Long-term devastating effects from Hurricane Katrina are still being felt in the southern United States, even as we approach its third anniversary, Northumberland Habitat For Humanity executive director Cathy Lyons said.

Interviewed following her return from the fourth build in Katrinaaffected areas in which Northumberland volunteers have participated, Ms. Lyons said progress in Mississippi is continuing steadily. As for progress in New Orleans, that's another story.

Ms. Lyons and local volunteers first went to the New Orleans area in April 2006, and again in December that year. A build in Biloxi, Mississippi, took place in October 2007, and Ms. Lyons has just returned from the 25th annual Carter Work Project -- the yearly project in which Habitat's most prominent volunteers and supporters, former presidential couple Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, will be participating.

Formerly known as the Jimmy Carter Project, Ms. Lyons said, it has been renamed the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Project -- or, as it is more commonly known, the Carter Work Project -- to honour the former first lady's participation and support every step of the way. It's a move of which Ms. Lyons highly approves.

This year, the Carter Project took place along the Gulf Coast between Houston, Texas, and Gulfport, Mississippi. Team Canada was in Louisiana, with 45 members from across the country.

As they drove around, they found that certain areas (including parts of Slidell) still have no electricity or phone service. However, asked how progress is coming in New Orleans, Ms. Lyons is not as pessimistic as she once was. Even since she was down last fall, she is seeing more activity and efforts -- especially in St. Bernard Parish.

Read More...

CHALMETTE, La. (AP) — Nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina, shifting demographics and the loss of community touchstones have rendered tight-knit St. Bernard Parish almost unrecognizable to those who cherished life here before the storm.

By one estimate, less than half the 67,000 pre-storm population is back in this New Orleans suburb, and residents are now poorer and more reliant on services from the cash-strapped parish government, St. Bernard President Craig Taffaro said.

There is no hospital, shopping options are limited, and teachers are in short supply. Many returnees cling to the life they once knew at remnant neighborhood hangouts. Read More...

NEW ORLEANS (BP)—When ABC network television’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition producers brainstormed about the 2008 season finale, their thoughts turned to New Orleans.

On Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a family—in this case, the Noah’s Ark Missionary Baptist Church family—receives a new or renovated home at no cost.

The family—in this case, Pastor Willie Walker, his wife, Veronica, and their three children—is sent on vacation for a week.
Extreme Makeover star Ty Pennington shows Pastor Willie Walker and his wife, Veronica, the fully stocked kitchen that came with the rebuilt church.
Watch the video.


Read More...

On a sunny Saturday in New Orleans, Joy Hines-just in from the snowy Midwest-spent the better part of her day on the floor of an elementary school building, surrounded by paper, paints, and brushes (Figure 1). In fact, some 55 attendees of the TMS 2008 Annual Meeting in March started their trip to Louisiana, not with dining or shopping or socializing, but working to beautify the campus of the flood-ravaged Mary D. Coghill Elementary School. The project was organized by Hands on New Orleans, a nonprofit group that coordinates the efforts of volunteers who want to help in Katrina recovery efforts. All day, TMS members such as Hines, who is chair of the Materials Processing & Manufacturing Division, worked alongside Material Advantage members and other volunteers to paint, build, and plant some life into the drab school campus. When the work was done, TMS had left its mark on the school and the event left its mark on the volunteers. (And, as can be seen on the cover, the students of the school left their mark on JOM.)

Read More...

If government agencies are to avoid the kind of flawed responses that exacerbated racially disparate conditions in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, they must take steps beforehand to address historic patterns of discrimination and inequality.

That's the message conveyed in three reports commissioned by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and released at a national conference on disaster mitigation on May 15-17 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in New Orleans.

The conference, "Race, Place, and the Environment in the Aftermath of Katrina: Reclaiming, Rebuilding, Revitalizing," was sponsored by the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) at Dillard University in New Orleans. Participants examined the progress of rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast region and took a closer look at the state of the recovery in New Orleans.

Read More...

NEW ORLEANS - Despite more than $22 million in repairs, a levee that broke with catastrophic effect during Hurricane Katrina is leaking again because of the mushy ground on which New Orleans was built, raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses.

