I wrote the following letter to my representatives
Dear Senator/Congressman,
I live in Henderson now, but I lived in New Orleans from age one to the day I left for college. My parents still lived in New Orleans until they evacuated the day before the storm. As I watch the news, I am becoming more and more frustrated, as the real issues, as I perceive them, are barely being addressed. I understand that the news does not necessarily reflect reality, but I also have several first-hand accounts from people in New Orleans that suggest that my deep concerns are all too real.
There are two major problems that need absolutely immediate attention:
1. There are tens of thousands of people still in their homes. Most of them are not living on rooftops or attics at this point, but they must be rescued just as surely. I personally know of five people who are likely (since telephone is down, I can’t be absolutely sure) living in dry, but isolated conditions. One is 89 years old, lives alone, and has prostate cancer.
The longer these people sit waiting, the more will die. If it takes a week to reach them, some will die. If it takes a month, thousands will die. Rescuers need to visit every last house in Jefferson, Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines Parishes to see if anyone is there.
I realize checking each house for survivors is a monumental task. But until it happens, more people each day will die of isolation. The number of workers presently in the New Orleans area is not enough by a long shot. At least ten times more are needed.
A friend who is volunteering his time, money, and vehicles to get people out of the city estimated that 90 percent of the rescue workers (as of Saturday, September 3) are state and local workers. A week has passed since the storm. Search and rescue teams from all over the country should be in New Orleans now. There should be as many rescue workers from Nevada and Massachusetts as there are from Louisiana. Right now, that is far from the reality. Until that happens, perhaps thousands of people will be dying needlessly.
2. Hundreds of thousands of people have no job, no home, and no access to their money, if they have any money. My parents are in this situation. They both live in an area that was flooded to the roof, so their houses are total losses. My mom, who is recently retired, was planning to sell her house and use the proceeds to move to Nevada. Now she is out $200,000, essentially her entire life savings, until the insurance company processes her claim, which realistically could take a year.
She had budgeted her retirement based on not paying for housing because she would own a place outright. Now she’s staring at an extra hundreds a month for rent and an outlay for new furniture and other new personal items that she, on a fixed income, simply can’t afford.
My dad is in worse shape. Not only did he lose his house, but also he was not yet retired. His job evaporated with the city. So he has zero income, no place to stay, and no personal items.
My parents are (or were, in my mother’s case) university professors at state schools. They are intelligent and skilled, and they will find their ways soon enough. They just need a little temporary money to keep them afloat until their insurance claims are paid and they get jobs and get back on their feet. They’ll be ok.
But there are hundreds of thousands of people in similar, but worse situations. They have few skills, no homes, no jobs, no money, and no life outside a city that, at present, does not exist. Unless the government wants enormous tent cities along the Gulf Coast of people relying on humanitarian shipments of water and food to survive, these people need immediate grants and emergency loans from FEMA. They need them urgently.
$10.5 billion is not going to be nearly enough. There are over a million people directly affected who can’t live in their homes and cities. $10.5 billion would work out to only about $10,000 per person, which might be enough to help keep people going for a year or more until this mess is sorted out if the entire amount went to personal grants and loans to the displaced.
But it won’t. The city needs to be drained. The levees need to be rebuilt. The power, communications, and transportation infrastructures need to be rebuilt. Then hundreds of thousands of buildings need to be repaired or rebuilt (or at least demolished).
A million people need significant grants and loans from FEMA. If they don’t get them, many will remain homeless and unemployed for months. They need to get the money this month. A million people can’t live with friends, relatives, in motels, in campgrounds, in their cars, on highway overpasses, etc. for a year. They need to start rebuilding, and they need a financial jumpstart to do it.
Doing what needs to be done will cost an absolute fortune, probably a hundred billion federal dollars or more. Relying on the private sector to pay for it will be a humanitarian catastrophe, as the poor will literally be left to rot en masse. After the immediate concerns of getting people out of the city and giving the displaced some cash to keep them afloat are addressed, the private sector can move in to help rebuild.
But the actions that must be taken now must come from the federal government. The few thousand troops dispatched and the $10.5 billion in aid lead me to believe that the government may not understand that cleaning up this mess requires ten times the rescue workers and ten times the aid. And those workers and aid are required immediately. Every day wasted is represents a day of death and a week of squalor.
Sincerely,
Ed Miller
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