Special Hurricane Katrina Coverage

Weathered Voices: Stories of Struggle Through the Voices of Survivors

NewStandard revisited some of the people and organizations whose challenges – and victories – we’ve documented over the past year. Here we present their voices.

Katrina Recovery Funds Wasted by Contractors, Govt.

A scathing report by a progressive watchdog organization details the myriad ways big contractors have hogged government funds for profit and defrauded taxpayers in post-Katrina reconstruction.

In Other News... Special Hurricane Katrina Coverage

• 4/27: Govt. to bill hurricane victims, exclude tenement dwellers
• 4/26: 36 counts against Katrina nursing-home owners dropped
• 4/18: FEMA wants students to give Katrina money back
• 4/9: Army Corps flooded with Katrina-related claims

ALL ON THIS SUBJECT

Disabled People 'Left Behind' in Emergency Planning

During Hurricane Katrina, Benilda Caixeta, a New Orleans resident with quadriplegia, tried for two days to seek refuge at the Superdome. Despite repeated phone calls to authorities, help never arrived for Caixeta. Days later, she was found dead in her apartment, floating next to her wheelchair.

FEMA Caves, Agrees to Test Katrina Trailers for Formaldehyde

Government officials have finally agreed to check for formaldehyde in trailers FEMA provided to survivors of Hurricane Katrina, but only after dozens of residents complained and environmentalists found high levels of the chemical in tests.

Judge Kills Move to Freeze FEMA Housing Fund Change

A federal judge has denied a request by lawyers working on behalf of people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to stop the Federal Emergency Management Agency from cutting off housing aid to thousands still in need.

Policy Changes Threaten to Re-displace Katrina Survivors

People seeking federal housing assistance from FEMA are being pushed into a new, more restricted program, but thousands will be left behind by new rules and red tape.

Kids Recount Intolerable Detention Following Katrina

Details of horrific conditions endured by boys and girls held in a New Orleans jail during and after Hurricane Katrina are chronicled in a shocking new report by a group that advocates for criminalized youth.

Congress Urged to Keep Katrina Housing Aid in Contested Bill

Among the $14 billion in "extra" budget items the US Senate crammed into its version of a supplemental military and storm-relief funding bill is a relatively small bankroll to fund housing help for some of Hurricane Katrina’s neediest survivors.

Evacuees Go the Distance to Vote in New Orleans

Community organizations bussed in voters for early voting in city elections amid lingering concerns that many will be unable to vote due to ballot obstacles.

Feds Okay Plan to Deny Remote Polling for Katrina Refugees

What was good enough for mostly well-to-do, pro-Western Iraqi expatriates living in the United States is apparently too good for the mostly black and poor New Orleanians displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

EPA Under Fire for Inaction on Katrina Cleanup

Environmental and civil rights groups petitioned the federal government yesterdayto clean up contamination released when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged insufficiently secured chemical stockpiles, submerged fuel-filled cars and stirred-up urban waste.

Red Cross Faces Another Round of Political Heat

Recent allegations and long-simmering problems have critics of the nation’s premier short-term disaster-response agency asking if the American Red Cross deserves the prominence it enjoys.

New Orleans Public Housing Residents Set to Fight Off Developers

For local real-estate tycoons who dreamed of wrecking New Orleans housing projects and gentrifying neighborhoods long before the 2005 hurricane season, Katrina’s floodwaters brought a blessing soaked in misery.

Grassroots Group Sues Louisiana over Voting Rights Violations

Despite emergency orders and new legislation, elections turmoil in New Orleans is far from over. Two weeks ago, grassroots organizations and community leaders filed a federal lawsuit seeking broad ballot access for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Elections for mayor, city council and other positions are currently scheduled for April 22 and May 20.

Fight Continues over New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward*

Six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged one of the Crescent City’s poorest neighborhoods, local leaders appear poised to invoke eminent domain and force one last exodus from the Lower Ninth Ward.

Biloxi, Miss. Suspiciously Evicts Katrina Relief Center

A highly acclaimed nonprofit hurriedly founded in the days following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the Gulf Coast has closed its doors on orders from the city government, allegedly to make way for developers.

Group Fights Abuse of Gulf Coast Workers, Contracts

For months, reports have alleged that companies rebuilding the Gulf Coast are engaged in contract impropriety while creating dangerous working conditions and paying low – or even no – wages. A newly formed coalition of community, labor and religious groups has stepped forward to fill in where the government has not acted.

Post-Katrina Throwback to Segregation Alarms Fair-Housing Activists

Laid bare by disaster's aftermath, the legacy of housing discrimination continues to confront the disproportionately poor and black survivors of last year’s Gulf Coast storms.

Report Rebukes Chertoff, Omits Katrina Response Duties

Having largely escaped initial blame for the federal government’s failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff faced rebuke for leadership failures in a congressional report issued yesterday.

