Thought some of you might find this BBC radio documentary interesting:

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Tue 22 Nov, 11:00 - 11:30 30 mins

For African-Americans, Hurricane Katrina has become a generation-defining catastrophe - a disaster in which the majority of victims were Black. But will anything change after Katrina?

Alvin Hall goes back to his roots on the Gulf Coast, an area badly devastated by the hurricane. These days, his job involves giving classes on investment markets to traders on Wall Street and, in the UK, he's probably best known for the BBC TV personal finance series, Your Money Or Your Life.

But Alvin's origins are very humble. He was born in the segregated South in the 1950s into a poor African American household. Having pulled himself out of poverty by getting a good education and working hard, his achievement epitomises the American Dream.

In this personal journey, he travels to New Orleans and the Deep South to find out what other Americans think. What will be the long-term impact on the African-American community? Will a new spirit of protest emerge, reminiscent of the Civil Rights era? Will a new political activism develop? Or is the divide indelibly ingrained into the fabric of American life?

There's also this which should be a little more uplifting:

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Tue 13:30 Blowing the Music Away
1/3. Hurricane Katrina demolished the fabric of New Orleans, but did it destroy its soul? In this three part series, Stephen Evans travels to the Big Easy to look for its musical past, present and future.

Evans joins the city as it welcomes back its musicians to perform a one-off concert on October 29th for the police, fire-fighters, National Guard, military and countless others who worked tirelessly to clean up the area and aid recovery.

[Rptd Sat 3.30pm]

link

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MAG: New Orleans, It's Worse Than You Think

$62.3 Billion in Federal Hurricane Relief Funds Mostly Unspent - More Than $37.5 Billion Still Sitting in FEMA's Account, Waiting For a Purpose, TIME Reports

Federal Emergency Management Agency 'Awash in Money,' As Agency Announces End of Emergency Housing Program Dec. 1

Only 60,000 People Staying Overnight These Days in New Orleans

Still Finding Bodies in New Orleans -- 30 in Past Month

Sun Nov 20 2005 09:01:52 ET

New York - They're still finding bodies 13 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit-30 in the past month-raising the death toll to 1,053 in Louisiana, TIME's Cathy Booth-Thomas reports from New Orleans. The looters are still working too, brazenly taking their haul in daylight. But at night darkness falls, and it's quiet. “It's spooky out there. There's no life,” says cardiologist Pat Breaux, who lives near Pontchartrain with only a handful of neighbors. The destruction, says Breaux, head of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, depresses people. Suicides are up citywide, he say, although no one has a handle on the exact number. Murders, on the other hand, have dropped to almost none.

Delays and squabbles in the recovery efforts mean that Congress's $62.3 billion largesse has mostly gone unspent. More than half-$37.5 billion-is sitting in FEMA's account, waiting for a purpose. Under fire for being slow to respond, the Bush Administration had rushed two emergency supplemental bills to Congress with little thought about how the money would be spent and how fast. Now FEMA is “awash in money,” says a Democratic appropriations aide. Of the nearly $25 billion assigned to projects, checks totaling only about $6.2 billion have been cashed. As a result, a third supplemental-funding bill sent to Congress suggests taking back $2.3 billion in aid. Mayor Ray Nagin attempted to shore up support for the city's recovery before Congress last week, but he came home with little new. The comment of a G.O.P. aide was typical: “We want to see them helping themselves before they ask us for help,” TIME reports.

Unbelieveable. As I just said in another post, I'll be $35k in the hole after this. I can think of a few things to spend that 35+ billion on. If they wonder the money has barely been spent, they ought to come down here and take a drive for a while. People haven't really begun fixing their houses in earnest because:

1: There are still areas of the city that are off-limits.

2: Fema has not yet made a decision about whether to force people to raise their houses to flood-level. This will cost 30-60 THOUSAND dollars per home. As has been previously noted, this applies in lower income areas. The people living here are the ones least able to afford it. Keep in mind, around here, Higher valued property are closest to the water, and therefore on higher groud, as the river and lake is at sea level as opposed to the rest of New Orleans, which is up to 17 feet below.

3: People still cannot return because there is NO housing to be had. and the housing that IS available is running about double the rate of before Katrina.

4: There are many people who were forced to get jobs elsewhere. Until the housing situation stabilizes, the vast majority of businesses will be unable to re-open. The only jobs available right now are at retail-outlet and restraunt type places. These jobs currently pay between $6-9 per hour. Who can afford to pay $1000 a month for a 1-bedroom at this salary. This would be your entire salary BEFORE taxes at the low-end of that mark.

5: Materials for rebuilding are extremely rare. Good luck finding sheet-rock or 2x4's. If you DO find them, be prepared to pay through the nose for it and stand in a 1.5 hour line for the privelege to do so.

6: Some of the people living here are still fighting with the insurance companies. I recieved my check for wind-damage, and it'll cover about half of my damage. They estimated I should be able to fix my fence for about $1200 but every estimate I get is coming in closer to $3000. The roof estimate is closer, but still too low.

