"You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day," said Myrna Guity, 43, whose import business was wiped out by the storm, along with her home in New Orleans East. "You get no answers to your questions. They're evasive. You're constantly 'pending.' What are you going to be doing, 'pending' for the rest of your life? I've lost everything."
Others wondered fearfully what was on the other side of their current privation. "We're almost begging them, 'Please, bring this trailer before Christmas,' " said DeLois Kramer, 43, who said she is "sort of living out of the car" with her 7-year-old daughter, Katlyn.
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: December 3, 2005
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 2 - They are the faces and voices of a city's desperation. Stepping wearily up to a Federal Emergency Management Agency help center here, all have a similar story of ruin in the past, anxiety over the future and frustration in the present, suffered differently each time.
Vincent Laforet for The New York Times
DeLois Kramer and her 7-year-old daughter, Katlyn, making their way to a FEMA help center in New Orleans Friday. "We're almost begging them, 'Please, bring this trailer before Christmas,' " Ms. Kramer said.
Young, middle-aged and old, these citizens of New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and now urgently seeking government assistance, spoke Friday of sleeping in a truck and on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that never seems to come. Trickling into the crowded center in the Uptown neighborhood here - hoping for a trailer, a loan, cash, anything - they were grimly resigned to waiting, and waiting some more.
"You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day," said Myrna Guity, 43, whose import business was wiped out by the storm, along with her home in New Orleans East. "You get no answers to your questions. They're evasive. You're constantly 'pending.' What are you going to be doing, 'pending' for the rest of your life? I've lost everything."
Others wondered fearfully what was on the other side of their current privation. "We're almost begging them, 'Please, bring this trailer before Christmas,' " said DeLois Kramer, 43, who said she is "sort of living out of the car" with her 7-year-old daughter, Katlyn.
Three months after the storm, political figures here talk often of the progress that has been made - trash cleared, homes lighted, money spent. Louisiana, they say, is proving its self-reliance. But hidden behind these sometimes rosy declarations are tens of thousands of their constituents, living at the edge of their dwindling resources.
Adding to their anxiety is what these citizens describe as a frustrating paper chase through the bureaucracy of FEMA: repeat visits for help that always seems to be just one or two documents away, but the documents FEMA demands are often ruined, stored in flooded houses.
Many spoke of once-comfortable existences, turned suddenly into an anxious struggle simply to get by.
On Friday morning, in fact, Ms. Kramer realized that there was a way to describe her situation. She was standing in front of the Jewish Community Center on St. Charles Avenue here, where FEMA has set up one of three New Orleans assistance centers, along with several mobile units.
"We're homeless, that's what we are," said Ms. Kramer, a disabled former substance abuse counselor and nursing aide. Her apartment, near one of the levee breaks, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
She and her daughter have a floor to sleep on, with "extended relatives," 70 miles away in St. Gabriel. But they must leave early each day; the relatives are increasingly "agitated," Ms, Kramer said. Every day mother and daughter are on the road, in a car packed with their clothing, going from help center to help center. "I'm very frustrated. And it's starting to take a toll on her," Ms. Kramer said, gesturing toward Katlyn.
"Are we being punished?" the little girl asks her.
Rosemary Varnado, 59, and her husband, Charles, 63, a truck driver, slept in one of his rigs for 25 days. It was a "miserable" experience, Ms. Varnado said, "just horrible." She has high blood pressure and an intestinal problem. Their home in the Lower Ninth Ward was destroyed in the flood, and now they are seeking a trailer. "We've been waiting, and waiting," Ms. Varnado said.
"Why is it taking so long? They don't know the suffering we've had to go through," she added. "We're suffering, but they are moving slow. We have no clothes, no nothing."
Ms. Varnado, who worked as a nurse's assistant, said emphatically: "We are people that have worked and paid taxes, all our lives. That's the important thing."
A FEMA spokesman said Friday that the agency was working as fast as it could to aid the thousands still destitute from the storm.
"I don't know if you understand the magnitude of this disaster," said the spokesman, James McIntyre. "Almost 1.5 million people have registered for assistance, and we're working to help them all."
Mr. McIntyre continued: "We're working as fast as we possibly can to meet their needs, and help them receive assistance for damages from these disasters."
Another FEMA official, the manager of an assistance center in the Lower Garden District here, suggested the mental anguish of many of his clients was now palpable.
"As people come in, they become desperate," said the official, Manuel Walker, who manages the Jackson Avenue center. "They're coming back, thinking they can live in their dwelling. And then all of a sudden, there's nothing."
With no place to live in New Orleans, several people entering the Uptown center spoke of frequent long drives to obtain help from FEMA here. Agency officials, backed by armed guards, refused to allow a reporter into the center's giant interviewing room, where long tables lined with seated aid seekers had been set up.
"I lost my business. I lost my home. We need everything," said Steven Reed, 37, a graphics designer who was commuting seven hours from Tyler, in East Texas, where he was living with his family at the Baptist Church of Gresham.
"I keep having to bring them more paperwork," Mr. Reed said. "They ask for paperwork. But the paper is at the house. And the house was under eight feet of water."
A father of four, Mr. Reed said he lost thousands of dollars' worth of equipment - computers and lenses.
"The whole society is not understanding what a disaster it was," he said. "You're waking up in the morning with no tissues, no toothpaste, no nothing. Right now, if I took any person in America, and say, 'This is not your house any more.' " He paused, adding, "How do you expect me to function?"
Luis Colmenares, a prominent local metal sculptor, unshaven and discouraged, walked away from the center here Friday afternoon. He lost $400,000 worth of equipment, and an art-metal business that employed 17. Hours on the phone with FEMA workers had been "horrible," he said.
