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Tuesday, September 13, 2005 | |
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Nagin offers residents early return to city By Steve Ritea, Gordon Russell and James Varney
Staff writers
Unflooded portions of New Orleans may be opened up for residents to return, perhaps as early as Monday, Mayor Ray Nagin said in an upbeat and wide-ranging press conference Tuesday afternoon.
The possibility of repopulating areas of the city so quickly marked a stunning turnaround from earlier predictions that New Orleans could remain uninhabitable for months. Nagin said the final decision on the date would hinge on pending results of federal tests measuring the toxicity of the city’s air and water, but initial reports are turning out much better than expected.
“I’m starting to get into the mode of how do we re-open the city,” said Nagin, speaking from the steps of Washington Artillery Park in the French Quarter, one of four areas targeted for early reopening. The others are Algiers, the Central Business District and dry parts of Uptown. “We are out of nuclear crisis mode and are in to day-to-day crisis mode,” Nagin said.
Nagin did not deny that the city continues to face daunting challenges. While he backtracked from earlier comments that New Orleans is “bankrupt,” the mayor said the city coffers have been drained. City workers were paid electronically for the last payroll cycle, but there’s nothing left to pay them or the contractors busy scraping gargantuan piles of trash and fallen tree limbs out of the Central Business District and other unflooded neighborhoods.
New Orleans is negotiating a line of credit to see it through the end of the year, and is relying on the charity and faith of thousands, said Nagin, who is setting up a non-profit agency to receive tax-deductible donations to the relief effort that have been pouring in from around the world. In the meantime, companies are continuing to work based on the assumption the city will get access to money, Nagin said.
Standing water covers many parts of the city, Nagin said, though he acknowledged that the areas are drying out faster than initially projected as additional pumping stations come back on line, notably No. 6 on the 17th Street Canal, the “big daddy” of pumping stations, as Nagin called it. A drive through the Lower 9th Ward on Tuesday revealed mostly dry streets.
Nagin noted that the pumping station that drains Interstate 10 as it dips below the railroad trestle near the Jefferson Parish line also is working again and the all-important supply route into the city from the west should be usable in a few days.
Nagin, wearing a Hornets polo shirt and in a generally ebullient mood, predicted a big comeback for the ravaged city.
“I know New Orleanians, and once the beignets are in the oven, once the gumbo is in the pot, and red beans and rice are being served on Mondays, they’ll come back,” he said.
As he spoke, helicopters occasionally clattered overhead and fire engine sirens wailed in the distance – a soundtrack familiar to the roughly 3,000 people still burrowed in the city’s unflooded homes and buildings.
“I’m tired of hearing these helicopters,” the mayor said. “I want to hear some jazz.”
That won’t happen, however, before the federal Environmental Protection Agency delivers the report Nagin requested. Preliminary information from the EPA “looks good,” Nagin said, adding that he might have the full report later in the day .
Algiers, which was spared the brunt of Katrina’s wrath and which was never subject to the ongoing but sporadically enforced evacuation, already has potable water and working sewerage, and power is being restored there quickly.
“My guess would be Monday,” Nagin said when asked for a return date to the four designated areas. “Once the dust settles, you’re going to have 150,000 people in New Orleans,” he said.
Nagin conceded the return of residents could create some confusion and perhaps complicate the sprawling relief effort to restore power and drinkable water to the city’s east bank. He plans to enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew. But a return to the normal rhythms of city life is preferable to the current ghost town, he said.
When questions turned to the broader controversies swirling around the hurricane and the government responses at every level, Nagin abandoned earlier belligerence in favor of a more diplomatic approach. He said he believes President Bush, with whom he has twice toured the city, got “bad information” in the hours after the storm but since then has offered unequivocal support.
Nagin conceded that officials at every level probably made mistakes.
“In the final analysis, we could have all done things better,” he said, adding that, for his part, he would have reacted differently had he known significant federal help was not going to arrive for two or three days. In general, officials said, the problem was not a lack of will or alacrity, but the storm’s unsurpassed fury.
“The system didn’t break down,” said Terry Ebbert, the homeland security chief in New Orleans. “The system just wasn’t designed to handle something so catastrophic.”
Nagin also began to unveil his plans for a committee that “will define how the city will be rebuilt.” It will include 16 business and community leaders, eight of them African-Americans and eight of them white, he said.
“The storm was a giant reset button, in my opinion,” he said.
Among the committee’s charges, he said, would be to “make sure we stay unique.”
He pointed to the redevelopment of the former St. Thomas housing project as a model that could be replicated in other parts of town.
In the more immediate future, Nagin said he is hopeful that safe water and power will quickly be restored.
Entergy CEO Dan Packer said 264,000 customers, the vast majority of whom are in the New Orleans area, remain without power, down from a record 1.1 million immediately after the storm. He estimated power would be fully restored to the Central Business District within two weeks and to Uptown and the French Quarter within a month.
Power already has been restored to much of Algiers – a neighborhood where Nagin said anyone who has “a few pennies might want to buy a lot of dirt” across the river, since property values will likely skyrocket as those displaced by the storm and wanting to remain in New Orleans seek high and dry neighborhoods.
Officials expect Algiers to have full power within days.
This week, approximately 200 temporary permits were issued to businesses in the Central Business District needing to make emergency repairs or recover essential documents or equipment. Although Nagin said the city “screwed up” that process by giving out incorrect information about how to obtain permits, he promised the permitting process will soon be back on track. Anyone seeking a permit should call (504) 599-5541, according to the New Orleans Police Department.
Once residents return, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center will become a temporary general store, with retailers – likely including Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe’s – answering “essential needs” until other businesses begin operating again, Nagin said.
Two hospitals – Touro and Children’s – should be ready to reopen “in the next day or two,” although getting staff back could take longer, Nagin said.
Noting the heavy military presence in the city, Nagin said the city is “probably the safest it’s been in many, many years.”
He said he has been assured that the military will remain in the city as long as it’s deemed necessary, but did not venture a guess as to when that might be.
“Once we get people back, we’ll do a hard assessment of what our security needs are,” Nagin said.
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New Orleans sets up a donations site By Frank Donze
Staff writer
New Orleans is moving quickly to set up a
non-profit corporation that can accept cash contributions, large and small, to help finance the mammoth recovery effort.
Describing the project as a work in progress, aides to Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday that it is too early to discuss specifics, including a fund-raising goal, how the non-profit will function and exactly what the donations will be spent on. But with offers of aid pouring in from around the globe, city officials said it is imperative to get a mechanism in place to accept the help.
“I can’t tell you exactly what the money would be used for,’’ said
Nagin spokeswoman Tami Frazier. “But anything we do will be geared toward helping New Orleanians back on their feet, by taking care of whatever their essential needs may be.”
City officials said the possibilities include temporary housing
assistance, helping small businesses acquire start-up inventory and paying for expert advice on urban planning and economic
development.
The administration has decided to name the non-profit “America’s New
Orleans Fund Inc.’’
Chief Deputy City Attorney Evelyn Pugh, who is coordinating the
project, said she hopes to have state approval to establish the fund by
Wednesday and set up an account with Chase Bank before the weekend.
Once the non-profit is authorized by the Secretary of State’s office,
contributions will be accepted at any Chase branch or a post office box the city will designate, Pugh said.
The non-profit, to be headed by the mayor, will have a 501 3-C tax
classification that makes donations tax deductible. Besides Nagin, plans call for the fund to be overseen by his top aides, including Chief Administrative Officer Brenda Hatfield, Chief Financial Officer Reggie Zeno and City Attorney Sherry Landry.
Before the city begins to solicit contributions, the administration will publish a “mission statement’’ that outlines the program’s goals and guidelines for how the money will be spent, Frazier said. She added that the city expects millions of dollars to flow in quickly.
“So many are contributing already – movie stars, activists, businesses
– we think that by establishing a fund that can be specifically
directed to New Orleans assistance, we can help a lot of people,’’ Frazier said.
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Nagin says some residents can return Monday In a drastic revision of earlier predictions, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said today that he expects to begin allowing residents in areas that did not flood to return to their homes. Those areas are Uptown, Algiers, the Central Business District and the French Quarter.
Potable water may be available in some of those areas by the end of next week, Nagin said.
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City needs to control recovery, Bush says President tours N.O. with governor, mayor
Feds now responding quickly, Nagin says
By James Varney and Bruce Nolan
Staff writers
President Bush got his boots on the ground of New Orleans on Monday, touring some still waterlogged areas in the 7th Ward and Mid-City before conducting an ad-hoc press conference under the elevated Interstate 10 at Cleveland and South Claiborne avenues.
Flanked by Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Bush said the federal government is prepared to offer whatever assistance Louisiana's leaders require but that the design and implementation of the Hurricane Katrina recovery plan would be led locally.
"This great city has ample talent and ample genius to set the strategy, to set the vision," Bush said at Cleveland and South Claiborne avenues, a spot that until late last week was still under water and where the smell of the septic glop now coating much of New Orleans was noticeable.
"My attitude is this," he said. "The people of New Orleans can design the vision. They can lay out what New Orleans ought to look like in the future, and the federal government can help."
Bush deflected criticism of both the federal government's response to Katrina, which has been widely excoriated for its dawdling pace, and notions that the strain the ongoing war in Iraq has put on the armed forces somehow made them inadequate to handle the nation's worst natural disaster.
In addition, he said the view that race played a role in Katrina's destructive path or its aftermath was faulty.
"The storm didn't discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort," he said.
Bush flashed some irritation at the questions about Iraq and insinuations that grossly inadequate planning and initial action had characterized the federal response. Although Bush has acknowledged that mistakes were made and promised a full investigation, he declined to address the issue Monday.
"There will be plenty of time to play the blame game, and that's what you're trying to do," he told a television reporter.
The day began with a briefing on the USS Iwo Jima, the amphibious assault ship docked behind the Riverwalk mall that serves as the floating headquarters for the federal relief mission. After that, the elected officials, accompanied by military generals and Bush appointees, took a circuitous overland route to Royal Street behind the St. Louis Cathedral, where they boarded light mobile tactical vehicles to continue their odyssey.
After taking St. Ann Street and wrapping around the Municipal Auditorium, the trucks lumbered through a handful of 7th Ward neighborhoods, cut over across Esplanade Avenue, and then turned down Cleveland. Longtime members of the White House press corps said they could not remember the last time they saw the president riding in an open car in an American city, calling the exposed journey nearly unprecedented.
"Well, we don't normally cruise through American cities that have been virtually emptied of people," said one Secret Service agent in the entourage.
Greenish-brown floodwater, leaving behind inches of thick black slime as it recedes, still covered some of the area the president's truck toured, and he, Nagin and Blanco often had to duck to avoid overhead wires.
After that trip, Bush returned to the Iwo Jima, where he and the top Louisiana officials made another tour of the city in Marine One, the presidential helicopter. As the chopper banked over Metairie and flew low over Lakeview and Gentilly, sunlight bounced off whole swaths of the city that remain inundated. City Park, too, is a watery plain dotted with cypress and other trees.
Before heading off to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for the final leg of Bush's visit, the helicopters landed at a former ExxonMobil office building at the Chalmette Refinery. There Bush met for more than an hour with leaders of seven parishes. The conversation focused on specific environmental cleanup tasks, such as the oil spill in St. Bernard Parish that now covers 3.3 square miles, mosquito-spraying projects and the like, administration officials said.
Nagin, who seemed upbeat and warm while greeting Bush on Sunday, was considerably more glum Monday. He said his mood was not the product of dismay with the White House, however.
"I think the president is really focused on the job at hand, and they are really starting to move," Nagin said. "On almost anything that I want to do now, I get a nearly instantaneous response."
Nagin said there did not appear to be any fallout from his interview on Sept. 2, four days after Katrina struck, when he lambasted federal officials for dragging their feet.
"Not at all," he said. "In fact, the president told me he appreciated my frankness and bluntness, and I told him I was sorry if anything I said had been treated as disrespectful."
The enormity of the Katrina disaster continued to reveal itself layer by layer in disclosures that at another time would be stunning, but now are routine: The Department of Corrections acknowledged Monday that 14,000 local felons who are supposed to be checking in regularly with parole officers are scattered and unaccounted for.
By Monday the official death toll in metropolitan New Orleans stood at 279, said Melissa Walker, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Hospitals. Officials expect it to go much higher, even as it appeared more clear that the count would be well below Nagin's early estimate of 10,000 deaths.
That number did not include a utility worker from Kansas who was electrocuted Monday while trying to restore power to a neighborhood in Kenner.
At a remarkable event in Baton Rouge, meanwhile, the displaced St. Bernard Parish Council met for the first time in the chambers of the state House of Representatives. A crowd of 3,000 displaced constituents overflowed the room and the Senate chambers and filled nearby committee rooms watching on closed-circuit television.
Nowhere in the New Orleans area was there more concentrated damage than in St. Bernard. The low-lying parish of 67,000 flooded wall to wall. Hundreds of choked-up neighbors encountered one another for the first time since the storm, exchanged embraces and wept together.
The news they received was brutal: "You'll probably be able to return in two to three weeks, but plan not to live in St. Bernard until at least next summer," Councilman Craig Taffaro said.
