"Living in Limbo in New Orleans" -- not ready for MSM...

[Radio_Lady]

http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/nov05/373118.asp

Living in limbo in New Orleans
Residents must decide: Stay or go?
By DAN BENSON

Posted: Nov. 24, 2005
New Orleans - When the London Ave. Canal's levee broke on Aug. 29, the floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that came rushing in washed the life from Robert and Pat Carter's neighborhood on the northwest side of New Orleans, just a few blocks south of Lake Pontchartrain.

"A Frenchman, an Italian, a Caucasian, an African, a Creole, an African, a Caucasian, an Hispanic," said Pat Carter, pointing to the rows of bungalows on each side of the street separated by what once was a grassy median.

Each home was tattooed by a dingy line across the middle of the house, signifying how high the floodwaters came.

"It was just like New Orleans itself," the 58-year-old retired schoolteacher said. "The chances of this neighborhood being what it was? Very slim. Very, very slim."

It's a neighborhood that also includes the Carters' two grown daughters, four grandchildren and Pat's 68-year-old sister.

The Carters had been in Little Rock, Ark., since the hurricane, staying in hotels. But they came back this week to oversee volunteers cleaning out their home and to celebrate Thanksgiving with their extended family.

They doubt they will stay in New Orleans.

It's a decision hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents are facing. On a tour of the city with Mark Lewis, who helps coordinate the relief effort at Trinity Church in nearby Covington, La., it was clear that like the Carters' neighborhood, vast areas of New Orleans are little more than ghost towns.

Little human activity can be seen, other than occasional work crews - some paid, some volunteers - piling people's soggy possessions at the curb, clearing debris or working to restore the city's infrastructure.

Expensive homes in the city's Lakeview district near the New Orleans Municipal Yacht Club and near where the Metairie Canal levee broke are for the most part junk. Some were knocked off their foundations and now stand dozens of yards away in the streets, partially blocking them.

Many more stand leaning this way or that, their frames and foundations damaged. Almost all have broken windows, felled trees and other damage.

Nobody lives in them. Entire neighborhoods, stretching for miles in any direction, are unoccupied.
(snip)

[Dancing_Dave]

1. The Spirit of New Orleans will survive!

And somehow it will come back to dwell in that region...even if it's so tragic how many people can't go home again.

Check out http://nola.com :nopity:

[waiting for hope]

2. New Orleans is like Mayberry

A friend of mine from New Orleans who was able to go back
sent me this:

NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 16, 2005

New Orleans police say they have never seen so much peace and quiet on the city's streets.

"We haven't seen a robbery since the beginning of August," said Lt. Troy Savage, who patrols what was once the city's most violent neighborhood.

"We're probably at this point, one of the safest communities in the United States," he said.

Police said a woman was stabbed to death Tuesday night, the first such incident in 90 days, a record in this city.


Since Hurricane Katrina forced most of the residents to relocate, police say, the daily shootings and killings have stopped.

"This was the most lethal criminal underclass in the United States," said Dr. Peter Scharf, director of the University of New Orleans Center for Society, Law and Justice. "We were heading for a murder rate of 72 per 100,000. New York City is at seven."

Scharf says, according to city records, there were 265 murders in New Orleans last year, 258 murders in 2003, and 275 in 2002.

Warren J. Riley, New Orleans' acting superintendent of police, says the drug dealers and gangs evacuated with the residents and haven't returned.

"We're a small town; we're Mayberry right now," Riley said.

Crime Wave Spreads

By some estimates, hardcore criminals in New Orleans numbered in the tens of thousands, and they're now living in other cities, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Atlanta, and Houston.

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt says crime is up in neighborhoods where large numbers of evacuees have settled.

He says he needs 400 new officers and has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for financial assistance.

"We're not going to let anyone come into the city and break the law at will," Hurtt said.

Last week, Houston police arrested a New Orleans man charged with four murders.

In Georgia, police have been busy busting alleged New Orleans drug dealers trying set up shop in and around Atlanta.

As a result, residents in some places are beginning to roll up the welcome mat. It's a criminal element some cities didn't expect, and New Orleans doesn't want back.

ABC News' Steve Osunsami filed this report for "World News Tonight."

[Dover]

3. Hard to imagine that Steve Osunsami received an award for bringing

"light rather than heat" to race issues in the news. Stories like this, and those which demonized and trashed evacuees during the aftermath of Katrina with a deluge of reports on shootings, muggings, looting, etc. are unforgivable. Perhaps it is a means of curtailing empathetic responses to the real crisis and distracting attention from the failures of those in charge.



ABC News A Portfolio of Stories
Reporter Steve Osunsami, producers Deanna Lee, Fiona Conway, Sandy Nunez, Eddie Pinder, and Mark Reeves
With the competition for airtime so precious, judges were gratified to watch Steve Osunsami's insightful and consistent attention to reporting on racial and ethnic issues that helped integrate these topics into the nightly World News Tonight newscast. Osunsami's work stands as a model for what television broadcast can achieve when it searches for stories that bring light rather than heat. These stories were crisply told but packed with information and explanation. Osunsami's work provides a role model worth emulating if Americans are ever to break the barriers that exist because of racial and ethnic differences

[Swamp Rat]

4. New Orleans is NOT like Mayberry AT ALL!

... unless Mayberry smelled like thousands of DEAD PEOPLE AND ANIMALS!

[unhappycamper]

5. waiting for hope:

Please be aware that DU copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to four paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

Here's the link to the article.

In the future, please insure your posts adhere to this standard.

TIA,

unhappycamper
DU Moderator

[No Exit]

6. I've talked to my friends, who have been back there.

What they told me was unimaginable. One of these days I'm going to go and see it.

The reason so many New Orleanians are in limbo is that the insurance companies are stalling. I know one retired couple whose house was flooded to the ceiling--for 3 weeks. They had money in the bank. Their house was paid for. They had both flood and homeowner's insurance. They always dutifully evacuated when there was a serious hurricane threat. This time, they came here, bringing their vehicle, of course.

So they did everything right. They are part of the "lucky" few: their income is portable, and they still have that money in the bank.

But they have not yet gotten the money the insurance company owes them for their house. They've signed a 6-month lease on an apartment--here. If these people had lost jobs, they'd be up shit's creek right now. And since their house was their main asset, they are still wondering if they'll never recover the value of the biggest thing they owned.

That's what's holding up a final decision on who's going back, and where they would live when they got back: a bunch of anal-retentive insurance companies. And, of course, the federal government--which could at least do SOMETHING.

I think the thing to do will be for New Orleans to rebuild ON THE RIDGES, as they did in the days of yore. And on the natural levee areas. Neither of those places are prone to flood, and most of the places that were a block or two from the river did not, in fact, flood. This will make for a smaller New Orleans--a New Orleans of maybe 60 years ago, or maybe like a New Orleans of 100 years ago.

I hope everyone knows that the French Quarter didn't flood in the houses, and neither did much of the Uptown area. So why hasn't Entergy gotten the lights back on in the areas that DIDN'T flood? I know the Quarter has electricity, but what about the other non-flooded areas?

[proud patriot]

7. Radio_Lady please read

In the future please limit your snips of articles to 4
paragraphs as per the Democratic Underground copyright
rules.

proud patriot Moderator
Democratic Underground