Katrina Round up

Scott Boehm Common Dreams "Bulldozing the Dead in New Orleans":

"Joyce Green died on the roof of her Lower 9th Ward home as her New Orleans neighborhood flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Helplessly, her son watched her die as the water rushed dangerously below them. Just last week he was able to return to their collapsed house on Tennessee Street for the first time, and found her skeletal remains amidst the ruins. He was able to identify them because they were wrapped in the clothes she was wearing the day she died. [...] On the eve of the holiday season, Greg Meffert, the city's chief technology officer, revealed that the city would immediately demolish about 2,500 "red-tagged" homes in the Lower 9th Ward. Before Meffert's announcement, a red-tag merely meant that a home was unsafe to enter. The City of New Orleans website specifically states in bold italicized text that "a red sticker does not indicate whether or not a building will be demolished, only that the structure is currently unsafe to enter." (more)

James Clingman Black Commentator "A New Iraq or a New Orleans?":

"Why have we spent as much as $1 billion per week to build a "New Iraq," yet our compassionate government, headed by George Bush and his boys and girls, cannot find a billion a week to spend on New Orleans and those wiped out by Hurricane Katrina?

What kind of a country is this anyway? What kind of people are running this show? Immediate expenditures totaling billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild a country we intentionally destroyed, but four months after the worst catastrophe in this country our government has hardly moved to take care of its own." (more)

From WBUR "Study Tracks Katrina Survivors"

"Boston, MA - January 06, 2006 - Researchers at Harvard Medical School are preparing a new initiative to track thousands of survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group will involve people displaced across the country who will be interviewed every couple of months to chart their recovery." (more)

AND "Survivors Of Katrina Get a Voice": "The struggles and stories of about 2,000 Hurricane Katrina survivors across the country will be documented regularly over the next two years in a project that aims to track their recovery. Their tales will be published and their advice sought for government policymakers, researchers said yesterday.

The first results are expected to be posted online by the end of February, said Ronald Kessler of Harvard Medical School, director of the project." (more)

Tommy Hallissey in Village Voice "Heartbreak Hotels":

"Half a continent away from New Orleans, some 480 Katrina evacuees in New York a re still attempting to navigate a cutthroat market for jobs and housing. More than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf region, some, like Vidho Lorville, had yet to receive a check from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. With no money to rent apartments, they're bunking in hotels around the boroughs." (more)

AND "Images: Katrina Evacuees in New York" (more)