"I kept saying, 'I have nothing,' " Mr. Colmenares said. "We've got food stamps, and that's pretty much it."
|
- bill 12-03-2005 3:27 pm
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: December 3, 2005
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 2 - They are the faces and voices of a city's desperation. Stepping wearily up to a Federal Emergency Management Agency help center here, all have a similar story of ruin in the past, anxiety over the future and frustration in the present, suffered differently each time.
Vincent Laforet for The New York Times
DeLois Kramer and her 7-year-old daughter, Katlyn, making their way to a FEMA help center in New Orleans Friday. "We're almost begging them, 'Please, bring this trailer before Christmas,' " Ms. Kramer said.
Young, middle-aged and old, these citizens of New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and now urgently seeking government assistance, spoke Friday of sleeping in a truck and on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that never seems to come. Trickling into the crowded center in the Uptown neighborhood here - hoping for a trailer, a loan, cash, anything - they were grimly resigned to waiting, and waiting some more.
"You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day," said Myrna Guity, 43, whose import business was wiped out by the storm, along with her home in New Orleans East. "You get no answers to your questions. They're evasive. You're constantly 'pending.' What are you going to be doing, 'pending' for the rest of your life? I've lost everything."
Others wondered fearfully what was on the other side of their current privation. "We're almost begging them, 'Please, bring this trailer before Christmas,' " said DeLois Kramer, 43, who said she is "sort of living out of the car" with her 7-year-old daughter, Katlyn.
Three months after the storm, political figures here talk often of the progress that has been made - trash cleared, homes lighted, money spent. Louisiana, they say, is proving its self-reliance. But hidden behind these sometimes rosy declarations are tens of thousands of their constituents, living at the edge of their dwindling resources.
Adding to their anxiety is what these citizens describe as a frustrating paper chase through the bureaucracy of FEMA: repeat visits for help that always seems to be just one or two documents away, but the documents FEMA demands are often ruined, stored in flooded houses.
Many spoke of once-comfortable existences, turned suddenly into an anxious struggle simply to get by.
On Friday morning, in fact, Ms. Kramer realized that there was a way to describe her situation. She was standing in front of the Jewish Community Center on St. Charles Avenue here, where FEMA has set up one of three New Orleans assistance centers, along with several mobile units.
"We're homeless, that's what we are," said Ms. Kramer, a disabled former substance abuse counselor and nursing aide. Her apartment, near one of the levee breaks, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
She and her daughter have a floor to sleep on, with "extended relatives," 70 miles away in St. Gabriel. But they must leave early each day; the relatives are increasingly "agitated," Ms, Kramer said. Every day mother and daughter are on the road, in a car packed with their clothing, going from help center to help center. "I'm very frustrated. And it's starting to take a toll on her," Ms. Kramer said, gesturing toward Katlyn.
"Are we being punished?" the little girl asks her.
Rosemary Varnado, 59, and her husband, Charles, 63, a truck driver, slept in one of his rigs for 25 days. It was a "miserable" experience, Ms. Varnado said, "just horrible." She has high blood pressure and an intestinal problem. Their home in the Lower Ninth Ward was destroyed in the flood, and now they are seeking a trailer. "We've been waiting, and waiting," Ms. Varnado said.
"Why is it taking so long? They don't know the suffering we've had to go through," she added. "We're suffering, but they are moving slow. We have no clothes, no nothing."
Ms. Varnado, who worked as a nurse's assistant, said emphatically: "We are people that have worked and paid taxes, all our lives. That's the important thing."
A FEMA spokesman said Friday that the agency was working as fast as it could to aid the thousands still destitute from the storm.
"I don't know if you understand the magnitude of this disaster," said the spokesman, James McIntyre. "Almost 1.5 million people have registered for assistance, and we're working to help them all."
Mr. McIntyre continued: "We're working as fast as we possibly can to meet their needs, and help them receive assistance for damages from these disasters."
Another FEMA official, the manager of an assistance center in the Lower Garden District here, suggested the mental anguish of many of his clients was now palpable.
"As people come in, they become desperate," said the official, Manuel Walker, who manages the Jackson Avenue center. "They're coming back, thinking they can live in their dwelling. And then all of a sudden, there's nothing."
With no place to live in New Orleans, several people entering the Uptown center spoke of frequent long drives to obtain help from FEMA here. Agency officials, backed by armed guards, refused to allow a reporter into the center's giant interviewing room, where long tables lined with seated aid seekers had been set up.
"I lost my business. I lost my home. We need everything," said Steven Reed, 37, a graphics designer who was commuting seven hours from Tyler, in East Texas, where he was living with his family at the Baptist Church of Gresham.
"I keep having to bring them more paperwork," Mr. Reed said. "They ask for paperwork. But the paper is at the house. And the house was under eight feet of water."
A father of four, Mr. Reed said he lost thousands of dollars' worth of equipment - computers and lenses.
"The whole society is not understanding what a disaster it was," he said. "You're waking up in the morning with no tissues, no toothpaste, no nothing. Right now, if I took any person in America, and say, 'This is not your house any more.' " He paused, adding, "How do you expect me to function?"
Luis Colmenares, a prominent local metal sculptor, unshaven and discouraged, walked away from the center here Friday afternoon. He lost $400,000 worth of equipment, and an art-metal business that employed 17. Hours on the phone with FEMA workers had been "horrible," he said.
"I kept saying, 'I have nothing,' " Mr. Colmenares said. "We've got food stamps, and that's pretty much it."
- bill 12-03-2005 3:29 pm [add a comment]