From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

So as the new year begins, what could have been an example of America’s ability to recover from natural disaster — our specialty when it happens elsewhere in the world — is still an embarrassing failure. If the Bush administration should be judged harshly for anything outside of foreign policy blunders, it is the abysmal way it has handled this domestic tragedy. The rest of the world has watched in disbelief at the sight of all those downed trees, uprooted houses and debris-littered vistas that still dot the Gulf Coast. How is it that it has taken the major gambling casinos along the coast only a short time to become once again new and improved palaces as if nothing ever happened? Maybe FEMA should hire those entrepreneurs.

More than that, Americans themselves should be appalled, realizing as they must that if the government with the vast resources of the most technologically and economically advanced society on Earth can’t deal with this natural disaster, how in the world could it be counted on to handle a major terrorist attack that included a nuclear device or some other weapon of mass destruction?…

This update from a regular reader’s husband — who previously sent us this missive one year after Katrina hit — brings home the continuing disaster so many folks in the Gulf Coast after Katrina and Rita are still living with today:

Two years and three months later, I find myself asking why it is so damned hard. Two years and three months later, my house is in worse shape. My business is on the edge. My savings are all gone. Both my personal and business credit cards are maxed out. And even though we all pulled back together a year after the storm, my family is once again scattered across the country.

Talk about one mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and financially stressed-out and depressed person! Good thing I’m a healthy man. When I go for a checkup, every doctor that looks at me says, “How old are you? Wow! 58! Sure you have no problems with this or that? That’s incredible!” One even said she wished she could buy my cholesterol level. Well, that’s one good, positive thing, especially since I can no longer afford health insurance. I wonder how long that will last.

For the past several months I wake up every morning and don’t want to get out of bed. I lie there looking at the weird dreams I’ve had, and then force myself out of bed and then it takes about an hour, half a pack of cigarettes (yes, I’ve started smoking again) and half a pot of coffee to clear the groggy, confused, bombarded feelings from my brain so I can attempt another day of rebuilding my life.

I ask myself is it worth it? Should I just walk away? Well, I can’t. A fighter can’t walk away, no matter what the odds. And then the song “Dust in the Wind” plays in my mind. That’s some damned odds. My family, home, business scattered like dust, and me, just another little speck of dust trying to hold it all together in a wind storm that still hasn’t ended two years and three months later.

What happened to get me to this point?

After paying off all my debts and rebuilding my credit from the early 1990’s recession, I bought a house in 2000 that had been empty for six years. I spent four years cleaning up and restoring this beautiful 100 year-old house, doing all the work myself. In February of 2005, I refinanced it and bought another house and a commercial building (for a shop), both of which needed work. I was in the process of rebuilding both of these buildings when Katrina hit.

Before the main evacuation, we packed up grandkids and all and headed for Alabama, where we had family. (I sincerely thank all those in Eufaula, Alabama for their kindness and generosity). Within a week, we got everyone settled in, rented a u-haul trailer and acquired $3500 worth of equipment, supplies, food and water (all on my credit card), and my oldest son and I went back to New Orleans. We dropped off a third of what we brought at the house, assessed damages, delivered the rest of the supplies to the local police precinct for use and distribution and returned to Alabama. A month later, after the flood water receded, my son and I went back to rebuild.

I’m trying to finish this narrative, but I get so depressed and feel like no one is going to care enough to listen anyway, like the “Christian” volunteer who once asked how I was doing and not long into my story, interrupted and told me to quit whining, or like the police officers from the second district precinct (the one I gave all those supplies to) who jumped on me and threw me on the ground, cuffed and arrested me for arguing with the garbage disposal workers who wouldn’t pick up three week-old stinky trash in front of my house, and then did the same to my 15 year old son for yelling from the sidewalk, “You’re hurting my dad!”

Or like SBA, who turned down my DISASTER loan application because, right after the storm, I didn’t have any income. Like Louisiana Unemployment, who still hasn’t paid my wife a dime for the time she was out of work because of Katrina and its aftermath.

Like FEMA, who gave me a formaldehyde-ridden trailer (my wife is chemically sensitive) to keep my family in because my house was not livable and then told ROAD HOME that there was no structural damage to my house. Like ROAD HOME, who sent an inspector to look at my house and then turned my application down because FEMA told them there was no structural damage (from the water standing so long, the ground under the foundation softened and the brick foundation gave way. The pilings can’t hold the weight, so my house is sinking-mostly on one side since the other side has a deeper foundation to accommodate a furnace basement).

And yes, I didn’t have enough flood insurance to cover all this, but even the mortgage company was comfortable with what I had because the area my house is in had never flooded. Then again, this flood was not a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, and those who caused it won’t pay for the damages. Oh yes, and we can’t forget the idiots who crashed our economy and our mortgage companies by raising interest rates too high too fast in a poor attempt to control inflation. What did you expect while half the south was trying to rebuild? Any intelligent person knows a quick fix does more harm than good in the long term.

To those of you who read this and turn away, shaking your heads and mumbling, “That’s too bad,” I ask: When you see someone injured and lying in the street, don’t you at least make a phone call to get them some help?

“What if God was One of Us?”

Many people do not like that song. Yes, that’s a scary thought, but God doesn’t have to be one of us. “As you do unto the least of these my brethren, so you do unto me.” To those of you I have helped in the past, like the second district precinct, church donations, charity, political campaigns: don’t expect any more. I not only don’t have it to give, I also no longer have any way to borrow it and pay it back.

To those of you who might think that this doesn’t sound all that bad, what you’ve read in five minutes isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. What has happened in the past two years and three months would take a book. With all I’ve been through in my life, I’ve never faced foreclosure or gone bankrupt, but now I am looking at both of those possibilities. I can hardly afford the co-pay on my wife’s medical card, let alone the cost of her insurance, which I refuse to give up until I can no longer beg or borrow the payments and I’m ground so far into the dirt I can no longer breathe.

And all of this is because people refused to do their jobs right, starting with the Army Corps of Engineers. Those levees were supposedly built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. Katrina was only a category 1 when it hit us. And it’s all been downhill from there….

What do you think a God whose philosophy is encapsulated as "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" would think about social Darwinism as a conservative strategery? What if the next disaster hits your family?

(H/T to readers "WB" and Lindy.  YouTube is Joan Osborne singing "What If God Was One Of Us?")


Related posts:

  1. After Katrina: Rebuilding And Renewal In New Orleans
  2. Lawrence O’Donnell: Pelosi Telling Her Troops to Go Forward Without a Public Option
  3. NOLA – Four, Three, Two, One, Now
  4. Looking Forward, Moving Backward
  5. FDL Book Salon Welcomes Bruce Bartlett, The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward