The Katrina Files

2006-03-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

What did they know
and when did they know it?

From the current issue of Newsweek:

March 27, 2006 issue - The Bush administration maintains top officials were unaware until the next day, but e-mails show that by the late evening of Aug. 29, some policymakers were told the damage to New Orleans might be worse than depicted on TV. In an e-mail to Homeland Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson at 11:05 p.m., Patrick Rhode, a top aide to FEMA chief Michael Brown, reported that a FEMA official in New Orleans had described a 200-yard levee breach near Lake Pontchartrain, that people were being rescued from housetops, that there were "unconfirmed random body sightings" and that 60 percent of the city seemed flooded. Earlier, in an e-mail to Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff's chief and deputy chief of staff, Brian Besanceney, Chertoff's top media adviser, warned that "unconfirmed" reports from New Orleans "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting."

Read complete article, Katrina: The Scapegoat

2005-11-28T18:53:00.000-05:00

Another man who knew

For those who still require convincing evidence that the Katrina tragedy could have been avoided comes this episode of PBS's Nova, called Storm That Drowned a City.

Among several faces that became familiar to the American public during the height of the storm coverage is that of Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane expert at Louisiana State University. Like AFGE's Leo Bosner, president of the Local at FEMA headquarters, van Heerden tried to alert any official he could reach to the tragedy that awaited New Orleaneans who remained in the city after the storm hit.

In numerous television appearances during the storm and its immediate aftermath, van Heerden reservedly explained, with scientific precision, what he knew about the storm and its wrath. Here, before Nova's cameras, however, he sheds tears over the lost opportunity to alert those in the Ninth Ward that the flood was headed their way:

The biggest failing in all of this was we should have warned everybody. We could have told the media on Monday night. The levees apparently broke Monday afternoon—the ones that really flooded the main city of New Orleans. We could have got to the media. We could have had vehicles driving on the interstates with bullhorns, telling people. We even could have used helicopters with bullhorns. We could have warned the people, "A big flood's coming, take evasive action." We didn't.

2005-11-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

photo by Paul Treuting
The waterline halfway up the siding on this house in Picayune, Mississippi, means that although it's still standing, it will need to be rebuilt. The orange markings indicate that the house was searched by rescue teams, and no bodies were found.

Brother Paul Treuting, president of Local 1707 of the Laborers International Union (North America), kindly sent AFGE his account of New Orleans, his hometown, after the storm, a story he originally sent his LIUNA collegues in late September. Treuting works on a National Guard base in Mississippi.

FORT WORTH, TEX.--We evacuated our F-15's here on August 27th, before Katrina hit our area. We (14 of us) came here on September 19th to check on the status of our aircraft and were told to stay in place until Hurricane Rita passed thru the Gulf...

Those areas that were flooded were searched for the living by Task Force Teams from Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Missouri, New Hampshire and California. Listening to those folks' stories at dinner was amazing.

Where the water stopped is where they launched their boats. Each team was given a neighborhood to search. They would go door-to-door, knocking and beating on a home for any response. Some folks were still in their attics and replied with their frantic calls. Many were rescued through holes that were either axed or chain-sawed. Homes where bodies were found were marked with red spray paint and the location marked by GPS coordinates.

When possible, the bodies were secured with care and respect, so not to float around. In some areas, the water was three to four feet deep. In other parts, houses were submerged to the roof peaks...Many small coastal towns and communities are obliterated like a game of Pixy Stix gone wrong...

Click here to read Brother Treuting's complete story.

2005-11-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

FEMA contractors
screw up some more

From the MSNBC blog, The Red Tape Chronicles, we learn who's responsible for the switchboard meltdown experienced by Katrina survivors who tried to call FEMA's much-touted 800 number:

In October, FEMA's Nicole Andrews told MSNBC.com that the agency had staffed up to 12,000 telephone operators, many on loan from the IRS. Some, she said, were outside contractors.

One of those outside contractors is Augmentation Inc., a call-center firm based in Rockville, Md., just outside Washington. According to the Washington Post, Augmentation had about 1,000 people answering the phones for FEMA last month. According to documents on FEMA's Web site, the firm has a $31 million contract for "temporary staffing."

But the company isn't great at answering its own phones. An operator hung up twice on a reporter who asked for the name of a public affairs official. Eventually, messages were left for company executives, but they were not returned. And FEMA representatives didn't return phone calls seeking comment about Augmentation or the FEMA call centers.

The Red Tape blogger, Bob Sullivan, also reports on the skeevy, quick-hire program for FEMA insurance adjusters, farmed out by FEMA to insurance companies.

Click here to read Sullivan's post on FEMA contractors.

2005-10-27T12:12:00.000-04:00

Fair-pay provision for post-Katrina construction workers reinstated
Your signatures and congressional pressure bring victory for workers and their families

Under pressure from both Democrats and moderate Republicans, President Bush relented on his revocation of the fair-pay provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantee the prevailing regional wage to workers engaged in rebuilding efforts after a federally designated disaster. From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will reinstate rules requiring that companies awarded federal contracts for Hurricane Katrina pay prevailing wages, usually an amount close to the pay scales in local union contracts.

The White House promised to restore the 74-year-old Davis-Bacon prevailing wage protection on Nov. 8, following a meeting between chief of staff Andrew Card and a caucus of pro-labor Republicans.

A great deal of credit for the turnabout belongs to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who deployed a little-known parliamentary maneuver in the House that ultimately forced the president's hand. Here, from Jonathan Tasini at The Working Life:

Here's what I hear from my Capitol Hill sources: the president, who suspended the Davis Bacon provisions that guarantee people working on federal contracts are paid the prevailing wage, was concerned that he not be seen as caving in to Democrats. The Dems were lead by Rep. George Miller, who used a little known parliamentary motion to force a vote on the suspension.

Under pressure, Bush agreed to rescind the suspension by December 8th. But at least one Republican said that he would vote for the Miller resolution if the suspension was not lifted earlier. And no question that the fact that the Building Trades put pressure on Congressional Republicans (37 signed the letter to Bush supporting the reinstatement of Davis Bacon) helped. In any case, Bush caved. The suspension will be lifted on November 8th.

2005-10-27T11:59:00.000-04:00

Brownie still doin'
a heck of a job

When assessing the characteristics of the Bush Administration, the answer to the question, "Do they have no shame?", has been granted definitively. No, they do not. How else to explain the extension of ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown's contract by an additional 30 days? Herewith, from the Associated Press (via MSNBC.com):

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Wednesday defended FEMA’s decision to extend former director Michael Brown’s post-resignation employment by another 30 days.

“It’s important to allow the new people who have the responsibility ... to have access to the information we need to do better,” Chertoff told The Associated Press as he flew to view Hurricane Wilma’s damage in Florida.

2005-10-24T17:26:00.000-04:00

Where are the jobs?

From the Associated Press comes this sobering piece on how the scandal of FEMA's no-bid contracts to favored corporations for contruction projects in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is exacerbating the distrust of government, born of FEMA's feckless respose to the disaster, among many of New Orleans' African-Americans:

[T]he acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has pledged that millions of dollars of government contracts initially awarded without bids will be reopened for bidding.

But there has been no guarantee those contract reconstruction jobs will go to New Orleanians who desperately need the work and money.

"People we talked to down there said jobs, jobs, jobs," [Mike] Davis[, a writer and historian who recently returned from New Orleans] says. "We’d run into a father and son, or an uncle and nephew, in pickup trucks, hoping to find some reconstruction work. They’re baffled that a month later, there are no real jobs."

2005-10-22T13:06:00.000-04:00

Seven dollars too much for Gulf Coast workers, says Pres. Bush

Brendan Danaher, AFGE's point man on the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, calls our attention to this item on TPM Cafe by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who has offered a resolution that would restore the fair wage protections, rescinded by President Bush, for the contruction workers who will rebuild the cities and towns of the Gulf Coast. Under a bill known as the Davis-Bacon Act, workers hired to rebuild after a disaster are guaranteed the prevailing wage in the region in which the disaster took place.

Here's Congressman Miller:

Every single House Democrat, 37 House Republicans, and one House independent are on record opposing the President's Gulf Coast wage cut - a clear majority of the House of Representatives. But Republican leaders in the House have refused to allow a vote to overturn the wage cut. Now it looks like they have no choice.