Do-it-Yourself Disaster Relief Snubs New Orleans Planners

With little useful assistance from FEMA and an abandon-and-wait attitude from the city, irrepressible hurricane survivors assert to reoccupy their neighborhoods and rebuild their homes – by doing it.

New Orleans Homeowners Fight to Save Homes from Bulldozers

Lower Ninth Ward residents and their advocates talk about why they persist in opposing City Hall’s plans to demolish and clear out thousands of storm-ravaged houses in their beleaguered neighborhood.

For Motel-bound Katrina Survivors, FEMA Help Still Elusive

As national attention turns away from those left homeless by the Gulf Coast catastrohpes, people stranded in temporary housing are fighting for every morsel of federal assistance.

Gulf Coast Hunger Spreads as Food Banks Struggle

After experiencing record demand for food immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Gulf Coast food banks are now in danger of coming up short. Local food banks throughout the region are warning that many people in the area are already going hungry.

Ethics Watchdog Seeks Info on Foreign Aid Offers

A government-ethics watchdog has been waiting for answers to questions about the federal government’s decision to decline disaster relief aid from several countries during this year’s particularly destructive hurricane season. First raised in a public-information request in September by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the information sought concerns why aid was turned down, who was behind the decisions and exactly what kind of help was offered remain unanswered more than three months later.

ACLU Questions Soundness of Orleans Prison as Inmates Return

Concerned that the Orleans Parish Sheriff is prematurely repopulating the prison there, the American Civil Liberties Union yesterday sent letters to every member of the New Orleans City Council imploring them to examine the facility. The ACLU says that about 600 people are now locked in the Orleans Parish Prison without a proper emergency evacuation plan or fire-safety officer.

Unaddressed Health Hazards Persist as New Orleans Slowly Rebuilds

Health advocates continue to raise alarms in response to troubling environmental test results, saying that instead of enforcing vital workplace safety regulations, the government has tied its own hands.

Threatened New Orleans Tenants Fight Back Against Evictions Scourge

As landlords in the Crescent City area file eviction notices at a rate of some 100 a day, community organizers and local renters are waging a two-front battle to resist homelessness.

Unacceptable Mold Levels Found in New Orleans Air

Airborne contaminant levels are dangerously high in New Orleans, posing a potential health risk to workers and returning residents, according to publicly released air quality tests conducted in the storm-ravaged city.

New Orleans Neighborhoods Demand Trailers to Help Rebuild

Many residents whose houses require repair complain that they are unable to live in their neighborhoods while they try to rebuild. FEMA has so far been unable or unwilling to provide trailers to many in need.

Investigation Details Abuse, Endangerment of Prisoners After Katrina

The ACLU has corroborated earlier reports that inmates held in a New Orleans prison were abandoned and abused by their captors when the Hurricane Katrina struck, and a lawsuit is underway.

Program Nixed in 2001 Could Have Curbed Gulf Coast Damage, Experts Say

In the field of emergency management, where "mitigation" is considered crucial to preparedness, a little-known FEMA program killed by Bush is said to have held the potential to make a difference this year.

Volunteers: Police Harassment of New Orleans Relief Workers Escalating

The arrest and alleged abuse of an activist has pushed local relief workers, who have complained of harassment since the early days after Katrina, to demand a solution so they can get on with their vital work.

Grassroots Group Plans Thanksgiving Relief Effort in New Orleans

Poor New Orleanians who continue to rely mostly on themselves and on grassroots-level support will get a big helping hand from activists across the United States later this month.

Congress Urged to Ax Bill Giving ‘Free Rides’ to Katrina Contractors*

A coalition of labor, workplace safety and environmental groups is calling on Senators to reject a bill that, the organizations say, would allow private contractors to violate environmental and worker protections in national disasters and other emergencies.

Hurricane Health Crisis Largely Unaddressed by Gov’t Plans

Healthcare advocates say the current plan for addressing the needs of hurricane survivors falls far short, while some propose – and try – alternatives.

Immigrants Rebuilding Gulf Coast Suffer ‘Third World’ Conditions

As businesses reap huge profits from contracts to clean up and reconstruct the storm-devastated Gulf Coast, a hidden underclass doing much of the toiling is underpaid, defrauded and mistreated.

Proposed Katrina School Vouchers Attacked

Proposals to allow families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to use federal money to send their children to a school of their choosing, whether it be religious or not, is coming under attack from education organizations, civil liberties groups and other proponents of the separation between church and state. Some accuse voucher supporters of using the hurricane tragedies to promote a political agenda.

New Orleans Activists Fill Aid Gaps Left by FEMA, Red Cross

Rather than wait for help from giant institutions preoccupied elsewhere, and instead of building a legacy of dependence, local groups have sprung up to recover poor and working-class neighborhoods through collective organizing.

