NationStates Jolt Archive

We need a good news after Katrina Thread, jus for good news storys, post only good news storys on this thread.

Your views and comments welcomed.

By John Ritter, Tom Weir, and Thomas Frank,
USA TODAY Fri Sept 16, 7:43 AM ET.





Far from Hurricane Katrina's ruin on the Gulf Coast, Mitchell and Hazel Rodgers are among the first hurricane victims to settle this week into new RV trailers at Wind Creek State Park, across a lake from million-dollar real estate.


The couple join tens of thousands of Katrina evacuees moving to the next stage of what promises to be a long process of getting back home.


The populations of hundreds of Red Cross shelters are dropping daily as families move to temporary housing, some, like the 500 trailer sites at Wind Creek, more permanent than others.


"This is the type of living my wife and I always wanted. Back to Mother Nature," says Mitchell Rodgers, 54, a disabled shipyard worker whose Gulfport, Miss., trailer-park home tipped over and filled with water. "As soon as I can, I'm going to register to vote. I'm not going back to Mississippi."


Hotels, private homes, churches, cruise ships, gyms and campgrounds will continue to accommodate many of the displaced in coming weeks. An estimated 1 million people fled Katrina.


But disaster officials say they're moving to assemble and make livable up to 300,000 trailers and other temporary housing units in Louisiana and Mississippi as fast as they can find sites and arrange utilities, schooling and other necessities with cities and counties.


Looking for space


The federal government has stopped selling foreclosed homes in 11 states and will make as many as 5,000 available at no charge to Katrina's homeless. Public housing authorities across the country are scrounging for every vacant unit they can find to offer to evacuees who came from public housing in New Orleans and Mississippi. An estimated 5,600 units could be made available within 500 miles of New Orleans.


Many cities - Houston, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia - and counties - Allegheny County, Pa., and Miami-Dade - have offered housing for thousands more.


The number of people in Red Cross shelters had declined from a high of 203,917 in the days after Katrina hit to 61,610 by Wednesday. More than 550 shelters had closed, the Red Cross said.


The Red Cross has paid about $12 million in hotel bills and expects to reimburse a total of $100 million on behalf of an estimated 132,000 Katrina-displaced people who were in hotels in 46 states.


In Baton Rouge, where tens of thousands took refuge because it's just 80 miles northwest of New Orleans, shelter populations have dropped steadily. But the metro area of 450,000 is scrambling to cope with other effects of its newfound - if temporary - status as the state's most populous.


Mayor Melvin Holden is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency for $10 billion to build schools, roads and sewers. Highway planners are trying to sort out the swollen region's traffic congestion. FEMA expects to station thousands of mobile homes in Baton Rouge for evacuees.


Mark Bielski has been staying with friends. Although his house in New Orleans' Uptown district remains intact, he's looking for a Baton Rouge teaching job. He says he'll return to New Orleans "as soon as the lights go on."


Others see Baton Rouge as their new home. Since Katrina, 1,100 houses in the area have sold, according to the local Realtors' association. Apartment vacancy rates slid from 8% to nothing.


Evacuees poured into Houston's Astrodome and other shelters, but nobody in Texas' largest city "knows for sure how many people are here or how long they intend to stay," says Frank Michel, a city spokesman. What they know is that 46,000 former Louisiana residents are living in hotels and motels and 16,000 Louisiana children have registered in Houston schools. The city has found more than 8,000 apartments and houses to accommodate 20,000 people.


Making evacuees feel at home


Many places seemed to open their arms, then worry later about consequences. Arkansas, one of the nation's poorest states, took in more than 75,000 evacuees, second only to Texas. That amounted to more than a 2.5% jump in the state's population, but Gov. Mike Huckabee reminded residents of the help they get after frequent ice storms and tornadoes.

"By golly, we're going to be there to take care of them now," he declared. He said midweek that at least a third of the influx had left.

Other evacuees, particularly those stranded in New Orleans after the storm, ended up farther away. Oklahoma, Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, North and South Carolina, Maryland, Ohio, Michigan, and California each sheltered 2,000 to 4,000. Florida and Georgia each took more than 1,300.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson found that evacuees in Philadelphia "have come to realize they might not go back to New Orleans."

"Of the families I talked to, 90% of the families have no desire to go back," Jackson says. "But that's not what I'm hearing from Texas. It's a whole different perspective."

Perspective may depend on circumstances. The new arrivals at Alabama's Wind Creek State Park get trailers 28 to 32 feet long; some would cost $40,000.

Red Cross volunteers "are helping me get baby clothes," says Suzanne Hughes, 18, from Kiln, Miss. She's 81/2 months pregnant and waiting for her fiancé to arrive.

"It's a really good community ... families that have kids, and the kids get attached to the atmosphere here," Hughes says.

