Ah, home

Sometimes, small town life is great. Take today where a bunch of friends and I went out for a picnic in a little park a block from my house. It is a quiet little lot with grass and a stream.

Then other times, small town life is overwhelming. Take tonight for instance. It was 8:45 and I wanted to find a coffee shop. They were all closing in 15 minutes if they were still open at all. In fact the only place still open was the Mate Factor, a cafe owned by a cult. The cult members are polite and don't try to prostilatize, which is nice, and the food is organic and wholesome, but as a general rule I prefer not to support cults. Also, the cult does not believe in Chocolate, because of the caffeine, so instead of hot chocolate I had hot-not-chocolate. How lame is that?

Toilet Training

I was clearing up old files and discovered this entry that I never posted...


Two friends and I were walking around a cool neighborhood last night and found this very cool restaurant. We had already eaten so we decided to stop in for desert. The restaurant, called The Bank, was in an old Greek Revival style building that was once a bank. The windows were 20 feet high and the ceilings even higher. Even in the restaurant was well dressed and beautiful.

Well, I nearly caused a flood. Here is what happened:
I flushed the toilet.

I flushed it once, but it flushed incessantly.

It sounded and looked like Niagara Falls. It was one of those commercial-grade power flush toilets that flush with vengeance. It sounded like a jet airplane and was the most ferocious flows I have ever seen in a toilet. More and more water came. The only bit of good luck was that it managed to get down the drain.

After a couple of minutes of incessant flushing I decided to return to my table. Feeling guilty and nervous, I returned to the bathroom to check on the progress after 5 minutes.

Still Niagara Falls in there.

I started to think I would need to tell someone. Unfortunately the wait staff consisted of pretty young females and they did not seem to be the right people to deal with such a serious problem. Besides, who wants to have to tell a pretty women that you broke the toilet.

I waited another five minutes, but it was still a waterfall in there.

After 10 minutes of drought inducing hard core flushing, I decided I had no choice. I swallowed hard and went to tell someone. Before fessing up, I went to look one last time and discovered the toilet had fixed itself.

Thank god.

A Developing Nation

So I was describing the dynamics of working in New Orleans to a friend. I decribed it as something like this:

A bunch of loud arrogant Northerners descend on New Orleans. They come in with an attitude that they have worked in other places just like New Orleans and they know what needs to happen to sort the mess out. (One went as far as saying New Orleans is the same as every other city in the world.) They stay at nice chain hotels, choosing ones that get them hotel points. They eat at fancy restaurants and get drunk most nights. They only (or mostly) hang out with other Northerners. The Northerns look to themselves as the experts and don't appreciate the knowledge of the locals. While they do similar work to the local hires, they get paid many times more. In the case of New Orleans, the cost of a contractor is about $10,000 a week. The cost of a local hire is about $1000 a week. When their contracts are up, the Northerners leave a product that is not useful to the community they are trying to help, but when they are back home they talk up what a great job they did.

The funny part is that this is EXACTLY the same as what happens when Northerners work in the global South on development projects (say a sewer and water sanitation project in Indonesia). It could be taken out of a Development text book.

It is a real missed opportunity to help. The literature regarding the developing world is fairly advanced about principles to ensure that the local area benefits from the work (even if it does not happen with many big projects). It is important to think about how FEMA can adopt some of these principles.

Levees

The Corps of Engineers has almost finished repairing the levees that failed to pre-Katrina strength. There are two problems: 1) pre-Katrina strength is not good enough and 2) the levees that did not fail were not repaired.

(One technical note, pre-Katrina strength means repairing the levees to the height they were supposed to be. In most cases, they had sunk several feet over the years.)

So now we have a situation where the levees protecting the flooded destroyed parts of New Orleans are stronger and higher then the levees protecting the areas that did not flood (or only flooded a little). If a new storm comes, the levees protecting the least damaged areas (or undamaged areas) of the city will fail and then there will be nothing left.

