Houston's Clear Thinkers

January 8, 2008

Dr. Pou's fog of Katrina

This Dr. Susan Okie/New England Journal of Medicine article (H/T Kolahun) provides the most extensive analysis to date of the circumstances surrounding the tragic deaths of the nine New Orleans area hospital patients during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that led to the egregious prosecutorial decision to bring criminal charges against one of the treating physicians, former University of Texas Medical School physician, Dr. Anna Pou (previous posts here). Dr. Okie addresses the key question of why these nine patients died ". . . in light of the eventual evacuation of about 200 patients from [the hospital], including patients from the intensive care unit, premature infants, critically ill patients who required dialysis, patients with DNR orders, and two 400-lb men who could not walk." It's an important question to address, but not in the context of a criminal case.

The fog of war analogy is certainly appropriate. Even with as good information as we have about the horrific conditions at the hospital in the aftermath of Katrina, it's still hard to imagine how difficult it was making even basic decisions in the face of the breakdown of civil society and infrastructure. What we do know is that Dr. Pou, who was not experienced in providing emergency medical services in what amounted to a heavy combat war zone, was no ethicist on mission to make a political statement. Rather, she was simply a physician doing the best she could to make the right decisions under the worst circumstances imaginable. It should not surprise us if, with the benefit of hindsight bias, some of those decisions would not have been the ones that a reasonable physician would have made under better conditions.

Posted by Tom at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 20, 2007

A real insurance fraud

I've been meaning to pass along this James Q. Wilson/WSJ ($) op-ed that lucidly describes the crisis that has developed in property insurance markets along the Gulf Coast as a result of the litigation risk and attendant cost of clearly inapplicable claims being asserted against property insurance policies:

When Hurricane Katrina hit our southern coast, it was the worst natural disaster in American history, killing 1,800 people, forcing more than a million to evacuate the area, and putting four-fifths of New Orleans under water. In the struggle to recover from this event, people turned to their insurance companies for help. Thousands of claims were handled, but for some people there wasn't any coverage. The problem was they were not insured against flooding.

Insurance companies' policies are quite clear on this, and state insurance departments, including the ones in Mississippi and New Orleans, have approved these rules. The homeowners' policy issued by State Farm, for example, says that water damage from a flood, waves, tidal waves, or a tsunami are not covered. . . .

The reason for the exclusion of water damage is quite clear: Hardly any insurance company wants to encourage people to build or occupy structures in places where such damage is likely. If they did allow this, either the company would go bankrupt from losses it could not pay or it would have to charge a premium so high that hardly anyone could afford the insurance. Even without water-damage coverage, insurance companies paid out around $40 billion to Katrina victims. [. . .]

Not content with these policies and rules, trial lawyers and politicians in Mississippi demanded that insurance companies should be required to pay for flood losses even though they were not covered by the policies. Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a veteran of class-action suits, and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood worked together to create a lawsuit that would retrospectively ban the flood exclusion rule. (Mr. Scruggs was a major source of campaign money for Attorney General Hood.) At the same time, Rep. Gene Taylor from Mississippi urged Congress to require a retroactive payment of flood insurance. Never mind what the homeowners' insurance policies said or what their coverage was, demanding money to which they were not entitled became "good public policy." [. . .]

In time some measure of sanity was restored. A federal district court judge upheld the flood exclusion in insurance policies, a view that was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. More recently, the Fifth Circuit has affirmed that there is no coverage when an excluded peril (such as flooding) and a covered one (such as windstorms) both contribute to the same damage. A Louisiana state judge agreed that policies not written to provide flood insurance did not, in fact, provide it. . . .

But the return of sanity was of short duration. In June Mr. Scruggs filed a lawsuit against State Farm saying that it engaged in racketeering, and Attorney General Hood filed a new civil lawsuit -- and then followed up with another grand jury investigation contrary to his prior agreement with State Farm. One wonders how its claims adjusters feel when they are told that they are no better than members of the Mafia.

In light of all this, State Farm announced earlier this year that it would no longer sell new homeowners' policies in Mississippi, not to punish people there but because politicians had made it impossible to do business in an orderly way. In response, Attorney General Hood demanded that the governor order State Farm to write new policies. Gov. Haley Barbour replied, quite reasonably, that he does not have the authority to tell a private company that it must do business in his state. There will no doubt be congressional investigations of the insurance business because it did what it told people it was doing.