I was able to determine that, under the 1976 National Emergencies Act, I am able to force a vote within 15 calendar days of introducing a "Joint Resolution" - which I did at noon today. In this case, that means that if Congress doesn't act by Friday, November 4, I can go to the House floor and demand a vote on my resolution. Congress then has three days to schedule that vote.

So the bottom line is this: by the first or second week of November, there will be a vote on whether or not construction workers who are rebuilding the Gulf Coast will get a fair wage for their labor.

Note that we're not talking about some high-bottom wage here. In the Gulf Coast region, we're talking about a wage around $7.00 an hour. That's right: $7.00 to handle materials imbued with toxins and covered in mold. Seven dollars an hour to haul lumber, power tools, slop buckets--and who knows what else--around construction sites. Seven dollars an hour to risk life and limb in an environment so changed that its present constitution remains a mystery even to the experts. For this, President Bush thinks $7.00 per hour is too much.

If we've succeeded in making you mad as hell, please sign the petition being circulated by the AFL-CIO's Working Families network. And call your representative in Congress, and demand that he or she vote for Congressman Miller's resolution.

To read Rep. Miller's piece on TPM Cafe, click here.

Click here to sign a petition demanding a fair wage for Gulf Coast workers.

2005-10-18T10:45:00.000-04:00

FEMA's Political Appointees Shown Fiddling
While New Orleans Drowned

E-mails sent between former FEMA Director Michael Brown and his staff paint a devastating portrait of callous and careless leadership during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, according to a story today at CNN.com:

Ahead of Katrina coming ashore, Brown's deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, dismissed the idea of the White House creating an interagency crisis group to manage the government's response.

"Let them play their little raindeer [sic] games as long as they are not turning around and tasking us with their stupid questions," Altshuler said in an August 28 e-mail.

Meanwhile, veteran FEMA employee and AFGE member Leo Bosner began clanging an alarm bell, but to no avail, days before the storm made landfall. Here's an account from News Inferno:

Three days before Hurricane Katrina hit eastern Louisiana, Leo Bosner, a 26-year FEMA employee, issued a serious warning to his superiors. “We told these fellows that there was a killer hurricane heading right toward New Orleans," Bosner told CNN. "We had done our job, but they didn't do theirs."

His alert stated, " New Orleans is of particular concern because much of that city lies below sea level. If the hurricane winds blow from a certain direction, there are dire predictions of what may happen in the city."

For more on Leo Bosner's attempts to move his superiors to action, click here.

2005-10-11T13:40:00.000-04:00

Context for a disaster

Brendan Danaher, an issues mobilization specialist at AFGE headquarters and our point man on Hurricane Katrina, has drawn our attention to this provocative piece by George Lakoff and John Halpin at The American Prospect Online. Here Lakoff, author of the bestselling Don't Think of an Elephant, and Halpin examine the conversatives' framing of their issues in the context of Hurricane Katrina, and offer suggestions to progressives on how to make the case for good and humane government in the context of the storm's aftermath. Indeed, they lament that the right has seized the opportunity to make its case via the catastrope, while progressives could well miss this boat.

Here are Lakoff and Halpin, in their own words:

Whoever succeeds in framing Katrina will have enormous power to shape America’s future. Progressives started out with the framing advantage, because empathy, responsibility, and fairness are what progressives are about. Conservatives started out with a big disadvantage, because they promised to protect us and they failed.

But the conservatives filled the framing gap so quickly and effectively that, if progressives don’t respond immediately, conservatives may be able to parlay this disaster into an even greater power grab than they made out of September 11.

On government:

Government is not the problem. Conservative government is the problem. The Bush administration’s actions have only reinforced the need for smart government that protects the public good, not an anti-government ideology that puts private interests above common needs. Relentless budget cuts and misplaced policy priorities left vital government response capabilities uncoordinated, stripped of critical funding, and in the hands of political novices. These were the results of deliberate decisions by our nation’s conservative leaders following the failed principle that less government is always better. When America needed its officials to step up to the challenge of a massive disaster, conservative government let us down.

On values, a favorite topic of the right:

The tragedy of Katrina was a matter of values and principles. The heart of progressive values is straightforward and clear: empathy (caring about and for people), responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy), and fairness (providing opportunities for all and a level playing field from which to start). These values translate into a simple proposition: The common wealth of all Americans should be used for the common good and betterment of all Americans. In short, promoting the common good so that we can all benefit -- and focusing on the public interest rather than narrow individual gain -- is the central role of government. These are not just progressive values. They are America’s values.

