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Hope, skepticism mark Character revealed through Post-Katrina actions

Katrina anniversary On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, shattering lives and
By Rick Jervis communities. The recovery effort still continues, and the response to the disas-
....................................................................................6 ter has run the gamut from the volunteer efforts of individuals to the continued
push for anti-poverty legislation in the federal government. The articles in this
case study explore the actions of individuals, businesses and the government in
Katrina ‘voluntourists’ make the wake of Katrina. In highlighting post-Katrina actions, the articles also reveal
labor a vacation the passions, values and character of the men and women involved.
By Larry Copeland
................................................................................7-9

New Orleans symbolizes U.S.

war on poverty
Public vs. Private
By Richard Wolf Two years after Katrina
...........................................................................10-11

The pace of rebuilding depends on who's

How I saved my business paying. As government work plods along,
By Anne Konigsmark
............................................................................12-13
New Orleans residents are getting things done.
By Rick Jervis
USA TODAY
Critical inquiry
Discussion and future implications NEW ORLEANS — It's hard to imagine
..................................................................................14-15 the 7-foot wall of muddy water that
muscled into Denise Thornton's house
two years ago, swallowing half her home
and belongings.
USA TODAY Snapshots®
Today, the two-stor y
Money toward reconstruction brick home in the
Federal commitments to Hurricane Katrina recovery
"This neighborhood is back," says
Thornton, who used her personal
savings to jump-start reconstruction of
her home.
Less than 2 miles east on Harrison
Avenue, the firehouse of Engine 18 is
shuttered and dark. A sign in front of the
two-story building reads:
"Help rebuild Harrison
Avenue Firehouse —

MARK
in Louisiana (in billions): Lakewood neighborhood Donations: Gulf Coast Bank
Rebuilding of New Orleans appears — T-shir ts: $20." Three
good as new. There's new firefighters work and sleep
$26.4
furniture in the living room, Tracking recovery in a cramped aluminum
Disaster relief art hanging from freshly in New Orleans trailer behind the closed
painted walls and a grand firehouse.
$18.0
piano in the living room.
National Flood Insurance Program
Two years after the devastating floods
Nearly 80% of the homes in affluent that followed Hurricane Katrina, the
$14.7 L akewood have been rebuilt or rebuilding of New Orleans, and much of
reoccupied, a remarkable return rate for the Gulf Coast, has largely taken two
Source: Louisiana Recovery Authority an area just down the road from one of paths: communities that have rebuilt
By David Stuckey and Robert W. Ahrens, USA TODAY the biggest levee breaches. themselves using private funds,

© Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co., Inc. All rights reser ved.
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION, AUGUST 29, 2007
Two views: Denise Thornton, above, jump-started
work on her home with her own money and
helped organize rebuilding in her area. At Engine
18, right, fire Capt. Paul Hellmers is still waiting for
public funds.
insurance money and sheer will — and
publicly funded efforts that have moved
much more slowly.
Federal, state and local governments
have struggled to speed up the release of
funds and restore infrastructure. None of
the 115 "critical priority projects"
identified by city officials has been
completed: For example, New Orleans'
police superintendent still works out of a
trailer, as do most of the city's
firefighters. And analysts at the city's
crime lab don't have a laboratory to
match DNA samples.
The delays have affected the poor the
most — those dependent on government
assistance to rebuild their lives. While
middle- and upper-class neighborhoods
have rebuilt using private insurance and
contacts, residents of low-income areas
such as the Lower 9th Ward and Holy
Cross — roughly 20,000 of them — for the
most part remain scattered throughout
the region, their return uncertain.
The flooding that began after Katrina
hit on Aug. 29, 2005, delivered an
estimated $150 billion worth of damage
to the Gulf Coast, making it the worst
disaster in U.S. history. Of the $116 billion
appropriated by Congress to Gulf Coast
recovery, $34 billion has been earmarked
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
for long-term rebuilding. But less than
half of that has made its way through
federal checks and balances to reach
municipal projects.
Throughout the Gulf Coast, residents
are asking why their government — at
ever y level — hasn't done more to
streamline the process and bring more
rebuilding dollars to the region.
"We're working ourselves close to
death," says Scott Darrah, a New Orleans
civic activist. "But we can't move it past
further than what we have today. The
government needs to step up."
There are signs of progress. About 111
million cubic yards of debris — enough to
fill the Louisiana Superdome more than
20 times — has been cleared from Gulf
Coast communities. Electricity and water
has been restored to virtually every city
in the coastal region. And New Orleans'
population, at about 300,000, is back to
more than 67% of what it was before
Katrina.
The Army Corps of Engineers has
received $7 billion since Katrina to fortify
New Orleans' flood-protection system,
including installing new floodgates at the
mouth of the Lake Pontchartrain and
rebuilding broken levees.
Photos by H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
Last week, the corps unveiled a long-
term plan to protect New Orleans from a
100-year storm — a relatively strong
storm with a 1% chance of hitting
Louisiana each year — that will cost an
additional $7.6 billion and be completed
by 2011.
Katrina was a 396-year storm, meaning
that statistically, another storm of its
magnitude should not hit for nearly 400
years.
'People needed help'
Stringent rules attached to federal
funds distributed by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), coupled with the magnitude of
the damage, have slowed many
municipal projects.
"There was a tendency in the early
days to think we could run this as we
might run a garden-variety disaster," says
Gil Jamieson, FEMA's deputy
administrator for Gulf Coast Recovery.
"But you just can't push that big of a pig
through the pipe."
Soon after the storm, Thornton sensed
the government response would be slow.
As workers rebuilt her home, she opened
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AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION, AUGUST 29, 2007
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
Beacon of Hope: Denise Thornton checks out a mower to Suresh Sikka.
Thornton created a non-profit neighborhood resource center to help her
neighbors. "I realized very early on that people needed help," she says.
her door to neighbors. She persuaded the local cable company
to run a single Internet line down the oak tree in her front yard
and into her house. Neighbors gathered at her home to access
free wireless Internet.
She kept a three-ring binder in her living room filled with
tips on navigating the complex maze of contractors and
insurance claims. She brewed coffee.
"I realized very early on that people needed help," says
Thornton, 49, who owns a room-fragrance business. "And I
needed them. I wanted my neighborhood back."
Thornton's efforts soon became a registered non-profit
called Beacon of Hope. It drew on volunteers and cash
donations by groups such as the United Way and dispatched
teams to cut the lawns of abandoned homes, rebuild area
parks and keep streets clear of debris. The activity drew
residents back.
Today, 11 Beacon of Hope offices are spread across northern
New Orleans, performing services usually done by the city.
"If disaster strikes another city, the best thing they could do
is realize that the government will not do anything for you,"
Thornton says.
"We are in this for ourselves."
In the third-floor offices of a University of New Orleans
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
campus building, thigh-high piles of folders and papers are
stacked next to a wall in the DNA department of the New
Orleans Police crime lab. Backlog cases, senior analyst Jennifer
Schroeder says.
The crime lab's original building was destroyed under 4 1/2
feet of water during Katrina. The floods also destroyed the
"wet labs" used by DNA analysts to match samples of suspects,
mostly in rape cases.
If police need an urgent match, the case is outsourced to
state or private labs, says Anna Duggar, the crime lab's director.
But without wet labs, in-house analysis has ceased. "DNA
really can't function without their lab spaces," she says.
The city estimates it'll need $3million to replace the crime
lab. So far, FEMA has obligated $673,000 for the building, says
Cynthia Sylvain-Lear, the city's deputy chief administrative
officer.
The crime lab moved out of temporary trailers and into its
current location in April, in offices leased with FEMA funds,
Duggar says. Architectural drawings were done so the space
could be retrofitted with wet labs. But it's not clear when the
crime lab will move into permanent facilities.
Part of the delay in municipal projects stems from FEMA's
requirement that the city pay for projects up front, then get
reimbursed by the federal government. That's money the city
doesn't have, Sylvain-Lear says. There was an estimated $1
billion in damage to city buildings and infrastructure, such as
roads and bridges, but only $45million in federal funds has
reached city hands, she says. This does not include funds for
public schools or the city's Sewerage and Water Board.
"I can't sign the contract without money, and the state can't
give us the federal money without a contract," Sylvain-Lear
says. "I have what some would call a cash-flow nightmare."
FEMA officials say the strict rules guard against the misuse
of federal money. Projects costing more than $1 million need
congressional review, further delaying the process, FEMA's
Jamieson says.
"There's a lot that can be done to streamline the process," he
says. "The issue is: How much do you want to sacrifice in
terms of accountability and control over the funds?"
Emergency federal funding is governed by the Stafford Act,
whose rules require cities and states to match a certain
percentage of federal disaster funds. The U.S. government
quickly waived the match requirement after previous
disasters, such as Hurricane Andrew in South Florida in 1992
and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the U.S.
Government Accountability Office.
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AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION, AUGUST 29, 2007