Lets hope we make it through this season...

The Boss

Another old entry that I was slow to put up…

I have been having a fabulous last couple of days in New Orleans. I attended the Jazz Fest, which probably had the greatest line up of musicians since Woodstock. (I know that is a strong statement, but I believe it is true) Dylan, Springsteen, Dr. John, The Meeters, Ani Difranco, Fats Domino, Dave Mathews Band, Jimmy Buffett, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Sonny Landreth, on and on, and at $30 a steal!

Despite that list of national acts, 92 percent of musicians at Jazz Fest are local. Most of those are also phenomenal. Listen to Troy “Shorty” Andrews at http://www.tromboneshorty.com/Listen/
Or Bonerama at
http://www.bonerama.net/audio.html

On Sunday, Bruce Springsteen was the grand finale. I was almost decided to not attend, figuring The Boss would do a bunch of the same tired songs I have heard a million times. There were too many great smaller bands playing at the same time that I wanted to hear. Then I reconsidered, concluding that I would never pay for a ticket to hear Springstein live, so I minds well take advantage of the opportunity.

I am really glad I did. Backed by the 18 piece Seeger Band, he played a fresh and inspired mix of gospel and folk / protest songs. While some of his songs were upbeat, brassy New Orleans swing others literally had much of the audience crying.

Two songs that stood out were City of Ruin, which he wrote about Asbury Park, NJ, but resonated strongly in post-Katrina New Orleans and surprisingly, When the Saints Go Marching In.

His version of Saints was unlike anything I have ever heard. Instead of the normal clichéd up-tempo triumphant march, (Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call/Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call/Lord, how I want to be in that number/When the trumpet sounds its call)

Springsteen almost prayed (Some say this world of trouble/ Is the only world we'll ever see/ But I'm waiting for that morning/When the new world is revealed).

His performance, in front of a crowd number over 100,000, was the most intimate, emotionally charged music I have ever seen. I can’t think of anything that is even in competition.

Pants down again

Once again the County has been caught with their pants down. The only piece of background information you need to know is that FEMA pays overtime for public employees after a disaster.

It is not surprising that some people had to work overtime post disaster. What is surprising is the scale. For the first two weeks after the storm the County Executive told everyone to log 20 hours a day. He explained that they were all working hard and had to sleep at the County Administration building because their homes were flooded and deserved to be paid for that time. In case 20 hours a day for two weeks is not ridiculous enough, some employees were paid for 25 hours a day for 2 weeks, to make up for hours they worked right before the storm but did not get paid for.

Here are some of the salaries of public employees. The parish employeed three doctors for the public health clinic. Salaries averaged $212,000 for six months of work. A couple of nurses made over $50,000 for the six month period. My favorite are the four "oyster mappers" that the parish hired, each of them has made roughly $10,000-$15,000 in six months for part time work. I know there are lots of oyster fields off the coast, but why they needed 4 oyster mappers, I am not sure. (I am not sure if FEMA paid the salaries of the oyster mappers)

Although it is bad, I don't smell corruption. I think the parish president really thought it was fair to pay people for all the hours. Perhaps he was less concerned because it was other people's money, who knows.

The only part that is a little sketchy is the fact that the Head of Disaster response hired his wife, his sister and his son to work for the County. Junior (his name really is Junior) earned $3000 for running errands.

Not surprisingly, FEMA and the state are balking at paying the huge overtime bills. The Parish Council (a seperate branch of government from the Administration who authorized the overtime) is also furious and is doing an investigation.

(To be fair, I should report that most of the overtime was in the first two week period. The County president then capped people at 50 hours a week.)

Coming Soon

Loyal readers,
Soon I will write about the great job choices that are in front of me. They include
1) returning to the parish free from FEMA
2) moving to California
3) working on a master plan in upstate New York
4) gardening and doing yoga while I collect unemployment

AP article

Here is an AP article about the New Orleans folks being sent home. All the Jefferson Davis folks were sent home as the same time as the N O folks, but we did not make the article. Long Term Community Recovery, the branch discussed in the article, was the branch of FEMA that I worked for.

