Five weeks in Louisiana with FEMA

Water-damaged belongings were piled.

I’m back home now in AZ after a five-week deployment with FEMA to Louisiana. Torrential rains in August dumped an estimated seven trillion gallons of rainwater across southern Louisiana—more than four times the amount of water contained in Lake Pontchartrain – that resulted in 13 confirmed flood-related deaths. The president declared 22 parishes eligible for federal assistance on Aug. 14. I was first assigned to the New Orleans area and after a month was transferred to Baton Rouge. By the time I demobilized more than 150,000 survivors had registered for federal assistance and more than $2.1 billion in assistance was provided.

As a media relations specialist, I gave TV, radio and newspaper interviews.

I was quoted in the Hammond Daily Star:

The federal agency considered trailer parks that had empty spaces available in parishes hit by devastating floods in August as possible sites for mobile homes, said Steven Solomon, FEMA media relations specialist.

Solomon said the agency conducted physical inspections of the trailers parks that included determining the parks' debris status and confirming that utilities were working. Sites have to be outside a flood plain, and lot sizes have to accommodate the manufactured housing units that are different from the FEMA trailers provided during Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.

Solomon said 47 units were being occupied by flood victims in the affected parishes as of Tuesday. The mobile homes are considered a last resort by FEMA, he said.

I find radio interviews to be the most fun, but no transcripts..

And on the NBC-TV affiliate:

“It was more than your local, parish and state agencies could handle on their own,” FEMA media relations specialist Steven Solomon said of the need for federal assistance.

Over 1,000 FEMA representatives moved in after the president ordered aid. The first priority was registering residents with FEMA.

Solomon said eligibility is based on damage, not income, and FEMA does not duplicate coverage offered by a homeowner’s insurance company.

“We're doing everything we can to get the assistance to the right people as quickly as possible," Solomon said. “Keeping in mind that the tax payers also want us to ensure that it's not going to the wrong people.”

Solomon said the agency can request proof that FEMA funds were spent on items outlined in a person’s determination letter. He said each person receiving aid should take pictures of purchases and keep receipts for at least seven years.

FEMA assistance does not have to be paid back, but loans that are part of the FEMA application process do.

Solomon said when FEMA assistance is granted, a resident must also apply for a federal Small Business Administration loan, although the applicant does not have to take any loan offered. So far, 52,000 Louisianans have accepted SBA loans, and Solomon said $400 million of SBA loans related to the August flooding in Louisiana have been paid issued.

When checks start rolling in, so does the next-wave of damage by way of scammers preying on disaster survivors. FEMA hasn't seen many scams in Louisiana yet, but Solomon said they are coming.

The scams can range from contractors working without licenses and permits, to agents claiming to navigate the FEMA process for a fee.

“That's a complete and total scam,” Solomon said of the agent-for-hire scheme. “No one can help you work any quicker through the process, through the system.”

And on Fox TV:

“The deadline to register is October 13 and we’ve had 146,000-plus individuals register for federal assistance,” said FEMA External Affairs Specialist Steven Solomon.

FEMA said it is working hard to process applications for assistance.

"Working to do everything we can to ensure eligible survivors get the federal assistance they're entitled to,” said Solomon.

He said once flood victims sign up, an inspection typically follows. H said they have made great progress.

"We've completed 99.3 percent of those inspections. We have nearly 100 inspectors still out in the field,” Solomon said.

But the agency has taken a lot of criticism from flood victims, as well as members of Congress over the pace of getting manufactured housing units to the people who need them. They are not the same as the tiny, travel-type trailers doled out in the New Orleans area after Katrina.

"As a last option, nothing else is working, and the individual is eligible, we bring in what we call a manufactured housing unit. So these are not trailers like you see pulled by car, these are like single-wide homes with rooms and doors and windows,” said Solomon.

He said FEMA is assisting people who have been forced to take shelter in hotels and motels.

Solomon urges flood victims to sign up with FEMA if they have not already, and he also warned against scam artists.  He said all FEMA workers have identification, and victims should ask to see it before providing any information.

He also warned against people showing up stating that they are third-party contractors who can help speed up the assistance process.

“There are also folks who pretend that they can facilitate the process between the survivor and FEMA for a fee, that’s an out-and-out scam. No one can make the process go any quicker, or any better,” Solomon said.