And Hood calls himself a public "servant" (see earlier post here)?

Posted by Tom at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 31, 2007

The Katrina legacy

The "News-Hurricane" category of this blog began with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The second post in that blog was this one in the early afternoon of Saturday, August 27, 2005, which was one of the first in the blogosphere warning of Katrina's potential danger to the New Orleans area and urging citizens to evacuate immediately. Unfortunately, most of the folks who stayed and lost their lives in Katrina probably had no way to read the recommendation passed along in the final sentence of that post.

Over the past two years, the "News-Hurricanes" category has developed into a cross-section of articles and blog posts on the various legal, economic and political issues involved in the rebuilding of New Orleans. On the two year anniversary of the storm, here are several more good ones:

Reason Magazine's Daniel Rothschild has traveled to New Orleans twenty times over the past two years reporting on the reconstruction. Here is the first installment of a three part series that is a must-read for anyone interested in the reconstruction of New Orleans;

The NY Times' Adam Nossiter, who has also reported extensively on New Orleans over the past two years, provides this article entitled "Commemorations for a City 2 Years After Storm;"

Moneyball's Michael Lewis writes about the risk of Hurricane Katrina;

Nicole Gelinas of City Journal writes on how the breakdown in law and order continues to hamper the rebuilding of New Orleans;

Ben C. Toledano argues that New Orleans effectively died long before the hurricane struck; and

This Associated Press story describes the difficult task of re-establishing New Orleans' small businesses, which were a major source of job loss after Katrina (a point made at the time). One of the most interesting aspects of the story is one small businessman's view on immigration:

"Trying to find workers, that's the toughest thing," [small businessman Robert] Thompson recalled. "The people we dealt with — craftsmen, carpenters, electricians, roofers — weren't home and if they were, they were decimated themselves."

Help did come in the first few weeks and months, in the form of workers from Honduras and Mexico who arrived in New Orleans to work in the rebuilding.

"Thank God for them, they were the work force for many, many months," Thompson said.

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August 27, 2007

In Dr. Pou's words

Dr. Anna Pou (previous posts here), the former faculty member of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, performed heroically in the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For her heroism, she became the main subject of one of the most egregious examples of prosecutorial misconduct in recent memory. In this extensive Newsweek article, Dr. Pou finally tells her side of the story and it magnifies the enormity of the injustice that a few irresponsible Louisiana state officials have put her through. The following are a few tidbits:

What was it like after the levees broke?

Monday after the storm passed, we figured, ‘OK, minimal damage; we began organizing how we were going to evacuate the hospital.’ We didn’t have full power so we needed to move patients. Tuesday morning we were planning our day and one of the nurses called me to the window and said you’ve got to come see this. Water was gushing from the street. So we all kind of looked in disbelief. What is this? We could tell the city was flooding, you could see water down Claiborne Street. It was rising about a foot an hour. Then the whole mood at the hospital changed and what we were doing changed. We were in hurricane mode and we had to go into survival mode because we knew we had to be there for some time.

How did things change on Wednesday?

Tuesday night, we lost generator power, and that changed things a lot. ‘Til then we were on generator power so we did have some lights, and we did have some water. Water wasn’t clean, but it was running. But then we didn’t have water, we didn’t have any electricity, commodes were backing up everywhere. Conditions in the hospital started to deteriorate Tuesday night and early Wednesday. When that happens it makes care a lot more difficult. I was called to help suction a patient who had a tracheotomy but we had no suction running. We were going down to very, very basic care. You try every old-time method you can … [P]eople in charge were trying to get helicopters to come, [but] at that time we were told we were low priority. There were people on rooftops [who were going to get rescued first]. They said … there’s not going to be a lot of help coming, [so] what we decided [was] if helicopters were going to show up sporadically, we have to have patients ready and waiting to go. [. . .]

The conditions were unbearable. Inside the hospital it was pitch black, with odors, smell, human waste everywhere. It was very rancid. You would take a breath in and it would burn the back of your throat. The patients were very sick. That’s when we had to go from triage to reverse triage because we came to realize if patients aren’t being evacuated, [we had to deal with what we had]. Basically it was a general consensus that we’re not going to be able to save everybody. We hope that we can, but we realize everybody may not make it out. [. . .]