it. The town lost most of its property tax

base and all of its sales tax revenue,
Numbers show region recovering slowly McDermott says.
Some statistics show the Gulf Coast is recovering from the hit it took after
Hurricane Katrina in 2005: Pass Christian was flat broke.
Funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency
set aside for Katrina recovery "You take a town that has absolutely no
income and say they have to pay 10%,"
Percent paid out of funds set Percent paid out of funds set aside for McDermott says. "It was a burden we
aside for permanent work temporary, emergency work just could not have done."
Louisiana 27% Mississippi
22%
Today, City Hall employees and the
73% 85% police still work out of trailers.
Population McDermott has received some federal
Mississippi Gulf Coast New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area grants to rebuild downtown. He says the
real rebuilding will start when residents
January 2005 370,396 (in millions) and businesses return. The town's
July 2005 1.31 valuable beachfront property could pull
October 2005 330,062 them out of the red, he says during a
January 2007 349,547 July 2006 1.02 drive through town.
(Note: More recent figures not available)
"That's what got us into trouble,"
Public school enrollment McDermott says, pointing to the
Seven parishes in New Orleans area (Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, shimmering Gulf of Mexico. "And that's
St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. John, St. Tammany) what's going to get us out."
October 2004 185,387
January 2006 104,223 Other countries have taken a more
direct role in rebuilding disaster-struck
February 2007 129,841 areas.
Gulf Coast public schools
2004-05 78,481 When an earthquake near Kobe, Japan,
in 1995 killed 4,500 people and caused
2005-06 70,317 billions of dollars in damage, the
2006-07 73,327 Japanese government poured the
Unemployment rates equivalent of $113 billion in today's
Metropolitan Statistical Area July 2005 September 2005 June 2007 dollars into rebuilding the impacted
areas, says Haruo Hayashi, a professor at
22.8% 22.5% the Disaster Prevention Research
14.8% Institute at Kyoto University.
5.3% 5.1% 6.1% 6.3% 6.9% 6.6%

New Orleans- Gulfport-Biloxi Pascagoula, Miss. Within 18 months, all city buildings
and infrastructure, such as highways and
Metairie-Kenner
Sources: Brookings Institution, Mississippi Department of Education, Federal Emergency Management
the Kobe port, had been rebuilt, he says.
Agency, Census Bureau and Greater New Orleans Community Data Center
By Adrienne Lewis, USA TODAY However, the flood of federal money
had an unexpected downside: After
But the match requirement — 10% in The 10% match requirement nearly being bolstered temporarily by the
the case of the 2005 storms — wasn't wiped out Pass Christian, a Mississippi government cash, the area slumped into
waived for post-Katrina recovery and town of 4,000 residents on the Gulf an economic depression for the next five
rebuilding until May, when Congress Coast, says its mayor, Leo "Chipper" years, Hayashi says.
passed a bill abolishing it, delaying many McDermott. Katrina slammed into the
projects. coastline, sending a wall of water "Government spending is a ver y
through the town and destroying 70% of powerful tool for recovery," Hayashi says.

