Anyone who wants to know why recovery is taking so long on Louisiana after Katrina simply has to review this article in the New Orleans Times Picayune, published Sunday, November 5. To summarize: Although the federal government has authorized $7.5 billion in block grants to rebuilding private homes, so far only 18 – that’s right, I said eighteen – out of 77,281 applicants have been approved, and $693,215 has been spent.
This is one year and three months after Katrina. The government’s lame excuse is that it wants to be certain that the money is well spent. To ensure that this is so, it has placed many restrictions on aid eligibility. So many, in fact, that it takes months and months for an application to be assesed. No one would argue that some verification of need is necessary, but after a while, funds delayed become funds denied. Isn’t this like letting a patient bleed to death while you send out to East Timor for blood typing results?
I hate to call a bunch of grown-ups stupid, but stupid is what you are when you suffer through a major fiasco and learn nothing from it. The scandal of Hurricane Katrina, as I recall, was the painfully slow government response on every level. So how does the government rectify the situation? By offering recovery money with so many strings attached that it takes years for the first recovery dollars to hit the street. Smart. Very smart.
In a related news story, FEMA told a reporter for a New Orleans TV station last week that there were “three to five thousand” people still waiting for trailers to be delivered to them. Two things stand out here. First, that there is anyone at all still waiting for a trailer 15 months after Katrina is pathetic. You the taxpayer paid for these trailers ages ago, and they have not been delivered yet. Second, I find it remarkable that FEMA does not even know how many people it has on its list! After fifteen months, I would expect a specific answer, like, “we have 3,710 trailers left to deliver.” But no. We have a range of three to five thousand. How can FEMA not know how many people are on its own waiting list? After all this time, FEMA should know the remaining cases by heart. After all, it has been sitting on the list for over a year.
And remember, this is the handiwork of the same federal department (the Department of Homeland Security) that is protecting you from terrorism. Yes, I know, I’m terrified too.