0.cached.png
By Mark Hosenball
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
As his helicopter swoops low over rows of empty mobile homes destined for Katrina victims, Bob Spaulding looks worried. The man in charge of "dragging and dropping" tens of thousands of trailers all over Louisiana doesn't like what he sees below: Trailers trickling out of the decommissioned military base in Baton Rouge, La., that serves as the delivery depot for his housing stock. "There's not enough of'em," he grumbles, "and we need to move faster." It's been a tough morning for Spaulding, 56, a leathernecked veteran contractor who found it easier electrifying Iraq than housing Katrina's diaspora. In meetings beginning at 7 a.m., he's learned of poorly built trailers that are uninhabitable and that a nearby community outlawed his mobile homes. He's listened to his federal overseers lecture him on how to justify spending on "big-ticket items." Adding to his headache: the struggle to house his Fluor Corp. staff, who are living in a tent city near its makeshift Baton Rouge offices. "It's like we've got this big, gangly animal," he says, "and we're just trying to get it under control."
After the deluge, the Gulf Coast is being overwhelmed again. But this time it's with waves of contractors, prospectors and speculators looking to cash in on what President Bush calls "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." The tsunami of spending, already budgeted at $62 billion, could top $200 billion--what the U.S. has spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then as now, those mopping up first are the politically well connected: Fluor, Bechtel and the Shaw Group, which each scored $100 million no-bid contracts before the flood waters began to recede. (Halliburton is benefiting from an existing $500 million contract to repair naval bases.) That has Democrats and Republicans howling over potential abuse. Even the president acknowledged the possibility of financial evil-doing when he dispatched inspectors to the Gulf Coast to monitor the money. That gesture, however, hasn't prevented accusations of cronyism, especially given that the president's former campaign manager Joe Allbaugh is a paid consultant to Shaw and Halliburton. Allbaugh and the companies deny he had anything to do with their contracts. "Anyone who says otherwise is making it up," Allbaugh told NEWSWEEK. (Allbaugh does, though, admit to contacting White House chief of staff Andrew Card to offer Katrina aid and to advising Shaw on how to set up its hurricane response team.) Adding to the controversy: The SEC is investigating Shaw for possible accounting irregularities, NEWSWEEK has learned. "Shaw has fully cooperated with the SEC," said company spokesman Chris Sammons. "There is no reason to believe that the informal inquiry will go further."
With so much at stake, and with FEMA still struggling to right itself, the reconstruction effort is beginning to feel as chaotic as the days immediately after Katrina. Reports of snafus are widespread:
Read More on News
With thousands of starving animals wandering New Orleans, the federal disaster agency placed an emergency $28,370 order with PetsMart for 970 wire pet crates on Sept. 9. The pet-supply chain jumped at the chance to help, even waiving delivery charges, a spokeswoman says. Over four days, FEMA first changed its order, canceled it, reinstated it, put it on hold and finally demanded it. But when the PetsMart truck arrived at a New Orleans naval base Friday, it was initially turned away. When the driver finally gained entry, he drove around the base all day, racking up 152 miles, to find someone to take delivery. The tail-chasing experience left PetsMart "frustrated and disappointed." FEMA admits "kinks" in the process, but says it was its first big pet rescue.
The day Katrina struck, Cool Express, a Wisconsin refrigerated-trucking line, was called on to haul ice for disaster relief. Hired by ice firms contracted by FEMA, Cool Express filled 75 trucks with 40,000 pounds of ice each and shipped them to the Gulf Coast. Eventually, though, military officials began turning ice trucks away, sending them as far away as Boise, Idaho, and Allentown, Pa., to "await further instructions," says Cool Express owner Dan Wessel. Late last week, nearly 1,400 ice trucks were scattered across the country, still awaiting further instructions. Yet orders for ice still rolled in from FEMA, says Wessel. FEMA says it just rewrote its ice contract "to make sure this doesn't happen again."