For more educational resources,

Reprinted with visit http://education.usatoday.com
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Page 4
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION, AUGUST 29, 2007
"Too fast is not so good. Too slow is also
not good. Wise pacing is key to
recovery."
Still in a trailer at Engine 18
The firefighters of Engine 18 wish
government relief came a little faster in
New Orleans. Since the floods battered
their 2,200-square-foot firehouse, three
firefighters have lived in a two-room
trailer behind the station. One naps on a
cot in the kitchen while two others share
a front dorm room.
The close quarters is adding to stress
caused by a lack of manpower, says Capt.
Paul Hellmers, the firehouse chief.
The city estimates it'll take $609,000 to
repair Engine 18's firehouse. Last fall,
FEMA assessed the damage at $118,000,
District Chief Tim McConnell says, adding
that FEMA and the city still haven't
agreed on the rebuilding cost.
Meanwhile, a local neighborhood
group is helping firefighters raise money,
and unions have donated services such
as roofing and plumbing to help rebuild
the firehouse, McConnell says. "For
whatever reasons, the (government)
money's not flowing."
For more educational resources,
Reprinted with
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
Living in FEMA trailer: Jeannie Marie Smith, 62, of
New Orleans.
The slow pace of government relief
pushed those in New Orleans' Gentilly
neighborhood into action.
When the city didn't seem to be
coming up with a plan to bring back their
neighborhood, they raised money and
paid architects at the University of New
Orleans to draw up plans. When no city
or federal official could answer questions
about federal aid, they studied the rules
and held workshops.
visit http://education.usatoday.com
permission. All rights reser ved.
"If you ask the city, it's the state. If you
ask the state, it's the feds. If you ask the
feds, it's the city and the state," says
Angele Givens, president of the Gentilly
Civic Improvement Association.
Givens emptied her 401(k) savings to
pay for rent as weeks bled into months
before she saw any federal aid, she says.
She eventually received $168,000 in
national flood insurance money and
another $40,000 in federal assistance to
rebuild her home. But the slow progress
was exasperating, she says.
Today, construction crews are busy
rehabbing homes in her neighborhood,
and some residents are building bigger,
nicer homes.
Still missing are schools, libraries and
police stations. Their absence is a
reminder of government struggles to
rebuild, and of how far Gentilly still has
to go. "If it weren't for volunteers, if it
weren't for the private sector," Givens
says, "nothing would have been done."
7
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AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION AUGUST 30, 2007
Hope, skepticism mark Katrina anniversary
Some afraid Gulf Coast
will be forgotten
By Rick Jervis
USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS — Joe Givens spent
most of Wednesday with mixed feelings:
Happy to have the spotlight shining again
on his city but dreading that the
attention on New Orleans will soon fade.
"We're on the front pages today, maybe
tomorrow," said Givens, a civic activist
who works with clergy in the city's poor
neighborhoods to resurrect
communities. "But then people will
move on to something else."
Like Givens, New Orleanians and
people across the Gulf Coast observed
the two-year anniversary of Hurricane
Katrina and the devastating floods it
unleashed with mixed feelings of hope
and despair, speeches, rallies, a
presidential visit and — of course — brass
bands.
President Bush on Wednesday visited
the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School
for Science and Technology, the first
public school to reopen in New Orleans'
ravaged 9th Ward neighborhood.
"I come telling the folks in this part of
the world that we still understand
there's problems, and we're still
engaged," Bush said in a statement from
inside the school's library. Laura Bush
and 23 students from the school stood
behind him.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
Some local leaders cast doubt on
Bush's words. City and state officials have
complained that federal funds are not
reaching municipal projects fast enough
and that the White House is not doing
enough to rebuild the region. The White
House said $114 billion has been set
aside for the Gulf Coast, and $96billion of
that has been made available to local
governments.
"A feel-good visit is great," New
Orleans Councilwoman Shelley Midura
said. "But he should be here a lot more
than what he is. And not just a meeting
at a restaurant or a photo opportunity at
a school, but doing the hard work with
people on the front lines."
Bells rang out across the city at 9:38
a.m., marking the moment on Aug. 29,
2005, when levees protecting the city
breached, sending walls of water into
New Orleans and quickly immersing 80%
of the city. Throughout the Gulf Coast,
1,800 people died and 450,000 were
displaced.
While some residents have rebuilt
neighborhoods, long-term infrastructure
projects have been slower to materialize.
New Orleans' population has returned to
67% of its pre-Katrina level of 300,000,
but thousands remain scattered
throughout the region.
As Bush read his statement, an
estimated 1,000 people marched in
protest from the Lower 9th Ward to
Congo Square on the outskirts of the
French Quarter. Marchers, some carrying
signs denouncing Bush's policies, were
led by dancers and two brass bands.
Another rally, held in front of the
convention center, mixed political
speeches with gospel singers.
"This day is part celebration, part
memorial, part indictment," said Ernest
Stephens, 62, attending the convention
center rally with his wife, Jacqueline, 65.
"With all the resources, all the
brainpower in this country, we're still not
back in our homes. It's crushing."
Givens, the New Orleans activist, spent
his morning at a breakfast at a
downtown hotel attended by clergy
from across the nation. One of the goals
of the meeting was to find a way to keep
the national focus on the devastation
wrought by Katrina and the slow
rebuilding progress, even as each passing
year fades it into memory.
"The shelf life for this catastrophe is
closing," he said.
In Mississippi, about 100 people prayed
and sang in the shadow of a Katrina
monument on the neatly manicured
town green of Biloxi.
"God has been good to Biloxi and its
people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast,"
Mayor A.J. Holloway said. "We have a
new outlook on life and a new
appreciation for what's really important
in life. It's not your car or your clothes or
your possessions. It's being alive and
knowing the importance of family and
friends."
Contributing: The Associated Press
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Katrina ‘voluntourists’ make labor a vacation
Across the USA,
people feel a pull to
help Gulf Coast
By Larry Copeland
USA TODAY
BILOXI, Miss. — Scott Shattuck, a
pharmacy manager from Vancouver,
Wash., is in Mississippi on vacation. But
by day, he's more likely to be found
"mucking out" a house damaged by
Hurricane Katrina or painting a children's