Bush's visit came as the metropolitan area continued slowly to heal. Little signs continued to accumulate:
-- Water continued to drain from the city.
-- New Orleans police said they were prepared to issue passes to business owners permitting entry to the Central Business District.
-- Entergy officials reported that about a third of their 790,000 customers around metropolitan New Orleans were back on the power grid.
-- The Associated Press reported a plane carrying equipment to rebuild New Orleans' mobile phone networks took off from Sweden on Monday after waiting more than a week for a go-ahead from the United States. The shipment included network equipment donated by the Swedish cell phone giant LM Ericsson.
-- The military was to begin widespread spraying for mosquitoes to keep down the threat of mosquito-borne disease, particularly St. Louis and equine encephalitis and the West Nile virus.
-- The federal government is preparing to provide temporary housing for as many as 200,000 people displaced by Hurricane Katrina for the next three to five years, FEMA's housing area coordinator, Brad Gair, said Monday.
Stories continued to leak out of ordinary people rising to extraordinary heights of service during the storm. The stories of New Orleans' hospital employees have become one recurring source.
State authorities said Monday they removed the bodies of 45 patients who died at Memorial Medical Center's Baptist campus. Isolated by floodwaters, its generators dead and with looters trying to break in, the hospital's staff struggled to care for desperately ill patients, said Mary Carstens, a New Orleans resident who evacuated to the hospital
with her husband.
Staff members ventilated patients manually and fanned them by hand with bits of cardboard, Carstens said.
As they died, their patients were set aside with the utmost care, she said.
With reporting by Keith Darcé, Michelle Krupa, Allen Powell II, Steve Ritea Robert Travis Scott, Manuel Torres, Jim Varney, Bill Walsh and The Associated Press.
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Mystery surrounds floodwall breaches Could a structural flaw be to blame?
By John McQuaid
Staff writer
One of the central mysteries emerging in the Hurricane Katrina disaster is why concrete floodwalls in three canals breached during the storm, causing much of the catastrophic flooding, while earthen hurricane levees surrounding the city remained intact.
It probably will take months to investigate and make a conclusive determination about what happened, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. But two Louisiana State University scientists who have examined the breaches suggest that a structural flaw in the floodwalls might be to blame.
"Why did we have no hurricane levee failures but five separate places with floodwall failures?" asked Joseph Suhayda, a retired LSU coastal engineer who examined the breaches last week. "That suggests there may be something about floodwalls that makes them more susceptible to failure. Did (the storm) exceed design conditions? What were the conditions? What about the construction?"
Ivor Van Heerden, who uses computer models to study storm-surge dynamics for the LSU Hurricane Center, has said that fragmentary initial data indicate that Katrina's storm-surge heights in Lake Pontchartrain would not have been high enough to top the canal walls and that a "catastrophic structural failure" occurred in the floodwalls.
Corps project manager Al Naomi said that the Corps' working theory is that the floodwalls were well-constructed, but once topped they gave way after water scoured their interior sides, wearing away their earth-packed bases. But he said some other problem could have caused the breaches.
"They could have been overtopped. There could have been some structural failure. They could have been impacted by some type of debris," Naomi said. "I don't think it's right to make some type of judgment now. It's like presuming the reason for a plane crash without recovering the black box."
Officials long had warned about the danger of levees being topped by high water from a storm surge. Absent topping, floodwalls are supposed to remain intact.
The floodwalls lining New Orleans canals consist of concrete sections attached to steel sheet pile drilled deep into the earth, fortified by a concrete and earthen base. The sections are joined with a flexible, waterproof substance.
Floodwalls were breached in the 17th Street Canal, at two places in the London Avenue Canal, and at two places in the Industrial Canal, Suhayda said. Naomi said last week that one of the Industrial Canal breaches likely was caused by a loose barge that broke through it.
Suhayda said that his inspection of the debris from the 17th Street Canal breach suggests the wall simply gave way. "It looks to have been laterally pushed, not scoured in back with dirt being removed in pieces," he said. "You can see levee material, some distance pushed inside the floodwall area, like a bulldozer pushed it."
He suggested that because the walls failed in a few spots, the flaw may not be in the design but in the construction or materials.
"Those sections in the rest of the wall should have been subjected to the same forces as that section that failed," he said. "Why did one side fail, not the other side?"
Drainage canals typically are lined with floodwalls instead of the wider earthen levees that protect the lakefront because of a lack of space, engineers say.
"It's a right-of-way issue," Naomi said. "Usually, there are homes right up against the canal. You have to relocate five miles of homes (to build a levee), or you can build a floodwall."
Constructing a more expensive earthen levee also would require building farther out into the canal itself, reducing the size of the canal - and the volume of water it could handle.
Naomi said that an earthen levee also could have been breached if the surge had pushed water over the top. "A levee failure might be more gradual than with a floodwall," he said. "It means you may have flooded a little slower."
The central question for engineers investigating the breaches will be whether the floodwalls were topped - and that's still unclear.
The levee system, floodwalls included, is designed to protect against an average storm surge of 11.5 feet above sea level. The Corps adds several more feet of "freeboard" to account for waves and other dynamics.
Naomi said the Industrial Canal floodwalls were topped by water coming in from the east. But scientists don't yet know exactly whether Katrina's Lake Pontchartrain surge was high enough to go over the wall in the two other canals.
Many storm surge gauges stopped functioning during the storm, LSU climatologist Barry Keim, though initial data point to a mi-lake height of eight or nine feet. Heights typically are higher at the Lakefront area because wind pushes water higher against the levees.
Suhayda said the debris line on the lakefront levee adjacent to the canal was "several feet" below the top. The levees are 17 or 18 feet high in that area. The canal levees, however, average only 14 feet. Storm surges have waves and other dynamics that push water still higher than the average height.
"There are big implications for as little as a one-foot change in elevation" of the storm surge, Suhayda said.
If the water did not top the levees, the breaches could prove more mysterious. Typically, the pounding of wave action would be the most likely way to cause a breach, scientists say. But there isn't much wave action in canals.
"Waves constantly breaking on the structure start to erode it and make it become unstable," said LSU coastal geologist Greg Stone, who studies storm-surge dynamics. "But I don't think that was a major factor in the canals. You just don't have the (open area) to allow wave growth to occur."
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Bodies lie for days awaiting retrieval FEMA policies limit who can do the job
State still uncertain how many perished
By MICHELLE KRUPA
Staff writer
Traveling by pirogue through the flooded Broadmoor neighborhood Saturday, two men spotted a body floating in a side yard at Rocheblave and Octavia streets. They reported it to National Guardsmen and a civilian airboat operator, who said they were aware of it .
For 13 days in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the body of Alcede Jackson lay on a porch at 4732 Laurel St., wrapped in a plastic bag and covered in a blanket beneath a sign quoting the evangelist John and commending Jackson to "the loving arms of Jesus.''
Across town, a left turn at Fern Street in the Carrollton neighborhood provided a clear view of the corpse of a man lying face-down on the sidewalk near a vacant lot. He wore blue jeans. His head was uncovered. Residents who witnessed the scene also informed a pair of National Guardsmen stationed on North Claiborne Avenue. They said they knew.
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina tore a deadly path through the New Orleans area, grim sights like these still dotted the vacant urban landscape as the official number of bodies collected and sent to a makeshift morgue at St. Gabriel rose from Sunday's count of 197 by the Department of Health and Hospitals to 279 on Monday.
With the total expected to rise, Kenyon International Emergency Services, the firm brought in last week by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help recover corpses, announced Monday that it would not formally extend its short-term agreement to have about 100 people on the ground to aid FEMA and the state in removing the dead from private homes and public areas.
Louisiana officials railed against the overall recovery effort Monday, saying that even with Kenyon on the job, too few people were working to handle the dead. FEMA policy, a spokesman said, prohibited any of the tens of thousands of National Guard troops or municipal police officers on the ground in New Orleans from touching the bodies, except to tag them and report their location to higher authorities.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said the slow pace of body removal was disrespectful to the deceased and said he didn't understand the holdup.
"I can't imagine going into a house, and I've got a bloated dead body of my father," he said. "They need to get them out and try to identify them as quickly as possible."
"How long do we want those bodies to sit out there and rot?" asked U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, adding that when residents return to check their property in the inundated parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines, "they'll get in and see all the bodies on the ground because FEMA can't handle its business."
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu said the dead must be honored now because "our federal government failed these individuals in life."
The reaction marked the start of a third week of scathing criticism of FEMA, which has been lambasted for its handling of rescue efforts and distribution of aid to evacuees. Ricardo Zuniga, the agency spokesman, said Monday that the recovery of corpses is being handled in a methodical, prudent manner.
FEMA had 3,700 workers deployed across the region Thursday in search and rescue missions, Zuniga said. On the same day, 60 people - 15 teams, each with four experts in handling bodies in disaster scenarios - were assigned to collect corpses from sites identified by military, police or citizens who called in to report where their neighbors or loved ones might be found dead, he said. He did not have more recent statistics.
"It's not a haphazard approach," Zuniga said. "We're going block to block, house to house, room to room in some cases."
Still unclear Monday was the scope of the recovery job as officials at all levels have suggested than an initial call for 25,000 body bags was overblown. Melissa Walker, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Hospitals, the state agency leading body recovery, said she did not know whether a complete survey of ravaged parishes had been undertaken.
"I have not heard that there is a need for more (recovery) people, but honestly I cannot tell you if there is or not," she said. "I can tell you that they're bringing in bodies every day."
Gov. Kathleen Blanco's spokeswoman, Denise Bottcher, said there currently aren't enough people retrieving bodies, which means the dead aren't being taken care of with appropriate "dignity."
Kenyon, an international firm that aided in body recovery after the 2001 terrorist attacks, is on retainer with FEMA to offer support during and after disasters, Zuniga and a Kenyon spokesman, Bill Berry, said.
Berry said his company would not "desert" southeast Louisiana, but he would not say how long Kenyon intended to continue working here or how many workers it would devote.
"We would continue to work as a courtesy because we would definitely not want our services to FEMA to end," he said. "We're going out of our way to not leave them in any kind of (bad) situation if they have other people that they're wanting to bring in."
Bottcher and Melancon said late Monday that the state was negotiating with the company to continue its work under state contract, which would have to be approved by FEMA for federal reimbursement.
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Runways reopen today to passenger flights Below-normal traffic expected through 2007
By Mary Swerczek
Kenner bureau
With armed military personnel roaming the grounds and one concourse still serving as a hospital, Louis Armstrong International Airport reopens today to passenger traffic, 16 days after the last commercial flight took off.
Only four flights are scheduled, a pair of round trips from Memphis, Tenn., by Northwest Airlines, and Aviation Director Roy Williams predicted 60 flights per day by the end of the week. Before Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, Armstrong averaged 350 flights daily.
Williams doesn't expect normal traffic for 18 months, largely because New Orleans' vital convention business has all but shut down.
"You don't have to lose many of those to lose a significant amount of your traffic," he said. "Nobody knows, even if all the hotels are back in place, people's proclivity to come back."
Many airlines have waived fees and penalties for passengers who want to reschedule flights they planned before Katrina. Some said they have given passengers refunds for canceled flights.
"We are currently working with those customers," said spokeswoman Ginger Hardage of Southwest Airlines, the busiest carrier at Armstrong.
Armstrong last saw a commercial passenger flight leave Aug. 28 at 4:30 p.m. After Katrina passed the next day, the airport morphed into a transit point for inbound relief supplies and outbound evacuees and a way station for emergency medical care. Cargo traffic resumed Sunday.
But the rows of people on stretchers and in wheelchairs no longer vie for attention in the lobby outside Concourse D. Soldiers have replaced the lines of cots with rows of airline passenger chairs in Concourse B, where an estimated 2,000 military personnel were living. They have now moved into tents in an airport employee parking lot.
Williams said he doesn't know how many people will be on today's Northwest flights.
Other airlines are still assessing their resources and demand for New Orleans flights, he said. Among the issues: fuel supplies and security. Southwest, which normally commands 30 percent of the market at Armstrong, flew in 21 employees from Dallas to examine its facilities, Southwest project manager Mark Petteway said.
"Everything looks great here," he said, referring to computers at the ticketing terminals.
Williams said flights in the coming days will attract a combination of people who live in areas with less damage, such as the River Parishes, and people involved in helping southeast Louisiana recover and rebuild.
Passenger service couldn't start earlier because of the emergency work. At one point, Williams said, Armstrong became the busiest airport in the United States.
Altogether, Armstrong evacuated 23,000 people, including 13,000 in one day, said Mike McCormick, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"Imagine this filled with stretchers," he said, pointing at a lobby of soldiers and emergency officials outside Concourse D, still somewhat of a medical center.
As Armstrong sputters back into normal operation, all passenger flights will leave out of Concourses A and B. Concourse D is still used as an evacuation and medical facility, although it hosted only one patient Monday. Concourse C suffered roof damage, Williams said.
The shops and stores in the airport will reopen slowly, with at least one food and one or two gift shops opening Thursday, Williams said.
Mary Swerczek may be reached at mkswerczek@hotmail.com.
