Disaster leaves behind a tale of two cities/Bush taken to task on New Orleans

Disaster leaves behind a tale of two cities
By Sheila McNulty in New Orleans
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: August 29 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 29 2007 03:00


Rachelle Blue snuggles her son, DJ, on an overstuffed sofa in her newly renovated home. Fountains flow into the swimming pool outside the picture window behind her.

It is hard to believe that two years ago Hurricane Katrina forced a wall of water over the nearby levee, leaving 10 feet of water in here for three weeks until the city drained.

But step outside and reminders are everywhere. The once bustling middle-class Lakeview neighbourhood remains mostly empty. Across the street a home is filled with debris untouched since the hurricane.

"What I hate about living here right now is that house; you never know what is going to come out of that house," Ms Blue said. "This is why the neighbourhood is not coming back as fast as it could. You look across the street and it is a reminder."

Such reminders are in every neighbourhood hit hard by the storm.Yet New Orleans's metropolitan area is seven times the size of Manhattan, so not every parish flooded.

Airport passengers are down only 10 per cent, hotel rooms down 17 per cent and restaurants down 23 per cent compared with before Katrina. But the neighbourhoods tell a different story.

"The truth is it's a tale of two cities," said Peter Ricchiuti, assistant dean at Tulane University business school. "The university area and the French Quarter are fine. Six blocks in the other direction it looks like the storm hit yesterday." A five-hour drive reveals streets deserted for block after block.

Some "Stop" signs remain bent to the ground. Every few yards a stairway leads nowhere - the homes having been swept away. Here a gate stands with a mangled house behind it; there, a row of houses with holes hatched through roofs reveal how families escaped as the water reached attics.

The red paint markings by rescue squads who went from house to house after waters receded remain on tens of thousands of homes. One shows three sets - the first by teams who found nothing, and the third revealing the discovery of three bodies trapped in the rafters.

Amid this haunting debris is a rare find - Stewart's Diner, which Kim Stewart opened last year in time for President George W. Bush to visit during his trip to the city. Yet this is not trumpeted, as many hold Mr Bush - and all other levels of government - responsible for the slow assistance.

"I'm not going to put all of the blame on him, just some of the blame," Ms Stewart says. She has yet to get a dime from the government, despite almost $7bn (€5bn, £3.5bn) in federal assistance to rebuild homes, schools and infrastructure. The big-ticket items, such as the stadium and convention centre, have been taken care of, but of the 181,608 who applied for funds to rebuild homes, only 40,433 have closed.

"The biggest issue hindering us is housing," said Mark Drennan, president of GNO, an economic development agency. "There are still tens of thousands of homeowners without the money to fund renovations."

Ms Stewart used savings to reopen her restaurant. Yet only 20 per cent of the neighbourhood around her is repopulated, so business is slow: "We just felt if we made the restaurant, it would encourage somebody else to make a move."

Others have the same idea; a few blocks away a man paints his newly renovated home bright yellow on an otherwise abandoned street.

"This is a citizen-led recovery," said Pamela Pipes.

This week Ms Pipes launched a self-guided tour of Katrina's destruction, but realised people could not follow it with many street signs still missing. She hired a sign painter to make street signs and spent Sunday with a carpenter hanging them up.

Residents know another hurricane could devastate the city again; only 20 per cent of levees are as high as they should be, and the government admits they would not protect against a Category 5 hurricane. Indeed, one levee that has for years stood unfinished because of government infighting about who should fund it.

Nonetheless, some people refuse to give up on the city.

"People are trying to come back and put their houses back together," said Harold Augustine, who mans a volunteer tool-lending and general assistance effort in the Lower Ninth Ward. "They're doing anything and everything to survive. But it will never be the same again."



Bush taken to task on New Orleans
By Edward Luce in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: August 28 2007 20:32 | Last updated: August 28 2007 20:32


George W. Bush will speak in New Orleans on Wednesday two years after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the second consecutive year the storm has overshadowed the anniversary of the 11 September terrorist attacks.

Mr Bush, whose poor poll ratings date from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which he was widely seen as having mishandled, pledged two years ago to “do what it takes” to rebuild the historic city.

But critics of Mr Bush, who was on vacation in Texas when the storm hit, say the federal government has not fulfilled its promises. Only two-thirds of the city’s pre-Katrina population has returned. Fewer than half of its public schools have reopened and the city has created 17,000 only jobs to replace the 118,000 that were lost, according to the Brookings Institution, which tracks the reconstruction effort.

Mr Bush has also come under fire for failing to appoint a top federal co-ordinator for Gulf coast reconstruction who would report daily to the president. After the storm, Mr Bush asked Karl Rove, his top political adviser, to oversee the rebuilding plans.

But the Bush administration’s effort has come under attack for alleged waste, poor co-ordination and for using “sole bid” contracts for reconstruction projects, many of which remain uncompleted.

“There has been a failure to rebuild every vital public institution that is necessary for civilised society,” James Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip in the House of Representatives, said on Tuesday. Mr Clyburn said that more than 50m gallons of sewage was leaking daily in the New Orleans area.

Mr Bush’s New Orleans visit follows sharply on the heels of most of the 2008 presidential hopefuls – Republicans included. John Edwards, who launched his presidential bid from New Orleans earlier this year, said he would revamp Washington’s federal emergency bureaucracy by placing a “disaster czar” in the White House.

Mr Edwards also pledged that as president he would push through a “Brownie law” – a sardonic reference to Michael Brown, who was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when the storm hit. At the time, Mr Bush told the Fema director: “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie.”

Mr Edwards’s proposed law would aim to ensure that political appointees to federal agencies are qualified to do the job. Mr Brown had previously been commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic frontrunners, issued similar criticisms and plans on their visits to New Orleans. Mike Huckabee, who surprised many by coming second to Mitt Romney in the Iowa Republican straw poll and who is the former governor of Arkansas, which took 75,000 evacuees, also blasted the Bush administration. He said: “We came to believe Fema stood for ‘Forget expecting meaningful answers’.”