clinic than hitting the casinos or walking
the beach.
"This is not a vacation in the sense of
doing all the touristy stuff," says
Shattuck, 33, here with a group of 30
volunteers from Kaiser Permanente.
"You're here to do work for the
community, and when you're done, you
can have your free time."
Shattuck and his group, who also
helped out in the New Orleans area, are
among the massive wave of volunteers
— half a million, by one estimate — who
have come here from across the nation in
the nearly 18 months since Katrina
struck.
In storm-ravaged Mississippi, their
impact has been immeasurable. From
Pascagoula in the east to Bay St. Louis in
the west, these volunteers have been the
one positive constant for residents who
have battled through lengthy power
outages, mosquito infestations, stuffy
FEMA trailers, recalcitrant insurers and
an often molasses-slow government
bureaucracy.
"They built our community back,"
D'Iberville Mayor Rusty Quave says.
"Without those volunteer groups, we
would be just starting. Our houses would
be like some of the parishes in Louisiana
where there are 10,000 houses that have
not been mucked out."
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
That might seem strong praise in a
state where the Federal Emergency
Management Agency had spent $857
million through Feb. 5 — just over $50.4
million a month since Katrina — and
where the Small Business Administration
had issued $2.06 billion in low-interest
loans for people to rebuild their homes.
But about 80,000 people still live in
FEMA trailers.
MARK
Tracking recovery
in New Orleans
Almost to a person, Mississippians
agree that the volunteers, many of them
from religious organizations, have been
the spur for their recovery. "We wouldn't
even have a coast if it wasn't for them,"
Pass Christian Mayor Chipper
McDermott says.
With their purchases of food and T-
shir ts, sneakers and blue jeans at
restaurants and stores throughout the
Gulf Coast region, the volunteers helped
keep the local economy afloat in the
weeks and months after the storm. They
helped revive the region's vital tourism
industry by blowing off steam at night in
the bars, casinos and restaurants.
Volunteers have been so critical to the
Magnolia State's ongoing recovery that a
term has been coined to capture their
duality. "Voluntourists," they're calling
them here.
"They've had a tremendous impact,"
says Stephen Richer, executive director of
the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention
and Visitors Bureau, who estimates that
500,000 volunteers have come here since
Katrina flattened the coast on Aug. 29,
2005. "When I look at the people all of us
have been dealing with on a day-to-day
basis, they are the one group that has
brought nothing but hope."
Spartan living arrangements
Shattuck, who also manages a
pediatric department in Vancouver, is
clearly a newcomer to Mississippi: He
rhymes the middle syllable of Biloxi with
"box" instead of with "lux" as the locals
do.
He was drawn to the Gulf Coast by the
need he sensed here.
"It seemed like after the immediate
coverage, it kind of faded away," he says.
"Seeing Spike Lee's documentary (on
New Orleans), When the Levees Broke,
and media images here and there …
made my heart hurt for the people here.
There was a tremendous urgency to
come down here to do a job for the
people that need help."
Shattuck says his wife, Melissa, was
fully supportive when he told her he was
taking a week of vacation to come here.
She would have come, too, but stayed
behind to care for their 3-year-old son
and 8-month-old daughter.
His vacation is far from posh. He lives
with about 100 other volunteers in a big
room at Beauvoir Methodist Church,
Mississippi headquarters for Hands On
Gulf Coast, an Atlanta-based volunteer
organization that also has a New Orleans
branch.
Short-term volunteers such as Shattuck
sleep on cramped bunk beds in a
barracks-like setting or in big Army tents
out back. They shower outdoors. Hands
On ser ves them breakfast, usually
oatmeal, pancakes, eggs, fruit salad and
cereal. Dinner might be jambalaya, fajitas
or spaghetti: "Something with a lot of
carbs, real easy to make and can feed a
lot of people," says Chris deVeer, director
of Hands On Gulf Coast.
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‘Voluntourists’ help to rebuild Gulf Coast and boost its economy
Hancock County
La. 59
Gulfport
12
Slidell
Biloxi
Pass Christian
Lake
Pontchartrain Waveland
10
Bay St. Louis
New Orleans
0 25
N
Sources: ESRI
He says it's not unusual "for people to
come for a week or two and still be here
three or four months later. It's a life-
changing experience. We connect people
with people who need help, but it
changes both sets of lives."
Along with religious organizations,
college students have been the backbone
of the state's volunteer effor t, and
officials on the coast expect thousands of
them during the upcoming spring break.
"We have a surge already booked up,"
says Betty Robinson, spokeswoman for
the city of Waveland. "In March, April
and the first of May, and again in the
summer, we'll see a lot of college
students."
'What's the value of hope?'
The Beau Rivage Resort and Casino
here, which recently completed a $550
million, post-Katrina renovation, is a
world removed from the storm-blighted
reality outside.
To anyone strolling among the resort's
11 restaurants, extensive shopping and
bustling casino floor, the storm's
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
Miss.
Ala.
D’Iberville 10
Pascagoula
Miss.
Gulf of Mexico
Detail
area
Miles
By Robert W. Ahrens, USA TODAY
devastation seems far away. It's easy to
see why a volunteer might want to
escape here for a few hours after a long
day of cleaning muck out of a house.
"We absolutely have people staying
with us that are here helping," says Mary
Cracchiolo, a spokeswoman for the
resort. "People are coming to help, and
taking time to enjoy the area attractions."
It's probably impossible to measure the
economic impact of "voluntourism" on
Mississippi, says Richer, who tracks such
things.
"What they spend is small," he says.
"As to what they bring, what's the value
of hope? What's the value of this house
they left behind? The dollar value is
probably a small par t of what they
brought. The overall impact is in the
multiple millions. Say their labor is worth
$10 an hour, and assuming they all work
at least 40 hours a week, you're talking
multiple millions of dollars."
Much of the evidence is anecdotal, says
Beth Carriere, executive director of
Mississippi's West Coast-Hancock County
Tourism Development Bureau. "In the
beginning, the volunteers were the only
customers here for whatever business
was open," she says. "Whatever was
open, they utilized it. Lord, I don't know
what we would have done without
them. Now that the hotels are open,
they're flying in, staying in hotels and
doing volunteer work."
Bruce Frallic, executive director of
Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport,
says voluntourists make up 15%-20% of
the airport's passenger traffic. "The
voluntourism really took off sometime
around November 2005 and was just
intense for the following year," Frallic
says. "They were probably 30% of our
passenger traffic" then.
Pam Meinzinger, general manager of
Prime Outlets at Gulfport, a 65-store
