Promised Aid Not There from Bush

Last April President Bush put his arm around 74-year-old Ethel Williams at her flooded home in the Upper Ninth Ward and stepped in front of TV cameras. She was elated, thinking the media attention and the president’s apparent affection for her would help get her home back. Four months later her home still stands gutted and empty on like thousands of others. A report on All Things Considered today recounts Bush’s visit and follows up on his promise.

“We’ve got a strategy to help the good folks down here rebuild,” the president said that day. “Part of it has to do with funding; part of it has to do with housing; and a lot of it has to do with encouraging volunteers from around the United States to come down and help people like Mrs. Williams.”

Hmm. Let’s break that down....

• “Funding”: Promised Federal funds coming through the states “may take awhile,” according to the White House.
  
• “Housing”: Thousand of FEMA trailers are still sitting unused beside the interstate north of Slidell, while Mrs. Williams stays with her daughter.
  
• “Encouraging volunteers:” Camp Algiers, a FEMA-funded camp where we stayed as volunteers, was closed this June with thousands of homes still waiting to be gutted.

In the mean time, Ethel Williams and thousands like her are still waiting for the president to keep his promise.

Slow Rebuilding in New Orleans

Today NPR covered recovery in New Orleans with this story about the long, slow recovery a year after Katrina nearly destroyed the city and the Gulf Coast. I was just talking to Julie Belcher of Yee Haw Industries last night. Her partner Kevin went to Jazz Fest in April to sell their posters and found stores just outside the Midtown festival site still boarded up. In June Chloe and I rode the streetcar to the end of the line on Canal and found the same thing. The displaced population and government neglect has made recovery in NOLA very slow.

As usual, NPR does a great job of covering this story in depth, bringing out the character of a city that will not die. The Rebirth Brass Band is shown at the Maple Leaf Bar in an audio slide show, and Lower Ninth Ward resident Ronald Lewis is rebuilding in the Lower Ninth. Out in St. Bernard Parish Donald and Colleen Bordelon are rebuilding room-by-room. Everywhere, the emotional burden of living and working in neighborhoods that still look like disaster areas is overwhelming. Many are beginning to show the strain. Read the whole feature story here.