Outside engineering experts who have studied the project said the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees as well and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.
Read More...

Half of New Orleans' Poor Permanently Displaced: Failure or Success?

NNPA from the Louisiana Weekly, News Report, Bill Quigley, Posted: Mar 23, 2008

NEW ORLEANS (NNPA) - Government reports confirm that half of the working poor, elderly and disabled who lived in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina have not returned. Because of critical shortages in affordable housing, few now expect tens of thousands of poor and working people to ever be able to return home.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) reports that Medicaid, medical assistance for aged, blind, disabled and low-wage working families is down 46 percent from pre-Katrina levels. DHH reports that before Hurricane Katrina there were 134,249 people in New Orleans on Medicaid.

Read More...

The following is information on how to help and how to get help following Tuesday's storms. If your organization has resources to add to this list for people who need help, or if you are having a fundraiser or benefit, send your information to news@jacksonsun.com:
Read More...

(FinalCall.com) - Racist, apathetic and outright neglected is how many have assessed the recovery efforts of the Bush Administration in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Institute for Southern Studies recently released a report to further expose America’s violations of human rights, disregard for UN relief standards, weak disaster laws and refusal to implement disaster policies at home that it imposes on foreign nations.

“For many people the Katrina tragedy never ended. Clearly, Katrina doesn’t make the headlines like it used to, but that doesn’t mean that all is well,” said Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies.

Read More...

This Old House' a good fit with New Orleans Article Rating

Saturday, January 26th 2008, 4:00 AM
Host Kevin O'Connor (r.) & his team helped homeowner Rashida Ferdinand rebuild from Katrina.

Host Kevin O'Connor (r.) & his team helped homeowner Rashida Ferdinand rebuild from Katrina.
THIS OLD HOUSE: REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS. Saturday at 7. Ch. 13.

When and how we put New Orleans back together after Hurricane Katrina may one day rightfully be seen as a gauge of America's heart in the early 21st century. Read More...

BATON ROUGE -- The Charity Hospital System has raised an alarm that Gov. Bobby Jindal's state government hiring freeze is impairing its effort to fill vacancies for more than 100 registered nurses and 200 other jobs in New Orleans to rebuild the public health care system after Hurricane Katrina.
A top Jindal administration official said she is waiting for the hospital system to provide evidence of its critical job needs before granting any exemptions to the freeze.
With patients waiting 120 days on average for primary care appointments and a patient load that has increased 24 percent in the past six months, the New Orleans Charity medical facility is pursuing an expansion plan that could come to a grinding halt if the hiring process is stymied, officials at the hospital said.
"We are in a limbo of sorts and absolutely not able to make any job offers at this time," said Cathi Fontenot, medical director of the Interim Louisiana State University Public Hospital in New Orleans.
Lombardi raises issue
Read More...

IN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA - Service canals dug to tap oil and natural gas dart everywhere through the black mangrove shrubs, bird rushes and golden marsh. From the air, they look like a Pac-Man maze superimposed on an estuarine landscape 10 times the size of Grand Canyon National Park.
There are 10,000 miles of these oil canals. They fed America's thirst for energy, but helped bring its biggest delta to the brink of collapse. They also connect an overlooked set of dots in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath: The role that some say the oil industry played in the $135 billion disaster, the nation's costliest.
The delta, formed by the accumulation of the Mississippi River's upstream mud over thousands of years, is a shadow of what it was 100 years ago. Since the 1930s, a fifth of the 10,000-square-mile delta has turned into open water, decreasing the delta's economic and ecologic value by as much as $15 billion a year, according to Louisiana State University studies.
The rate of land loss, among the highest in the world, has exposed New Orleans and hundreds of other communities to the danger of drowning. Katrina made that painfully clear.
"I remember when I was a young boy we had a camp out in the marsh," said Don Griffin, a grocer and seafood dealer in the delta town of Leeville, which became an oil-drilling center for decades. "The same places you used to have to get around with a pirogue and a push pole now you can go with a 25-foot outboard. There's no more marsh, which is your first barrier of defense for hurricanes."
Read More...