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Brown resigns FEMA post Nagin: Stepping down won't solve problems
By Bruce Alpert
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON - Three days after being relieved of responsibility for managing the federal government's Hurricane Katrina relief effort, Michael Brown stepped down Monday as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
His departure comes after an avalanche of criticism that the federal relief effort, particularly in New Orleans, parts of Jefferson Parish, St. Bernard and St. Tammany parishes, has been slow, inept and largely ineffective.
"It is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA," Brown said in a written statement.
Brown's resignation was expected after the Bush administration in effect issued a no-confidence declaration Friday by removing him from day-day-management of the relief operations, replacing him with Vice Adm. Thad Allen of the Coast Guard.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Brown's resignation will not solve the problems.
"I think it's bigger than any one person,'' Nagin said. "If you think that's going to fix it, it's not. It might make people feel better. It doesn't make me feel better."
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said that while Bush has "now addressed the leadership issues" with FEMA, he must still deal with "the resource and organizational issues, which hindered our national response to this tragedy."
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the departure of Brown, whom critics said lacked solid experience handling disaster management, was appropriate.
"On the positive side, I'm very impressed so far with Vice Admiral Allen," said Vitter, who praised him for quickly taking charge and demonstrating complete command of the current rescue operations.
R. David Paulison, head of FEMA's emergency preparedness force, was named to take over the beleaguered agency.
Paulison is a career firefighter from Miami who was among emergency workers responding to Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 in the Florida Everglades in 1996, according to a biography posted on FEMA's Web site. He also has led the U.S. Fire Administration since December 2001, according to the site.
In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Brown said he last talked to Bush five or six days ago, but decided his resignation would allow the relief effort to move forward with the least controversy.
"I think it's in the best interest of the agency and the best interest of the president to do that and get the media focus on the good things that are going on, instead of me," Brown said.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who asked Bush to replace Brown last week, called his departure "the right thing for the country and for the people of the Gulf Coast states."
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U.S. Postal Service working to restore deliveries to city Transient evacuees urged to check in
By Mark Waller
Staff writer
As most New Orleans bound mail gets channeled to Houston in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, U.S. Postal Service officials are urging displaced residents to sign up for address changes, no matter how temporary, so mail carriers can find them.
People can file address changes on the Internet at www.usps.com, by telephone at 1 (800) 275-8777 or by filling out a form at any open
post office. Evacuees who move again can register another change, and the mail will go to the latest location on file.
"The sooner we get those change-of-address forms out, the better for us," said Dave Lewin, a spokesman for the Postal Service who is based in Houston but is working in Baton Rouge to help manage the emergency.
Postal Servive officials working from Baton Rouge said 60 New Orleans area postoffices are back in service, including eight that came online Monday in Belle Chasse, Harvey, Kenner, Lafitte, Marrero, Metairie and Westwego. Home delivery is not yet restored in all of those places, but customers in ZIP codes with working post offices can retrieve mail at the counter.
On Friday, 37 post offices in St. Charles, St. Helena, St. James, St. John the Baptist, Tangipahoa and Washington
parishes reopened, some with limited services.
"We're doing everything we possibly can; we're getting all available mail we can out there," said Victor Dubina, a postal ser vice spokesman from Cleveland who is also in Baton Rouge. "It's a question of patience."
Lewin said the service is using more than 30 generators to power some stations where electricity remains out, and it's using 26 mobile buildings in areas where post office buildings suffered hurricane damage.
Late Monday, officials said they were extending the time that people from areas with no mail delivery can pick up Social Security checks. The check pickups at post offices in Baton Rouge, LaPlace and Des Allemands were originally scheduled to end Monday, but will now continue today.
The Baton Rouge Downtown Station at 750 Florida Blvd. serves residents from most New Orleans ZIP codes seeking their Social Security
checks. The Des Allemands post office at 17242 U.S. 90 covers Venice, Boothville, Buras , Port Sulphur, Barataria and Algiers. The
LaPlace post office at 190 Belle Terre Blvd. serves residents of Pointe a la Hache, St. Bernard, Violet, Meraux, Chalmette, Arabi and Braithwaite. West Slidell Station distributes checks to all Slidell residents.
He said the service is trying to re-establish its presence in communities hit by Katrina as quickly as possible, partly to reassure residents that life is slowly returning to normal.
"I think it's important for the people in the area to see our people out there," he said. The Postal Service is also still trying to find some of its own employees, who themselves were affected by the storm, asking them to call 1 (877) 477-3273 to report on their well-being, whereabouts and availability for work.
"A lot of them suffered the same damage everyone else did," Lewin said.
At least one employee who evacuated to the shelter at the Astrodome in Houston is working in post office operations there, he said.
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U.S. Postal Service *The suspension of standard mail delivery, including letters and periodicals, remains suspended in zip codes that begin with 395, 700, 701 and 704. The suspension has been lifted for zip codes that begin with 369, 393, 394 and 396.
*Temporary change of address forms are available at any post office or https://moversguide.usps.com/mgservice/ECOA
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Port prepares to open for business this week Housing a problem for returning workers
Many truckers reportedly lost everything in storm
By Jeffrey Meitrodt
Staff writer
NEW ORLEANS - As he drove his boss around the Napoleon Container Terminal, Joseph LaBarriere yanked the wheel of his Ford Explorer left and right to avoid hitting dozens of four-ton steel boxes scattered across the yard by Hurricane Katrina.
"Looks like Legos on a child's playroom floor, doesn't it?" said Gary LaGrange, president and chief executive officer of the Port of New Orleans.
But the task of cleaning up the yard is actually one of the less daunting tasks LaGrange said he will face in the coming months.
Not a single ship has been unloaded at the port in two weeks because there's nobody left in New Orleans to unload them, and because the trucks and trains that transport cargo entering the port can't get through.
That could change Wednesday, when the port is scheduled to unload its first ship. Within a month, after rounding up workers and borrowing much-needed equipment from the federal government, LaGrange said, business will bounce back as much as 50 percent. He's betting the port will reach at least 80 percent of capacity in three months.
That will be a tall order, according to transportation leaders, who say there are still many unknowns when it comes to moving cargo in and out of New Orleans. But it's not an impossible goal.
"We were wounded; we weren't totally wiped out," said state Sen. Walter Boasso, D-Chalmette, who owns a liquid bulk shipping business and has been helping coordinate rescue efforts. "We've still got infrastructure here that doesn't exist anywhere else in the country. That gives us some advantages."
One of the most immediate problems is housing. With much of New Orleans under water and facing a mandatory evacuation order, there's no place to put the thousands of people whose jobs are related to the port.
On Thursday afternoon, help started to trickle in when the crane ship Diamond State arrived from Orange, Texas. Port officials said the ship can house about 40 workers, and it will soon be joined by three training ships capable of accommodating as many as 1,000 people, LaGrange said. Typically, when traffic is heavy, there are about 2,000 people involved in loading and unloading ships, he said.
"These cabins will be dedicated to anybody who is working the port in any capacity at all," LaGrange said. "That includes truckers, terminal workers, stevedores, warehousemen, line handlers, tug operators and security personnel."
Also on the list: state-commissioned pilots, who have the job of guiding foreign vessels up and down the Mississippi River. One of the casualties of Katrina was Pilottown, an island community near the mouth of the river that has served as a base of operations for two of the region's three pilot groups for about 100 years.
"Pilottown got wiped out," said Ed Peterson, executive director of the Louisiana River Pilots Association.
Peterson said the storm has complicated a river that was already considered one of the most challenging waterways in the world to navigate.
One of the biggest problems: a lack of navigational aides. Of the 120 lights and buoys that once blinked along the river, helping pilots fix their position and plot their course, just three remain. As a result, ships can only move during daylight, causing delays of 10 to 12 hours.
"The river looks totally different," Peterson said. "It is so much wider, and the levees have disappeared. The pilots are feeling their way to find the deepest part of the channel because it is not marked. It is pretty stressful, but they're doing it. They want to keep this river open."
It took five days to reopen the Mississippi, Peterson said. Initially, traffic on the river, which is popular with shipping companies because its deep channel typically provides 45 feet of draft, was limited to 35 feet, greatly reducing the amount of cargo those ships could carry. The limit has since been increased to 39 feet, Peterson said.
"That is a huge impact,'' Peterson said. "That is a lot of tons that don't get loaded. But we're going to overcome that in short order."
"We're probably doing 60 percent as many ships as we had been before the storm," Peterson said.
For now, virtually all of those ships are heading to grain terminals north of the city, which are working at about 85 percent of capacity, or to facilities near Baton Rouge, whose port was largely unaffected by the storm.
Glen Guillot, vice president of two trucking companies that do business with the port, said restarting cargo handling operations will be hampered by a shortage of diesel, which is needed to fuel both his trucks and the generators that will be used to provide power to the dock workers. Conventional electricity isn't expected to reach most docks for weeks, if not months.
Another obstacle to truck traffic is getting past the checkpoints operated by State Police, but port and parish officials said they are discussing an agreement that would allow commercial traffic in the parishes sometime this week.
Guillot said his biggest challenge is finding his workers. Of the 20 drivers at Southeastern Motor Freight, he's been able to locate only seven - and they're spread from Atlanta to Houston. The rest evacuated without leaving any forwarding information.
"That is going to be a challenge, and one I look at with great apprehension," said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which represents 129,000 truckers around the country. "The primary response we're getting (from members in that area) is no response whatsoever."
Spencer said he knows of several truckers in the area who lost everything, including their trucks. "I suspect that is going to be a pretty common situation for the guys who worked the port," he said.
By contrast, finding stevedores and other dock workers should be fairly easy, according to officials at P&O Ports and Ceres Gulf Inc., two companies that expect to be back in business this week at the port.
"We have 92 managers and employees, and all 92 have been located and are intact - and that's the best news of the whole week," said Dave Morgan, senior vice president of Gulf operations for P&O Ports.
Jim Campbell, president of the local chapter of the International Longshoreman's Association, said he has located virtually all of his 250 or so members.
"If I had to put together 100 men today, I could do it," Campbell said late last week.
Though LaGrange said he sees challenges almost everywhere he looks, he is confident the port, which is the nation's fourth or fifth largest in terms of tonnage, will rebound quickly. His main argument is the river itself, which connects to 15,000 miles of inland waterways crossing 33 states, reaching 62 percent of the nation.
"No other port has that," he said. "The river is still here. The railroads are still here. All the parts that make our port great are still here. All we have to do is get power and get our people back here."
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Flooded property records can be saved, official says And they'll be moved
From court basement
By Greg Thomas
Real estate writer
Most of the property records in the basement of Orleans Parish Civil District Court are salvageable from floodwaters and may be ready to use within the next few weeks, said Stephen Bruno, the custodian of the notarial records, on Monday.
Stored in the courthouse basement, which took on nearly a foot of water during Hurricane Katrina, moisture was the biggest enemy to property records. Abstractors, who conduct title searches before a real estate transaction closes, should have access to them within the next few weeks, Bruno said.
The records include titles, mortgages, conveyances, liens, wills and other documents.
Munters, the Swedish records restoration company hired to preserve the nearly 12 million pages of titles, liens, mortgages and other records, is freeze-drying the documents, Bruno said.
"We dodged the bullet," Bruno said by cell phone, driving back into the city from Florida, where he evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. Bruno and other city officials are seeking a permanent - and safe - location to keep the records.
"I'll tell you one thing. They'll never be stored in the basement of the courthouse again,'' he said.
Documents stored in the New Orleans Research Records Center on the third floor of the former Amoco building at 1340 Poydras St. also survived, but broken windows have left the records threatened by exposure to heat and humidity, Bruno said.
Those records, considered more important from a historical perspective, date back several hundred years and include slave records and land grants, handwritten in French and Spanish, from the Colonial period, Bruno said.
Munters is pumping air conditioning into the Research Center through a broken window to dry out the records instead of risking further damage by moving them to a more protected area.
According to Bruno, the building engineer at 1340 Poydras said the structure's heating and air-conditioning system is relatively intact and that once power is restored, humidity and moisture can be removed from the building.
Bruno is working with Register of Conveyances Gasper Schiro and Recorder of Mortgages Desiree Charbonnet. Both were unavailable for comment Monday.
Onsite Munters official Bob Harrison said he thought only a few inches of water entered the basement. Bruno had heard that as much as 3 feet of water had flooded the basement.
Bruno said that he has made arrangements to store the conveyance and mortgage records at the old Jefferson Parish Courthouse in Gretna once clearance is received from the state fire marshal.
He said that Jefferson Parish Clerk of Courts Jon Gegenheimer was assisting in the relocation and that abstractors could possibly return to work in a few weeks.
Until the records are available, it is virtually impossible to sell or buy a piece of property in Orleans Parish.
"I can't believe the records weren't (totally) submerged" Bruno said, adding that Munters employees pumped the basement clear and had to work around snakes and other debris to remove the books, a process that was still ongoing Monday.
"We are so fortunate," Bruno said.
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Officials: N.O.'s rebuild should be locally based Washington-run redesign remains a big worry
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON - Local residents and civic and political leaders, not Washington policy-makers, should take the lead in charting the future for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said Monday.
"We know how people like to have their houses built and where they want to stay," Landrieu said after a press conference with Louisiana clergy. "While we appreciate the help in rebuilding and expect attention and support unprecedented in the nation, it will be led by the people of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama."
