Authorities in this hurricane-ravaged community north of New Orleans allowed residents to return on Friday as tempers flared over the slow pace of relief.
Life is slowly returning to normal in St. Tammany Parish after Hurricane Katrina roared through August 29, but many residents are still desperate, having lost homes and business and reduced to subsisting on handouts of military rations and bottled water.
Parish President Kevin Davis announced evacuated residents could begin returning home, acknowledging that conditions had improved. But with most media attention focused on the flooded city of New Orleans, those still suffering Katrina’s impact feel overlooked.
They try to call the number for disaster assistance, but it does not work. There is no mail delivery, and many businesses are closed. Cellphone service is spotty, and many land lines are down.
Many have waited up to three days to apply for emergency food stamp benefits before Friday’s deadline. The frustration boiled over on Thursday in a crowded parking lot at the state Department of Social Services office in Covington.
”The National Guard were screaming and hollering at us like we was in boot camp,” said Bettie James, from the nearby town of Abita Springs.
”The came as close to having [a riot] as they could come without having one,” added Roxie Myers of Covington.
State and federal officials say they are doing the best they can.
”We are trying to do everything we can, but obviously there have been unprecedented needs here,” said David Passey, spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
”I’m not aware of any specific needs that these people have that are not being met, but we are trying to give them face-to-face time to take care of their immediate needs.
”It’s obviously a tough situation.”
Americans have contributed a record $587-million in aid for the more than one million people affected by Katrina, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The US State Department has accepted another one billion dollars in cash and material goods from 45 countries.
And late on Thursday President George Bush approved $51,8-billion in Hurricane Katrina emergency funding.
The huge aid Bill, approved overwhelmingly on Thursday in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is the second tranche of Katrina emergency funds passed after the US legislature last week approved an initial $10,5-billion emergency package.
But getting that aid over flooded ground and damaged roads to those who need it has proved difficult, despite a massive influx of military troops and civilian aid workers, because of the magnitude of the disaster. When all of the casualties are counted and the costs tallied, Katrina may turn out to be the worst natural disaster in US history.
Jay Kleinman lost his Covington home and the restaurant he owns in nearby Long Beach, Mississippi, when Katrina roared through, uprooting trees from the ample pine forests in the parish and turning buildings into piles of rubble.
”It disappeared. Couldn’t find a dish, couldn’t find silverware. … It’s gone,” Kleinman said of his restaurant.
”I don’t know what to do. It’s like you want to cry. What do you do?”
Kleinman has insurance, but he said he can’t reach the insurance company, which is why he was sitting in a plastic chair in the corner of the Social Services office parking lot, waiting for aid.
State officials have moved to ease the process of applying for food stamps by extending office hours and hiring 55 temporary employees, but with hundreds of thousands of people needing assistance they say they cannot make it painless.
”We believe we have identified the most efficient way to assist our citizens, who we regret may have to wait outside for long hours to submit applications,” Social Services Secretary Ann Williamson said in a statement.
But some say it is not enough.
”They should have had more than one distribution center with a multitude of people like this,” said Julius Bolton.
Bush on Thursday announced a national day of mourning for the victims, as authorities in New Orleans began the grim task of searching for corpses in the ravaged city with 25 000 body bags at the ready.
Under pressure to demonstrate his leadership of the relief and reconstruction effort, Bush dispatched his Vice President, Dick Cheney, to tour the stricken area and promised to fasttrack cash payments to every displaced family.
He designated next Friday as a day of prayer and remembrance. A similar event was held to commemorate victims of 9/11. But 12 days after Katrina wrought havoc on the US Gulf coast, there is still no official estimate of how many people died.
So far the focus has been on rescuing the living rather than counting or collecting the putrefying bodies lying in the city’s floodwaters. But the official house-to-house search for bodies began mid-morning, with a temporary mortuary set up about 80km away in St Gabriel ready to receive 500-1 000 bodies a day, with refrigeration trucks on site to hold the corpses.
Asked if authorities expected to fill every body bag, a spokesperson for the state department of health and hospitals said: ”We don’t know what to expect … It means we are prepared.”
In New Orleans, emergency workers were urging the estimated 10 000 residents who remain to leave. But officials warned that the hazards posed by fires, waterborne diseases and gas leaks mean the city will eventually have to use force on those who resist.
”We need everyone out so we can continue with the work of restoring this city,” said coastguard vice admiral Thad Allen.
The floodwaters are thick with sewage-related bacteria in amounts at least 10 times higher than acceptable safety limits, including E coli, and cholera-like bacteria.
The disaster generated a small piece of history as the Mexican army crossed into US territory for the first time in more than 150 years to deliver aid to refugees in southern Texas.
Bush, beset by a fresh poll showing that two-thirds of Americans felt he could have acted more promptly, promised to ”cut through the red tape” to ensure that displaced people receive an immediate $2 000 hand-out.
He warned that helping hundreds of thousands of people pick up the pieces of their lives ”is going to place many demands on our nation”.
Cheney, touring the ruins of the Mississippi coastlines and surveying the overwhelmed levees, sought to deflect criticism over who was to blame for the slow response, saying that the relief effort was making progress. Standing outside a damaged house in the town of Gulfport, Mississippi, Cheney said he had ”enormous confidence” in the beleaguered Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency) director, Michael Brown, who has borne the brunt of criticism for the slow and ineffective response.
”The progress we’re making is significant,” he said.
New Orleans now feels like a city under occupation, with heavily armed national guardsmen on almost every street corner in the historic French Quarter of the city. – Guardian Unlimited Â