To the Editor:
New Orleans is one of the most hurricane prone places on this earth. Why would anyone want to invest in a home that lays 10 feet below sea level right next door to the seashore? Every year in late summer, the threat of utter destruction is a possibility to the residents of the crescent city. Another question that might be asked is why should people of other geological locations throughout the United States be required to bail these risk-taking people out every time a hurricane destroys their investments?
Katrina cost taxpayers billions of dollars. FEMA management (or mismanagement) of that disaster is well documented. It makes you wonder how these decision makers attained such positions because of the flippant use of our tax dollars. For instance, they decided to supply mobile homes, costing $34,500 for each family, which would provide temporary housing for hurricane victims. For good reason, Louisiana officials balked at installing them inland. Where would they create a housing development that would accommodate that many mobile homes (streets, plumbing, water, sewer etc.)?
Nearly half, or about 10,000, of the $860 million worth of units now sit at an airfield in Arkansas, where FEMA paid $250,000 a month to store them, add to it the renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base altogether cost about $416,000 per evacuee. In September 2005, the Military Sealift Command, acting on behalf of FEMA, awarded Carnival Cruise Lines three contracts worth a combined $236 million to provide temporary housing to Hurricane Katrina evacuees. This ingenious plan cost more than $50,000 to house a single person for six months, more than $300 per person for each night’s lodging. Furthermore, there were documented hundreds of cases of fraud amounting to $2 billion. Here are a couple of examples; A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Texas, was charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance. I think people should live in New Orleans at their own risk. They should not expect taxpayers from other states to bail them out, especially after the lessons of Katrina.
Howard W. Hall
Shawnee
