| Page 3 of 3 < |
Lack of Cohesion Bedevils Recovery
Joan Buckley, 63, of New Orleans Parish, waits at a shelter in Baton Rouge, La. Some local officials say they need better guidance from states and Washington.
(By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"The federal government really hasn't provided much of anything," he said.
Harold Dodge, superintendent of schools in Mobile County, Ala., said he had tried to convey to state and federal officials the challenges he faced after nearly a thousand evacuee children from Mississippi appeared in Mobile.
Alabama requires four years of English, math and science to meet the state graduation standards. Mississippi requires only three years. Dodge also worried about being stigmatized by federal authorities for any drop in test scores. The superintendent said a lack of planning and foresight had left him dealing with constantly changing scenarios.
"I don't know whether someone sitting way up there is saying let's disperse them in an orderly fashion," he said of the evacuees.
"This is one of the few times I couldn't get my arms around an issue," he said. "Every time I thought I had my arms around it, it got away from us. We are in a constant state of flux."
In Houston, now home to about 125,000 evacuees in shelters, private homes and subsidized apartments, the understanding from the start was that the city and its suburbs were on their own in dealing with evacuees.
Local leaders used their own buses, convention center and sports stadium, along with shelters, hotels and private apartments, to serve evacuees as they navigated a thicket of applications for traditional federal benefits, from food stamps to unemployment insurance.
But many evacuees now find themselves in apartment complexes at remote edges of the city, in no man's lands near the airport or in industrial parks near oil refineries. They are without cars, or constantly getting lost, in one of America's most car-dependent cities.
Mary Joseph, 63, a custodian from Violet, La., in a new apartment in Northland Woods off Beltway 8, is 17 miles from downtown: "We spend $30 for gas every few days, and we don't know where we are going."
Dallas Mayor Miller said she believed Bush understood the disconnect between government intentions and the execution of the relief efforts.
"George Bush stepped up and said, 'We didn't handle this well, and we are going to fix it,' and I believe that," she said. "I hope the people under him can do him justice."
Starkman reported from Mississippi, Vedantam from Washington. Staff writers Evelyn Nieves in Mississippi, Lisa Rein in Houston, Sylvia Moreno in Austin, Kevin Merida in Dallas, Ceci Connolly in New Orleans and Peter Slevin in Chicago contributed to this report.