Landrieu was reacting to what she said was a "general sense" that members of Congress already are hatching plans to redesign the city of New Orleans.
As the scope of destruction from the Aug. 29 storm has started to become clear, powerful lawmakers have all but insisted that New Orleans be fundamentally redeveloped to ensure it doesn't fall victim to future hurricanes. Unsaid, but implied, is the fact that Congress would resist approving the billions of dollars necessary to rebuild unless the plans meet with lawmakers' approval.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., has said it doesn't "make sense" to rebuild New Orleans the way it was before Katrina struck and that whole neighborhoods should be bulldozed. He also said it is important that as New Orleans is revived "we rebuild smart."
He didn't explain what he meant by "smart," but urban planners, architects and construction firms around the country already have begun to float ideas for mega-levees slicing through the city where submerged neighborhoods now stand, towering flood walls partitioning New Orleans to keep flooding in check and massive landfill operations to raise low-lying areas that frequently flood.
At the same time, lawmakers have discussed legislation to clamp down on the federal flood insurance program, which effectively would deny coverage to homes in frequently flooded areas; such legislation would require a large-scale redevelopment of the areas now under water in New Orleans and surrounding suburbs. One member suggested a large park in New Orleans to replace submerged neighborhoods; it would serve as both a memorial to flood victims and a buffer against future disasters.
This week, the Louisiana delegation hopes to unveil its package of legislation intended to put a local mark on the flurry of Katrina-related legislation in Congress.
Rep. Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo., went furthest in raising fears about who will sketch the plans for a rebuilt New Orleans. He urged Hastert and other Republican leaders last week not to give any rebuilding money to Louisiana officials because of what he called "mind-boggling incompetence" in dealing with the disaster and a "long history of public corruption." He has offered a resolution, so far without much support, to create a 15-member House commission to oversee the disbursal of $62.3 billion in disaster assistance already approved by Congress.
During a visit to New Orleans on Monday, President Bush gave support to the idea that the city should chart its own future.
"My attitude is this: The people of New Orleans can design the vision, the people of New Orleans can lay out what New Orleans ought to look like in the future, and the federal government will help," Bush said. "I think the best policy is one in which the federal government doesn't come down and say, 'Here's what your city will look like."
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Hospital staff fought to save dying patients 45 bodies protected from water, looters
By Steve Ritea
Staff writer
Forty-five patients died at Memorial Medical Center's Baptist campus during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, despite the best efforts of staff who struggled in nightmarish conditions to keep the frail and elderly alive as floodwaters rose and looters broke in.
"You could smell death," said Command Sgt. Major Earl Hackney of the Army National Guard. "But it wasn't as bad as the floodwaters."
Despite horrendous conditions, hospital staff struggled to accord dignity to the dead, moving at least a dozen bodies into a chapel and covering each with a blanket or placing them in body bags.
The bodies were not recovered from the hospital until days after the storm passed, officials said.
"Everything was done to protect the remains," Hackney said, adding that security workers remained until Thursday or Friday after the storm to watch over bodies that were scattered all over the hospital, including the top floors where some had been brought in the hope of rescue by helicopter.
The staff managed to evacuate 270 patients, he added.
Outside the abandoned hospital on Monday, pools of dark, fetid water had receded to reveal shards of broken glass. The ramp to the hospital's emergency room was littered with tell-tale signs of the tragedy: abandoned gurneys, surgical masks, latex gloves, bags of intravenous fluid and an oxygen tank inside an inflatable raft.
Department of Health and Hospitals spokesman Bob Johannessen confirmed the recovery of the 45 bodies at the hospital, not counting the ones in the morgue.
Bill Berry, a spokesman for Houston-based Kenyon Co., which is assisting with the recovery of bodies, said the largest numbers are being found in hospitals and nursing homes and that the death toll at Baptist is among the highest he has heard about.
The 317-bed Uptown hospital at South Claiborne and Napoleon avenues is owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. Tenet spokesman Steven Campanini said that some of those found Sunday had died before the hurricane hit, and that none of the deaths resulted from lack of food, water or electricity to power medical equipment. Many of the patients were seriously ill, he said.
Mary Carstens, a New Orleans resident who evacuated to the hospital with her husband, a computer systems contractor there, described "heroic" efforts by staff to keep patients alive.
"Nurses stayed up all night, literally, fanning patients with paper or pieces of cardboard just to keep them cool. There were older people lying on the floor on mattresses or right on the floor. Others were manually giving them oxygen for hours at a time," she said, describing the resuscitation bags that were used after electrical ventilators stopped working.
Generators failed the day after the storm, leaving the building dark, hot and humid, said Carstens, who had arrived at Baptist with her husband on the eve of Katrina's landfall.
"I remember it was just so dark . . . you couldn't see anything, and there were looters trying to get in the hospital and there was no security," she said.
To reach helicopters landing on the roof of an adjacent parking garage, staff moved patients through a hole smashed in the side of the building to avoid floodwaters below, Carstens said.
Inside the garage, some patients were placed in the bed of a pickup truck and driven to the top of the garage to wait for helicopters.
Some of the dead later found on the hospital's upper floors apparently were taken there by staff hoping they would be rescued from the roof, Hackney said.
But the helicopters couldn't take people fast enough. On Wednesday, two brothers from Thibodaux arrived with an airboat to transport their mother, who was a patient in the hospital's hospice unit, Carstens said. The woman died before she reached dry ground.
But the brothers stayed anyway, evacuating several hundred staff, patients and others, four or five at a time, to a dry spot at Napoleon and St. Charles avenues.
By then, water and food were starting to run low, Carstens said.
Looters continued to break in, some to forage in the hospital's pharmacy.
"It was really hot, the bathrooms were overflowing," Carstens said. "People were going to the bathroom in the hallways."
Carstens, her husband and their dogs were rescued by boat on Thursday, three days after Katrina struck.
"As far as I'm concerned, the staff did whatever they could to get the
living and the dead out of there," Hackney said. "They were truly heroic."
Steve Ritea can be reached at sritea@gmail.com.
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Most St. Bernard homes will be bulldozed, residents told Homeowners can't return for at least six months
By Paul Rioux
St. Bernard bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Scattered across the Gulf South by Hurricane Katrina's near total devastation, about 3,000 St. Bernard Parish residents filled the Louisiana Capitol on Monday for a town-hall meeting marked by tearful reunions and a no-punches-pulled assessment of the damage.
Officials said that virtually all of the parish's 27,600 houses will have to be bulldozed and that it will be more than six months before the lucky few whose homes can be repaired are allowed to return.
About 400 people packed the House chamber, while thousands more piled into the Senate chamber and five large meeting rooms equipped with video or audio feeds. Others spilled into the hallways, catching bits and pieces as parish officials painted a bleak picture of what remains of their homes.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you," Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said. "I hope all of you remember St. Bernard because when you go back, you aren't going to recognize it."
Shrieking winds, tornadoes and a 20-foot storm surge swamped St. Bernard on Aug. 29, flooding virtually every house and washing away entire villages in the parish's eastern half.
Parish Council members took turns giving detailed descriptions of the storm damage in their districts. In Arabi, the surge lifted at least 45 homes off their foundations, depositing one on Judge Perez Drive. In Violet and Poydras, the water reached the gutters of one-story homes. It was even higher in the central parts of the parish. And of the hundreds of homes and camps in communities from Reggio to Delacroix, only 16 homes are left standing.
Despite the grim assessment, many residents said the meeting filled them with hope for the parish's rebirth.
"We heard so many rumors about people who didn't make it that it's good to see them in the flesh and blood," said Meraux resident Sheila Carlin, who now lives in a camper in Walker.
While some rumors were put to rest, many questions remained about when residents will be allowed to return to retrieve what little the storm did not destroy.
Officials said some residents might be able to return to assess damage in Arabi and parts of Chalmette in two or three weeks. But Rodriguez warned people about exposure to toxic chemicals and mold, telling residents to bring rubber gloves, protective masks and rubber boots, and to leave children behind.
Residents in other areas of the parish would be allowed later, officials said, as part of a staggered re-entry plan that they expect to announce in a few weeks. Parish officials tried to prepare returning residents for what they will see.
"Some of you are going to find that your home isn't there anymore," Parish Council Chairman Joey DiFatta said. "Others are going to be wondering, 'How did the damn refrigerator get in the bedroom when we could barely get it in the house when we bought it?'"
The event became an emotional reunion for relatives, friends and neighbors who had not seen each other since they evacuated before the Aug. 29 storm. DiFatta's voice cracked as he opened his remarks by asking his son, whom he had not seen since before the storm, to look for him.
As she walked to the Capitol, Carol Licciardi of Chalmette raced through traffic on Third Street to wrap her arms around Gursline Roger, a fellow parishioner from St. Mark Catholic Church in Chalmette.
"I was worried I'd never see my church friends again," Licciardi said after releasing Roger from a 15-second bear hug. "I couldn't stop screaming when I saw her, but I better get my emotions under control. I don't want to survive the hurricane and then get hit by a car."
State Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Chalmette, urged the crowd to sign a petition calling on the state Legislature to shut down the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a waterway to the north and east of St. Bernard that topped levees during the storm.
"If we didn't have MR-GO, we would have had some problems, but we wouldn't have had 30,000 homes flooded," he said.
His statement drew loud applause from the crowd, but other officials said there was no way to prevent much of the damage caused by the powerful Category 4 hurricane.
"There are no levees that could have protected us from Hurricane Katrina," Rodriguez said. "That was the perfect storm."
Residents flooded officials with questions ranging from the status of their jobs to how to deal with insurance companies and creditors, including mortgage lenders.
U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, said he is co-sponsoring a bill with U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., to suspend mortgage payments on homes destroyed by the storm. Details were unavailable Monday.
Parish officials said they also are meeting daily with FEMA officials to discuss temporary housing and long-range plans for rebuilding the parish. But Parish Councilman Craig Taffaro cautioned that residents should plan on living elsewhere until at least next summer.
That's much longer than most residents expected to be out of St. Bernard. Mary Ann Francingues, a culinary arts teacher at Andrew Jackson Fundamental Magnet School in Chalmette, said when she evacuated before the storm she assumed she would return in a day or two.
"It's hard to think about not going home for months, but there's a camaraderie here. We're crying and laughing together," she said after signing into an e-mail and phone list to keep track of displaced residents.
"I don't have any doubt that the parish will be rebuilt," Francingues said. "My concern is whether it will be in my lifetime."
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Water level is dropping, But plenty remains Gentilly, Lakeview
Still pretty wet
Much of eastern New Orleans remains under water
By JAMES VARNEY,
GORDON RUSSELL
and GWEN FILOSA
Staff writers
Despite signs the water is receding in New Orleans, much of the city remained flooded Monday afternoon.
The specifics of how high the water is in certain neighborhoods, or which neighborhoods might have dried out since Hurricane Katrina tore into the city on Aug. 29, remain imprecise.
The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, faced with the greatest crisis in city history and with tens of thousands of residents desperate for information, has been unable to provide detailed updates.
Nevertheless, a ground survey by The Times-Picayune, coupled with an aerial tour of the city by President Bush, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin in the Marine One helicopter early in the day, showed a mix of progress and seemingly intractable floodwaters.
On the bright side, both the New Orleans Country Club and Metairie Country Club now have visible golf courses, albeit in a deathly mix of brown and wheat tones that may spell long-term problems. Cars could be seen moving near the lake into eastern New Orleans. And the route to Chalmette along St. Claude Avenue now can be made in a compact car.
Yet much of Gentilly, for example, remains under water, as do swaths of Lakeview, Mid-City, and Uptown neighborhoods on the lake side of St. Charles Avenue. City landmarks like the Criminal Court Building on the corner of Tulane and Broad remain inaccessible by foot.
Along Veterans Memorial Boulevard near the Jefferson Parish line, it is clear that water levels have dropped by as much as 5 feet, although most houses in Lakeview still remain encircled by water. Most of Broadmoor, along with the area around Xavier University and Gert Town, has drained as well, with formerly flooded Napoleon Avenue dry until its terminus at Broad Street.
Much of Mid-City and the 7th Ward are now unwatered also: Apart from the portion around the criminal justice center, Broad Street, for the most part, is dry. The drying was aided in part perhaps by the activation late Sunday of one pump at the London Avenue Pumping Station No. 3. The pump was shut down Monday, however, after water sent by the pumps began pouring over sandbags placed in one of the breaches in the London Avenue Canal, according to those at the pumping station.
Patrols run by the military and the New Orleans Police Department push farther out each day. The city's hospital complexes around the Central Business District and the elevated Interstate 10 expressway, for so long provinces explored only by kayakers, are now dry.
Everywhere, however, the odor and the slime left by floodwaters seasoned for weeks with bloated corpses, human waste, debris, and untold quantities of various chemicals hangs over the city like a sword.
Huge parts of eastern New Orleans were still badly flooded Monday, with Read Boulevard at Dwyer Road a virtual lake. Water on Read was at least 4 feet deep in some spots, swallowing up entry to Joe Brown Memorial Park, Marion Abramson Senior High School and the 7th District Police station.
In scores of neighborhoods off Chef Menteur Highway, Downman Road and Hayne Boulevard - suburban enclaves dotted with one-story ranch-style houses - water had receded by four feet, according to dirty watermarks lining the homes, mostly beneath the front windows.
