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A Look At FEMA Today

Elva Galadas is a resident of Lacombe, Louisiana, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Her house was as good as destroyed by Katrina, leaving her with rotten wood, mold, and "tin roof rusted." Galatas, who is 73, has a son who is paralyzed from the waist down and who has epilepsy. He also has a broken ankle, an injured arm, and allergies that require him to get daily oxygen treatments.

Galatas applied for a FEMA trailer, but didn't get one, so she moved back into her moldy, structurally unsound house, and her son went to live in a hospital in Winnfield, Louisiana, which is nowhere near Lacombe. Finally, after months of phone calls and frustration, FEMA sent Galatas a trailer in June of this year. The trailer was designated as handicap accessible, but it was not big enough for both Galatis and her son. According to FEMA, since there were only two people who planned to live in it, there could be only one bedroom.

So Galatis began going down the trail of red tape, phone calls and frustration a second time. And this month, FEMA removed the first trailer and replaced it with a second. The problem is that the second trailer is the same size as the first. On top of that, FEMA subcontractors dismantled the handicap ramp of the first trailer but failed to build one for the second. Galatas is still living in her moldy house, and her son is still in the hospital.

A FEMA spokesman says "We want to make it happen for her."

FEMA has agreed to reimburse $217 million of $394 million worth of claims filed by the city of New Orleans alone. So far, only $117 million has reached the city. One of the most dramatic examples of loss in New Orleans is that of City Park, which sustained $43 million worth of damage. So far, FEMA has authorized only $2.6 million for repairs, and the park has actually received only $250,000.

Aside from the obvious fact that the city of New Orleans needs federal aid badly is the ugly fact that the damage within the city was not caused by a force of nature, but by the Army Corps of Engineers, who designed and built levees its engineers knew were not adequate.

Comments

Diane,

I can;t agree with you, the fault cannot be laid at the Army Corps of Engineers because Bush controls them and he told them exactly what to do and not do and he took away the funds they needed to do the job.

The very same thing happened to the agency that is charged with maintaining mine safety and we all know what happened to the miners in W.Va. and in S. Carolina or was it N. Carolina.

Bush deliberately cripples these agencies but the blame for these disasters belongs entirely to georgie boy Bush the weed that is infesting all of America. He is the blight upon our land, this sick sociopath who has no feelings for people.

I guarantee you that we will see more of the same, be it the space shuttle, global warming(some know nothing twithead advises him on that subject)the already total contamination of of all our drinking water, the further contamination of our water supplies by oil and chemical companies, levee failures in Calif(via Arnold Shwarzenegger, another Bushie elitest)predation of our forests by logging companies, another hurricane in New Orleans, Mt. Ranier and/or Mt. St. Helens or any of dozens of other disasters that can and will occur.

Let's point fingers and name names, Bush is the disease infesting America.

The Republican party is the disease that is infesting America.

Radical right wing fundamentalist religions(Catholicism and white southern Baptists) are the diseases that are infesting America. Fundamentalist religions are a pox upon the entire world.

Posted by: Bob DAmico on 09/23/06 at 1:52 AM

When the Corps of Engineers designed and built levees they knew were going to fail, George W. Bush was running Bush Exploration in Texas and had never sought political office. Though it is an attractive idea to blame him for what happened, he wasn't around at the time.

Posted by: Diane on 09/23/06 at 6:35 AM

Much as we'd like to blame Bush for the CoE's screw up in New Orleans, it's really not his fault completely--at least only the last 6 years are his fault. The levees were in trouble (and sinking) in the late 70's when my husband lived there. They have been a disaster waiting to happen for the last 30 years.

The Corps of Engineers has been SNAFU for as long as can possibly be remembered. One wonders if it's not really time to kick the bums out and start over. How much worse could they do?

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