To read the complete article, "Framing Katrina," click here.

2005-10-06T15:45:00.000-04:00

Cleaning the waters
AFGE members deploy cutting-edge equipment

photo courtesy TARDEC

TARDEC team member Mark Silbernagel installs the intake on a state-of-the-art water purification system.

The great irony of great floods, such as those produced by Hurriances Katrina and Rita, is that communities under water find themselves with no drinkable--also known as potable--water. (In the words of the Ancient Mariner, "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.")

Here AFGE National Representative Joe Dolan (7th District) reports on the deployment of AFGE members from an Army local based in Detroit to the Gulf Coast to install cutting-edge water purification equipment designed by their agency, the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC). Photographs are courtesy of TARDEC. The majority were shot by TARDEC employees Mark Miller and Drew Downing.

Several engineers from the U.S. Army’s Tank-Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC), represented by AFGE Local 1658, are assisting FEMA in the Hurricane Katrina Relief effort. Just days after the hurricane hit, they deployed to the Gulf region, providing clean drinking water using newly developed water purification equipment. TARDEC is the nation’s laboratory for advanced military automotive technology, including petroleum and water systems. TARDEC has developed state-of-the-art water purification systems that clean and desalinate salt water, and purify contaminated water.

photo courtesy TARDEC
A 100,000-gallon-per-day Expedi- tionary Unit, Water Puri- fication (EUWP) System is installed on the deck of the dam- aged Hard Rock Casino, providing potable water to Mississippi's Biloxi Regional Medical Center.

AFGE Local 1658 Members Don Roberts and Jeremy Walker and their co-workers Bob Shalewitz, Drew Downing, Kevin Oehus, Mark Miller, Scott Nielsen, and Mark Silbernagel, have set up and are operating and maintaining the following systems:

• A 100,000-gallon-per-day Expeditionary Unit, Water Purification (EUWP) System on the deck of the damaged Hard Rock Casino, providing potable water to the Biloxi Regional Medical Center in Biloxi, Mississippi.

• Another 100,000 gallon-per-day EUWP System in Pascagoula, Mississippi, providing potable water to one of the cruise ships being used in the relief effort.

• A 1,500-gallon-per-hour Tactical Water Purification System (TWPS) at Buccaneer State Park near Waveland, Mississippi, providing water for a 200-unit RV park occupied by employees of the city of Waveland, Miss.

• Two 600-gallon-per-hour reverse osmosis water purification Units (ROWPU) in Waveland, Mississippi; one for providing water to a U.S. Air Force shower facility for relief workers and evacuees, and the other providing potable water to charitable relief organizations.

The TARDEC Associates are working alongside the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation engineers, with support from the Army’s 38th Infantry Division. "We are pleased that this emerging technology will be put to use helping the local residents who have suffered from the effects of the most devastating hurricane in this county’s history, said TARDEC Director Dr. Richard McClelland, a member of AFGE Local 1658. "Years of research, design and engineering have gone into the development of this technology so that it can be helpful in such a critical [time as] today."

--Joe Dolan

2005-09-27T10:12:00.000-04:00

"Private-sector opportunities"
in Katrina relief

2005 © Adele M. Stan for AFGE
Katrina's wrath in New Orleans

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Nearly a month after Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, she continues to make news. And for some, according to the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, the news is not all bad:

A "Katrina Reconstruction Summit," hosted by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and sponsored by Halliburton, among others, brought some 200 lobbyists, corporate representatives and government staffers to a room overlooking the Capitol for a five-hour conference that included time for a "networking break" and advice on "opportunities for private sector involvement."

2005-09-21T13:15:00.000-04:00

photo by Adele M. Stan for AFGE
What once were trees.

2005-09-19T02:25:00.000-04:00

Communications Specialist Adele Stan, together with the M.O.R.E. team of Issues Mobilization Specialist Brendan Danaher, and Health & Safety Specialist Milly Rodriguez, were sent to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in mid-September to assess the needs of AFGE members--those affected by Hurricane Katrina, and those deployed in the disaster relief efforts. These are their blog entries.