The newspapers were very interesting. One of my favorites was The Donaldsonville Chief, with the logo of an Indian wearing a headdress of colored feathers in the “C” of “Chief.” The editor was only a year out of college, but was putting out a pretty good paper with minimal resources. Another paper, L’Observateur, has an interesting slogan: “Best Along the River since 1913.” I had a nice chat with their combined publisher/general manager/editor. But the newspaper with the slogan that struck me as most unusual was the St. Charles Herald Guide’s: “Serving St. Charles Parish since the roads were dirt!” Wow.

I had at least one day off every week and I was there over the Columbus Day holiday too, so I was able to do a lot of sightseeing. I’d never been to Louisiana before, so I toured two historic plantations, a half-dozen museums, went on a swamp tour, saw a play, went to a concert, saw a rodeo, etc. 

Ladies at R'evolution invited me to their table.

Banana pudding layer cake at NOLA's.

And the food was amazing! I was fortunate to get a chance to dine at Chef Emeril Lagasse's NOLA restaurant, with FEMA pal Annette. Foodie that she is, I also had dinner with her at the swanky 4 1/2-star R'evolution restaurant. I had a paneed veal chop. Well, actually I had half of the entree. Annette picked away at the other half until it was gone.

On the tour at the Houmas House Plantation.

I went on a tour of the Houmas House Plantation and Gardens, a grand antebellum estate with 16 rooms filled with period antiques and Louisiana artwork. It has 38 lush acres of gardens, ponds and a majestic live oak alley. The plantation was voted the second most popular Best Historic Home Tour by the readers of USA Today. I also took a guided tour Laura Plantation, a restored 200-year-old historic Louisiana Creole plantation on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Bolstered by 5,000 pages of documents from the French National Archives and from Laura's own memories, the Creole Family Saga tour focused on two centuries of human habitation that took place on the site. Both the Houmas and Laura plantations showed the stark and startling contrast between the lives of the owners and their slaves.

I picked up a FEMA colleague, Annette, at her hotel and we met up with a group of

I didn't see this coming!

colleagues at Cajun Swamp Tours in LaPlace, a privately owned wildlife refuge just 25 miles from New Orleans, where we were taken out on a bayou for a swamp tour on a large pontoon boat. The captain/guide was a local who told us stories and legends about the area and pointed out the many raccoons, alligators, trees and shrubs. The big surprise is that we all got to hold a small alligator that had its mouth gently taped shut. Holy Moly! The takeaway from this excursion is that you don’t need to apply insect repellant when you go on a swamp tour. Our tour guide explained that mosquitos need standing water to breed, and the water on a bayou is always moving. So there aren’t any bugs! It happened to be Annette's birthday, so we went to New Orleans for lunch and I treated. It was a really nice day.

I learned all about the Scoville scale for hotness.

On another Sunday off I made the long drive over to Avery Island, where the McIlhenny Co. has been making Tobasco since 1868. There’s no fee, but you have to cross over a gated entry to the former sugar plantation, located about 140 miles west of New Orleans. They have a museum and 10-stop self-guided tour that showed how they grow the pepper plants and the warehouse where the mash is aged for three years. They also have a decent little restaurant and a well-stocked gift shop. I bought enough stuff that I qualified for a “free” jar of spicy beans! Then I looked at their adjacent 170-acre semitropical Jungle Gardens. You drive along a narrow road and stop wherever you like to walk the grounds. I didn’t see any but they said they have alligators, deer, snowy egrets, armadillos, bears, squirrels, nutria, bobcats, etc.

I visited a bunch of museums on my time off: The New Orleans Museum of Art, where I

Oldest museum in Louisiana.

enjoyed El Greco’s “St. Francis,” Poincy’s “Dogs in the French Market,” as well as works by Rodin, Beraud, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Sargent, Giacometti, Modigliani, Miro and Calder. I also had a nice lunch in their restaurant. At the Civil War Museum there was a piece of a tree filled with minie balls that struck it, more than a hundred Confederate battle flags and Jefferson Davis’s suit. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art featured an exhibit about New Orleans graffiti and paintings of southern Louisiana ships, barges and bridges. I could’ve spent two days in the World War II because it was so large. I started with a short film narrated by Tom Hanks and then saw entire wings devoted to aspects of the battles in Europe and the fighting in the Pacific. The smallest museum I toured was the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum in the heart of the French Quarter, housed on the site of the apothecary of America’s first licensed pharmacist.Bloodletting, leeches and questionable medical practices were featured on the ground floor, with displays of hand-blown apothecary bottles filled with crude drugs, medicinal herbs, “gris-gris” potions used by voodoo practitioners and rare patent medicines.