New Orleans’ Displaced Struggle for Housing, Jobs, Neighborhoods

Under the looming threat of a “re-envisioned” city that could reflect the whiter, wealthier designs of developers and planners, New Orleanians struggle to meet housing needs and eventually return home.

Groups Urge Congress to Protect Gulf Workers

With near-daily reports about workers in the Gulf Coast region toiling under hazardous conditions for long hours with poor pay, over 100 organizations are seeking federal action to reverse the situation for many of the nation’s most vulnerable people.

Bayou Towns Still Fending for Selves After Rita’s Floods*

After Hurricane Rita left them flooded, residents of Louisiana’s impoverished, largely Native American coastal towns knew better than to expect aid from FEMA, since they’re used to being ignored by the feds.

Some Neighborhoods Rebuild, But Part of Lower 9th Remains Off-limits

After traveling hundreds of miles to see their flood-ravaged homes, some New Orleans residents found themselves locked out of their neighborhood, which they say has been maligned and targeted by elites with ulterior motives.

Safety Places a Distant Second in Race to Repopulate New Orleans

Mixed messages from officials at all levels are conpounding danger with urgency as thousands of residents and workers try to clean up and rebuild in places where hazards are at best uncertain.

Abuse, Forced Labor Rampant in New Orleans Justice System

The videotaped beating of a New Orleans resident offers but a small sample of the widespread brutality, deprivation and railroading that have come to characterize the city’s response to alleged crimes.

Lawmakers Continue Pushing Cuts to Social Spending, Taxes

Facing steep costs associated with the cleanup of Hurricane Katrina and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, together costing more than $5 billion a month, fiscally conservative legislators are seeking to roll back federal spending across the board with social programs taking the biggest hit. At the same time, they are considering a new round of tax cuts to the wealthy.

‘GAS’ Bill Comes Under Fire for Environment Threat, Opportunism

Opposition to companion bills working their way through separate committees of the US House of Representatives has been growing, as conservationists and politicians at the local, state and national level take up efforts to beat it back.

Katrina’s Displaced Move to Defend New Orleans from Elite Visionaries

Concerned that the mayor’s well-to-do special-planning board will recreate only the worst aspects of the city’s former character, activists and advocates are pushing for grassroots participation in NOLA’s renewal.

Minority Firms Receive Fewer Katrina Clean-up Contracts

With only a fraction of the $1.6 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency hurricane cleanup money going to minority-owned businesses, concern is cropping up that a White House decision waiving federal affirmative action rules in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina is already fostering inequality.

Federal Probe of Louisiana Prison Abuse Allegations Demanded

Citing what they term "credible reports" that Louisiana prison guards and other law enforcement officials in the state have abused, neglected and otherwise mistreated people in custody, a civil rights group and a humanitarian organization yesterday issued a joint call for a federal probe into abuse allegations.

New Reports of Prisoner Abuse in Louisiana

Thousands of prisoners in Louisiana are saying the state failed them when Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast, including some jailed for minor crimes but still held five weeks after the storm passed. Recent reports of guards beating and otherwise abusing inmates and news that Orleans Parish sheriffs left a number of prisoners in flooding jail cells have prompted a deluge of legal filings and requests for intervention and investigations.

Medicaid Extension for Katrina Victims in Doubt

The White House is trying to block a bill that would extend Medicaid benefits for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Introduced by lawmakers from the nation’s two controlling parties, the measure would cover all state Medicaid expenses in Louisiana, Mississippi and the hardest-hit parts of Alabama for five months and leaves open the possibility for an extension of equal duration.

Signs of Environmental Hazards Dampen Katrina Homecoming

City officials urging residents to repopulate select parts of New Orleans know little about the storm’s ecological impact, leading critics to question the sensibility and motives of the effort.

Worsening Storms Compound Legacy of Chemical Waste

As sea-borne threats promise to worsen with warming waters, the “long-term” dangers posed by disastrously lax hazardous waste policies have become immediate, but few in power seem to care.

Some Immigrants Suffer Doubly After Hurricane Katrina

Undocumented workers and families in the areas devastated by one of the worst storms in US history – including Central American survivors of Hurricane Mitch – face perhaps the steepest route to recovery.

Hurricane Rita Bears Down on Masses Stranded by Govt. Ineptness

Once again, a failed evacuation plan places hundreds would-be evacuees in grave danger, this time by the hundreds of thousands, left exposed by a traffic debacle on Texas roadways.

Relief Workers May Be Next Wave of Katrina Victims

Reminiscent of the 9/11 recovery workers in Manhattan, first responders and relief personnel operating in the toxic gumbo New Orleans has become are toiling largely unprotected, treated as dispensable by the federal government.