Police officers patrol the park. Evacuees undergo background checks because the park could be home to 1,000 children. Evacuees are being hired as park workers. Sporting goods companies are donating fishing gear. South Central Bell is putting in phone banks, Dell is offering laptops. Cisco is providing Internet service.

"It would turn you into a Christian, even if you weren't," says Arthur Walker, 57, known as "Mr. A" when he worked as a palm reader in New Orleans' Jackson Square.

"Of the families I talked to, 90% of the families have no desire to go back," Jackson says. "But that's not what I'm hearing from Texas. It's a whole different perspective."



Is Texas that bad? :) :p

Texas is great, I voted for President Bush twice and would do so again., than for your post.

Sept. 17, 2005, 1:40PM


Steve Ueckert/Chronicle
Pat O'Brien's employees rehang the landmark French Quarter bar's sign Friday with hopes of soon serving its signature drink — the hurricane.



NEW ORLEANS
Signs of life are slowly returning
By ROMA KHANNA, THOMAS KOROSEC and MICHAEL HEDGES
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
HURRICANE KATRINA


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUDIO:

Katrina evacuee Janice Armstrong talks about starting over 9/13



NEW ORLEANS - Business owners who return today to kickstart the city's commercial rebound will be warned of contaminated water and fragile sewers and told to enter at their own risk — all signs that while the city is reopening, many basics are still unavailable.

Trucks carrying everything from exterminators to clean linens were parked two deep on the streets of the Central Business District on Friday as a number of businesses got an early start on revitalizing stores, restaurants and hotels that have been closed for more than two weeks.

But even as humming generators and whirring fans brought life to streets deserted since Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, officials in Mayor C. Ray Nagin's office cautioned residents that his ambitious re-entry plan may not move as quickly as they have hoped.

"It is vitally important for this city to stay alive, to start moving commerce in the right direction," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' chief of homeland security.

"But we have to do it in a progressive manner."

Plans to open downtown, Uptown and the French Quarter this weekend to business owners and repopulate the neighborhood of Algiers on Monday remain on track, said Ebbert, who expects thousands to enter the city today.

But Nagin's prediction that within 10 days people will move into Uptown and the French Quarter, which have limited power and no drinkable water, will not get final approval until services such as 911 and hospitals are available.

"Three inches of rainfall would cause us to have flooding and we would lose ground," Ebbert said of the city's strained levees. "You can expect there to be a mandatory evacuation anytime we encounter a large rainfall."


Making preparations
Nonetheless, the prospect of the imminent return of residents set the city in motion Friday, as restaurants emptied refrigerators of rotten food and convenience stores and gas stations opened in the largely spared Algiers, on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

At the posh Shops at Canal Place, management trickled in to assess their stores.

Thick pipes from a dehumidifier snaked around displays of dainty high heels and jewelry on the first floor of Saks 5th Avenue, where a fire broke out several days after the storm hit.

"I wouldn't expect these places to be up and running right away," said Mike Cantrell, a private security guard helping store owners with logistics. "The building needs to be inspected and people need to have a place to house their employees. It is going to take some time, but they are eager to get there."

In the equally active French Quarter, Paul Prudhomme, the renowned chef of K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, said he will begin cleaning out the restaurant Monday and reopen "sometime the following week."

"We need to get open," Prudhomme said. "We've been here 26 years and we've had storms. We've been through lots of storms."

Prudhomme, who is credited with popularizing Cajun food worldwide, said he has gathered from his e-mail that people believe the city is a total ruin.

"I just drove to the airport and back and a lot of the city is standing and looks fine," he said.


'Back to basics'
Prices at his restaurant, which before the storm ran $26 per entrée, will be cut to $10 to $20, Prudhomme said.

"We're going back to basics, jambalaya, filé gumbo, red beans and rice, good food," the famed chef said.

Nearby at Matassa's deli and grocery, owner John Matassa said the timing of reopening presented a dilemma.

"We can't open until we get supplies in from Baton Rouge. And I don't want to order supplies if there aren't going to be customers."

But he was optimistic he'd be operating within a few days. "My family has owned this place for 82 years. We'll be back," he said.

The fact, however, that such business necessities as power and clean water are unavailable tempered many owners' optimism.

"Until we get power, nothing's gonna happen," said Bob Rue, who owns Sarouk Oriental Rugs Shop at the western edge of downtown. "I do have a phone. I thought I was hallucinating when I heard it ring the other day."

I am trying to find only good news storys to post, so far I am doing good.

Sept. 17, 2005, 11:17PM

A LOVE STORY
Blown into each other's arms
2 New Orleans neighbors brought together by storm
By PAUL SALOPEK
Chicago Tribune

NEW ORLEANS - They could be seen for days, the Adam and Eve of this city's impoverished 8th Ward district, paddling a broken motorboat through their fallen Eden of tar-black floodwaters, downed power lines and rotting houses — two incongruously smiling figures, afloat under a festering sun.

There was always something different about them. A charmed air of leisure. They waved happily, not in distress, at the military convoys and the frantic journalists roaring overhead on the jettylike highways of this ruined metropolis. They looked like a couple on holiday. To some, they seemed insane.

But in fact, Vanessa Magee and Roger Hart, former neighbors in one of New Orleans' poorest neighborhoods, were enjoying a bizarre honeymoon of sorts.

"It's awful to say, but I have Katrina to thank for my most precious days," declared Magee, a gregarious 42-year-old with a weakness for hugging perfect strangers. "If this hadn't happened, I wouldn't have gotten to know Roger like I do."

"Truth is, we like it here now," agreed Hart, 54, who is more shy. "Sure it's stinky. And yeah, we have no appliances or water. But we talk. We take boat rides. We feed the birds, the pigeons, the dogs and the rats. We connect."


Happiness amid tragedy
There are a million unbelievable stories oozing out of this eerie new world called New Orleans, a bleak Wonderland where the familiar husks of American civilization — golden arches, car antennas, church steeples — already jut like ancient artifacts from a thickening pool of toxic crud.

But as a counterpoint to Katrina's deepening legacy of tragedy, few sagas can match the waterlogged love story of Hart and Magee, two of the Crescent City's less privileged citizens, who were blown into each other's arms by Katrina's 100-mph winds, and who have toiled together to survive since.

And anyone encountering the friendly couple would have been struck by one additional lesson about Katrina: While arguably the worst storm in U.S. history may have stolen everything else from New Orleans, judging by two of its citizens, it didn't get its soul.

Their story begins around 2 a.m. on Aug. 29, when Katrina rolled like a war down the 8th Ward's Spain Street, a nondescript lane hemmed by humble clapboard houses and old beaters that could never outrun the storm.

Twenty-four hours later, the levees girding New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain had broken. Magee, who occupied an apartment below Hart's, felt water rising around her bed. By the time she touched her bedroom doorknob, it was up to her thighs. At Hart's urging, she fled upstairs. And for the next nine surreal days, the couple lived together in Hart's islandlike second-floor apartment.

Hart, a part-time stucco worker originally from Mobile, Ala., had stockpiled food and 40 gallons of water. After the initial shock of the catastrophe wore off, he set about wiring salvaged car batteries to his old TV set. He liberated a beat-up old boat with an engine that didn't work. Magee, for her part, marveled at the oily silence smothering the once-vibrant metropolis of 1.3 million. "This neighborhood ain't ever been so peaceful!"

And in the spirit of an earlier first couple, they began naming the creatures they found, in this case a menagerie of starving cats and dogs stranded on rooftops: They rescued newly dubbed Dirty Red and Jughead, two excitable hound dogs, and Minu the dingy kitten.


Growing close
And so, growing close, Hart and Magee spent their days inside the concrete swamp that is central New Orleans. The nights were sweltering. But the meals of canned beans and spaghetti were warm, heated on the rooftop by the Southern sun. And though the sprawling city, under its layer of polluted black water, was weirdly bereft of songbirds, Magee attracted pigeons with scraps of food. She also fed stranded rats.

Ever enthusiastic, she described it almost as an idyll.

"I was a little depressed at first, but mostly I been happy," she said. "We been everywhere in that boat."


Getting out
Then rescue crews in boats began stopping by in earnest. Finally, a sassy team of volunteer Illinois Conservation Police officers showed up at the half-submerged address of 2723 Spain St., and the sunbaked Midwesterners spent half an hour persuading the couple to finally leave. New Orleans was uninhabitable, they said. Hart and Magee had to go.

The couple loaded Jughead, Dirty Red and two tattered bags not bigger than purses into their old boat. Magee toted grubby and wide-eyed little Minu in the crook of her arm.

Towed behind the police craft on a rope, Hart's vessel banged into light poles and the sides of houses on the way back to the wider world.

"They're takin' away my paradise," Hart said plaintively, ignoring all the hubbub. He didn't say much else.

Meanwhile, on the concrete highway landing, state animal-control agents gently took away the couple's dogs and cat for health reasons.

Magee cried, holding up her filthy shorts with her hands because Dirty Red was using her belt as a leash.

And she cried hard again when told that the neighborhood might have to be bulldozed.

"I'm gonna hate that," Magee said, her face contorted with agony. "It hurts to leave. It's really hard startin' over somewhere else."

A 2 1/2 -ton Army truck drove them away only a little while later. Wherever they end up, few will ever know the brave thing they attempted in the vanished 8th Ward. Still, they have each other, perhaps Katrina's only gift.