Katrina News Online

More than four years have passed since terrible Hurricane Katrina ripped all the way through New Orleans, and the images of demolished buildings also homeless families have washed out from our memories. But the nightmares are still a certainty for the more than Fourteen thousand (14,000) families in New Orleans still living off Disaster Housing Assistance Program vouchers along with the countless internally displaced persons.

Unfortunately for those 14,000 families, the Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP) vouchers perish this month. According to Amnesty International, the government estimates regarding half of those families might be eligible for Housing Choice Vouchers and allowing them to live in Section 8 housing. But what is the option for other families who do not qualify for section 8 housing?

“Each person has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health as well as well-being of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care also necessary social services,” according to  the Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

If more than 7,000 families lose their homes, the United States (US) would be worsening to uphold this clause.

Now this is not the time to place disaster relief in New Orleans on the back burner, but it seems lots of Americans have pushed it to the back of their minds and consider it old news.

“I think it is totally not on everyone’s minds anymore just because the shock value is gone now,” said Hannah Nusz who is the co-director of the Alternative Breaks program.

The program directors have resolute to send a cluster of students to help clean up and build housing in New Orleans this winter break.

Alternative Breaks has gone to New Orleans in the earlier period but had no programs there last year. This year, Nusz said the program felt as if something was gone astray.

“Although there is a rebuilding of communities, rebuilding a homes and peoples’ life, that takes time,” Nusz said. “It is definitely not something that just happens in a few months.”

Nusz is completely right. The existing quagmire that will leave many Katrina victims with no housing is proof that reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in New Orleans are not yet over.

If only there were other forms of helping victims might turn to when federal aid runs out. Groups like American Red Cross, Oxfam America, and Louisiana Disaster Recovery also the NAACP Disaster Fund has helped since the hurricane hit. At slightest one of these organizations, Louisiana Disaster Recovery is still contributing their support, but there are around 1,000 of families who risk losing their homes at the closing stages of this month need a better relief effort.

Alternative Breaks does more than assist Katrina victims; moreover it provides a new perspective for the students involved. If more organizations still show up their interest Alternative Breaks are investing in the problem, New Orleans might make huge strides forward.

A New Orleans woman has been sentenced to more than five years in jail for illegally obtaining Hurricane Katrina grant money along with a loan for a home she lost prior to the storm.

In June, a federal board of judges convicted Barbara Simmons Dowl of charges that included wire fraud as well as theft of government funds.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance sentenced Dowl to 69 months in prison also ordered her to compensate $156,000 in restitution towards the state as well as federal governments.

Prosecutors say the city of New Orleans sold property that Dowl and her ex-husband owned but gone astray in the year 2004 due to unpaid taxes.

After the August 2005 hurricane, Dowl obtained a Small Business Administration disaster loan as well as a federally subsidized proprietor grant for the property even though she no longer lived there.

Hurricane Katrina, the deadliest hurricanes in the history of United States. Severe loss of life and heaps of property damage occurred in New Orleans. It is vague that Hurricane Katrina caused more than $US81 billion in damage.

The Tropical Strom Katrina first upgraded its status on 24 August, 2005. On August 25 a hurricane crossed the coastline of Florida early morning.

Katrina weakens over land and was below Hurricane strength for a few hours. However, there is a quick development in the hurricane when it entered the Gulf of Mexico.

On 27th August, Hurricane Katrina hit category three and it actually reached category five intensity the next day itself. Fortunately, Katrina destabilized a little before it hit the coast.

In the early hours of August 28, Katrina strikes the coastline as a category three hurricane near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana.

Katrina then go back over the sea for a few hours before it made its final cross over land as a hurricane nears the Louisiana/Mississippi border.

Hurricane Katrina maintained hurricane intensity well into Mississippi.

Real Fact About Hurricane Katrina:

• About 1836 people were killed by Hurricane Katrina. Still 705 People are classified as missing.
• In New Orleans, the Flood security is failed in more than 50 places. This caused the mass flooding
  coupled with Hurricane Katrina.
• The name Katrina is been retired officially by the World Meteorological Organization due to its
  severity and replaced as Katia instead of Katrina.
• About $4 billion dollars has been contributed by the people for the victim of Hurricane Katrina.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the gulf coast of the United States, east of New Orleans,

1. With the storm’s eye passing within 10 to 15 miles of the city. The effect on New Orleans, as well as on the entire coastal region, was devastating.

In the aftermath of the storm, about 80 percent of the city  was flooded. A recent article estimated damages in excess of $200 billion, making Katrina one of the most economically costly hurricanes ever to strike the United States

2 Reacting to the widespread destruction, the 109th Congress enacted two supplementary appropriation bills totaling $62.3 billion for emergency response and recovery needs.