But the areas were left with brown, soggy grass, and brown-black muck encrusted sidewalks. The strip clubs off Downman were wrecked. One neighborhood off Chef Menteur - including Knight, Arthur, Lancelot and Galahad Drives, was empty of people and covered in sludge. Sections of Lancelot were flooded, but the levels appeared below car wheels.
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FEMA plans temporary housing for 200,000 Communities could be bigger than most La. towns
By Keith Darcé
Business writer
In an unprecedented undertaking, the federal government is preparing to provide temporary housing for as many as 200,000 people displaced by Hurricane Katrina for the next three to five years, Federal Emergency Management Agency's Housing Area Coordinator Brad Gair said Monday.
Work on the first of what will be dozens of mobile home communities around Louisiana will begin this week in the Baton Rouge area, he said.
"It may not be quite on the scale of building the pyramids, but it's close," Gair said. "This is big. We've never done anything like this."
He would not say where the new communities would be sited, but said most would be in Louisiana.
In a few cases, the effort will create new towns larger than most towns in the state. The largest evacuee communities could house as many as 25,000 mobile homes and come with their own security force, utilities, government services and even schools.
Smaller clusters of trailers will blend in with surrounding communities.
FEMA is first targeting state parks, recreational vehicle facilities and vacant parcels of all sizes, Gair said. "We're prepared to set up temporary housing anywhere in the state."
Gair couldn't say how much the housing effort will cost taxpayers.
"This is going to be expensive - clearly the most expensive housing situation that we have ever been involved in," he said.
The agency's main goal is to move people into better accommodations than they're in now. "We are not planning any tent cities for victims," he said.
The government housing couldn't come any sooner for Christina Sentmore.
The pregnant mother of three has lived in a shelter in West Baton Rouge Parish since evacuating her home on St. Ferdinand Street in New Orleans two weeks ago. She hasn't been able to find an apartment or house in the Baton Rouge area.
Sentmore, who is due to give birth any day, doesn't want to bring a newborn child into a shelter that could be filled with germs and illness.
"You don't know what other people might have," she said Monday afternoon.
FEMA has gathered more than 6,000 trailers and mobile homes in Louisiana and the agency has contracts with manufacturers to produce up to 500 units each day, Gair said. Some trailers and mobile homes may be purchased from retailers. "We've ordered well over 100,000" units thus far, he said.
The units will be offered first to people still in shelters, he said. But they will be available to those who can't find housing. State officials will play a primary role in distributing the units.
Initially, the temporary communities will be located throughout the state, wherever land and services are available, Gair said. Over time, evacuees will be moved closer to their original homes, which could mean some evacuees moving again before landing in a permanent house.
The water and sewer pipes, roads and electrical wires required for the temporary communities should serve as incentives for cities throughout the state to welcome the new neighborhoods, Gair said. "Many parishes already have plans for future development. This could help get infrastructure that they wanted anyway."
Keith Darcé can be reached at kdarce@yahoo.com.
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Maravich center's stint as hospital is over B.R. facility saw 6,000 patients
By John Pope
Staff writer
BATON ROUGE - After 10 days and 6,000 patients, the 800-bed field hospital at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center has closed.
Even though the basketball arena at Louisiana State University was a major destination for ambulances and helicopters delivering critically ill people from areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, it needed to be closed as quickly as possible because the facility wasn't sanitary enough to be a long-term hospital, said Dr. Chris Trevino, the medical director.
"This is not a hospital," he said. "There are lots of federal laws and regulations that were being broken right and left, but that's OK if it's not for a long time. ... That was why we shut it down as quickly as we could."
The center, which has been described as one of the biggest facilities of its kind ever created, stopped treating patients Wednesday.
People seeking medical help who come to campus are being evaluated at Alex Box Stadium to determine whether they need to go to the nearby Carl Maddox Field House, which remains a shelter for people with special medical needs; to a nursing home; or to a hospital, said Trevino, an emergency-room doctor at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Gonzales.
Even though the Maravich Center hospital was set up swiftly Aug. 29, when Katrina roared ashore, planning had begun several years earlier. That's when Dr. Jimmy Guidry, the state health officer, asked Trevino to design such a center for a catastrophe. As a result, Trevino said, about 60 percent of the necessary planning had been done before Katrina struck.
"The next thing I knew was when Jimmy called up and said, 'Buddy, it's here,'" Trevino said. "I arrived Monday about 1 p.m. Six hours later, we had our first patient arriving. Two days later, we had patients from all over, many of them nursing-home patients. At one point, 14 people were on ventilators."
Personnel came from a host of agencies, including the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Public Health Service.
According to an LSU estimate, about 1,700 volunteers came from Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Utah, Arizona, Illinois, Washington state and Washington, D.C., as well as 2,000 LSU faculty and staff members and students.
Although Trevino said he is proud of what he and his colleagues were able to do, he said he was frustrated because they could have treated many more patients but couldn't get the necessary transportation.
"I needed to help people, and I couldn't get them where they needed to go," he said.
One challenge came last week at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, where Trevino saw about 1,000 desperately ill people, including 50 who, he said, were expected to die.
"Just about all of them got transferred and went somewhere," Trevino said. "None of them died there."
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St. John schools welcome 956 displaced students District is first in area to reopen after storm
More than 100 seek St. John school jobs
By John John Williams IV
River Parishes bureau
Diamond Nicholson, a spunky 11-year-old from Gentilly, was set to begin her reign as head cheerleader at Parkview Academy in New Orleans this school year.
But Hurricane Katrina changed those plans Aug. 29.
In one swipe, the storm flooded her family's home, ended the school year in New Orleans and separated Diamond from her friends. On Monday, she found herself as the odd kid out when she entered the unfamiliar halls of Lake Pontchartrain Elementary school in LaPlace.
Surprisingly Diamond, who is living now with her aunt in LaPlace, was upbeat.
"I have a nice teacher and I feel comfortable,'' she said.
And she plans to try out for the cheerleading squad.
The scene was played out many times Monday at St. John the Baptist Parish schools, as the district became the first in the metro area to reopen after Hurricane Katrina.
With schools in many districts destroyed or still sitting in floodwater, students have had to look elsewhere in metro New Orleans and beyond. Statewide, about 135,000 students were displaced by the storm. St. John, so close to New Orleans, yet suffering much less damage, has become a hot spot.
On Friday, St. John district officials said 901 new students had signed up for classes. Another 55 registered Monday, parish schools superintendent Michael Coburn said.
Lake Pontchartrain received many of those new students. Also seeing substantial growth were LaPlace Elementary, East St. John Elementary and East St. John High School. Private schools in the parish have grown by 1,000 students.
"It's wild over here; we have students all over,'' said Ann LaBorde, the district's executive director of legal services and personnel. "Every home is doubled up.''
Diamond's new classmate Todd Ferniz was in the process of running for student council at Belle Chasse Middle School in Plaquemines Parish. But, like Diamond, he now has to start the process all over.
"Yesterday was my best friend's birthday,'' he said. "I guess I'll have to make new friends.''
Barely looking at his classmates, Todd walked to an empty chair in the back of the classroom and sat down.
Joshua Euper, Todd's new teacher, said many of the displaced students have been shy.
"It takes time for people who are even native to the area to adjust,'' Euper explained. "I'm just trying to make them feel welcome."
Twelve of the 20 students in Euper's social studies class were displaced students from other parishes.
"Not all are here,'' Euper said. "There are more to come.''
Coburn said if the total number of new students reaches 1,000, the district will need to bring in portable classrooms to accommodate the surge.
Coburn said he has been in contact with state education Superintendent Cecil Picard.
"He said, 'Sign the students up and there will be funding,'" Coburn said. "It's going to all work out."
St. John has also received more than 100 applications from people seeking jobs ranging from principal to maintenance worker.
"For the first time we have bus drivers. We're thrilled,'' LaBorde said.
One of those lucky enough to get hired is Nick Mitchell, who was hired as a special education teacher at Lake Pontchartrain. He had taught at Dwight Eisenhower Elementary in New Orleans and applied to St. John when Orleans Parish announced schools would be closed for the remainder of the school year.
"I wanted to go back to work," said Mitchell, one of seven new teachers at Lake Pontchartrain. "I knew it wouldn't happen in New Orleans. I'm just thankful.''
Mitchell said he has spoken to a couple of co-workers who have found jobs in Baton Rouge and Texas.
"They're probably there for good,'" he said.
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St. Tammany's hardest-hit schools may not reopen Local officials waiting on damage estimates
6 Catholic schools set to reopen Monday
By Christine Harvey
St. Tammany bureau
The Louisiana Department of Education is reporting that a handful of St. Tammany Parish's most badly damaged public schools will be unable to reopen, though school officials said Monday that they are waiting for an assessment of damages to those schools to be completed before they are comfortable making such a determination.
Though most of the parish's 52 schools received some form of damage, including damage to roofs, gutters and windows, as a result of Hurricane Katrina, five in Slidell bore the brunt of the storm's winds and water.
Initial reports indicate that Salmen High and St. Tammany Junior High sustained the most severe damage, including significant flooding and downed trees. In addition, Slidell Pathways had considerable water damage, while Brock and Abney, both elementary schools, had water damage as well as damage to their roofs.
Linda Roan, the system's spokeswoman, could not confirm Monday whether the system plans to shutter the five schools in question, saying that Superintendent Gayle Sloan will make that decision once the damage assessments are complete. Sloan said last week that she hopes to begin classes in St. Tammany on Oct. 3.
In the meantime, six of the parish's Catholic schools are set to reopen Monday. They are Mary, Queen of Peace, in Mandeville; Pope John Paul II, in Slidell; and St. Paul's School, St. Peter School and St. Scholastica Academy, all in Covington. St. Margaret Mary in Slidell also plans to reopen and will work in conjunction with Our Lady of Lourdes School, which was badly damaged during the storm, to accommodate the needs of those students. Our Lady of the Lake School in Mandeville will reopen by Oct. 3, at the latest.
None of the Catholic schools will have bus service until the public schools reopen.
The hurricane forced the public school system to begin devising contingency plans for student enrollment with the idea in mind that some schools may be unable to reopen early next month.
Sloan said she hopes to know the results of inspections at the schools in the next week or so. If certain schools are unable to reopen, she said, the system could open temporary school sites in the parish, incorporate affected students into other parish schools or institute a system of "platooning,'' in which some students attend school in the morning and others in the afternoon on the same campus.
"We really think it's important to get the schools up and running as soon as possible,'' Sloan said.
She is also working on a plan to salvage the system's athletic programs, including football, volleyball, cross country and swimming, which take place in the fall.
Sloan said she believes students can make up the 24 or so days that they have missed as a result of the hurricane by attending classes during holiday periods. If so, summer vacation should be unaffected, as would graduation dates.
The system has received a number of calls from evacuees requesting placement in the system when school reopens, Roan said. Officials have yet to assess how many students may need placement, though they expect to begin looking at those inquiries this week.
"We're going to welcome students who have been displaced,'' Roan said. "We're going to fold them into the student bodies and give them the best education we can.''
System administrators, principals, and members of the maintenance and custodial staff returned to work Friday, meeting with Sloan to discuss the best way to get the system ready for the start of school. Sloan asked each principal to create a checklist of needs at the schools and take photographs of the damage to their schools.
Hundreds of troops from the National Guard and the Marine Corps are assisting the system with its cleanup effort, Roan said. She added that once cleanup is completed at some schools, employees will be asked to help at others.
About half of the system's schools had power restored as of Friday, with assurances from CLECO that returning power to the remaining schools is a priority, Roan said.
"I think we came out pretty well, considering,'' she said. "We've got
our work cut out for us.''
Staff writer Karen Baker contributed to this report. Christine Harvey can be reached at charve1@lsu.edu.
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Parts of Eastern New Orleans remain underwater Sludge, water marks, vandalism tell tale of devastation
By Gwen Filosa and Trymaine Lee
Staff writers
Vast stretches of eastern New Orleans remained flooded and filthy
Monday, two weeks after Hurricane Katrina tore through the area.
Read Boulevard at Dwyer Road was under at least four feet of water in some places, marooning the 7th District Police Station, the 4th District Fire Department, Marion Abramson Senior High School and Joe Brown Memorial Park.
Access required a boat - and the will to risk exposure to probably toxic water, and the black-brown sludge beneath it.
At about 4 p.m., a fishing boat carrying contract-workers in blue decontamination suits dragged a second boat holding three corpses. The bodies were bloated and draped in black plastic.
The men on the boats would answer few questions, but one said they came
from a nearby hospital. "Get out of there," one boater yelled at a photographer and a cameraman viewing the scene.
"Respect the dead!"
Abramson High, like much of the east, was a swampy mess filled with sludge -and eerie remnants of daily life before the hurricane.
From a blown-out window in Mr. Gibbs 10th-grade civics class, nearly a dozen not-so-long-forgotten essays clung to the walls, the only artifacts not wet or under water.
Bright red A's stood boldly against the mildewing white-lined papers, along with the names of the students who wrote them: Yanna Davis, Demetria Myers, Lesha Bartholomew.