FEMA Closes Office in New Orleans

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer Tue May 2, 5:40 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS - The
Federal Emergency Management Agency is closing its long-term recovery office in New Orleans, claiming local officials failed to meet their planning obligations after Hurricane Katrina.
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The office is responsible for helping the city devise a blueprint to rebuild destroyed houses, schools and neighborhoods.

"FEMA cannot drive the planning — our mission is to support it. We can only do so much and then we look to the city to embrace and begin planning and managing," said FEMA's national spokesman Aaron Walker. "Once they begin planning, we can re-engage with them."

Of the 35 employees who initially worked in the long-term recovery office, only five remained Tuesday, and they were waiting to be reassigned. Those five may continue to work on long-term recovery in a different office, Walker said.

City officials were angered by the move, saying New Orleans is again being abandoned by the federal government. Deputy Mayor Greg Meffert said the FEMA office and the city worked in tandem initially, but had a falling out over funding earlier this spring.

"We have a city that has an enormous planning need and you need planners. To date, we haven't gotten any monetary support to bring in planners," Meffert said.

Several employees of the disbanded office agreed with Meffert, saying that at the beginning the office worked closely with city officials, helping implement their plans. The relationship soured after the mayor's rebuilding commission, a group of businessmen and community leaders asked to create plans for redevelopment, requested FEMA money this spring to help fund their planning effort.

Brad Gair, then-director of FEMA's long-term recovery office, made a verbal promise to city officials to fund the effort, Meffert said. Gair has since left the New Orleans office.

"It appears the mayor's office misunderstood the commitment made: While FEMA is committed to the long-term recovery of the Gulf Coast region, providing funding for planning does not fall under the federal guidelines of public assistance," Walker said.

Eight months after Katrina, rebuilding has barely begun. One major hold-up was the late release of FEMA's flood elevation advisories, which offer guidelines on how high homeowners should raise their homes to qualify for flood insurance. Many residents also have faced delays settling claims with insurance companies, and city and state officials say they've received only a fraction of the public assistance needed to overhaul the blighted city.

Scale of the Destruction

I am still struggling to find stories that convey the scale of the destruction. This is an old story that I never got around to putting up on the blog.... (PS. I am back in my home town, but will continue to catch up on old postings for a few days)

My friend Christina recently visited and she wanted to see the hurricane devastation. It is the same request I get from everyone who visits. Even though I only get one day off, I usually take them on the tour. So far, I have given four or five, and they all are the same.

We started off and got to the Lower Ninth Ward and Christina was amazed by the destruction. Every few minutes she wanted to stop and get out of the car to capture an image. Collapsed houses, cars resting on other cars, boats on top of houses, cars standing on end, propped up against an old oak tree. “I have to take a picture of that,” she said over and over as I stopped the car and she hopped out. i total snapping 40 photos in the first 15 minutes. The car was full of questions about what happened and general small talk.

Christina, like everyone who I have taken, had an enthusiasm that almost bordered on giddiness. Disaster touring is, after all, part of a modern New Orleans vacation, and moments before we were being serenaded as we sipped café au lait and ate Beneigts at an outdoor café in the French Quarter.

As the tour continued, Christina became quieter and stopped taking so many pictures. Occasionally, she would see a more dramatic site, a house with two feet of marsh much covering its roof or a house in the middle of the street and she would ask to stop. Maybe she got out of the car, maybe she would just roll down the window.

The ruined, molding urban world enveloped us to the South, East and West for miles, if not dozens of miles. To the North lay marshes backed by ocean, the cause of all the destruction.

Two hours later, we had stopped talking. She just stared out the window silently, shocked and numb. She hadn’t taken a picture in an hour.

Then, I knew it was time to head back.