mall, says the voluntourists helped the
stores there remain open during the
leanest period and are still important
customers.
"They're just kind of becoming a part
of the community," she says. "They're a
big par t of our customer base. The
northern volunteers usually need some
summer clothes. They really do shop us
quite a bit, at night. … They buy a lot of
blue jeans and tennis shoes."
Now Mississippi is saying thanks. In
January, during a brief appearance on
NBC's Today show, Richer expressed the
state's appreciation to the volunteers —
and urged them to keep coming.
The city of D'Iberville will build a 26-
acre park, tentatively called Good
Samaritan Park. It will feature the flags of
all 50 states, the state highway patrol, the
National Guard and others. "We're
planning it right now," Mayor Quave says.
Going 'beyond vacation'
Bruce Beckham is executive director of
Tourism Cares for America, a non-profit
group that brought 330 tourism industry
volunteers to Mississippi last year. He
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AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION FEBRUARY 19, 2007
says that since the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, many Americans have felt
compelled to "go beyond their vacation"
by volunteering.
"They're not doing it out of guilt," he
says. "They feel that's what their
responsibility as a human being is."
John Edmiston, Kaiser Permanente's
national community relations manager,
says the company had nearly 300
applicants for the 30 slots on the week-
long Gulf Coast trip, all of them willing to
give up a week's vacation.
Sometimes volunteers come for a
week and find themselves pulled back.
"They come here and build something,"
Frallic says. "They've contributed their
blood, sweat and tears to this
community, and as a result, they want to
come back and see how things are
going."
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
Maureen Gatto, 53, a lawyer from
Bucks County, Pa., near Philadelphia,
came to Hancock County for a week in
April 2006 with about 25 other lawyers
and friends.
"It was a typical group," she says. "We
were gutting houses, helping out. When
I got back home, I felt a very strong pull
back to Mississippi, and I couldn't shake
it. I gave it a month, thinking that do-
gooder feeling would wash off. When it
didn't, I said, 'Whatever it takes, I'm
going to go down.'"
Gatto returned to Bay St. Louis last
August for a two-year stay. She is now
the Mississippi coordinator of the Bucks-
Mont Katrina Project, which has built a
day care center in Bay St. Louis and
breaks ground next month on an animal
shelter. "I don't think I'll be here
permanently," she says. "My whole
family is in the northeastern United
States."
Sometimes, volunteers come back.
Sometimes, they fall in love.
Randy May, 58, says he drove from
Austin to Pass Christian within a few
days of Katrina. He's been there ever
since, working as a coordinator of
volunteers for a Baptist group from
Indiana and Kentucky.
"I had a good life in Texas," he says.
"I'm a horse-shoer and golf instructor.
But I had to come here."
Two weeks after he got to Mississippi,
May met Deborah Yawn, 56, of Jackson.
She had been volunteering in Long
Beach.
"She came to the Pass looking for
(volunteer) work," May says, "and two
weeks later, I married her."
Page 9
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION DECEMBER 22, 2006
New Orleans symbolizes U.S. war on poverty
Katrina survivors find themselves 'waiting
on the road to recovery' as aid trickles in
By Larry Copeland
USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS -- If this is ground zero
for the federal government's war on
poverty, it's hard to find the front lines.
Since Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug.
29, 2005, only 94 homeowners — and no
tenants — have received federal aid to
rebuild. The poor have been treated at
walk-in health clinics while a federal-
state partnership struggles to finance a
new medical complex.
"I thought they would do a lot for us,
but so far they haven't given us
anything," says Albert Walker, 75, who's
using insurance to rebuild a one-story
home in the devastated Lower 9th Ward,
which nearly disappeared under 11 feet
of water. "Most of the people down here
are waiting on the road to recovery."
Fifteen months ago, President Bush
stood in Jackson Square, in this city's
fashionable French Quarter, and pledged
to confront poverty, racial discrimination
and a "legacy of inequality."
Now, as Democrats prepare to take
charge of Congress, advocates for the
poor say New Orleans symbolizes the
government's fits and star ts in
addressing pover ty. They want
lawmakers to increase the minimum
wage, cut interest rates on college loans
and expand health insurance to more
poor children.
Lawmakers take on issues
Democrats say they intend to raise the
profile of anti-pover ty issues. Rep.
Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who will take
over a key housing subcommittee, plans
hearings here next month. Rep. Charles
Rangel, D-N.Y., incoming chairman of the
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
House Ways and Means Committee,
plans to examine how poverty negatively
affects economic growth, sprawl, crime,
health care, even national security. "We
can't afford poor folks," he says.
Any broader war on poverty will have
to wait. The annual budget deficit is
nearly $300 billion. "It's a reflection of
the political realities," says Rep. Mel
Watt, D-N.C., outgoing chairman of the
Congressional Black Caucus. "The public
is fed up with these growing deficits."
Politics, too, presents a problem.
Conservatives led by Rep. Mike Pence, R-
Ind., don't want to spend heavily on
social programs. Even liberals such as
Rangel don't want to raise taxes. Senate
Republicans can block almost anything
from passing. "I don't see a concentrated
war on poverty by Democrats," says
Jared Bernstein of the liberal Economic
Policy Institute. "But you are going to see
a couple of well-chosen battles."
Like many, Tracie Washington
remembers the Bush speech.
"I bought it," says Washington, director
of the NAACP's Gulf Coast Advocacy
Center. Today, she says, "It's like that old
Wendy's commercial — 'Where's the
beef?'"
"There's been ver y little done for
health care, very little done for mental
health services, virtually nothing done to
shore up and support the criminal justice
system," says Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.
"For all the president saying 'We'll do
whatever it takes,' it hasn't quite
happened that way."
The majority of New Orleans' poorest
residents remain outside the city, unable
to return because of a shor tage of
habitable housing and soaring prices.
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
16 months after hurricane: Albert Walker’s home
in the Lower 9th Ward is almost rebuilt, but most
of the neighborhood remains uninhabitable.
More than 200,000 former residents are
in the nationwide diaspora that Katrina
created, about 80% of them black.
Tenants have yet to receive anything
from a federally financed program
intended to help people get back into
their homes, even though more than
50,000 units of rental housing were
destroyed. The federal government plans
