They brought in puppies the other day and now they are pushing counseling. We look a bout a haggard bunch.
For my part, I am in need of a quiet room with no one else in it and a comfortable bed where I can cry for a few hours. I think I need to cry myself to exhaustion and dehydration. And then maybe I can sleep one of those sleeps of no dreams. Maybe that kind of exhaustion will allow me to wake up and not instantly think about the people down here who so desperately need help that I can’t give.
Of course that is part of my guilt…I can leave this. I will be leaving this. In 8 days…and I am counting…I’ll be playing with my nieces (yes that was plural my new niece arrived Wednesday morning!).
So the days drag a little longer. Today more than most because the surge that kept us so busy has slowed to drops. I’m typing this at work – something I couldn’t have done just a few days ago.
Of course now all my thoughts have dried up. Now I have less to say.
Last night was rough for me. After half a day of work my friend lee took me to my apartment to pack up so more things while he nailed the kicked in door shut. It is a feeling of minute joys that feel sparkly and bright but then dim under the weight of so much gloom.
Picking through my clothes strewn about the floor – deciding which books are worthy of mailing back. Wading through debris mounted and scattered below my balcony to pull out a few gems. One of my prince albums, an ani album, los hombres caliente.
And I was overwhelmed with the desire to sob at my life scattered all around me. And my guilt returns that so many people are so much worse off. Do I have the right to be so upset?
That is my struggle. I think I may lose this battle as soon as I find my quiet corner and a moment to myself. But it doesn’t make it less of a struggle for me to succumb…
Committee on
Homeland Security Democrats
Bennie G. Thompson, Ranking Member
www.house.gov/ hsc-democrats.house.gov
For Immediate Release: Contact: Jennifer Porter Gore
September 30, 2005 Nadra Harrison
202.226.2616
FEMA Cuts off Expedited Assistance for Hurricane Katrina Victims
Decision Leaves Potentially Thousands of Victims Without Survival Funds
WASHINGTON–As Hurricane Rita struck the Texas-Louisiana border, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ended the $2,000 in Expedited Assistance it was granting hurricane Katrina victims for housing and other essential disaster-related needs. Personnel within FEMA have told Congressional investigators that this determination was made because other assistance programs, which do not provide on-the-spot assistance, were becoming available.
“FEMA continues to make one bad decision after another. Victims of Hurricane Katrina were told they would get cash assistance and then not get assistance and now, suddenly, the agency has ended the program. These American families have lost everything and the current Administration is too busy spending money on photo ops to care,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Homeland Security. “It is time for FEMA to start taking an interest in its job and start doing right by the towns and cities in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Cutting off emergency survival funds for those in need is a sign of the incompetent and bureaucratic Department of Homeland Security at work.”
The execution of FEMA’s Expedited Assistance program after Hurricane Katrina has been marred by error since it was announced. Soon after the program began, it was abruptly cancelled, only to be reactivated. Evacuees were forced to wait in daylong lines, only to be turned away when funds in certain locations ran out.
“FEMA was created to provide immediate assistance to those in need after disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” said Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA). “Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, this agency has proved its incompetence in being able to provide essential emergency assistance. Everyday, my office fields complaints from constituents who applied for assistance and still have yet to receive any FEMA funds. These monies are used for food, diapers, medicines, and other essential items. For FEMA to cut off these funds now is unacceptable and FEMA should reinstate the expedited assistance program immediately until all qualified individuals receive the money to which they are entitled.”