In the most macabre mishap, the chief body collector nearly pulled out of New Orleans over a dispute with FEMA. Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Services dispatched a small team and a mobile morgue to New Orleans as Katrina hit. With the death toll rising, Kenyon offered more staff and morgues if FEMA could broker a deal with Louisiana. But FEMA and the company argued for two weeks until Kenyon finally gave the Feds an ultimatum: Work out a deal or find a new mortician. The Louisiana Health Department stepped in and hired Kenyon, which increased its staff in New Orleans 15-fold. An issue raised by the Feds that Kenyon found distasteful: an instruction that chaplains bless recovered bodies. A company source said the Feds are insisting on this, and the first chaplains are supposed to go out this week. Asked if that was mixing church and state, a FEMA spokeswoman responded: "A prayer is not necessarily religious. Everybody prays."
Certainly, many are praying for a clear sense that someone is in charge. Washington would like to direct the entire effort, but Louisiana is already worried about losing control of its destiny. "I don't want anyone outside of New Orleans telling us how to plan this city," Mayor Ray Nagin told his city council last week (meeting in exile in Baton Rouge). Still, even neighbors can work against each other. The biggest roadblock to housing evacuees: local communities that fear Katrina trailer parks will overwhelm schools and roads. Baton Rouge's population has already surged from 400,000 to 1.2 million. That's why nearby Livingston Parish voted last week to outlaw temporary trailers. Spaulding, who is plopping mobile homes into state parks and along abandoned naval airstrips, says these "social engineering" problems must be resolved, but not with an iron hand. "We need a Marshall Plan," he says, "not martial law."
The lure of lucre, though, accounts for some of the region's population surge, as outsiders rush in to make a fast buck. Wall Street bankers were ready to hop the next plane to Baton Rouge after a conference call last week with Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy, who was soliciting financing to rebuild what the Feds won't cover. "We won't make money immediately," said one Wall Streeter. "But once this gets started, there could be tens of billions in financing." Florida developers are also flocking in to snap up the Big Easy's ravaged neighborhoods. New Orleans businessman Finis Shelnutt claims to have three Florida investors ready to plunk down hundreds of millions to "build French Quarter design high-rises that can take Cat 5 hurricanes." Tradesmen and truckers are also capitalizing on the free market gone wild. Tennessee trucker John Provence Jr. says he's making $3,000 a day hauling FEMA trailers 87 miles from Baton Rouge to Slidell. That's more than double what he earned pulling mobile homes after last year's Florida hurricanes. "My wife's been fussing," says Provence, 38. "But when I get home with all this cabbage, she won't be fussing any more."
Money will be the next thing to flow down Bourbon Street. The French Quarter, which was spared the worst flooding, is scheduled to flicker back to life next Monday. And the city's power brokers expect tourists to return within 90 days. Of course, it will be a whole lot easier for them to get there once the government fixes the roads and bridges. Despite the Fed's fitful effort, the talk of all those tax dollars is helping revive grand plans for New Orleans. The city fathers are considering luring a political convention or even a Super Bowl. Wynton Marsalis is shopping an idea to create a jazz institute, with a concert hall and classrooms.
While the moneymen move fast, the process of housing New Orleans's poor grinds on. Late last week, just 40 FEMA trailers were filled with evacuees in Louisiana. Ten of those simple, white trailers are wedged among vacationers at an RV park in Patterson, La. Inside her one-bedroom unit, Elizabeth Jones, 65, shows off her shiny black stove. "Look how this works," she says, snapping on the gas burner. "I wish I had one this nice at home." Outside, though, a teary young mother approaches an aid worker. "Can you help me get one of these?" asks Kami Phillips, her three toddlers in tow. "You've got to call FEMA, darlin'," shrugs the worker. "I've tried, but they just give me the short end of the stick," says Phillips. "I've got nowhere left to go." Rebuilding a life scattered to the winds by Katrina just might be the toughest reconstruction project of all.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines