Lack of Cohesion Bedevils Katrina Recovery -- Washington Post-

[Coastie for Truth]

Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, red tape and poor planning have left thousands of evacuees without basic services, according to local and state officials, public policy experts and survivors themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of people from New Orleans and Gulf Coast communities have fled, sometimes to neighboring states and beyond, moving in with friends and family or into shelters, public housing and hotels funded by the Red Cross. With little guidance from federal and state governments -- and no single person or entity in charge of the overall operation -- cities and counties have been left on their own to find survivors homes, schools, jobs and health care. A patchwork of policies has resulted, causing relief agencies to sometimes work at cross-purposes.

President Bush has promised a range of new initiatives to help the evacuees, including $5,000 grants to help the unemployed find jobs, a voucher program for students and more money for state Medicaid programs. But while Bush's promises of additional help have been welcomed, the initial efforts to provide for the evacuees has sometimes been disjointed, confusing and ineffective, local officials said:
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· Some services have not reached their targets: At the Dallas convention center free legal resources for evacuees were hardly being used, partly because no one had told survivors how to think through what their legal needs might be.

· Public assistance programs for evacuees are going to vary widely, depending on welfare policies in individual states, meaning that evacuees who happened to be transported to one state are likely to receive very different benefits than those in others.

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"800 Number" call centers are "saturated"

*In his Thursday speech, Bush implored evacuees to call the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Red Cross to register themselves, because "we need to know who you are." Bush was referring to people such as Steve Lacourt, whose mobile home in Pass Christian, Miss., washed away. ... Lacourt has tried to do just what the president asked -- for more than a week. One night, the 42-year-old mechanic said, he drove to a highway overpass, where his cell phone got some reception, and speed-dialed the toll-free numbers for FEMA and the Red Cross for six hours straight, from 8 in the evening until 2 in the morning. ...
He could not get through.

"FEMA Call Centers are saturated"

* In Ocean Springs, Miss., FEMA officials working out of a former Kmart gave him FEMA's toll-free number again. ... "That's completely useless," he said he told them. ... "That's all we can do," he said he was told.

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller quoted as saying

*"When Congress approves $12 billion in two to three days of the hurricane, and two weeks later, none of the communities whose population has swollen by 25,000 has received any of that money, you have to wonder what is going on," she said. "Is it a bureaucratic problem? It sounds like it is."

Major disconnects as evacuees without cars are housed in remote suburbs without public transit.