Soaked textbooks littered the classroom, the halls and most corridors. A toppled metal detector lay in the mess.
The school's gym, cafeteria and auditorium were empty. A water mark on the first-floor auditorium entrance showed that the building had flooded to a depth of at least six feet. In the front parking lot, about 30 cars were tossed about like Tonka toys, some having bashed into others.
Upstairs, two dead white rats lay in a science lab sink, and soggy pieces of ceiling left a trail through the hallways. The dank smell of decay wafted through the air, despite the sunlight splashing through shattered windows.
Contradicting rumors that hundreds of evacuees poured into the school for shelter, only to meet a watery grave, a stroll through the school on Monday revealed no corpses.
Outside the school's gates, in the lake that once was Read Boulevard, signs tilted like cattails in the still high, but receding, water.
For about 500 yards in each direction, there was nothing but water. Buildings along the near horizon were set in a shadowy haze, their business wrecked and strewn with rubble.
Chef Menteur Highway was dry, but here, too, businesses were ruined, as far as the eye could see, and on residential lots, religious statuary and yard ornaments were cracked or headless.
"It was like a bomb blew it open," moving company manager Billy James, 43, said. "The whole place is shot. I lost cars, seven or eight trucks," he said of the firm, called The Movers. "We're starting from scratch. We'll probably have to expand to the north shore or Baton Rouge."
James conceded that hundreds of customers probably lost their belongings
in the trashed warehouse at 8200 Chef Menteur. "They may not want it," James said of the stored goods. Most of his 50 employees were safe and accounted for, he said - except one man, Ray, whose last name temporarily had slipped James' mind.
Ray was believed to have ended up at the Houston Astrodome. "They scooped him up on the street down here," company driver Sidney Byrd, 53, said. "He wasn't expecting to go to Houston," said James, cracking a smile.
"He wasn't happy about that. He'll be calling for a bus ticket." James said the owner of the business wants to keep The Movers going, but it's not possible in New Orleans right now.
The company parking lot showed signs of looting. Someone tried to rip off the steering wheel of one big truck, leaving a burst of exposed wires below the dash. The giant padlock on the warehouse was intact, but someone managed to take off the bolts and smaller lock on the other side to get inside.
Though mostly abandoned to U.S. Army soldiers and some random dogs, the east was not entirely without signs of life on Monday.
Orlando Pena Morales, 59, a Cuban immigrant who moved to the region in 1979, rode out the storm in his trailer off Chef Menteur.
Some mobile homes in the trailer park, behind Tokyo Modeling in the 7700 block, were on their sides and Morales' belongings were ruined. He and his neighbor had painted the parking lot with an appeal for food and water.
A carpenter by trade, Morales laughed as he recalled his decision to stay through the storm. "I didn't want to go anywhere. I don't' want to go anywhere. I like New Orleans. I don't know why. You drink the Mississippi River."
Morales said the floodwaters at one point rose up to his neck. "What am I gonna do?" he said.
Next door, at the Sugar Bowl, floors and bowling lanes had buckled and bowling balls littering the sidewalk. Daylight came in through the wall that once backed the pinsetting equipment. A video poker machine looked as if it had been pummeled and pushed onto its side.
At Chef and Downman, as in neighborhoods all across eastern New Orleans, the floods had receded Monday to reveal bleached-brown grass and a coating of scum. Many a ranch-style, one-story home was spray-painted with zeros, signaling that the place had been searched and that no one was inside, dead or alive.
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Jeff works to get back to business Firms allowed in to begin cleanup
By Rob Nelson
Staff writer
Tossing ruined ceiling tiles into the trash amid the pungent smell of mildew and mold, Dave Beard had a simple reason for returning to his debris-ridden workplace Monday.
"I've got to make a living," said Beard, who works for Pemco, a Harvey company that builds power plants for the oil and gas industry. "The sooner we get back on our feet, the sooner we can make some money."
Businesses throughout Jefferson Parish made a firm push to resume commerce on Monday, the first day leaders officially allowed company owners and some of their employees back in the parish in an effort dubbed Operation Jumpstart Jefferson.
Beard endured miles of heavy traffic along U.S. 90 to return to Jefferson on Monday morning. Annoyed by officials' efforts to keep him out because he lives in LaPlace and had no proof of his Jefferson work address, Beard said he drove around the barricade and made his way to work. There, he found a large hole in the second-story roof, spilling water, debris and mold throughout the building.
Meanwhile, the smell of spoiled chicken wafted through the World of Wings restaurant in the 1600 block of Manhattan Boulevard in Harvey. Co-owners and brothers Kerry Nichols and Koy Nichols spent the day chucking out the chickens and cleaning the store, eyeing a reopening later this month.
Koy Nichols praised the speed of Jefferson's rebuilding. "The recovery has been faster than we thought," he said. He lamented, however, the financial difficulty for some of his workers.
"The worst part is that the employees take the hardest hit," he said, adding that his staff depends heavily on tips and hourly wages.
Several business managers said they are still searching for their workers, many of whom fled Hurricane Katrina and are now scattered throughout the country.
At the Heritage Plaza office building in Metairie, Roddy Orgeron, owner of a Mandeville computer consulting company, and two of his buddies hauled several computers and boxes of equipment down 16 flights of stairs. Orgeron's client asked him to retrieve computers from the office, which had sustained roof and water damage, Orgeron said.
With sweat pouring through his shirt in the powerless building, Orgeron said the insurance company badly needed their computer files. "When everything is flooded, you do what you have to do," he said. "They needed these as soon as possible."
Down the road, in the 3500 block of Veterans Boulevard in Metairie, Sherry Perkins and her husband, Ed Perkins, spent the day cleaning out one branch of their restaurant, Lee's Original New Orleans Hamburgers.
While their Metairie home remains flooded, the couple, who sent their children out of town for school, will live in an apartment above the restaurant.
Luckily, the business suffered little damage, Sherry Perkins said. "This is home," she said. "This is our life, these two businesses. As soon as (Sheriff) Harry Lee says Jefferson is unlocked for business, we're ready."
In the meantime, the couple continues to commute from Oakdale, a four-hour haul from Metairie.
At Dorignac's Food Center in Metairie, Scott Miller, director of operations, said rainwater spilled into the store from a roof tear, but several workers returned to aid with cleanup.
The damage "wasn't as bad as we thought, and it wasn't as good as we thought," he said, saying the 40-year-old store could reopen late next week. In red spray paint, Miller wrote on plywood covering the store's front windows: "Opening Soon!!"
While stores planned reopenings, several banks and savings associations swung their doors open Monday. At a Hibernia branch in the Marrero Shopping Center, Mary Meyers, 68, said she was the first in line at the bank at 8:30 a.m., more than two hours before it opened.
With two armed soldiers guarding the door and about 40 people in line about 11 a.m., Meyers said she needed some of her Social Security money to pay bills. Surprisingly upbeat, Meyers said she remains confident in the metro area's upturn. "It'll come back," she said. "It'll bounce back. New Orleans will bounce back, too."
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YOU'VE GOT A YEAR Next Labor Day, I expect to have dinner at Commander's Palace, drink a hurricane at Pat O'Brien's and then spend the remainder of the evening at Preservation Hall. Stop complaining and get busy!
Paul M. Morgan
Jupiter, Fla.
AARON BROUSSARD WAS RIGHT
Thank you, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, for saving Jefferson Parish. You are a hero. The Times-Picayune owes you a Page 1 apology for ridiculing you as an alarmist just three weeks before Hurricane Katrina.
As for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, he is the goat. Assuming he has no responsibility for the 17th Street Canal, it still takes little forethought to realize that the citizens in the Superdome would need food, water, portable toilets and security. This newspaper has continuously praised Mayor Nagin during his tenure. His only accomplishment thus far is that he is perceived as honest. An honest fool
is no match for a hurricane. The truth is he has been learning on the job and failing.
It is not too early to assess responsibility and demand accountability. In fact, it is two weeks too late.
Bruce Netterville
Jefferson
Now in Lafayette
NOBODY'S HOME
A front-page photo in the Washington Post Friday shows agents breaking down the door to a locked house in New Orleans, looking for survivors. Many people locked their doors and evacuated. How do we communicate to the rescue forces that we don't want them to break our doors down and expose our homes to the thugs?
I shared this article with my family, which is spread out all over the United States because of the storm. I am writing for all of them and for others in the same situation. The last thing any of them needs is a broken-down door exposing their home. The Times-Picayune has access to the officials. I am asking for your help to set up a Web page or phone number where safe residents can put their addresses, so that their homes are not broken into. This would also reduce the number of homes officials would have to search.
Ellis Cooper
New Orleans
Now in Woodbridge, Va.
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A world of help The Gulf Coast is in a world of hurt right now, and there’s no foreseeable end to the pain that is pouring out of this region as families continue to mourn the loss of loved ones and their homes. But there is a world of help out there, too, and the international community’s response to our crisis is something that our region and our nation should never forget.
More than 95 countries have stepped up with offers of money, oil, supplies and people trained in everything from medical care for the living to forensics to help identify the dead.
Canadian warships delivered supplies, and Air Canada planes helped evacuate people. The Vancouver Urban Search and Rescue Team was the first to arrive at inundated St. Bernard Parish. They rescued 119 people before the U.S. military arrived.
But help has come not only from close neighbors and wealthy, developed nations. It is also coming from places that could hardly be expected to look past their own pressing needs. Perhaps the most moving offers came from war-torn Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, which is still struggling to recover from its own catastrophe, last December’s tsunami, which claimed far more lives and caused more destruction than Hurricane Katrina.
Sri Lanka wants to send $25,000 to recognize the response of Americans to the tsunami. Indonesia’s director of tsunami reconstruction told the Los Angeles Times that his country is also willing to share what lessons it has learned in its recovery.
The help that is pouring in from the rest of the world is borne, many times, of remembered pain. Croatia, for example, has offered forensics experts. That country’s war in the early 1990s has given it expertise in identifying the dead that, tragically, the United States might need.
“There should not be an assumption that because America is the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, this isn’t a major challenge and a major crisis,” Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on Australian radio.
He’s right, of course, and the world has been quick to recognize that, even though there has been criticism from international quarters, too.
For Americans, it’s not completely comfortable to be on the receiving end of generosity. We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as strong and
self-reliant. We respond to other people’s disasters, and this turning of the
tables is disorienting. But this is no time for pride, and it’s good that the
federal government is not rejecting the world’s generosity. “We’ve turned down no offers,’’ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday. That’s the right attitude, and it needs to continue.
European Union nations expressed some frustration late last week that they have not been able to get supplies and personnel to the disaster as quickly as they would like because they are awaiting the U.S. government’s go-ahead. That’s something that needs to be rectified, but the U.S. government’s decision to reach out to NATO for help in delivering food, medicine, bedding and other aid from European nations is a good sign that progress is being made.
Making sure that the right people and things are sent to the right places is important, of course, and managing the flood of help will present its own logistical challenges. But our government needs to make sure that accepting and coordinating international offers are given a sufficiently high priority.
No one should go without something that’s waiting in a truck a world away.
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WWL radio talk host David Tyree dies He suffered relapse
Of prostate cancer
By Dave Walker
TV columnist
New Orleans radio talk host David Tyree died early
Monday of prostate cancer.
Originally diagnosed with the disease in 1996, Tyree
suffered a relapse last fall and later left his job at
news-talk WWL 870 AM to live and seek treatment near
family in Alva, Okla.
"They were very close, watched him, tended to him
daily," said Jack Savoie, Tyree's producer at WWL. "I
talked to David at least twice a week. He always put
on a brave face. He was tough to the very end."
A Vietnam veteran and former TV anchorman in
Lafayette, Tyree had done an earlier stint as WWL talk
host and was working as a reporter at WVUE-Channel 8
and as a talk host at WGSO radio when he first was
diagnosed with cancer.
He became a crusader for early detection. After
treatment delivered what he described as a "clean
bill of health" by his doctors, Tyree eventually
returned to the airwaves, first in Baton Rouge in
September 1999 and then in December 2000 at WWL.
At WWL, Tyree established himself as a
hard-to-categorize talk host. A hawk on the war in
Iraq - or, more precisely, a hawk on the overall war on
Terror - Tyree leaned less to the right on many social
issues.
He was a tireless proponent of New Orleans and its
Frequently confounding charms.
"Anybody who knows New Orleans has a love-hate
relationship with New Orleans," Tyree told The
Times-Picayune on the occasion of his 2000 return to
WWL. "It can drive you crazy, it can be infuriating,
but there's no place like it in the country. It's got
that magic, whatever that magic is."
Former WWL-Channel 4 anchorman Garland Robinette, one of several temporary hosts who filled in for Tyree during the early stages of his relapse, became Tyree's permanent time-slot replacement in May.
At the time, WWL managers said they would hold a job
for Tyree until he recovered, a promise Robinette made
a condition of his own employment at the station.
According to Jay Mitchel, Tyree was glued to
television coverage of Katrina and the storm's
aftermath, and spoke by phone with several Louisiana
leaders.
Several family members watched Sunday's New Orleans
Saints victory with Tyree.
"That was the last thing he got to see before he
passed," Mitchel said. "He was surprised that they
won, but he was happy."
Diane Newman, WWL programming director, said she last
spoke with Tyree as Hurricane Katrina approached the
Louisiana coast.