I got a parking spot with no meter right in front of the Old Statehouse Museum, which its

One of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen.

website says is “a Gothic architectural treasure, stands high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. The 165-year-old statehouse has withstood war, fire, scandal, bitter debate, abandonment and an occasional fistfight. Today, the building stands as a testament to bold, inspired leadership and active citizenship.” It was one of the most beautiful buildings, inside and out, I have ever seen (and I've been to the Vatican), with exhibits that explain the state’s history – indigenous people, then French rule, then British rule, then Spanish rule, then French rule again, an independent nation and finally American. It was built by Gov. Huey Long to both look like and function like a castle and has led some locals to call it the Louisiana Castle, the Castle of Baton Rouge, the Castle on the River, or the Museum of Political History; although most people just call it the old capitol building.

This was incredibly pretty and serene. 

I’m so glad I drove out to the Afton Villa Gardens, located in St. Francisville on the terraced ruins of a palatial home built by Susan Barrow in 1849. There were 250 acres of what they described as “floral beauty (that) thrill nature lovers every spring and fall with its grace and serenity. A half-mile oak alley leads to a renowned 19th-century garden featuring formal parterre, hundreds of azaleas, and expansive grounds.” It was breathtaking and I took so many fabulous photos that I could’ve posted dozens. AN old barn on the site was gorgeous.

Ms. Gwen with a seat cushion.

One of the most pleasant and interesting times I had was at the West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen, not far from where my third hotel was located. By coincidence, I was the only one given a tour at the time I visited, by a Cajun guide born nearby. The museum is inside a former courthouse, and on the six-acre grounds are six historic buildings and a barn that showed sugar plantation life from the antebellum period through the Civil Rights Era. Ms. Gwen took me into each of the buildings – the plantation house, three slave cabins, the plantation store – and patiently explained the significance of each. She even gave me a small packet of locally grown/made raw sugar.

The rodeo show was sold out!

On my last Sunday in Louisiana, I went to the Angola State Prison Rodeo, the longest-running prison rodeo in the nation, which got its start in 1965. The prison is Louisiana’s largest, with 6,300 prisoners, and it’s a maximum-security prison. The rodeo is professionally produced with rodeo stock contractors who provide the rodeo horses and bulls and professional judges. The contestants are prisoners who work on the prison’s beef cattle operation on the 18,000 acres. There is also a farm. I had a great seat and took some nice photos of bull riding, barrel racing, bareback riding, and wild cow milking. And, I had a gigantic smoked turkey leg for lunch!

Touro Synagogue, oldest in NOLA.

Cong. B'nai Israel in Baton Rouge.

 And lastly, when deployed I always look for a synagogue where I can pray on Friday nights. I call or email beforehand to let them know, and I’m always warmly welcomed. In New Orleans, I went to the Touro Synagogue, a Reform synagogue in New Orleans named after Judah Touro, the son of Isaac Touro, the namesake of the country's oldest synagogue, Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. The New Orleans namesake was founded just 28 years after the Louisiana Purchase, in 1828. When I went there it was packed. I also attended services at the oldest synagogue in Baton Rouge, Congregation B’nai Israel, which also happens to be the name of the synagogue where I was bar mitzvahed in New Jersey. The coincidences don’t end there, because it turns out that their rabbi’s last position was at a synagogue in Scottsdale, Arizona where I live now. Go figure. At the Touro Synagogue, a young woman asked me if I would help her mother whose home was damaged by the flooding. It turned out that she received a $30,000 FEMA grant and had some questions. I met her and her mother on my own time at a Starbucks one evening. Her mother was very sweet. “Is the money taxable?” she asked. No. “Do I have to pay it back?” No. “Should I take pictures?” Yes, and get a receipt for everything. “Can I use the money to buy lunches for the workers?” No. It was pretty straightforward. They were very appreciative.

I flew United back home to Arizona and Mary picked me up at the airport in Phoenix. On the ride back to Scottsdale my phone rang. It was an automated call from FEMA: Would I be able to deploy to North Carolina on Tuesday?