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Homes ready to be Built

NEW ORLEANS — The only thing keeping Gerard Rigney from getting back into his home is the FEMA trailer in his front yard.

It needs to vanish so his plumber can redo the piping into the house, which was damaged by Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters almost four years ago. After months of calls and letters from the Federal Emergency Management Agency saying his days in the trailer were numbered, he can’t wait to get rid of it.

"I’m grateful I had this. I would’ve been at the mercy of friends and strangers without it,” the 65-year-old stagehand said from his trailer’s front steps — a day before FEMA’s Saturday deadline for him and thousands of others to leave their federally issued travel trailers and mobile homes or face possible repossession.

Mobile home and trailer dwellers like Rigney were given several extensions to finish rebuilding homes or find permanent places to stay. Those who stayed on or past May 1 were given notices to vacate. And it appears the deadline is going to stick after FEMA told residents they would ask the U.S. Department of Justice to help get them out of the units.

With hurricane season beginning Monday, an estimated 3,400 households affected by those storms remain in trailers and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi.

David Garratt, FEMA’s acting deputy administrator, told a House subcommittee on May 22 that it could take several months for any "evictions.”

FEMA has assured state officials the situation would be approached on a case-by-case basis. Agency spokesman Clark Stevens said FEMA is working with federal, state and local agencies to help residents transition into long-term housing.




by the associated press

Victims from Katrina wants Billions

NEW ORLEANS — More than three years after Katrina stirred up the waters and washed out levees along a 75-mile, man-made shipping channel dubbed "hurricane highway,” a judge could soon decide whether the Army Corps of Engineers owes residents and businesses damages because of the massive flooding.

Arguments are scheduled to begin today in the trial, which will be heard and decided by a judge, not a jury.

And much is at stake: If the five residents and one business in this initial lawsuit are victorious, more than 120,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities could have a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

The residents argue the corps’ poor maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the wipeout of St. Bernard Parish and the city’s Lower Ninth Ward when Katrina struck in August 2005.

The corps has argued that it is immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans’ flood control system, but the judge has allowed the case to move forward because residents claim the shipping channel was a navigation project.

The four-week trial will explore in detail the natural history, engineering and politics of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.

The outlet was authorized in 1958 by Congress. The route went through largely pristine wilderness of marsh and swamp forest southeast of New Orleans.

Scientists have said its construction destroyed about 18,000 acres of marsh and 1,500 acres of cypress swamps.

by the assocated press