“Thirty days is fine if you can actually reach FEMA during those thirty days. Many folks couldn’t get to a FEMA recovery center to stand in line and only got busy signals when they tried to call,” added Louisiana Rep. Charlie Melancon. “Once again the FEMA devotion to bureaucracy has trumped common sense. When are they going to throw away their old playbook and figure out how to actually help people?”
the days are not filled with much noise. mostly quiet desperation. eyes not really focusing on anything until i tell them there is no money coming. fema lied. and then they see me clearly for a moment before stoicism or weeping takes over.
for most it is a dazed and quiet walking away.
for others – a minority given the magnitude of the grief and destruction – for others there is the almost silent breaking down. i haven’t heard wailing. and it would be easy to miss the tears of those that finally succumb to the realization that no one is coming to rescue them.
one woman at my desk covered her face with one hand. i couldn’t hear her breathing. i waited. she sat, immobile and i placed my hand on her forearm across a stretch of wood that separated us. it was all i could do. she put her head down on her arm and cried. still silent. but her back constricted and she tried desperately to compose herself.
two kids. a husband. a mother. two homes destroyed.
only a wrong code and bad timing between her family and the money that could have made all the difference.
then there was the woman with an accent who wept when i smiled and asked her to move one chair over –usually a happy sign that the line was moving along.
She bent her head and wept quietly. When I knelt closer to ask her what was wrong she blurted out that her husband was sick and needed care and she was scared.
What could I tell her?
And the stories continue. With tears, without. With indifference and resignation, with fear and silent indignation.
It is getting harder and harder to do the government’s work. Harder to smile at people all the while knowing they will not be getting the money they were promised. The help they desperately need. The help now being flaunted in front of them as Rita victims begin to file and receive their money.
Even so I’m unsure. How long will Rita folks get their money? Fema promises obviously mean nothing. And although I try to make a difference…all of us here are trying to help in any way we can…it is increasingly difficult to sit this close and know that I am unable to truly help.
the government giveth and the government screws you over.
people are NOT getting their $2000 and people think that is normal and what has been happening all along. IT HAS NOT.
i need SOMEONE, ANYONE to make a stink about this. i need fema to be shamed into doing the right thing. for the love of all the people who need that money like the rest of us need oxygen, please someone call the press, the poloticians…anyone who’ll listen.
i have a whole rant to leave at some point…when i have more than three minutes to blog…but it’s coming…you just don’t know…
for my part – stupidity played it’s part.
my cell phone is gone. i’d like to think i simply misplaced it but i have a sinking suspicion that it was stolen from the office today. i had it out trying to get everyone’s attention about my second rant…
fema has STOPPED giving the $2000 the president promised. that’s right.
don’t be confused…a few weeks ago they stopped giving the CARDS not the money…now they have stopped giving the money even though some people got it and lots more need it. i’m so tired and feel like such a pawn in a big ugly machine i don’t even know what to say…
send your numbers by e-mail although i have no idea when i’ll be able to call anyone.
can i just be bitter for a moment and say that life sucks in the biggest of ways right now!
No more tent city…we finally got rooms at the Hampton inn. Sounds great. Is great. I haven’t slept in such a plush bed in quite some time. Even so…I have to choke back tears or at least a huge sigh of apprehension every time I walk in or out of it.
It is directly in front of the convention center.
There are still chairs and leftover food on tables. There is a note scrawled in red something across the glass doors pleading for rescue and help for a dog.
You can see how they’ve begun cleaning up – huge dumpsters line the street in front and they are heaped with debris.
This is my new home.
Stranger than all of that is the idea that I’m in a hotel that is quite plush in the middle of downtown new Orleans and most of the rooms have the carpet ripped up and the furniture piled to the side because the windows were blown out and water was abundant. Stranger still because we have a wide shower with great pressure but we can’t drink the water and shouldn’t even brush our teeth with it…it is contaminated.
It’s like south Africa with air conditioning.
I’m thankful though…tired from working 12 hour days…but thankful for a soft safe bug-free place to rest my head.
We evacuated today. I haven’t decided if we were being overly cautious or just so…but when we got to the drc (disaster recovery center) at 8:30am, there was a line that wrapped out of the parking lot and down the street. They weren’t for us…we are pretty good at getting people processed and through the system – yes I’m tooting the boutte fema horn – but red cross can only take 250 people a day.
250.
