When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005 the world watched in shock and amazement as local, state and federal officials were heavily criticized for not responding in a timely manner to the initial response, or the aid that would follow in the months and years to come. Last year (September 13, 2008) Hurricane Ike devastated SE Texas and the areas around Galveston but the news coverage was minimal due to the 2008 Presidential Election coverage. So, did officials learn an important lesson to respond to hurricane victims quickly and efficiently? Here are some updated facts as of early March 2009; nearly 7-months after Hurricane Ike left its trail of death and destruction.

The following are snippets grabbed from area newspapers within the first week of March.

• Temporary housing trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrive in High Island, TX for residents who have been living in tents for the past 7-months.
• Galveston officials announce that a park which has been rebuilt over the past 6-months is slated for reopening on March 21^st.
• Galveston and other cities along the Texas Gulf inform their employees they need to be looking for other jobs as many municipalities plan for major cut-backs to their workforce, including those working in schools.
• FEMA finally sends the Texas Emergency Management Agency grants totaling $60 million to cover expenses such as food, water, ice, emergency shelters, National Guard. The Associated Press reports that Texas has $134 million in unpaid debt from Ike’s response; Texas Governor Rick Perry blames FEMA for not being timely enough to help the state fiscally in its response to the disaster.
• Elementary students helping with a beach clean-up project find a “message in a bottle” and discover the bottle had been afloat since the early 1960s – they returned the message to the original author from Ocean Springs.
• Bolivar Peninsula announced that local residents will no longer have to boil water that is meant for human consumption due to completing a multimillion dollar project to rebuild the water mains in the area.
• The FIRST FEMA housing site finally opens in Bolivar Peninsula for area residents who have survived the winter homeless since the hurricane heavily damaged, or destroyed their residences. Why does it take 6-months to get temporary housing setup for area residents? Local officials say that it’s FEMA’s fault and because of “Lots of Paperwork.”
• Vendors in East Texas who advanced time and money to the State of Texas for the initial response to Hurricane Ike are still waiting for the government to repay them. KSLA news noted one such vendor as saying his business has called the State, sent emails, wrote letters and hasn’t received the answers they were looking for.
• US Oil Company Shell restarts a major pipeline that sustained damages during Hurricane Ike.
• Houston city leaders consider an increase in utility fees to area residents to cover expenses incurred to rebuild water mains after the hurricane.

So, as of March 3, 2009 those are some of the headlines that I was able to dig up from news sources around Southeast Texas. Just quickly skimming over these news stories it’s easy to see that priorities have been given to projects such as cleaning up parks and rebuilding pipelines, while many hurricane victims have been living in tents for shelter and some of those people are now getting temporary housing more than 6-months after the storm hit.

Unlike Katrina, Hurricane Ike took a back seat to national news coverage during the election season. People living outside of Texas or the immediate area of the Gulf Coast heard little to nothing about the response to this major natural disaster that left one of Texas’ most unique communities completely devastated and hundreds, if not thousands of people homeless – many of whom are still without substantial shelter and have no relief in-sight more than 6 months after the storm.

What we have heard a lot about are banks and insurance companies who have received billions of dollars in government money and have opted to take their executive teams on lush retreats and weekend getaways costing into the millions of dollars.

The point to this entire post is this: While US Citizens who were displaced when a natural disaster destroyed their homes, businesses and communities were surviving the winter in tents and using public facilities – the US Government was giving billions of dollars to banks and financial institutions. Either the government or private banking industry could have opted to help these storm ravaged folks, but instead decided to spend much of the money on luxury retreats that included spas, executive golf courses and private concerts by Earth, Wind and Fire.

I can easily understand that many people who lost homes may not have had proper insurance and therefore they assumed the risk of a hurricane destroying their property with no clear plan of recovery. If the US Government hadn’t handed over nearly a trillion dollars to major businesses who have shown nothing but fiscal irresponsibility I would leave it at that.

But – the money that would be needed to restore SE Texas is a drop in the bucket compared to the total “bailout” funds that have been released by the government and there is no valid excuse for allowing these people to suffer and taking more than 6-months to get a simple trailer park setup so they could just have a place to sleep and shower, while handing out more than a trillion dollars to industries who have betrayed the trust of the American people.

This is a shame to America and it’s a great injustice to SE Texas residents and the American people as a whole.

Tags: hurricane, texas