7: If you DO come back and are lucky enough to have a job, good luck doing anything else but work. Most places are only open from 8-5 M-F. Since those are the hours I work, when am I supposed to buy the things I need? I could go at lunch, except for the fact that simply going to the grocery takes upwards of an hour and a half, longer than I get for lunch. The only time we working slobs can go to the store at all is on the week-end, along with everyone else. So what we have is a lot of empty parking lots, but the ones that are NOT empty are like the day before Christmas. Totally packed. Who wants to deal with this if you are perfectly comfortable somewhere else?

8: Basic services like phone and water have a 2-month waiting list to be handled. So if you DO get a new apartment, be prepared to be without a phone or cable until at least January.

So yeah, I guess we are having a hard time spending all the recovery money. It's a process that will take quite a while. Things will NOT happen overnite and no amount of money will make it happen any faster. It will just take time.

As to them pulling some of the money back, for obvious reasons this pisses me off. Since things are barely begun, Who the hell knows how much money this is going to take. Take the money back AFTER things are rebuild and there is a surplus. Or use it to help fund our government infrastructure that is falling apart around our ears. The power company has had to declare bankruptcy protection because there is no money coming in from these dead houses and they are having to completely rebuild the power grid from scratch. Both the state and the City of New Orleans has laid off thousands of workers because of a lack of tax-base income. There is more work than ever to be done, but less people to do it because of some bass-ackwards law stating that FEMA cannot fund local governments. The state is estimating a BILLION dollar tax shortfall. Again, this is on the budget, not to mention all the extra money going out to other projects that were NOT budgeted but have become neessary. Yeah, we don't need the help, we'll do it ourselves. Sure.

Let's not forget that the gulf coast region produces 25% of the nation's oil supply, but we get less in oil revenues than any other state. Yeah, that's fair.

Wow, that looks pretty bleak. Do you think New Orleans will ever recover?

Have property values dropped very much? I would think in the long term that would encourage people to move or come back to NO.

Also, I´ve heard that nearby cities like Lafayette and Baton Rouge now have booming economies due to the population increases. Perhaps New Orleans will now be de-throned as the industry capital of Louisiana?

Property values have only dropped in a very few areas. Here in Kenner, things are really picking up quickly. Then again, we didn't suffer the damage N.O. did.

Anyway, I do believe New Orleans will be back. It'll just take a while.

Not in response to anything specific in your post... but I think I got a small glimmering of what it was like going through the hurricane when I read an article by well-known author William Jeanes in the latest Car and Driver magazine.

He and his wife weathered the hurricane in Mississippi, in a house that had survived many previous hurricanes including Camille, a house that was 30 feet above mean sea level. They retreated to the second floor, some 11 feet above the ground floor, and watched the ground floor get washed away leaving the second floor supported by steel posts, and then watched the floor in the second storey buckling and shifting as it was battered from below by waves in a 35 MPH current that was running through what used to be their living room down below. They were sure that they were not going to live through the night.

I highly recommend reading that article.

tanstaafl.

I've seen video of this. Well, not HIS house, but this exact scenario.

I guess what bothers me the most is hearing all the people around the country saying "It's their own fault. Why would anyone choose to live below sea level" Ya know what? We aren't the only ones living in a dangerous area. Hawaii is an ACTIVE volcano. LA is just waiting to be sucked underwater if a massive earthquake shears off that portion of California. (There were 18 quakes this past week, btw) Kansas has tornado's, the northeast has blizzards and such. I mean, we ALL live in dangerous places. Just because we had a failure of our levy system doesn't mean we shouldn't live here. I don't recall anyone ever saying that people should stop living in Kansas because those pesky tornados just don't seem to be stopping. People in LA don't think about pulling out every time a quake comes, even though it could be THE ONE.

In fact, we weathered the storm quite nicely, it was the levy breach a day and a half later that caused all this destruction. That was a man-made problem. That can be fixed. Coastal erosion is also a big problem. That can be fixed too. They have been working on a process of planting sea oats to naturally trap the silt leaving the mississippi creating new ground. Yes it takes time, but these storms don't usually happen but once a lifetime, if that. We could give it a few (10) years and see.

We just need to be given the chance to pick ourselves back up and start over. I'm willing to, and I know I'm not alone.

Let me just say that I respect your perseverance. Being from the area and having moved away at the age of 18, I can't say I'd weather this mess as well as you. It's inspiring to see someone willing to deal with all the hardships and start over instead of just cutting and running. Most of my family is doing the same and it's really tough hearing all of the battles they are dealing with, especially with the insurance bastards. I almost got into a fist fight with a close buddy whom I thought was insinuating the "it's their fault" take on things... it was crazy. I've never been in a fight in my life and am just patently non-violent but MAN I got pissed out of nowhere. Turns out it was a misunderstanding... I didn't let him finish his sentence... heheh. But being IN the situation as you are and hearing stuff like that must just make your blood boil.

All the best man, be sure to let us know if you need anything.