By the time Wednesday evening came around, if you can imagine in our mind, there is a central area that is a sea of people. A lot of very sick patients in that central triage area. It’s grossly backed up. Few patients had been evacuated. So there was just enough space to walk between the stretchers. It is extremely dark. We’re having to care for patients by flashlight. There were patients that were moaning, patients that are crying. We’re trying to cool them off. We had some dirty water we could use, some ice. We were sponging them down, giving them sips of bottled water, those who could drink. The heat was—there is no way to describe that heat. I was in it and I can’t believe how hot it was. There are people fanning patients with cardboard, nurses everywhere, a few doctors and wall-to-wall patients. Patients are so frightened and we’re saying prayers with them. We kind of looked around at each other and said, “You know there’s not a whole lot we can really do for those people.” We’re waiting [for help]. The people in that area could have [been evacuated] by boat but no boats were coming. I would do what I could with the nurses: changing diapers, cooling patients down with fanning. It wasn’t like, “I’m a doctor, you’re a nurse.” We were all human beings trying to help another human being, whatever it took.

What happened Thursday?

On Thursday morning we were told nobody was coming and we had to fend for ourselves. Everybody was kind of like at a loss here. What is plan B? Or plan C?

How did you come to be the one administering the injections? Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti made a point of saying you had administered medication to people who were not your patients.

This was an emergency situation. There were no LifeCare doctors. In an emergency situation, the patients become everybody’s patients. What are you supposed to do if a patient needs to be cleaned and have IV fluids, say, “You’re not my patient, good luck”? That’s absurd. If that’s the case I dare say three-fourths of the population of Memorial Hospital would have been left without a doctor. We’re in medicine because we care about people. This is what we do. We don’t run around murdering people. That’s why what he said is so ludicrous.

When did you leave the hospital and who was still there when you left?

I left Thursday around 6 p.m. in a helicopter. When I left no one was in the hospital. There were a handful of patients on the helipad. I went to [another hospital and then] on a bus to Baton Rouge because my family was there.

How did you feel?

I was tired but I was more in total disbelief that the sick and the poor could be abandoned the way that they were in the United States of America. I never thought I would ever live to see that day. I was sad, heartbroken, kind of amazed and shocked at the lack of organization—the fact that there was no type of coordination. I have friends who practice in the third world and this was less than third world.

What was it like to be arrested in 2006?

I had [performed] surgery that Monday. It was bedlam in the medical community after Katrina. I had surgery Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and clinic on Friday. And the attorney general’s office knew that. I was taking care of indigent patients. He put my patients at risk. I am still angry about that. And then I was basically sitting by myself eating a salad, still in scrubs. I was starving and really dehydrated because I had been on call the weekend and been up 48 hours before. There was a knock on the door. It was four agents from the attorney general’s office.

The whole way [to jail] I was asking God to help my family get through this. I have nieces and nephews, and my hospitalized patients, who found out about this on the 10 o’clock news, which was heinous. Had I known [about the arrest], I could have spoken to my patients. Instead I just don’t show up and they see me on the news. There were cancer surgeries that had to be rescheduled. These patients’ treatments were delayed because of what happened. I am still furious about it. It just really makes me mad.

There is much more, so read the entire article. Again, I ask -- where is the investigation of the public officials who are responsible for attempting to organize this lynch mob against this hero?

Posted by Tom at 12:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 20, 2007

What does the investment of a billion dollars in New Orleans generate?

According to this NY Times article, apparently not much:

Six inches.

After two years and more than a billion dollars spent by the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild New Orleans’s hurricane protection system, that is how much the water level is likely to be reduced if a big 1-in-100 flood hits Leah Pratcher’s Gentilly neighborhood.

Looking over the maps that showed other possible water levels around the city, Ms. Pratcher grew increasingly furious. Her house got four feet of water after Hurricane Katrina, and still stands to get almost as much from a 1-in-100 flood. [ . . .]

New Orleans was swamped by Hurricane Katrina; now it is awash in data, studied obsessively in homes all over town. And the simple message conveyed by that data is that while parts of the city are substantially safer, others have changed little. New Orleans remains a very risky place to live.

The entire flood system still provides much less protection than New Orleans needs, and the pre-Katrina patchwork of levees, floodwalls and gates that a Corps of Engineers investigation called “a system in name only” is still just that.

The corps has strengthened miles of floodwalls, but not always in places where people live. It has built up breached walls on the east side of one major canal, but left the west side, which stood up to Hurricane Katrina, lower and thus more vulnerable. It has not closed the canals that have often been described as funnels for floodwaters into the city. [. . .]

As a result, the city still lacks a system that can stand up to that 1-in-100 storm, let alone one like Hurricane Katrina, which the corps calls a 1-in-396 storm. The work that could build the more robust system — originally estimated at $7 billion, and now at least twice that — will not be completed until 2011 at the earliest, and experts agree that even that level of protection will be less than the city needs.

The corps is working on a two-year, $20 million study to find ways of providing even more protection, but it will not even be released until December.

Read the entire article. As noted in many posts over the past two years in the hurricane category of this blog, the performance of the various federal, state and local governmental entities in rebuilding New Orleans has been generally abysmal, at best.

Posted by Tom at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 23, 2007

Dr. Pou's defense goes on the offensive

The state's threat to prosecute Dr. Anna M. Pou for murder is a sad reflection of the incompetence in the Louisiana state government that permeated the preparations for and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After almost two years now of legal limbo, Dr. Pou's defense team is fighting back:

Dr. Anna Pou - the physician arrested in the deaths of four patients at a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina - filed suit against the Louisiana Attorney General on Monday, accusing him of using her arrest to fuel his re-election bid.

The suit, filed in state court in Baton Rouge, also seeks to force the state to provide a legal defense for Pou against civil lawsuits filed by families of three of the patients.

Last year, State Attorney General Charles Foti claimed Pou and two nurses killed four people with a ‘‘lethal cocktail'' at Memorial Medical Center during the chaotic conditions after the August 2005 storm. The four were among at least 34 who died at the sweltering, flooded hospital in the days following Katrina. Pou, who is free on bond, has not been formally charged. A New Orleans grand jury is looking into the case.

Foti had Pou arrested, ‘‘called an international press conference the next day to announce the arrest, made extra judicial comments totally contrary to the Rules of Professional Responsibility, and culminated the week's activity with an attorney general fund raiser to showcase his ‘achievements' in the arrest of Dr. Pou and the two nurses,'' the suit says.

Foti was not immediately available for comment . . .

Go Dr. Pou!

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July 15, 2007

Katrina evacuees and the enduring nature of poverty

In the summer of 2005, tens of thousands of citizens from the New Orleans area relocated to Houston and other cities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, most of whom never returned to their former home. A substantial number of those evacuees were poor and largely unemployed in the depressed New Orleans-area economy that existed even prior to the destruction of Katrina. Thus, the hope was that those evacuees would be able to improve their living standard by starting anew in economically vibrant areas such as Houston.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case. As this Jacob Vigdor post notes, research on the Katrina evacuees is indicating that the syndrome of poverty is extremely difficult to change:

Should governments help residents of depressed regions move towards more prosperous areas? Evidence from Katrina evacuees suggests that such efforts are likely to fail. The fortunes of long-term evacuees are almost completely unrelated to the characteristics of the cities to which they relocated. [. . .]

What can the world learn from the experiences of Hurricane Katrina evacuees? As indicated in other recent research carefully examining the impact of residential location on employment, moving a poor, undereducated citizen from a declining urban area to the middle of a vibrant economy is not likely to be a quick, cheap way to find him or her a job. While participants in a voluntary relocation programme would almost certainly be exposed to less personal trauma than Katrina evacuees, the survival instinct alone appears to be insufficient to guarantee success. Particularly in nations with social welfare systems more generous than the American model, the result of any such programme seems quite likely to increase, rather than assuage, drains on the public budget in the short-to-intermediate term.

Posted by Tom at 12:41 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

June 11, 2007

Act of God or Man?

It's hurricane season in the Gulf Coast region, which always generates some interesting issues involving insurance markets and liability (see also here). Along those lines, this Tim Haab post discusses an interesting case arising from the floods of Hurricane Katrina regarding the difference between an Act of God and an act of man under a homeowner's insurance policy. A good reminder to pull out your homeowner's policy and review what type of damage is covered and what's not in the event of a hurricane.

Posted by Tom at 4:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 12, 2007

A case study in governmental incompetence

Just about the time that you think that the bureaucratic bungling of allocating governmental relief funds for New Orleans cannot be topped, another story appears to top the previous one:

In a hurricane-ravaged city desperately lacking health services for the poor, the primary-care clinics that arrived in New Orleans last summer looked to be just what the doctor ordered.