Trust me that isn’t many and the line was many people beyond that. So we convoyed…our protection guys from black hawk love to convoy…to a parking lot a little ways away and waited for the sheriff’s department or national guard or someone to disperse the group. And it looks like they did.
Even so I can’t help but feel bad…they were waiting in line for hours, some since 9:30pm.
It’s a desperation most of us will never know.
And even in the midst of this one of the people set to help commented that it would be better if they would go get a job instead.
Silence…
What jobs? Where?
I’m curious to see how much people are still paying attention two months from now, when the new car smell wears off and people are still desperately in need.
we got lucky….rita, though bad, wasn’t what we feared she’d be. even so, she dumped rain on already saturated land. i’m sure you’ve all seen the news (i haven’t, electricity was out the night and morning of the storm and cable stayed out all day…) but the levees broke or were breached or decided that the city was thirsty. whatver you want to call it.
so we headed out at 7am and are back in boutte ready to process people. and the line is winding througout the parking lot. and of course our computers are acting wonky…but we are trying. we are trying like you just don’t know.
i have more to say on this but we’re about to open.
one final note…an important one…
THAT DUMB BLEEP FROM KENNER THAT STOLE ALL THAT STUFF…WE VOLUNTEERED FOR HIM WHEN WE FIRST CAME DOWN.
yeah…i have some things to say about that guy if i get the chance, and i’ll talk about that later too…
so, i’m sitting in the office of a comfort in in baton rouge. there are about 30 of us…a little less…but about that. combined we have two hotel rooms and a confrence room – a lot of cots and sleeping bags and nervous energy.
of course, about a day and a half ago we were a pretty well oiled machine cranking out applicants and updates for fema. it felt good to be helping. it wasn’t always good news that we gave, but we gave it with honesty and compassion and that beats unknowing and unrealistic expectations.
at that same time we were also living in the french quarter.
you read that right. not in a hotel but in…on…around the french quarter. in a huge tent city complete with mobile shower units, porta potties, kitchen trailers and yes…tents. big white tents set up rather uncerimoniously near the river.
i don’t know why that fact is interesting to me. i guess because it is something few people will experience in person…a deserted new orleans. cars deserted and water marked at their roofs wedged against curbs where owners left them. a boat haphazardly blown or maybe floated into the middle of canal street where the trollies ususally run. and a reason to smile, the homeless woman who hangs posts herself on broad street right off of canal – still dressed in layers and layers of black sweat clothes and wool hat and i think gloves. somehow through all of this she managed to be in the same place i left her weeks ago. still a little surly – i’ve never seen her smile.
she was the only person i saw in the new orleans i know. away from the bars and tourist haunts…the places seemingly untouched by looters.
i didn’t get to drive far…mostly i drove to my apartment. stared in awe even the second time, amazed by just how demolished it was – less by an act of God and more by an act or acts of man.
still, that is so far from me now. hunkered down in baton rouge while the wind picks herself up and beats her bad feelings against windows and doors and then seemingly forgives herself and cries only quietly – only to be enraged again and flail and scream and weep wildly. tomorrow is another day…another hurricane. and mybe by monday it will be another day for me to do some work.
looks like i’m about to be on the road again…not a plan of mine dear friends, but rita has me on the road again. we just closed our office in st. charles parish where we were processing disaster victims so that they could get money for katrina – then dear rita who was headed for my family and not me decided to do a little wiggle dance and might be coming here. we are dismantling. although currently and we are hurrying up and waiting…to figure out just where we’ll be evacuating to. this could get interesting given the amount of people already displaced. i don’t know where or when.
on a happy note…a sweet friend of mine took me to my apartment and helped me load up some stuff…my red silk sari from sri lanka is in tact as is the tea for my sister and the ginger for my brother (in law…one day i’ll right aobut how much i hate to qualify him in that way…he’s just my brother to me!).
so, there is a toasty egg wash finish to my otherwise soggy bread!
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