Prison in transit

photo by Brendan Danaher for AFGE
By Rolls, by bus, by rail--it's now a jail.

NEW ORLEANS, LA--Before we set out for New Orleans, we received many dire warnings about checkpoints we might not get through. Brendan and Milly had gotten clearance from FEMA to pass into town, but I was along for the ride with the admonition that my press pass would do me more harm than good.

Less than an hour south of Baton Rouge, which had survived Katrina virtually unscathed, New Orleans’ brutal battering became ever more evident as we drew closer to the city. Soon the roadside was flanked by woods rendered naked by wind and rain; trees stood looking as if a fire had torn through the land which now bore little more than their roots and bare trunks. What branches were left were reduced to mere stumps.

Roofless buildings spoke of the beating they’d endured. Even the billboards--the few still standing--had been stripped of their ads, the paper having curled off of them in strips.

We never passed a working checkpoint before entering the city, so we headed directly for the Union Passenger Terminal (a.k.a., the Greyhound bus station) which, we had been told, was in use as a makeshift prison. Our mission was to locate the correctional officers from the federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) who were helping state and parish officials run what was now the relocated Angola correctional facility.

A pair of National Guardsmen from Puerto Rico greeted us as we approached the station on foot, having parked the rental car in a bus stop where busses no longer stopped. They were kind and happy to see us, especially Milly, who had been to their island. The three exchanged a few words in Spanish, and everybody smiled.

Outside the front doors of the facility sat an odd collection of upholstered furniture and office chairs. These apparently served as a smoking lounge. “I wonder what that Rolls is doing there,” Brendan said. Inexplicably, a white Rolls Royce sat on the lawn--shiny and tidy in a scene of forlorn neglect.

We walked through the al fresco lounge, an African-American worker held open the door for us. A manager from the Department of Justice stepped out from the stationmaster’s office, where he and a colleague had set up shop. A mobile featuring a cardboard replica of a Greyhound coach hung in the corner of by the window that looked onto the lobby. Once apprised of the purpose of our visit, he set out to find the warden on duty.

We met the deputy warden at the borderline between office and prison, which seemed to be marked by a set of glass doors that led to where the bus stalls were. It was there, presumably, that the inmates were housed. The bus station lobby--a broad expanse of terrazzo floors and aluminum trim with a wrap-around mural--appeared to be where the administrative work was done. People sat at computers in the middle of the waiting room, in a section marked off by yellow police tape.

Beyond the yellow perimeter, lining one wall and spilling out on a row of racks set perpendicular to the wall, were piles of colorful comforters and clothing. Nearby sat a garbage bin emblazoned with the motto, “Trash your city, trash yourself.”

photo by Adele M. Stan for AFGE
Items collected for working officers who themselves lost everything.

photo by Adele M. Stan for AFGE

“Those are for our sheriffs and their families,” said the DoJ manager. It was a story commonly heard throughout our trip; so many of the people doing the work of keeping order and performing rescue and relief were people who, themselves, had lost everything, or very nearly so.

Before we even got to the warden, a young guard employed by the State of Louisiana , white with a Marine-style haircut, began insisting that this one and that one would want to see us--all state and parish officials. We tried explaining that we were advocates for federal workers, but it was to no avail. Once they learned that Milly’s specialty was health and safety, they were all over her.

The young deputy with Native American looks and a French name insisted that his boss would love to talk to us. He explained that most of the correctional officers on site were employees of the state, and that the BoP officers were detailed primarily to prisoner transport.

Soon a doctor in scrubs, a tall, wearing-looking white man in his fifties, rushed up to tell us he desperately needed medicine. He ran the clinic on this site, he explained, serving not just the inmates, but many of the rescue and law enforcement folks, as well as National Guard. He was handling the preventive care for a number of these workers--the vaccinaitons and antibiotics--in addition to treating their occupational injuries. “When folks learn there’s a clinic here, they come,” he said. “I don’t want to turn anyone away.” And he really needed more medicine, he told us. Milly promised to pass his request on to the FEMA officials that she and Brendan had met with.

