The largest effort that will have to take place in response to the Katrina disaster is rebuilding New Orleans.
Decisions will have to be made and I hope the right decisions are made:
Associated Press
Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimate it will be weeks before all the water that flowed into the city through breached levees can be pumped back out. After that, it will take several years -- and many billions of dollars -- to rebuild homes, offices, streets and highways.
It is the decisions people make as they go through that process that will determine what New Orleans eventually becomes, disaster recovery experts said. From the major political battles over how to spend public funds to each family's deliberation over whether to return to a city where there's not much to go back to, the choices people make in the weeks and months ahead will determine the Big Easy's fate.
The owners of single-family homes are usually the first to rebuild after a hurricane, said Walter Peacock, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. But because fewer than 50 percent of New Orleans homeowners have flood insurance, many of them probably won't have financial resources to rebuild at all.
Condominiums and rental housing take longer to come back simply because they have more complicated insurance and financing issues to work out. That can make finding a place to live in the aftermath of a disaster extremely difficult for renters, especially poor ones. The flooding has wiped out many of the neighborhoods where low-income minorities live, making their situation especially tenuous as the city recovers.
"If you get reinvestment it probably isn't going to be targeted at those people," Peacock said. "That could be a major problem in New Orleans if that housing doesn't come back."
Because low-income housing in the Florida Keys has not been replaced after hurricanes, he said, the resort area's hotels and restaurants now have trouble finding enough employees. Many of them have to commute from Homestead, south of Miami.
Fewer than 50% of these people have homeowners flood insurance. It is always low-income people particularly low-income minorities that get short changed in these types of situations.
When the congress comes back they must ensure that everyone gets adequate assistance. It is simply the right thing to do. Democrats must lead on this issue.
Ironically, the destruction caused by Katrina gives New Orleans residents the opportunity to gird themselves against the next hurricane that pounds into their city. Even before Katrina hit, Louisiana was considering a stronger building code that would require more wind-resistant designs for roofs and walls. With the proper building materials and techniques, a house can usually survive a Category 5 storm intact, said Marc Levitan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University.
The new rules should be instituted as soon as possible, Levitan recommended, before people start to rebuild.
"It would be nice if we could make some recommendations and get them in place so we're not building the same thing that fell down last time," he said.
Katrina also gives the Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for flood control in New Orleans, the opportunity to modify the network of levees it uses to keep water out of the city. The structures that are currently in place are designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, but the Corps has been considering an upgrade for several years that could handle a Category 5 storm.
"I think there's a lot of opportunities for improving the levees," said Joannes J. Westerink, a civil engineer at the University of Notre Dame. "There are lots of ways of protecting the city."
They all cost money, of course. So for New Orleans and everyone who has a stake in it, the big question over the next few years will be how much to spend and what to spend it on.
Harry Reid (as always) is fighting for those that need help the most.
yahoo news
With Congress scheduled to reconvene next week after a long summer break, Democratic Leader Harry Reid urged majority Republicans to drop plans to debate legislation repealing the estate tax in favor of hurricane-related relief.
"Given the tragic and devastating events along the Gulf Coast, members of the Senate would have great difficulty explaining why we were debating the estate tax during our first days back when we know hundreds of thousands of families are suffering," he wrote Majority Leader Bill Frist.
The White House has not yet sent lawmakers a request for funding for hurricane-related costs. Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist, said the GOP would bring up relief measures as quickly as possible. "Certainly our first priority is Katrina," she said.
When all else fails - turn to the big dog.
Bush asked his father and Clinton to lead the fund-raising campaign after their successful similar efforts in the wake of the Asian tsunami that hit last December. He made the request of them Wednesday and the three planned a Thursday afternoon meeting in the Oval Office.
McClellan said that Bush trusted the view of administration officials that the response effort so far is "going well."
....
Chertoff had a news conference in Washington at which he urged people to donate money for Katrina's victims.
"We know that we have a long and challenging road ahead of us," he said. "We know the spirit and the willing generosity of the American people will blaze a path forward on that road, but we know that it's going to be a path that will be difficult."
An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country began pouring into the Gulf Coast on Wednesday to shore up security, rescue and relief operations. The new units brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the largest military response to a natural disaster.
With key Gulf Coast refineries and pipelines out of service, the Energy Department tried to keep fuel production steady by tapping an emergency government stockpile of oil and to temporarily ease pollution standards on gasoline and diesel fuel. But the president raised the possibility that the hurricane will lead to even higher gasoline prices and shortages in some areas.
If the Democrats want to fight for moral values well how about fighting for assistance for those who have suffered most in this tragedy and for those who are most vulnerable.
In America we love our neighbor as ourself and we do all we can to help those in need and we need Democrats to step to the plate and demand action on the ground and to fight for the necessary funding to transition those most affected back to a normal life.
We also need to address the coming oil concerns as well as the environmental issues that are involved. Dems it is your time to shine - make America proud.