"All he cared about was that I was OK and that
everybody else here was OK and how sorry he was that
he couldn't be here (on the air)," said Newman, whose
station was forced from the city by Katrina and has
relocated its base of operations in Baton Rouge. "And
I know these past two weeks, all David was thinking
about was not his cancer and his dying - he was
thinking about us.
"God didn't create a better human being."
Tyree's funeral is scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m. at
Marshall Funeral Home in Alva.
Instead of flowers, Tyree's family requests a donation
to the American Red Cross relief fund to aid Hurricane
Katrina victims.
TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at
davewala@yahoo.com.
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Benson urges San Antonio fans to rally behind Saints By John Reid
Staff writer
SAN ANTONIO - Saints owner Tom Benson urged San Antonio residents Monday to support his team with sellout crowds for three games that have been shifted to the Alamodome.
But he declined to make any long-term commitment to San Antonio, saying the residents of South Louisiana affected by Hurricane Katrina need something to take their focus off the devastation caused by the storm.
"The only hope they got left is this football team," Benson said. "They need us."
The Saints cannot play at the Superdome this season because of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, so they will play a split home schedule with the three games in San Antonio and four games at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.
The Saints' three games at the Alamodome are Oct. 2 against the Buffalo Bills, Oct. 16 against the Atlanta Falcons and Dec. 24 against the Detroit Lions.
"A little over two weeks ago we were in California, and we just played the Raiders and we didn't know where we were going," Benson said.
"So it went back and forth to see what could be done. The Alamodome has some restrictions on what games could be here. LSU had restrictions, too. So it was a lot of conversations about different games."
Benson praised San Antonio for welcoming the team with open arms, but reiterated the city has an opportunity now to show if it is serious about supporting an NFL franchise.
"It's most important for everyone involved to make certain capacity crowds attend every game that we have here," Benson said. "This is something brand new, never happened before in the National Football League."
"I expect these games to be televised nationally and it could make me not only proud of our football team, but it would also make the (San Antonio) mayor proud to show what kind of great city you have here in San Antonio. This effort and this schedule will help rebuild Louisiana and the Gulf South."
Several San Antonio elected officials attended Monday's news conference, but former San Antonio mayor Nelson Wolff said they can't worry about trying to land the Saints long-term.
"If we do well and support them right, I think we will be considered for something down the road," said Wolff, who now serves as a county judge. "Right now we just have to do a good job and see where it leads."
Saints coach Jim Haslett said most of his players would have preferred to play most of their home games in San Antonio because their families have relocated there.
"Again, I know what their (NFL) agenda was, they would like for us to play in our home state and our players like that, too, to be honest with you," Haslett said. "It's just more of a travel and family issues. But I'm sure their families and friends will go to Baton Rouge to see the game to be with them."
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HOMECOMINGS Saints work out deals to play
at Tiger Stadium, Alamodome
Dolphins game could draw most interest
Saints vs. Giants
at East Rutherford, N.J.
Monday, 6:30 p.m.
ABC
By Jim Kleinpeter
Staff writer
BATON ROUGE - The Saints, displaced by the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, will play four home games at LSU's Tiger Stadium and three at the Alamodome in San Antonio, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced Monday.
The first Tiger Stadium game could be the most popular: Oct. 30 against the Miami Dolphins, led by former LSU coach Nick Saban, who guided LSU to the 2003 BCS national championship and left for the Dolphins in December 2004.
The Saints' other games at Tiger Stadium are Nov. 6 against the Chicago Bears, Dec. 4 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and former LSU receiver Michael Clayton, and Dec. 18 against the Carolina Panthers.
The games in San Antonio are Oct. 2 against the Buffalo Bills, Oct. 16 against the Atlanta Falcons, and Dec. 24 against the Detroit Lions. One other Saints home game against the New York Giants already has been moved to Giants Stadium as part of a Monday night doubleheader Sept. 19.
Tagliabue met with Saints owner Tom Benson, chairman of the LSU Board of Supervisors Bernard Boudreaux, LSU chancellor Sean O'Keefe and Superdome Commission chairman Tim Coulon, among others, at the Tiger Den Suites on Monday morning to hash out the agreement.
Tagliabue said the priority for the rescheduling "has to continue to be recovery and rebuilding from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."
"If you look ahead for the next two weeks, the next month, we should stay out of the way of those priorities being met," Tagliabue said. "The appropriate time for the Saints to start playing games at LSU would be against the Dolphins on Oct. 30."
Benson said the Christmas Eve game was scheduled in San Antonio so players could be with their families, most of which have relocated there.
"I'd like to thank the commissioner of the National Football League for stepping up to the tremendous problem we have, not only the Saints, but the NFL, of getting this behind us so now we know what our schedule (is), where we are going to play the rest of the season," Benson said.
The Saints evacuated New Orleans to the San Francisco Bay Area before their final exhibition game at Oakland, and later moved their operations to San Antonio, where Benson has long-standing business and personal ties. The team has continued to practice there. On Sunday, New Orleans won its season opener at Carolina 23-20.
FEMA is occupying the Saints' Metairie practice facility, and the Superdome was heavily damaged by the hurricane and by its use as an evacuation center of last resort.
Tagliabue and Benson declined to answer questions about the future of the Superdome, and Benson declined to talk about the Saints' future in New Orleans. Before the storm, Benson and the state were wrangling over the terms of the Saints' agreement with the state.
"I don't want to leave Louisiana," Benson said.
State officials felt it was important for the Saints to return to Louisiana to play at least some of their home games. That would give fans, most of them storm victims, something positive and it would aid in the recovery.
"It was a Herculean task this morning that we accomplished with the cooperation of Mr. Benson and the commissioner, and I have to commend LSU for their efforts," said Coulon, the state's chief negotiator with the Saints. "As you know, they are dealing with many, many logistical issues here. No doubt every person in that room was sensitive to not having a negative influence on the recovery. But it was also the sentiment that the Saints need to be a part of our rebuilding initiative. We made the best of a difficult situation."
Benson and LSU officials said many of the details of playing at LSU, such as security, ticket sales, media rights and concessions, have yet to be worked out but some of those matters were discussed in preliminary talks last week.
"The people who met today aren't the people who work out the nitty-gritty details to make things happen," LSU associate athletic director Herb Vincent said. "LSU will obviously be reimbursed for expenses and would not suffer financial losses from this arrangement. Beyond that, not a lot of details have been settled. They will emerge in the days to come."
One important issue is the distribution of tickets, which Benson said is a priority. He said he planned to set up a staff in Baton Rouge as soon as possible, and that season-ticket holders' tickets will be good in Baton Rouge and San Antonio.
"That's the first thing we'll be working on," Benson said.
"We'll work together to make the distribution of tickets as fan friendly as can be," Tagliabue said.
Tagliabue said he was confident hotel room availability would not be a problem because the first game in Baton Rouge is 49 days away. Evacuees have taken most available hotel space within a large radius of Baton Rouge, but that situation is expected to ease by Oct. 30. The NFL needs about 260 rooms to accommodate the teams and personnel required to put on a game.
Another hurdle that must be cleared is the turnaround time for the Miami and Chicago games. LSU plays North Texas, the rescheduled game from Sept. 3, on Oct. 29, and its homecoming game against Appalachian State on Nov. 5. That will leave about 14 hours between the end of the LSU games and the noon kickoffs for the Saints. But a source close to the negotiations said the kickoff for the game against the Dolphins might be moved back to 3 p.m., and that the game against the Bears might be moved to Monday night.
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Giants next challenge for charged Saints Haslett hopes team's effort carries over to Monday night game
By John Reid
Staff writer
SAN ANTONIO - Saints coach Jim Haslett saw his players pushing beyond their limits Sunday against the Carolina Panthers.
They successfully controlled the clock with a rushing attack that featured Deuce McAllister, who rushed for 64 yards and two touchdowns on 26 carries.
Although a few times defensively they bent, giving up a few long runs by Stephen Davis, they didn't break to the point of not being able to hold their lead.
They were emotionally charged, eager to give their fans, many who are displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina, something to feel good about.
It was a good day to be Saints fan after New Orleans pulled out a dramatic 23-20 road victory that wasn't sealed until John Carney made a 47-yard field goal with three seconds left.
But that's over.
Now comes the real challenge. Can the Saints be as emotionally charged for this upcoming Monday night's game against the New York Giants?
Saints coach Jim Haslett thinks so.
"I don't think it will be problem, they'll be excited about playing on Monday night, they'll be excited about the opportunity to play in New York, and hopefully we can continue playing well," Haslett said.
Haslett said he's confident his players will be emotionally charged because he has seen it since last season, when they closed out the season with four consecutive victories to finish 8-8.
"It really was a carryover to this week, they started off that way in practices and it carried over in the game," Haslett said. "Obviously the Hurricane hitting the city played into it. But really the way we practiced, started last year."
Haslett was so emotional the day before the Carolina game that he couldn't finish reading a letter to his team from New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, which described some of the devastation he saw in the city resulting from Hurricane Katrina.
Haslett still had some emotions carry over from Sunday's game into Monday, wishing he could answer only questions about how his team performed rather than whether San Antonio is a good place to play three games that has been designated for the Alamodome. But Haslett answered every question at length.
Still, it didn't take him long to shift his focus toward the Eli Manning-led New York Giants, who also won Sunday.
"They really got a pretty good offense and they have a heck of a group of linebackers," Haslett said. "I think they're a good team and didn't watch the game yet from (Sunday), but they must have scored a couple on special teams. I think they are much better."
NOTES: The X-rays on tight end Ernie Conwell's jaw and wrist were negative. He suffered a dislocated jaw in Sunday's game and Haslett said he would be listed as questionable for Monday's game. … Wide receiver Az-Zahir Hakim re-injured his hamstring and is listed as questionable. … Haslett said Monday that he has never been on the LSU campus, where the Saints will play four home games this season.
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N.O. Arena 'not nearly as bad as Dome' Hornets could play
home games by
All-Star break
By Jimmy Smith
Staff writer
Damage to New Orleans Arena, home of the Hornets, was relatively minor and the facility could be ready to host NBA games by the midseason All-Star break, a top official of the building's management company said Monday.
Doug Thornton, regional vice president for SMG, toured the Arena on Sunday and reported that with any luck at restoring power in the area soon, the necessary cleanup and repair should only take a couple of months.
"The good news in all this is the Arena is not nearly as bad as the Dome," Thornton said. "If we can get in quickly and get to work, we can fix it quickly."
"The bottom line is we think we can get the Arena in shape and ready for use by the first quarter of 2006, if not sooner. That's our goal."
Unlike the Superdome, which housed tens of thousands of evacuees as a shelter during Hurricane Katrina, the Arena was used only as a special medical needs facility and access in the building was restricted to the concourse areas.
The Arena came through the storm without significant structural damage, Thornton said.
"I think there's minor roof damage that needs to be remedied," Thornton said, "and some water damage on some of the carpet and drywall in the locker room areas.
Obviously, there's some damage to the exterior skin; a couple of panels that have come off. And there are a couple of panels on the exterior LED screens missing, but we don't know the extent of the damage there."
"We don't think there's any significant damage to the electrical distribution system or the mechanical systems such as the elevators or escalators. We've got those issues at the Dome, but not the Arena."
Cleanup crews are clearing the facility of debris around the outer concourses, Thornton said, and SMG soon will put out a bid to do the environmental cleanup inside of the Arena to dispose of refuse and medical waste that was left behind during the evacuation process.
That effort could be slowed somewhat by the lack of electrical power and sewer availability in the area surrounding the Arena.
Thornton said he spoke with Hornets owner George Shinn on Sunday following the inspection tour of the facility and updated Shinn on the damage, the first time Shinn had received first-hand knowledge of the Arena's status.
He said Shinn reiterated to him the team's desire to move back into New Orleans as quickly as possible, though, officials are still in fact-finding missions around the state and the country, touring possible venues to hold some of the team's home schedule.
Several of the facilities at which the Hornets are looking are operated by SMG, including those in Oklahoma City, Bossier City and Baton Rouge.
That, Thornton said, is merely coincidence, though New Orleans Arena's game operations employees would be available to work Hornets games in any SMG-managed arena, which would make any transition much easier.
"I think," Thornton said, "the Hornets are appreciative of that."
LSU officials are awaiting word as to when the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, a possible alternative venue, would be cleaned up so that Hornets officials can tour the building, according to LSU senior associate athletic director Dan Radakovich.
The PMAC was used as a medical evacuation facility until last Thursday, preventing members of the Hornets' fact-finding team from visiting the arena.
"We're just waiting to hear from the cleanup people," Radakovich said.
Efforts to reach Hornets president Paul Mott were unsuccessful Monday.
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Four games in Baton Rouge not enough for N.O. fans By John Deshazier
Sports columnist
If they can play four Saints home games in Baton Rouge, they could've played six or seven.
End of story.
So, no, it certainly doesn't appear that Saints fans won in Monday's announcement that the team's seven regular-season games will be split 4/3, with four at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge and three at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
Definitely, it could've been worse. NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue could have succumbed to the wish of the organization, which was to play most, if not all, of the home games in San Antonio, where the team is headquartered and practicing.