3 The death toll has been estimated at more than 1,200.

4 In addition, tens of thousands of citizens were evacuated to other parts of the Nation.

Besides taking its toll on the human, social, and psychological fabric of the city, the storm had a notable effect on the city’s economy, its labor market dynamics, and its individual businesses. Just what these effects were has been the subject of some discussion. This article joins the discussion in its analysis of employment and wage data.

In what follows, trends in employment and wage patterns based on data provided by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, the Bureau) are compared before and after the storm to measure the extent of the losses during the first 10 months (September 2005 to June 2006) following Katrina.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) provided more than $86 million to the state of Louisiana to restore criminal justice infrastructure and better equip local law enforcement agencies. These funds have provided local police and sheriffs with vital equipment; helped re-establish local court operations; helped pay the salaries of prosecutors and investigators; and supported programs that help prevent youth violence and other risky behavior.

• DOJ created the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force to deter, investigate, and prosecute disaster-related Federal crimes – 892 prosecutions to date. In August 2007, New Orleans installed its first Inspector General with full support of the Federal Government. The Federal Coordinator hosted a meeting of key Federal Inspectors General in May 2008 and a follow up meeting last month, where a pledge of continued cooperation was made by more than 30 Federal, State, and local leaders.

• DOJ has also played a lead role in the Southeast Louisiana Criminal Justice Recovery Task Force, a coalition of local, State, and Federal criminal justice leaders working to restore vital infrastructure and establish a more effective justice system. The Task Force is helping to train New Orleans police officers, sharing intelligence between the FBI and local law enforcement, exploring ways to better harmonize efforts such as the establishment of a regional crime lab and regional training academy, and working to improve interoperability between State police and local law enforcement.

Four propositions drawn from 60 years of natural hazard and reconstruction research provide a comparative and historical perspective on the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Decisions taken over its 288-year history that have made New Orleans so vulnerable to Katrina reflect a long-term pattern of societal response to hazard events—reducing consequences to relatively frequent events, and increasing vulnerability to very large and rare events. Thus Katrina’s consequences for New Orleans were truly catastrophic—accounting for most of the estimated 1,570 deaths of Louisiana residents and $40–50 billion in monetary losses. A comparative sequence and timing of recovery provides a calendar of historical experience against which to gauge progress in reconstruction. Using this calendar, the emergency postdisaster period appears to be longer in duration than that of any other studied disaster. The restoration period, the time taken to restore urban services for the smaller population, is in keeping with or ahead of historical experience. The effort to reconstruct the physical environment and urban infrastructure is likely to take 8–11 years. Conflicting policy goals for reconstruction of rapid recovery, safety, betterment, and equity are already evident. Actions taken demonstrate the rush to rebuild the familiar in contrast to planning efforts that emphasize betterment. Because disasters tend to accelerate existing economic, social, and political trends, the large losses in housing, population, and employment after Katrina are likely to persist and, at best, only partly recover. However, the possibility of breaking free of this gloomy trajectory is feasible and has some historical precedent.

On August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast, 130 Louisiana residents in the greater New Orleans area were known to be undergoing treatment for tuberculosis (TB) disease. Standard treatment and cure of TB requires a multidrug regimen administered under directly observed therapy (DOT) for at least 6 months . This report updates previous information and summarizes TB cases reported as of December 31, 2005, among persons undergoing TB treatment in the New Orleans area when Hurricane Katrina made landfall and among persons who were evacuated and subsequently received a diagnosis of TB in other parts of the country. By October 13, 2005, through intensive local, state, and national efforts involving both government and private sector partners, all 130 TB patients from the New Orleans area had been located and, if still indicated, had resumed TB treatment. As a result of heightened public health surveillance among Hurricane Katrina evacuees, six other New Orleans evacuees began treatment (i.e., two persons with known TB and four with previously undiagnosed TB) after arriving in other states. The success of these post-disaster TB control measures affirms the utility of alternative data sources during health-related emergencies and the importance of maintaining a strong TB control component in the public health sector.

The effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were shattering and long-lasting. As the middle of Katrina conceded east of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown were in the Category 2 variety with recurrent powerful gusts, and tidal flow was corresponding to regarding a strong Category 3 hurricane. Although the most stern portion of Katrina missed the city, striking nearby St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, the hurricane rush caused more than 50 breaches in drainage channel levees and also in navigational channel levees and precipitated the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States.

By August 31, 2005, eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded, with several parts below 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. Mainly of the city’s levees intended and built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers were broken in one place or another, with the 17th Street Canal levee, the Industrial Canal levee, and the London Avenue Canal floodwall. These breaches were dependable for most of the flooding, according to a June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ninety percent of the inhabitants of southeast Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation’s history. In spite of this, many remained .The Louisiana Superdome was used as a selected “refuge of last resort” for those who remained in the city. The city flooded owing mainly to the failure of the federally built levee system.