Once Again, Insurance Industry Looks to Hang Clients Out to Dry

Aside from consumer advocacy groups and one state attorney general, insurance-policy holders are left to fend for themselves against an industry bent on denying claims and hoarding record profits.

Gas Price Gouging Feared Rampant

With retail gas prices still hovering at or near the $3 level in much of the country three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit land, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday told Congress it is monitoring the price of fuel over concerns that companies may be artificially inflating pump prices.

Administration Considers Expanding Military Use in Disaster Response

Responding to heavy criticism over his administration’s failure to handle the disaster created by Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush is floating the idea of repealing a 127-year-old law restricting federally-controlled troops from conducting operations on United States soil.

Experts, Katrina Survivors Lament Unimaginative Disaster Planning

Those closely observing and living through Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the Crescent City note that officials ignored even the inadequate plans in place – let alone sensible alternatives – leading to a compounded catastrophe.

Calls for White House to Accept Cuban Aid Offer Grow

With an unknown number of displaced people facing an uncertain future and government health officials warning of the deleterious effects Hurricane Katrina is having on public health, the Green Party earlier this week called on the White House to accept Cuban President Fidel Castro’s offer to send trained doctors to aid in relief efforts.

Disaster Buck Stopped at Chertoff, Not Brown

Protocols enacted last year place responsibility for federal disaster management on the DHS chief’s desk – what’s more, they give no indication that he can pass that authority on to the FEMA director.

Questions Persist about Katrina Recovery Contracts

Following the repeal of normal operating procedures for contractors and allegations of cronyism in awarding federal hurricane relief work, the Department of Homeland Security said yesterday that it would dispatch a team of auditors with a mandate to ensure taxpayer money is spent properly, the New York Times reports.

Louisiana NAACP Head Urges Shelter Denizens to Organize

As part of an extensive and ongoing effort to aid those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the head of the Louisiana arm of the NAACP called on survivors staying in shelters to begin organizing committees to handle resource distribution, information gathering and dissemination and agitating for better treatment from government agencies.

Katrina Preparations, Response Saw Failure at ‘Every Level’

Reviewing the deficient preparations, sluggish response and fumbled relief that marred the local, state and federal response, experts say bad decisions defined official efforts before and after Katrina struck.

FEMA Attempts Media Black Out in New Orleans

As hurricane clean-up efforts kick into gear in New Orleans and the surrounding storm-ravaged areas, federal government officials have been taking action seemingly to prevent the news media from accurately reporting on the tragic human toll Hurricane Katrina has taken so far.

Firefighters Recruited to do Katrina PR for FEMA

Against the backdrop of receding, polluted floodwater, oil and natural gas leaks, random fires, an uncountable number of dead and a concerted effort to evacuate people remaining in New Orleans, the federal agency in charge of disaster relief sent out a call for thousands of firefighters -- not to conduct search and rescue or firefighting duties, but to participate in public relations efforts for the agency.

U.S. Offers No Response to Cuban Emergency Assistance Offer

Since last Tuesday, the Bush administration has essentially ignored an offer from a nation experienced in disaster relief to provide doctors ready to enter hurricane-ravaged areas with backpacks and on-the-street medical skills.

FEMA Held Off on Requesting Hurricane Relief Workers

Adding fuel to recent and growing criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, a recently revealed government memo shows that the federal agency tasked with handling emergency relief efforts waited until after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before seeking additional authority to deploy thousands of Department of Homeland Security personnel to the area.

U.N. Relief Supplies, Teams Sit Waiting for Bush to Say ‘Please’

Even though the United Nations has at the ready disaster relief teams, generators, water storage tanks, high-energy biscuits, water purification tablets, airplanes, tents and other supplies for emergency relief, the Bush administration has not asked the world body for help.

FEMA Planned to Leave New Orleans Poor Behind

Emergency management officials predicted with remarkable prescience the effects of a massive hurricane hitting New Orleans; but they did little with their knowledge, other than plan to leave the poor behind.

Bankruptcy Bill Threatens Katrina Survivors; Relief Faces Opposition

When Congress passed a controversial bankruptcy bill back in April, it did not approve a proposed amendment that would have made it easier for victims of natural disaster to gain protection from creditors. Now, in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, some lawmakers will ask their colleagues to reconsider.

Authorities Favored VIPs over Superdome’s Desperate

Rescue missions prioritized tourists and hotel employees, evacuating them first from the Superdome, then from a swank hotel, forsaking tens of thousands in worse circumstances in the process.

Katrina Survivors Face Cops, Gougers, Scams, ‘Gangs’

While the media and authorities remain fixated on desperate people taking inanimate objects from abandoned storefronts, less "sexy" dangers lurk.

Feds Ignored Catastrophe Predictions, Diverted Funds

The Bush administration spent the last four years moving funds from natural disaster prevention and relief to militaristic priorities like the Iraq war – a move that may be responsible for death and suffering along the Gulf Coast.