Asked for the most common injuries he saw, the doctor listed a litany of the sorts of things that appear minor on the surface, but can be debilitating or even deadly if left untreated. Among the former are poison ivy, all manner of dermatitus, and red ant bites. The latter include cuts, puncture wounds and bacterial bronchitus, an increasingly common complaint among those working on the stench-filled streets and fetid waters of New Orleans.

We bade the doctor and the warden good-bye and turned for the door. “I really need medicine,” the doctor said.

2005-09-19T01:38:00.000-04:00

Issues Mobilization Specialist Brendan Danaher and Health & Safety Specialist Milly Rodriguez of the AFGE M.O.R.E. team, together with Communications Specialist Adele Stan, went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in mid-September to assess the needs of AFGE members--those affected by Hurricane Katrina, and those deployed in the disaster relief efforts. These are Brendan's photos.

New Orleans in camouflage

photo by Brendan Danaher for AFGE

2005-09-18T13:40:00.000-04:00

photo by Brendan Danaher for AFGE
National Guard in front of New Orleans' St. Louis Cathedral

2005-09-18T02:30:00.000-04:00

photo by Adele M. Stan for AFGE
Tent living.

HAMMOND, LA.--We had heard that a contingent of Border Patrol officers were being housed at a small airport outside of Baton Rouge. We arrived to find living quarters for 200 in a single vinyl tent erected in a helicopter hangar. The tent was a relatively new feature, we were told by the officers. They had been there since the day after Katrina hit New Orleans, sleeping on cots in the open hangar. Five port-a-johns were all there was in terms of rest rooms to accommodate the 200 men. There were no showers for the first four days; that was when the officers were working 24-hour shifts, evacuating the New Orleans International Airport. (For his 24-hour shifts, one officer said, he had received only 12 hours of pay.)

"It was unbelievable," one officer told me. "There was human excrement from one end of the facility to the other. I never saw so many sick people."

Some 5,000 New Orleaneans, the officer estimated, were holed up there, seeking shelter and a ticket out. Every day, for three days, the Border Patrol officers moved people out of the facility, living not unlike the evacuees themselves. No showers. Overflowing potties. No real food--just MREs.*

The officers were then dispatched on 24-hour and 12-hour shifts to police the streets of New Orleans. "But by the time we got there," one officer explained, "most of the looting was over."

They have little idea of just what they've been exposed to by way of toxins. They were vaccinated for hepatitis and other diseases likely to be borne of unsanitary conditions, and were also given gammaglobulin shots to boost their immune systems. They take tetracycline, an antibiotic, every day as a preventive measure against bacterial threats.

Now told that they're to ship out--go back home to San Diego or Laredo or McAllen, or other spots along the Southern border--they were asked to fill out a questionnaire that one officer said comprised only three questions, including a request to list what toxins the respondent had been exposed to. "How do I know?" he asked. "How do I know what was in that dust coating the streets of the French Quarter?"

Once the levees broke, waters containing benzene, petrol, PCBs, and who knows what else, filled the streets of the lower-lying areas. (Not to mention, of course, sewage and decomposing bodies.)

I got the distinct impression that no higher-ups from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were around. When I asked if any of the DHS managers had shown up from time to time, the Border Patrol officers just smiled and shook their heads. Indeed, the command structure at this location seemed to be just officers and their team leaders.

Orders came from a voice behind some curtain in Washington.

When you ponder the numbers of people, eager to help, like these Border Patrol officers--people who have been living in day-to-day uncertainty since the storm began, have seen awful sights on a far grander scale than they're accustomed to at the border, and who sit wondering whether something they breathed in September will mean illness in July--it's hard to overestimate the mental health crisis soon to come, not just among evacuees, but among those dispatched to help them. No mental health professionals had been to their quarters, the officers told me. No EAP; no instructions on where to seek help, if needed. A Catholic chaplain did make regular visits to the site, and was there during our visit.

Two days ago, this particular Border Patrol contingent was told that they would be heading home the next day. They packed up their duffles, only to find the order rescinded. One officer was eager to return to his wife and new baby; the baby was two weeks old when he deployed. It wouldn't be quite as bad, another officer explained, if they were actually doing something. But for the last three days, they've been hanging out in a hangar, hungry for home.

* MRE--Meals ready to eat.

2005-09-16T20:56:00.000-04:00

photo by Adele M. Stan for AFGE
Milly Rodriguez, Andrew Brumsey and Brendan Danaher.