to replace many of those with private,
mixed-income developments.
Making the immediate shortage worse
is the Department of Housing and Urban
Development's plan to tear down more
than 4,000 units of public housing. HUD
says it would cost $130 million to
rehabilitate the run-down projects. Low-
income-housing advocates have gone to
court to block the move. HUD now says
it will be phased in.
It has been left to groups such as
Catholic Charities USA and ACORN,
which represents low-income families, to
gut flooded houses. "The joke here is
that we need a New Orleans Study
Group," ACORN founder Wade Rathke
says.
Page 10
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S NEWS SECTION DECEMBER 22, 2006
The federal government has invested
billions into housing, health care and
education, but red tape and a fear of
fraud have slowed the flow of funds. The
administration wants to change systems
that were failing before Katrina struck:
u Housing. It's trying to turn renters
into homeowners with jobs and rent-to-
own programs. The state is readying $1.5
billion in rental aid to landlords and $1.7
billion in low-income tax credits.
u Health care. It wants to replace the
old two-tiered system, in which the poor
were relegated to Charity Hospital, by
having the Depar tment of Veterans
Affairs join Louisiana State University in
building a modern medical complex.
u Education. It's investing in charter
schools, where parents play a direct role,
rather than rebuilding the old public
school system that was one of the
nation's worst.
Donald Powell, the federal coordinator
of Gulf Coast rebuilding, is frustrated
with the delays. "We need to be very
resourceful about finding ways to speed
up the process," he says.
Andy Kopplin, executive director of the
Louisiana Recovery Authority, says aid
was slow to arrive and tied up in red
tape. "We asked for significantly more
than we got in lots of categories," he
says.
Despite Bush's speech on poverty Sept.
15, 2005, little has been done to address
it nationally.
The need is clear: Census Bureau
figures show that about 37 million
Americans, or 12.6%, lived in poverty in
2005 (annual income of $19,971 or less
for a family of four). The poverty rate has
been rising since 2000. About 8.8 million
families have severe housing-cost
problems, up 33% since 2000.
New Orleans had the eighth-lowest
median income in the nation among big
cities in 2005 — $30,771 — before
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
Debris remains: Bruce Collins, left, and Melvin Crowden remove hazardous materials from a curb in New
Orleans’ Gentilly area.
Katrina. Orleans Parish had the sixth-
highest poverty rate among counties,
24.5%.
Some experts say that if disaster struck
elsewhere, poor city dwellers would fare
worst. "We're underinvesting in our
urban core," says John Powell, executive
director of the Kirwan Institute for the
Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State
University.
Democratic leaders in the House and
Senate have pledged to vote early next
year to raise the federal minimum wage,
stagnant since 1997, to $7.25 an hour
over two years from $5.15. That would
have an immediate impact in states such
as Louisiana that have no minimum wage
laws.
Program funding sought
The leaders also will try to reduce
interest rates on student loans and
expand the Children's Health Insurance
Program to some of the 9million children
still uninsured.
Anti-poverty advocates such as Mark
Greenberg of the liberal Center for
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
American Progress say more money is
needed for programs set to expire in
coming years: food stamps, child care,
Head Start, job training. They want
changes in the tax code that would
benefit the poor, such as an expansion of
the earned income tax credit.
Democratic lawmakers caution against
high expectations. They point to the
budget deficit, the future insolvency of
Medicare and Social Security and their
own promises to pay for new spending.
"The body politic does not want to
mention the word 'poverty.' All you're
going to hear about is the middle class,"
Waters says. "We've got to talk about
poverty, not only in Louisiana but in
America."
As the 2008 presidential campaign
heats up, exper ts say, the issues of
poverty and inequality will be given
voice by Democratic candidates such as
former North Carolina senator John
Edwards, who plans to announce his
quest in New Orleans next week. "This is
going to be a reference point for the
debates nationally about equality and
poverty," Rathke says
Page 11
AS SEEN IN A USA TODAY MONEY BONUS SECTION ON NOVEMBER 20, 2006
How I saved my business
Companies beat back hurricanes, bankruptcy and big competitors to survive, thrive
By Anne Konigsmark
USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS — It took Aaron
Wolfson five years to open The Savvy
Gourmet, a cooking school, catering
outfit and upscale kitchenware shop in
New Orleans.
His timing couldn't have been worse:
He opened in mid-August 2005.
As floodwaters washed through the
city following Hurricane Katrina on Aug.
29 of that year, Wolfson's business plan
suddenly seemed absurd. His shop did
not flood, but that seemed beside the
point when 80% of the city did. Assuming
anyone returned to the devastated city,
who was going to take a cooking class?
Or buy a lemon squeezer? Or need a
party catered?
"I was thinking, 'I have made the
biggest mistake of my life, and it will take
forever to recover financially,'" says
Wolfson, 35. "I'd mortgaged my house
and begged, borrowed and stolen to
open that place."
Unlike thousands of business owners in
the flood-ravaged metro area, Wolfson
and his childhood friend and general
manager, Peter Menge, also 35, didn't call
it quits. In late September 2005, they
came up with a new business plan to suit
the needs of a largely abandoned city.
With no grocery stores open and all
but a handful of restaurants closed,
rescue workers, law enforcement, the
media and a few residents were
desperate for places to eat. Savvy began
serving food. The idea saved the business
and offered those toughing it out in the
first months after the storm a clean, air-
conditioned oasis, complete with fresh-
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
cooked food, cable T V and wireless
Internet access.
"The idea wasn't just clever — it was
crucial," says Tim Williamson of the Idea
Village, a local non-profit that gives
grants and other suppor t to
entrepreneurs. "It was about surviving as
a business."
Savvy was not the only business
adapting to a new world after the storm.
"If you look at the people who are
surviving today, they all had to adapt to
some extent to survive," Williamson says.
Few made such a drastic change, but
there are other examples. Before Katrina,
New Line Environmental was a coastal
restoration company. L ast fall, the
company began doing construction and
debris removal, thereby keeping its
workers employed. Owner Drew
Herrington then started a new venture,
Hurricane Guy, offering pre- and post-
hurricane services such as boarding up
houses and emptying refrigerators.
"Rather than waiting on a government
loan, they survived by creating revenue,"
Williamson says.
Wolfson and Menge were fortunate:
More than a third of the retail businesses
in the New Orleans area remain closed.
Less than half the restaurants are open,
according to the Louisiana Restaurant
Association.
"We have such a small population
relative to what we had, so the demand
just isn't there," says James McFarland, a
business and economics professor at
Tulane University. There are about
187,000 people living in New Orleans,
according to the latest U.S. Census
numbers. That's down from 460,000
before Katrina. "It's going to be a very,
very slow turnaround," McFarland says.
Building on a small start
From the start, The Savvy Gourmet
was an odd venture. Wolfson is a
psychologist who became interested in
cooking classes while working on his
Ph.D. in Seattle. He took them at night, he
says, as a diversion. When he returned to
his hometown of New Orleans to open a
private psychology practice in 2000, he
found there were no cooking schools in
New Orleans, other than those for
tourists.
"I started doing classes in my home,"
he says. He enlisted a neighbor who was
a chef, and began asking friends over to
his tiny apartment kitchen for evening
classes. "They were just parties — we
didn't charge anything," he says.
The classes became so popular that
Wolfson began renting restaurant space.
In 2002, with his psychology practice
blossoming, he realized he had to either
make the classes a business or stop
having them.
He asked Menge to come back from
New York and work full time to develop
the concept. They began with four
classes a week, leasing space at night
from a lunch-only restaurant in the
French Quarter.
Menge, who has a business degree
from the University of New Orleans, says
he made about $4,000 the first year, and
the business barely paid for itself.
"Without a retail component, we knew
we couldn't make money," Menge, who
recently bought into Savvy, says. "Our
business model was to have an activity in
the back of a space to drive people past
Page 12
AS SEEN IN A USA TODAY MONEY BONUS SECTION ON NOVEMBER 20, 2006
the merchandise in the front."
In March 2004, Wolfson signed a lease
on a building on Magazine Street, a hip
and popular commercial strip in well-to-
do Uptown New Orleans. It took 18
months to renovate the space into a shop
with a cooking demonstration area in the
back.
Menge and Wolfson look back fondly
on one of the first cooking classes held at
the Magazine Street location. It was five
days before Hurricane Katrina.
"It was a sauce class, and it was
exquisite," Wolfson says.
Says Menge: "We only had 13 plates for
13 people, and it was a nine-course meal.
So we had to wash the plates between
courses."
The Saturday before the storm hit,
Wolfson and Menge were unpacking
boxes when two people walked in and
offered to board up the windows.
"I was like, 'For what?'" Wolfson says.
After catching up on news of the
strengthening storm, he hired the men.
The following morning, like most New
Orleanians, Menge and Wolfson
evacuated. They closed up the shop,
leaving 60 guinea hens in the freezer,
bought for an Aug. 29 cooking class.
When they saw the news of levee
breaks and massive flooding, Menge and
Wolfson met in Memphis. "We were
totally freaking out," Wolfson says. "I was
like, 'We're absolutely done.'"
In the third week of September, Menge
and Wolfson drove back with a journalist
into New Orleans — then still off-limits to
residents.
"We opened the door to thousands of
flies," Menge says. "It was like those bats
in the beginning of the Scooby-Doo
cartoon. And then, you smelled it."
"It" was the rotten contents of their
refrigerators and freezers. The city had
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
been without power for weeks.
For the next week or so, the two
worked in the stench and heat to clean
out Savvy. For what, they weren't sure.
"We just knew we had to get it back to
normal," Wolfson says.
Then it came to them.
"People were eating three meals a day
of peanut butter and jelly or
cheeseburgers at the same bar," Menge
says. "So we thought, 'Maybe we should
try to feed these people.'" After all, he
says, "Who wanted to take classes? There
was no such thing as leisure and hobbies
anymore. And who is going to buy
cookware when they don't have a house
to put it in? And who wants catering? No
one was entertaining."
On Oct. 12, finding ingredients where
they could and borrowing tables and
chairs from a still-closed restaurant
owned by a friend, they began serving
lunch. Corbin Evans, the chef of the
closed restaurant, made roasted
vegetable sandwiches, roasted chicken
salad and homemade soups.
"Believe us when we tell you that we
are making this up as we go along, but …
we have re-opened with the addition of
a real, live restaurant," read an e-mail
Wolfson and Menge sent to a list of about
3,600.
The first day, 33 people came, Wolfson
says. "By the third day, it was a
madhouse."
Out of disaster, opportunity
Peter Bodenheimer, who until recently
worked in the mayor's Office of
Technology, spent a lot of time at Savvy
when it first reopened. "People needed
socialization in a big way," he says. "You
could go there and meet people and not
obsess about what was going on in the
city."
Savvy began hosting "devacuation
parties" on Saturday nights for returning
residents. There were MRE's -- military
meals — and chips and salsa at the first
par ty, but soon, local chefs began
cooking up more elaborate snacks.
Because Savvy had wireless internet,
cable TV and a pot of coffee brewing all
day, people used the sleek, sunny space
as an office. The mayor's Bring New
Orleans Back Commission even held its
meetings there.
"We were a hub," Wolfson says,
"because we were the only game in
town."
Financially, Savvy still struggled. To help
keep the place afloat, the Idea Village
awarded Savvy a $10,000 grant. Wolfson,
who had borrowed $312,000 to get the
place going before the storm, took out a
$25,000 bridge loan.
But what they needed were retail
sales, Wolfson says. In November,
Wolfson and Menge rented a U-Haul and
drove to Baton Rouge to pick up their
stock. There was still no mail service in
New Orleans, so thousands of dollars
worth of high-end cookware had been
sitting in a warehouse, Wolfson says.
The shelves were stocked in time for
Thanksgiving. By December, Savvy began
to make money for the first time. "We
were selling $8,000 to $10,000 a day in
retail during the holidays," Wolfson says.
Today, Savvy has a busy daily lunch and
Sunday brunch crowd, a full roster of
night classes and wine tastings, shelves
full of things to buy, and a catering
business. There are six full-time
employees and 10 par t-timers. The
bridge loan was repaid in June. Wolfson
says Savvy will gross $1 million for 2006.
Savvy is about to branch out again, this
time into kitchen design. And Wolfson
and Menge hope to open more stores.
"We're committed to New Orleans — our
ties are deep here," Wolfson says. "But
the reality is, the population that exists
here now will not support this single
location."
Page 13
 1. Those hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina were the poor.
CRITICAL INQUIRY
Describe the federal government’s response to
Hurricane Katrina and how the war on poverty has
been affected. What initiatives are currently underway? Who else is responding and how? Use a current issue of USA
TODAY to find examples.

