Archive for August, 2005

Today on Good Morning America New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said that it will be 12 to 16 weeks before people can go back to the city at all. And it’s not clear what they’ll find when they get there. The New Orleans of the future is looking to be a very dangerous, very decimated place. Prior to the storm 1.5 million people lived and worked in New Orleans everyday. So now, where are they all going to go?

It’s a human tragedy. And a logistical nightmare.

Officials are preparing to move the 10,000 plus people camped out in the Superdome 350 miles west to Houston by bus, where they will be housed in the Astrodome for the foreseeable future, until December or longer.

And Houston isn’t the only place preparing to receive evacuees. Those that were able to evacuate started streaming northwards and to East Texas, to small cities and towns all over northern Louisiana and Mississippi. Those places are coping with an influx of people who can’t go back to New Orleans for a long, long time.

Jason Cole is an associate pastor at the Parkway Baptist Church in Natchez, Mississippi. Natchez is in southwest Mississippi right on the river, about two hours from Baton Rouge and two hours from Jackson. There are normally 28,000 residents in the city, but now there’s also an extra 3 or 4,000 evacuees. Jason’s church is a Red Cross shelter, and they’re currently housing 240 people, and preparing to transition from a short term to long term care shelter.

The major difference between a short term shelter, which houses people for two to three days, and a long term shelter, is the amount of space we give people. The Red Cross has certain guidelines for short term stays. You can fit a bunch more people in. For long term, you’re given more room, which cuts down on the number of people in the shelter.

We’re here as long as we need to be. We have not been given any time frame. Our stance as a church has been to take care of these people. Jesus talked about giving a cup of cold water in my name, ministering to peoples’ physical needs and not just their spiritual needs. Hopefully it will only be a couple weeks, but even if it’s longer, we’ll still be here.

-Jason Cole, Parkway Baptist Church, Natchez

A broker in Austin is offering a $25,000 discount on new homes to hurricane victims, saying, “WE WILL SELL FOR 200,000 for residents of New Orleans or if you have lost your home to KATRINA.”

This afternooon Jenine Day, a real estate broker in Lafayette was preparing to meet with an evacuated family ready to buy a house.

The calls are coming from to the office from people looking to buy. This woman is from the Metairie area. She knows her house is gone, and she wants to buy something here. Not everyone wants to stay here permanently, but you can’t have your kids out of school for 2 months. Some people are hanging around till they can get back in and assess the damage. Some people are making the decision to relocate. some of them are looking for rentals, looking to relocate.

It’s bad. And i honestly, I’ve been talking to a bunch of my friends, and my husband still works in New Orleans, I have friends all over the area in mobile trailers and hotels. They have no way to make a living or get to their money. Some of them have their money in banks that only has branches in New Orleans, so they have no cash. It’s a bad situation.

-Jenine Day, real estate broker