BATON ROUGE, LA--Brendan, Milly and I entered a giant Red Cross staging area in the care of AFGE National Representative Andrew Brumsey, who is himself an evacuee from New Orleans. He and his wife are now lodged in Baton Rouge hotel.

Andrew spends his days tracking down AFGE members who have been affected--some devastated--by the storm.

He’s assembled a long, handwritten list of AFGE members he’s located, and is trying to get a handle on who else is out there.

In Gulfport, Miss., Andrew tells us, the AFGE Local at the Naval Navy National Space Technology La. (NSTL) Station in has been decimated. Thirty percent of the local’s members are homeless, and just yesterday, he learned of a member who had drowned in the flooding along with his two-year-old son.

Andrew’s home is still standing--but just barely. It’s not liveable. So, in the meantime, he just keeps putting one foot in front of the other, searching for members who have yet to be located.

2005-09-16T18:46:00.000-04:00

photo by Adele M. Stan for AFGE
Flying in with FEMA

BATON ROUGE, LA.--Even before the landing gear hit the tarmac at the Baton Rouge airport, you could tell that nothing was normal here. Witness the flock of U.S. Army helicopters, painted olive drab and marked with the red cross of a medevac, lined up alon g the side of the landing strip.

The flight that brought me here with my colleagues from the AFGE national office, Brendan Danaher and Milly Rodriguez, was populated largely by firefighters, FEMA and otherwise, as well as various other relief workers.

While waiting for my baggage, I chatted up a FEMA firefighter who told a tale of chaos and frustration regarding her deployment. She was with a unit from Ohio. They been deployed shortly after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, but then spent a week sitting in a hotel room in Epcot Center. “They’ve been putting us up in resorts, while people have lost everything,” she said. “It’s humiliating.”

After a week in Orlando, she was sent to Atlanta, where she was to be trained as a community relations worker for the New Orleans area. “Then,” she explained, “they said, no, never mind.”

Now, she said, she had received an order saying that she was about to be deployed to an area where she should be prepared to live in “austere conditions.” They’ve been prepared for that for weeks, she said. She and her colleagues are terribly frustrated in not having been allowed to use their skills to save lives while people were dying.

What she expected to now, she said, was “recovery.”

“You mean bodies?” I asked.

“We’re firefighters and EMTs. Yeah. Recovery is part of what we do.”

Welcome

2005-09-16T12:42:00.000-04:00

Communications Specialist Adele Stan, together with the M.O.R.E. team of Issues Mobilization Coordinator Brendan Danaher, and Health & Safety Specialist Milly Rodriguez, have been sent to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to assess the needs of AFGE members--those affected by Hurricane Katrina, and those deployed in the disaster relief efforts. They will be posting to this blog their experiences. Check back here for updated content.

2005-09-15T17:26:00.000-04:00

Hospital Workers in Shelters

ALEXANDRIA, LA.--The Veterans Administration (VA) closed facilities in New Orleans and Gulfport, Miss., after the storm. The agency has offered to put dislocated employees to work in its other facilities, so employees are scattered around the Southeast in Jackson, Miss., Houston, Tex., and Arkansas -- anywhere they can find an open VA hospital or office.

Many VA employees from New Orleans are still being housed in shelters in the Alexandria area. According to Roger Bennett, president of AFGE Local 1972 at the VA Hospital in Alexandria, 224 employees are staying at the Nazarene Church Camp and the Sacred Heart Church. Many others who were originally sheltered in Alexandria have moved on to other cities.

All told, Alexandria is housing about 9,500 people who are homeless after the storm.

When Katrina hit, the VA employees in Alexandria prepared food, washed clothes, and set up makeshift shelters for the evacuees. In the days that followed, the volunteers started to drive the victims on errands, since what many New Orleanians needed most was a ride to file an insurance claim or shop for food. Bennett says that housing is a huge problem.

2005-09-15T17:12:00.000-04:00

Gulfport local decimated

GULFPORT, MISS.--Rhett Hamiter, president of AFGE Local 1028 at the Navy's National Space Technology Lab, says that 30 percent of the employees at the facility lost their homes. They need help with relocation and clothes. He's spent the better part of the last two days helping to clean out wrecked houses.