2. List the traits Aaron Wolfson possessed which allowed him to keep the Savvy Gourmet afloat when so many other
entrepreneurs went bankrupt or gave up.

3. What corporate values did Mississippi Power possess which made it able to respond so swiftly and effectively to power
outages after Katrina? How might such a culture help a large federal agency respond more quickly to disasters?
Prepare a presentation for your class with examples from the article and your recommendation.

4. Create a chart with two columns. In the first column, list the actions and general attitudes of Voluntourists. In the sec-
ond column, list what these actions and attitudes reveal about their character, values and beliefs.

5. Compare and contrast Mississippi Power’s post-Katrina plan and its implementation with Savvy Gourmet’s post-Katrina
plan and its implementation. Who would you consider most successful and why? Write a brief report, citing specific
examples for each.

6. Katrina has drastically changed local economies in the Gulf Coast region. Find three to five specific examples from the
articles in the case study that illustrate this point. Then find two more examples using current issues of USA TODAY.
Share your list with a classmate and discuss what you think needs to be done to ensure the continued recovery to
local businesses.

1. How would you evaluate the federal government’s crisis

management since Katrina? In groups of three, compare
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
and contrast its management of Katrina to recent exam-
ples found in USA TODAY of the government’s responses to disasters and critical situations. Create a five-minute
presentation for your peers and share your findings.

2. The articles in this case study illustrate the various roles of the government, business and individuals in response
to disaster. What do you believe is the proper role of the individual vs. the government? Write a six-minute quick
write stating and supporting your opinion. Incorporate evidence from current USA TODAY articles to support
your view.

3. What is the current state of “voluntourisim”? Do you believe this trend will last? Research USA TODAY to find
information on this trend and other ways in which individuals make contributions. Partner with a peer and share
your opinion and research on the status and future for this new kind of tourism and other volunteer initiatives.

4. Your generation has experienced the Columbine shootings, Katrina, 9-11 and most recently the Virginia Tech
shootings. How do you see these tragedies impacting the character and values of your generation? Do you think it
makes you more compassionate? More cynical? More fearful? Debate these questions with a friend and write a
one-paragraph essay persuading others to your point of view.

For more information, log on to www.usatodaycollege.com Page 14

 Additional Resources

v Federal Emergency Management Agency v The Savvy Gourmet

www.fema.gov www.savvygourmet.com

v US Small Business Administration v Mississippi Power

www.sba.gov www.mississippipower.com

v Tourism Cares for America v Network for Good

www.tourismcares.org www.networkforgood.org/volunteer

v The Idea Village

www.ideavillage.org

For more information, log on to www.usatodaycollege.com Page 15