fema

FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be . . . FEMA

By Al Kamen
Wasgington Post
Friday, October 26, 2007

FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.

Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices. They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a "listen only" line, the notice said -- no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News, MSNBC and other outlets.

BURN BABY BURN
The California Celebrity Fires

By Greg Palast
October 26, 2007

The ‘Boo ain’t no N.O.
Plus: George Bush, Flame Retard
By Greg Palast

What color is your disaster? It makes a difference. A life and death difference.

Dig:

Population of San Diego fire evacuation zone: 500,000
Population of the New Orleans flood evacuation zone: 500,000

White folk as a % of evacuees, San Diego: 66%
Black folk as % of evacuees, New Orleans: 67%

Size counts, too. Size of your wallet, that is:

Evacuees in San Diego, in poverty: 9%
Evacuees in New Orleans, in poverty: 27%

The numbers would be even uglier, though more revealing, if I included evacuees of the celebrity fire in Malibu.

“They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”
New Orleans two years after

by Greg Palast

Malik Rahim, Director of Common Ground
[Thurs August 30] "They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that's just the bottom line."

It wasn't a pretty statement. But I wasn't looking for pretty. I'd taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn't Malik's concern.

Two years ago President Bush said he would "do what it takes" to help New Orleans to recover from Hurricane Katrina, and even gave a toll-free number that displaced families could call. Today, that number is disconnected, just like all of the other promises President Bush made days after the storm

The forgotten Katrina refugees...
Still left behind
August 31, 2007

ELIZABETH SCHULTE reports that the harsh reality exposed by Katrina--of two Americas, one rich and one poor--remains two years later.

WHEN HURRICANE Katrina hit the Gulf Coast two years ago, 79-year-old Carrie Lewis had to flee her assisted-living home in New Orleans. Two years later, she’s still living in a trailer, 100 miles northwest of New Orleans.

“I want to go home,” Lewis told a reporter. “They don’t have places for old people in New Orleans yet. What am I supposed to do? I don’t want to die in a little trailer in the middle of a field somewhere.”

Petition: http://WhenTheSaints.org

It's been two years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region, and still there are tens of thousands of families without homes. 30,000 families are scattered across the country in FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in trailers, and hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt. Support the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 by signing the petition at WhenTheSaints.org