Costliest Natural Disaster in USA History

Costliest Natural Disaster in USA History



Aug. 2007  - Two years, 
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, costing at least 1,836 
people their lives and causing at least $81.2 billion in damage, making it 
the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history and one of the deadliest. 
In Louisiana, the flood protection system in New Orleans failed in 53 
different places as Hurricane Katrina passed east of the city as a 
category 3 storm. Nearly every levee in metro New Orleans broke open, 
flooding 80 percent of the city and many areas of neighboring parishes for 
weeks.

The hurricane caused severe destruction across the entire Mississippi 
coast and into Alabama, as far as 100 miles from the storm's center. 
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday that 
accurate forecasts provided by NOAA meteorologists, including those at the 
National Hurricane Center, provided critical advance warning and saved 
countless lives, but countless others perished. 
Today, everyone from hurricane survivors to the governors of the affected 
states to President George W. Bush marked the anniversary in a diversity 
of ways. 
Many hurricane survivors held a Tribunal today at the PanAmerican 
Conference Center to try the U.S. government "for human rights violations 
and crimes against humanity" in the handling of citizens before, during 
and after the hurricane, and to call for justice and restitution. 
Tribunal organizer Kali Akuno, executive director of the People’s 
Hurricane Relief Fund, says governments at all levels had at least four 
days advance notice that the levees could not contain mass flooding 
expected from a category three hurricane, but they did not mobilize to 
evacuate people, instead leaving them "to die on their roofs and in the 
rubble of the devastation." 
"In the face of this abandonment," writes Akuno, "the population of New 
Orleans took their survival into their own hands and neighbor-to-neighbor 
attempted to save lives and reach secure ground." 
      
"In the chaos of their own incompetence and racist rumors, local, state 
and federal governments sent military and mercenary personnel to New 
Orleans," Akuno writes. "They launched a military invasion aimed at 
removing the Black population and containing a potential rebellion, rather 
than sending a relief effort." 
"New Orleans became a battle zone between government and mercenary forces 
seeking to ‘protect’ the white neighborhoods of the city and the 
surrounding suburbs from the Black mass fleeing the floods and seeking 
refuge from the disaster and race induced neglect," he writes. 
"Dozens were murdered and arrested by various government forces and 
mercenaries as the media fueled and justified human rights abuses by their 
unfounded, and later to be found completely untrue, reports of mass 
looting and rape," Akuno writes. "To this day, the government has produced 
no accurate count of the number of people killed." 
"What is known is that some one million, mainly poor Black people, were 
forcibly dispersed to over 44 states across the US," Akuno writes."They 
herded people onto buses and trains at gunpoint, separating mothers, 
children, grandmothers and cousins. They uprooted and separated families, 
friends, neighbors, support networks and violently ripped apart the social 
fabric of peoples lives in order to transform the ethnic and racial make 
up of New Orleans and the region forever."

"The net result of the systematic policies of intentional neglect and 
depraved indifference being executed in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is 
ethnic cleansing of the historic and politically strategic Black 
communities in the region," Akuno writes. "This ethnic cleansing is being 
conducted through a deliberate and strategic collusion of government and 
multinational corporations, particularly real estate developers." 
In addition to making its views known and holding the various levels of 
government accountable, the Tribunal seeks to attain national and 
international recognition as Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, for the 
all the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and to attain financial 
restitution and reparations for all Gulf Coast IDPs. 
At the same time that the Tribunal was gathering, across the city 
President George W. Bush and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco were 
visiting the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward, a low-income black neighborhood 
that was under water for weeks. 
Standing in the library of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School for 
Science and Technology, the first public school to open in the Lower Ninth 
Ward after the devastation, Governor Blanco stressed "the optimism and 
hope that comes with progress." 
"Schools are welcoming new students. Homes are being rebuilt. Businesses 
are opening their doors. Life as we knew it is slowly but surely returning 
to our neighborhoods," Blanco said.

"We are making progress in the face of an unprecedented catastrophe that 
requires an unprecedented response. A full recovery will take a sustained 
effort - at the local, state, and federal levels - over a period of 
years," said the governor. 
Thanking the American people for its generosity towards the stricken 
state, the governor pleaded for more help, from the federal government and 
from ordinary people. "Come be a part of this historic rebuilding," she 
invited. "Come teach in our schools and work in our hospitals. If you want 
to make a difference, Louisiana is the place to be." 
"Louisiana has committed more than $4.9 billion dollars to our own 
recovery, and we will continue prioritizing resources," she said. "But we 
cannot do it alone. We must have a renewed and sustained commitment from 
Washington." 
Governor Blanco asked President Bush to act now on four key priorities. 
"First, I asked the President to support full-funding for the Road Home 
Program. Louisiana has more homeowners with more damage covered by less 
insurance than FEMA estimates, resulting in a shortfall," Blanco said. 
Louisiana has committed $1 billion in state resources towards this gap, 
and the governor asked President Bush to free up the $1.2 billion dollars 
of promised Hazard Mitigation funds from red tape. "This would go a long 
way towards filling the gap," the governor said. 
"Second, I asked the President to rescind his veto threat and sign the 
WRDA bill." This bill, the Water Resources Development Act, WRDA, passed 
by both House and Senate this spring, does not fund projects. It is an 
authorization bill that identifies projects that are eligible for future 
funding. It awaits the president's signature to become law. 
"Louisiana stands to receive billions of dollars to strengthen our levees, 
close the MRGO and protect against future storms," said the governor. The 
Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, MRGO, is a 76 mile channel that 
provides a short route between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans' inner 
harbor. 
"At a time when our communities remain vulnerable, we cannot afford to be 
sidelined by political turf battles. Six years is long enough to wait for 
WRDA. We need it now," the governor said. 
"Third, I asked the President to waive the local match for the $7.6 
billion in levee work needed to strengthen the federal levees to the level 
they should have been pre-Katrina. It will be next to impossible for 
future governors to pony up the resources we do not have to meet this $2.6 
billion price-tag," she said. "Let's do what it takes to rebuild the 
federal levees, and let's do it without delay." 
"And fourth, I asked President Bush to cut through federal red tape and 
reform the Stafford Act. Every dollar, every ounce of federal assistance 
is tied up in pounds of red tape that is choking our recovery," Blanco 
said. "The Stafford Act is like an archaic relic from the past. Our school 
systems have to justify their replacement expenses pencil by pencil before 
they can be reimbursed." 
"A strong recovery requires an efficient, effective and expedient 
government that is not caught in a bureaucratic nightmare," said Blanco. 
President Bush received the governor's requests in the form of a letter, 
but did not respond directly to them today.

Instead he said, "New Orleans, better days are ahead," and "We're still 
paying attention. We understand." 
The president reminded Louisiana that, "The citizens of this country thus 
far have paid out $114 billion in tax revenues - their money - to help the 
folks down here." 
"Of the $114 billion spent so far - and resources allocated so far, about 
80 percent of the funds have been disbursed or available," said the 
president. 
The president had a message for the rest of the country too. "The 
taxpayers and people from all around the country have got to understand 
the people of this part of the world really do appreciate the fact that 
the American citizens are supportive of the recovery effort," he said. 
According to Department of Homeland Security figures released Tuesday, $24 
billion went to rebuild the Gulf Coast states and provide survivors with a 
place to live, repair damaged infrastructure, and build houses and schools 
in 2007. 
Of the $114 billion allocated for Gulf Coast recovery, 84 percent has 
either been disbursed or is awaiting claims. FEMA awarded $8.3 billion in 
public assistance funding for education, criminal justice, public works, 
health and hospitals, and historic and cultural resources; education and 
public works receive $1.3 billion apiece. 
As of July 2007, over 95,000 households have received aid. 
Concerning the critical set of levees that is supposed to protect 
low-lying New Orleans from storms, the president said the federal 
government is going to "complete storm and flood protection infrastructure 
to a hundred-year protection level by 2011."

"We're also going to fund a $1.3 billion network of interior drainage 
projects to ensure the area has better hurricane protection," said 
President Bush." In other words, there's federal responsibilities; the 
levee system is the federal responsibility, and we'll meet our 
responsibility. And obviously we want to work together with the state and 
local governments, as well. Obviously it's a collaborative effort." 
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, has set September 30 as the 
last day of operations for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' Louisiana 
Recovery Field Office, LA-RFO. 
Right-of-way debris pick up will transfer to the city of New Orleans on 
August 31 with the expiration of Corps/FEMA interagency agreements for 
Orleans Parish signed today, on the second anniversary of Hurricane 
Katrina. 
In Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes, where work is focusing on cleanup 
of private property debris and canals, the Corps expects operations to be 
complete by September 30. 
"The Corps/FEMA role is clear and terminal," said Mike Smith, LA-RFO 
Director. "To set the stage for communities to get back on their feet." 
For two years, Smith said, the "white shirt" Corps of Engineers volunteers 
have answered numerous historic, unparalleled missions, engaging about 10 
percent of the Corps' worldwide team as volunteers in Louisiana alone. 
The following missions were completed in early 2006 using a Corps 
workforce that peaked at 1,700: emergency ice and water, 310 temporary 
critical facilities, power generation, mortuary center construction, 
disposal of 50 million pounds of rotting meat, housing site evaluations 
and 81,000 roof repairs under Operation Blue Roof. 
By September 30, the Corps is expected to have removed, recycled or 
processed almost 29 million cubic yards of debris, enough to fill the 
Superdome eight times, demolished about 7,100 structures and cleaned up 
almost 70,000 private properties in southern Louisiana. 

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