temporary
housing. At the time, that was the seventh highest award of Katrina money in the country. According to the
Washington Post, Circle B was not even being licensed to build homes in its own state of Georgia and filed for
bankruptcy in 2003. The company does not even have a website.
Signs of Hope
Despite the tragedies that continue to plague our Gulf Coast, there is hope. Between the rocks of hardship, green life
continues to sprout defiantly.
Fifteen feet of water washed through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School for Science and Technology in
the lower 9th Ward. When people were finally able to get into the building, the bodies of fish were found on the
second floor. Parents and over 90% of the teachers organized a grass-roots effort to put their school back together. ..
The New Orleans Vietnamese people continue to inspire us. They were among the very first group back and they
have joined forces to care for their elders, rebuild their community church, and work together in a most cooperative
manner to resurrect their community. Recently they took legal and direct action to successfully stop the placement
of a gigantic landfill right next to their community. Their determination and sense of community-building is a good
model for us all…
Tens of thousands of volunteers from every walk of life have joined with the people of the Gulf Coast to help repair
and rebuild. Lawyers are giving free help to Katrina victims who need legal help to rebuild their homes. Medical
personnel staff free clinics. Thousands of college, high school and even some grade school students have traveled to
the area to help families gut their devastated homes. Churches, temples, and mosques from across the world have
joined with sisters and brothers in New Orleans to repair and rebuild.
Despite open attempts to divide them, black and brown and white and yellow workers have started to talk to each
other. Small groups have started to work together to fight for living wages and safe jobs for all workers. Thousands
came together for a rally for respectful treatment for Latino and immigrant workers. Seasoned civil rights activists
welcomed the new movement and pledged to work together.
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Ultimately, the people of the Gulf Coast are the greatest sign of hope. Despite setbacks that people in the US rarely
suffer, people continue to help each other and fight for their right to return home and the right to live in the city they
love. …
For more information see www.justiceforneworleans.org