Continuing Hurricane Katrina Struggles in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana

[Wayward Episcopalian]

You may recall my post from last week about spending Spring Break with some other Dartmouth Episcopalians in New Orleans. We were one of about a dozen Dartmouth groups there. Here's another such post, cross-posted from my Katrina recovery blog. Also cross-posted to DailyKos and MyDD.

We spent our last day in Louisiana gutting a two-story house in St. Bernard Parish. (Parishes are like counties.) St. Bernard Parish is just to the east of Orleans Parish, and was completely inundated – all but two or three houses were underwater for several weeks. I’d like to tell you about the family we were helping. The “Bordreauxs” have had a rough year, battling the government while living in a cramped trailer outside their rotting home. To this day, 18 months after the storm, they have not received a dime from FEMA, the Road Home Program, State Farm Insurance, or any other official entity.

(On a related noted, I'll have pictures up on my blog this week, I'm just waiting for the ok to put them online from the other folks in them!)

Before the storm, “Larry” and “Reba” lived with their three sons. A daughter lived nearby, and gave birth to a little girl shortly after Katrina. The youngest son still lives with Larry and Reba. They evacuated to Baton Rouge when the hurricane came.

A FEMA inspector initially told the Bordreauxs that their house was structurally unsound and needed to be demolished. As a result, the couple spent nine months trying to get FEMA to come destroy their house, but it was like pulling teeth from a wooly mammoth. Things changed a month ago, when as part of a lawsuit with State Farm Insurance, a structural engineer came out, took a look at the place, and asked them why they wanted to tear it down – he said there was nothing structurally wrong with the place. It turns out that the FEMA inspector who made the mistake was not a professional structural engineer, but a retired postal worker. This was typical: the neighbor’s FEMA inspector was a dentist. So after nine months of trying to destroy their house, Larry and Reba are now in the process of gutting it so that they may rebuild.

The Bordreaux’s battle with their insurance company has been no better: long and drawn out. They had homeowner’s insurance, but not flood insurance. When they originally bought insurance, the salesman told them they didn’t need flood insurance – because of the levee system, the government did not consider St. Bernard Parish a flood zone. It’s easy to criticize people for not purchasing flood insurance when they live below sea level, but can you really criticize them for taking the advice of the federal government and their insurance company, the so-called “experts”? The family is now suing State Farm, because for all intents and purposes, in not paying them anything, the insurance company is penalizing the family for taking their advice.

The Bordreauxs do what they can to make life tolerable - they've put their trailer next to their son's and their neighbor's, built a porch and series of ramps between them all, and decorated the area with Easter signs, welcome home messages, and flowers. It's about as homey as you can make such living conditions, even with the two-story mess behind them.

Another crew gutted a house for a woman who is struggling to get money from Road Home, suing her insurance company (All State), facing a gut-or-demolish deadline, caring for a sick relative, and trying to hold down a job. The intern who led that crew said her story, like the Bordreauxs, is typical: “Throw a rock in this town and you’ll hit six more homeowners who’ll tell you the exact same story.”

Cross-posted from my Katrina recovery blog.

[Kurovski]

1. K&R. (nt)

[intheflow]

2. SSDD

This is what's happening in Mississippi, too, though most of our homes have been gutted by now. Now I, in my role of volunteer coordinator, get to listen to volunteers rant because they're not building houses, they're doing things like planting trees and helping to survey neighborhoods. "We came down to build!" they say. Yeah, well, you can't build without materials, and you can't get materials without money, and so far very few people have gotten anything from the insurance companies or the states or the federal government.

:banghead:

[Wayward Episcopalian]

4. Planting Trees

Remind them of the importance of city beautification - instead of saying "We came to build!" they should be saying "We came to do whatever is needed!" City beautification is very much needed - the area's trying to entice half the population to move back, and why should we ask people to come home to ugly, desolate scarring?

I speak as one who went to build and wound up helping run a distribution center in the Lower Ninth Ward for three months, so I know where these kids are coming from.

[intheflow]

8. In our case,

the trees are actually part of a wetlands restoration project. Mississippi didn't flood like NOLA did--no levees broke--but we did get storm surge to rooftops up to 15 miles inland in some places because so many wetlands have turned into WalMarts and suburbs. The problem with that project is the same thing, though--no money for materials, so we're short on shovels and trees. But, hey! they don't call it a "disaster" for nothing!

[jus_the_facts]

3. K'n'R....just heard tonight on the local news...80 MILLION payed by the STATE to the Saints....

....for the next 4 years to keep them here...sure doesn't sound so important when citizens are still sufferin' like this...sickening actually. :(

[Wayward Episcopalian]

5. Saints

$20m a year isn't so bad. The Saints are a huge moral uplift to so many, and that emotional help is just as important as the physical help. I wrote this in the Spokane Spokesman Review and the Dartmouth Free Press: "Perhaps the biggest shot in the arm for the city was the return of their football team, the Saints, to the Superdome in September. Ten blocks surrounding the stadium were closed, but the party still spilled over into downtown traffic. The game opened with a joint performance by U2 and Green Day. More reporters covered the game than did last year’s Superbowl, and I am told the noise from the crowd was deafening. Even the ESPN announcers were caught up in the emotion surrounding the game, a blowout win for the Saints. The next day in the Lower Ninth Ward, no one wanted to discuss their troubles – everyone wanted to talk about the game. “My grandma was getting sleepy around 8pm, and I told her to go to bed,” said one man. “‘No way,’ she said! She wanted to watch her Saints win – and she did! My eighty-year old grandma made it to ten-o-clock!” The joy continued all season."

I would also point out that a lack of money isn't the problem. Enough money has been allocated for now; the problem is that it's bottlenecked by red-tape and beuracracy and not getting to the people who need it.

[jus_the_facts]

6. "not getting to the people who need it." ....the Saints org. doesn't need it....

...anywhere near as bad as the citizens of this state...that's my point...yet the people with money get theirs easily and the citizens get the shaft..and are still waitin' almost 2 years later...with the next hurricane season knockin' at their doors. x(

[Wayward Episcopalian]

9. $$

My thought is that $7b has been allocated for Road Home, so setting aside another $80m isn't what Road Home or FEMA needs. What is needed is competent workers to get the money moving from the red tape to the citizens, and an extra $20m would just be more that isn't moving.

[uppityperson]

7. Looking forward to the pictures and thanks for doing what you are doing.

Insurance companies and The Road Home. bah.
Did you run across Emergency Communities (Food for Love cafe) and distribution doing food and stuff in St.Bernard (big tent dome thingy)?

[Wayward Episcopalian]

10. Re:

Thank you, and no, sorry, I'm not familiar with that particular group.

[uppityperson]

11. rechecking website, looks like they moved again, here's a link

http://www.emergencycommunities.org/
Thanks for Road Home info too.