"Wait 'til next year" could have taken on a whole new meaning if they'd have been blanked, or San Antonio would've been given four, five or six Saints games.
But that's little comfort for fans in and close to Louisiana, who, for 12 weekends instead of eight, will have little or no chance of seeing in person the team they've grown up unconditionally loving, loving to hate or hating to love.
Unless, that is, they still retain the kind of disposable income after Hurricane Katrina that will allow them to travel to one of the eight regularly scheduled road games, or one of the other four (please, let's not call next Monday's game in East Rutherford, N.J., a "home" game for the Saints) that have been designated as home games but sure appear to be "away." And that isn't likely.
Maybe the thinking was that San Antonio was owed a debt of gratitude beyond "thank you," and that's understandable. The city has been more than generous to New Orleans' football franchise and any of its displaced citizens who also might have landed there. But payment shouldn't have been to award the city almost as many games as the Saints will play in Baton Rouge. That's no knock against the wonderful citizens of San Antonio. It's a defense of many in and around Louisiana who have little to take solace in now that they've lost almost everything they have called their own.
Now, they can't even call the Saints all their own, at least for this season.
"I don't want to leave Louisiana," Saints owner Tom Benson said from LSU's campus, after the announcement had been made.
That makes it sound like his arm was twisted. Maybe that actually was the case. But whatever happened that led to the decision, it just doesn't seem that the best interests of Saints fans fully was taken into consideration. Otherwise we'd be talking about six or seven games in Baton Rouge, one or none in San Antonio.
Obviously, the logistical concerns with staging an NFL game at LSU, now that hundreds of thousands of evacuees have settled there and taken up residence in Baton Rouge hotels, sufficiently were alleviated. So the obvious question for Saints fans is this: Why couldn't they be ironed out for six or seven games?
Why is it that the people who need to see the Saints in person the most will be watching them on television, playing in San Antonio almost as many weekends as they'll have access to them?
The best possible scenario for Saints fans would have been for New Orleans' football team completely to take root in Baton Rouge for seven Sundays, 90 minutes from the home it cannot occupy, where its scattered fans have a better chance of convening and watching their team on gameday without having to spend its more-precious-than-ever dollars on a hotel room.
But that's not going to happen.
It could've been worse. We all know that the franchise wanted to play most of its games in San Antonio; Tagliabue easily could have satiated that desire.
But it could've been better, too.
It should've been better.
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Green Wave finds a home in Ruston La. Tech campus, game-week routine lift players' spirits
By Fred Robinson
Staff writer
RUSTON - After two weeks of traveling from one city to the next and not knowing what its next move was going to be, Tulane's football team arrived "home" Monday evening.
Louisiana Tech, nearly 300 miles from Tulane's Uptown campus, will be the Green Wave's home for the next three months.
"I wouldn't call it home, but it'll do for now," said Tulane senior offensive lineman Chris McGee.
The Green Wave, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, traveled to Jackson, Miss., the day before the hurricane hit. It then traveled to Dallas before the athletic administration was able to place the football team at Louisiana Tech for the fall semester. In all, the Green Wave has spent more than 36 hours riding buses.
"It's been an adventure," linebacker Anthony Cannon said. "It's all about adjusting."
Once the team arrived in Ruston on Monday, the players went through an orientation, picked up their books at the school's bookstore, got their class schedules and had dinner. Following dinner was a team meeting at the Thomas Assembly Center, Tech's basketball arena.
The team will be housed at Caruthers Hall, also home to more than 100 Katrina evacuees, according to a university security guard. In Dallas, the Doubletree Hotel was the team's home, and at least once the team used Southern Methodist
University's practice field. Tulane will meet SMU on Sept. 24.
Settling in new quarters isn't expected to be a problem.
"I think everybody will adjust just fine," McGee said. "We've adjusted just fine wherever we've gone so far."
Cannon said this stop will be better than the team's first two stops - Jackson State University, and then Dallas. Now, Cannon said, the picture is much clearer for the team.
"We're here now. We have a home, and we're finally relieved to know we have a set schedule for now and know what we're going to do next," Cannon said. "We have somewhere to call home and we appreciate Louisiana Tech and Ruston for opening their arms to us."
Next for the Green Wave will be classes today. The team will practice at 1 p.m. today in preparation for Saturday's game against Mississippi State at Independence Stadium in Shreveport.
Game-week, players said, will make a huge difference with the team.
"Now that the season's starting, we have something to get everything else off of our minds," McGee said. "Now we have games to worry about. We'll start focusing on what's important, and all the little things won't matter much - like our sanity and free time."
The Green Wave's Sept. 4 season opener with Southern Miss was pushed back to the weekend following Thanksgiving, meaning Tulane will play 11 consecutive weeks without a break.
"I've been waiting for this for six weeks. Six weeks of camp, it's the longest camp in history," McGee said. "I think this week will make all the difference in the world."
Recovering from a disaster isn't new for safety Sean Lucas. A week before he was to leave his Georgia home to become a freshman at Tulane, a house fire destroyed all of his belongings. Katrina hit one week before Lucas was to begin his senior season.
Getting over a disaster takes the right attitude, said Lucas, whose apartment near South Claiborne and Napoleon likely received flood waters.
"I rebounded (from the fire) and I'll rebound again," Lucas said.
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Call was all bad news for Wave's Smith Tulane receiver finds
house was damaged
by hurricane winds
By Benjamin Hochman
Staff writer
RUSTON - New Orleanians have been getting those calls the past couple of weeks - those calls about their homes, or what's left of their homes.
Fred Smith got one of those calls while evacuated in Houston. A neighbor from St. Rose had stayed in town during Hurricane Katrina.
"They told us the house was messed up," said Smith, a Tulane receiver. "But we didn't expect that much damage."
Smith laughed after saying that. The damage was unfathomable, so all he could do was laugh at the absurdity.
"It's done," Smith said of his mother's home. "You can't prepare yourself for it. We had a lot of wind damage. The roof came off."
Because Smith is injured and wasn't with the team, which spent the past 13 days in Dallas, the junior had the opportunity to visit his house. On Monday, he reunited with his teammates at Louisiana Tech, where he will begin classes today. Smith won't play this season because of a knee injury suffered in the preseason.
"It's good being back," Smith said. "The guys are like my other family right now."
PULLING THE STRINGS: Jim King has been the logistical savior for Tulane football.
So who is he?
He is the vice president for student affairs at Louisiana Tech, and in the past week King has been orchestrating the unprecedented move of a Division I-A football team into the home of another Division I-A football team, and about 11,000 other students. King oversaw housing and meal planning, and helped coordinate the academic and athletic facets.
King said the number of transplanted students at Louisiana Tech "is growing every day." On Monday, he said approximately 400 students from other schools were on campus, including Tulane's 88 football players.
"The challenges have been varied," King said. "Such as massaging an eight-story high-rise."
Caruthers Dorm had been closed and was scheduled for demolition before Katrina hit. Louisiana Tech officials decided to repair the building's air conditioning system and take in evacuees. On Monday, the Green Wave moved into the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth floors, sharing a facility with "3-month old babies to 90-year-olds," King said. "Our hearts go out to the people who have been displaced. And when you hear their stories, it's amazing. . . . It's emotional because of all the unknown."
Tulane football also knows about that.
THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: Tulane has selected its football captains for the season: all 17 of the seniors. The Green Wave season begins Saturday against Mississippi State, in a 7 p.m. game at Shreveport's Independence Stadium.
TELETHON TO BE HELD DURING MSU GAME: A telethon will be held during Saturday's to assist youngsters in relief centers and help rebuild Boys & Girls Clubs damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
The game will be played at the Independence Bowl Stadium in Shreveport.
The phone number and Web site for donations will be shown during the game.
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ESPN to televise Tigers-Vols game By William Kalec
Staff writer
Despite previous requests from Tennessee officials to move the Tigers-Volunteers' Sept. 24th game to a daytime kickoff for fans' travel purposes, ESPN snatched up the possible top five matchup and set a 6:45 p.m. kickoff.
The SEC announced CBS will pick up either Arkansas at Alabama or Florida at Kentucky. Should Tennessee and LSU maintain their current positions in The Associated Press poll after this week, it will mark the first time since Oct. 31, 1959 that two opponents ranked in the top five play a game in Tiger Stadium.
The LSU-Tennessee game is sold out. Prices on eBay already are as high as $125 per seat.
WROTEN HONORED: LSU senior defensive tackle Claude Wroten was selected SEC Defensive Lineman of the Week. Wroten blocked a field-goal attempt that sparked a 28-point fourth quarter and lifted the Tigers to a 35-31 victory at Arizona State.
On the block, Wroten was able to penetrate the Sun Devils' line, deflecting the ball backward in the air. Cornerback Mario Stevenson returned the ball 55 yards untouched, reducing the deficit to 17-14.
Wroten had three tackles, two for losses, a pass deflection and a quarterback hurry.
Wroten received the same honor following his performance against Vanderbilt last year.
AWAY TICKETS: The LSU Ticket Office is shipping tickets for those who purchased seats to LSU away games Sept. 19, except if the buyer's address is in one of the following parishes: Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Tammany, Washington, Tangipahoa, Plaquemines and several counties along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
People in the areas listed above can pick up their tickets at the LSU athletic administration building during business hours.
Fans who wish to update their address prior to ticket delivery must make those updates by 5 p.m. Thursday by using a form available at www.LSUsports.net, under the ticketing link.
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St. Paul's, PJP II teams return to practice field Both hope to open
season on Sept. 23
By Marty Mule
Staff writer
St. Paul's and Pope John Paul II, St. Tammany Parish's only two Catholic high schools that play football, returned to practice Monday in hopes of beginning their seasons Sept. 23.
Both schools are expected to reopen next Monday.
St. Paul's coach Ken Sears welcomed 72 of his 100 players back to practice Monday, their first since Hurricane Katrina struck two weeks ago.
Pope John Paul II also returned to the practice field with 27 of 65 players participating.
Pope John Paul II is scheduled to host Live Oak in a non-district game Sept. 23. The game, scheduled for 7 p.m., may have to be moved to an afternoon start because the stadium lights may have been damaged in the storm, school officials said.
"Our scoreboard is blown down, and our lights have to be checked out," Pope John Paul II principal Richard Berkowitz said.
"The important thing is to play at night,"' said Jaguars coach Chris Lachney, who then reversed himself. "No, the important thing is to play."
St. Paul's is scheduled to play Mandeville in the District 4-5A opener for both schools Sept. 23. St. Tammany public schools, however, are not scheduled to resume classes until Oct. 3. St. Tammany teams cannot compete unless school is in session.
However, a meeting is scheduled today for the parish's coaches and athletic officials. A decision could be made then to begin play before school resumes.
All eight District 4-5A teams, including five St. Tammany Parish public schools, are scheduled to begin district play on the weekend of Sept. 23.
Northlake Christian School said last week it will begin its season at Gueydan on that date. It will be the school's first varsity game.
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Wildcats scramble to find normalcy Destrehan QB Eugene
relieved to play close
to home after Katrina
By Lori Lyons
River Parishes bureau
For a week, Destrehan quarterback Jai Eugene didn't know if he would be playing at home or in Texas.
When Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on the region and St. Charles Parish was evacuated, Eugene and his family went to Houston. And after the storm, when all the news reports began showing the catastrophic destruction to the New Orleans area, Eugene was wondering what would become of his senior season.
"I was so scared," he said. "I must have called Coach (Stephen) Robicheaux 50 times that week, trying to find out what was going on. I was thinking my whole senior year was going down the drain. We were preparing to stay in Texas, and I was going to go to school there."
But the Eugenes soon learned that St. Charles Parish had been spared the worst of Katrina's wrath. There was only minimal flooding in some areas and there was no damage to the high school.
"I was so excited," Eugene said.
The day Eugene returned from Texas, his coach called with news that isn't usually greeted with joy by high school football players. Practice would be held the next day.
"They were excited when I called to tell them there was a meeting," Robicheaux said. "They were ready to get back to the routine."
And the news only got better. On Friday, Robicheaux was able to work out arrangements with Thibodaux coach Lenny Ford to play a game Sunday afternoon in Thibodaux. Then, after three practices -- only one with an opponent in mind -- the Wildcats defeated Thibodaux 14-0.
"As a coach, it was a logistical nightmare," Robicheaux said. "It's not like you can just pick up the phone and say, 'Hey. Let's play.' And then you've got no film, no nothing. We really weren't prepared. But what was important is that the kids played. They were so excited to be playing. They're all looking for some normalcy."
Robicheaux said he was pleased when his team went 86 yards on its opening drive for a touchdown.
"We pretty much stayed vanilla," Robicheaux said. "Then we were able to adjust to what they were doing."
Eugene completed 11 of 16 passes for 163 yards. He also had one of the Wildcats' three interceptions. Brandon Braxton had two. Raynor Derkins ran for 71 yards on 15 carries.
"We were a little bit out of rhythm as a team," Eugene said. "But when we took that first drive for a touchdown, we settled down."
"There were some mistakes," Robicheaux said. "But you don't know how much of that had to do with the lack of practice time. We don't know how good we are right now. We've got good athletes. I'm optimistic that, with what we have, we're only going to get better."
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