Last week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had the following to say in regards to New Orleans recovery:
Romney said he thought that the recovery effort next door in Mississippi was “going well and being effectively managed,” citing Republican Governor Haley Barbour as possibly the reason. But he said he wasn’t sure who to blame in New Orleans.
Romney: New Orleans Katrina clean-up ‘disappointing’
I have always found it reprehensible when officials compare the recovery in New Orleans to the rebuilding in Mississippi. To do so as a political move critiquing Democratic leadership and exalting a Republican governor in the process is vile indeed.
The effect of Katrina was vastly different in the two states.
Mississippi cities like Biloxi, Waveland and Pass Christiane faced an immense 25-foot storm surge that washed away almost all the beach front homes and businesses along Highway 90, killing hundreds of people in the process. The devastation was near-total. I have a friend who lived near the beach who lost everything. The magnificent homes that used to greet visitors off I-110 are just slabs now. The casinos were lifted from their docks and washed blocks away taking out buildings as they went. The water came in fast and washed everything away, then receded. Much the same was the effect of Katrina in Eastern Louisiana and Plaquemines Parish.
In New Orleans, the water slowly rose and stayed. For three weeks, soaking everything in a sludge but leaving many buildings intact. Intact and ruined. Infrastructure was destroyed and entire neighborhoods were inundated. The entire city of 450,000 people had to be evacuated and some never returned.
When a house has been reduced to a slab, it’s not exactly difficult to decide what to do with it. As heartbreaking as the situation may be, the decision to destroy the house was not up to the home-owner. He or she needs only to decide weather to rebuild there or move on.
Here in New Orleans, the decisions are agonizing. Raze or repair? What’s paid for and what isn’t? Will there be city services if i return? Will my friends and family return? To what?
The two states’ situations are different but both faced horrible disasters. To pit victims of these two events against each other is very low. Yet, that is exactly what a man who wants to be our president, our leader chose to do.
What is truly astonishing is that the rebuilding of New Orleans is a political issue at all. Why anyone would run on a platform that forsook 1.3 million people because they are of a different political party is sickening. And it shows just how menial our system has become.
At the end of Romney’s article he goes on to say, if elected, he would work on revitalizing the region. But, and I hate to say this because it makes me sound like a partisan hack, I don’t trust Republicans. Perhaps it’s the 7 years of George W. Bush that have soured me on the party but, we are talking about my home here.
And I’m not sure the recovery is going as bad as Romney says it is. At least not compared to other disaster areas. My former homeland of Perdido Key, Florida is still not fully recovered from Ivan in 2004.
Coming back from that homeland down Highway 90 a few weeks back, I couldn’t find a single place to eat outside a casino in Biloxi. The entire stretch from Ocean Springs to St. Bernard Parish is vacant save for a few Waffle Houses.
And yes, Nagin was correct, New York still hasn’t fixed their hole in the ground.
The fact that everything isn’t back to normal in these four disaster areas isn’t what’s most on my mind though. What I’m worried about is the levee eight blocks away. Can’t we at least get the 10 Billion to fix it and revitalize the marshes a dozen or so miles beyond that?
There is a another difference.
As severe as the devastation in Mississippi was the heaviest damage was to a thin strip of mostly residential and tourist structures along the coast. The industrial and commercial structures are generally further inland and not as severely affected by the storm surge.
The Mississippi coastal counties, Hancock, Harrison and Jackson bore the brunt of the the storm. They had a total population of 363,988. Mississippi has received just over 31,000 application for their Homeowner Assistance Program (Phases I and II) from the entire state. Mississippi has paid to date right at $1 Billion in grants.
New Orleans with a population in excess of 400,000 had much of it construction infrastructure flooded and just New Orleans represents 54,000 applications to the Louisiana Road Home Program. Neighboring largely un-flooded Jefferson Parish with a similar population accounts for another 31,000 applications, as many as the entire state of Mississippi. The Road Home has paid $2.75 Billion and has closed only about 20% of the applications. That amount of the individual grants in both states programs is about the same.
Not only was the number of structures damaged higher in the New Orleans Area but the proportion of damaged structures was higher as well.
This canard about the greater progress in Mississippi has been the prevailing wisdom in the media since day one. No matter what anyone says, no matter what evidence to the contrary exists, this fabrication continues to be promulgated, mostly by self-serving and ill-motivated pundits and politicians who have never visited the area. Thanks for calling the uninformed Mutt on this one.