The six double-wide trailers from FEMA, each equipped with eight exam rooms, were supposed to be strategically deployed around the city and provide checkups and other nonemergency health services for the city's poor and uninsured.

But nearly nine months after they were first delivered, the trailers are still in the parking lot of University Hospital waiting to be deployed, and Louisiana State University officials are angrily asking how the seemingly simple process of bringing them into service got delayed by red tape and political foot-dragging. [. . .]

LSU hospital officials began planning for a temporary network of neighborhood clinics in early November 2005, barely two months after Hurricane Katrina knocked Charity Hospital out of commission and threw health-care services for many of the city's uninsured into disarray.

Eight months later, in late June and early July, FEMA delivered the trailers to New Orleans, with the $761,000 bill picked up by the federal government.

It wasn't until last week that the New Orleans City Council agreed to temporarily waive the city's zoning code to allow the trailers to be located at six schools around the city -- three on the east bank and three in Algiers -- for two years.

In between fell more than 100 meetings and dozens of e-mails about the issue involving LSU executives and officials at the city, state and federal levels. And the journey is not over. The zoning waivers still need approval from Mayor Ray Nagin, which cannot occur until next week at the earliest, as well as permits from the city that could take up to six months to acquire.

Donald Smithburg, who heads LSU's hospitals division, said university officials have stood ready to operate the clinics -- each of which require one doctor, two nurses and administrative staff -- since last summer, which is when LSU officials first approached the City Council about a zoning change for the clinics.

He said he was flummoxed by the continued delays. "It's been a procedural mystery as to how we get these trailers placed," Smithburg said.

Read the entire sordid tale.

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February 5, 2007

Update on the case of Dr. Pou

Speaking of prosecutorial excess, the case of Dr. Anna Pou -- the former University of Texas Health Science Center professor and physician who was arrested last year in Louisiana on wrongful death charges for her actions in attempting to save lives during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- was back in the news last week. The New Orleans coronor announced that he had not found evidence that would show that the cases were homicides, although he noted that he was continuing to gather evidence and had reached no final conclusion.

Dr. Pou's case was transferred to Orleans Parish after Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti had labeled her and two nurses who were assisting her during the chaos as murderers. Just to make sure he got the most publicity possible for his lack of prosecutorial discretion, Foti repeated those charges on 60 Minutes several months ago. Ultimately, the decision on whether to prosecute will come down to Eddie Jordan, the District Attorney of New Orleans, who is still planning on presenting evidence to a grand jury. With the the coroner’s current classification, what on earth is there to present to a grand jury?

Posted by Tom at 5:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 31, 2007

New Orleans may still be a mess, but at least fraud is under control

This Christopher Cooper/Wall Street Journal ($) article on the inability of the federal, state and local governments to administer the vast amounts of aid appropriated to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region was published over this past weekend, so the story was not widely discussed around the blogosphere. But the story it tells is instructive regarding the inefficiency of government administration in comparison to entreprenurial activity in achieving the goal of rebuilding the region:

It's been almost 17 months since Hurricane Katrina pounded coastal Mississippi and southeast Louisiana, and about a year since Congress authorized the bulk of its rebuilding aid for the region. More than four months have passed since President Bush visited New Orleans on the anniversary of the storm and extolled the "amazing" reconstruction effort.

But a review of the devastated region shows that rebuilding is in a deep stall. Tens of thousands of residents remain displaced as authorities dither over how to disburse housing assistance. Many crucial infrastructure projects have yet to start. Of the tens of billions appropriated by Congress, half remains unspent.

There are many culprits. Among them: the size of the disaster, which continues to overwhelm agencies charged with rebuilding; the crush of competing bureaucracies, which has delayed many projects including the Bay St. Louis bridge; and weak local leadership.

In addition, many reconstruction efforts are ensnarled in spools of red tape spawned by a bevy of old and new government procedures. A prime example: an obscure set of 30-year-old Congressional rules designed to combat corruption known as the Stafford Act.

According to the White House, the federal government has provided $110 billion for the Gulf Coast region. But nowhere near that amount of actual cash has been made available. The total is spread over five states and covers damage done by three separate storms. Some of it consists of loans. A chunk comes from government insurance payouts that ultimately derived from premiums paid by homeowners themselves.

Of $42 billion given to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency has spent only $25 billion, federal records show. Most of that went to temporary housing, debris removal and emergency operations in the early days of the disaster. It has spent more than $4 billion on administrative costs.

Louisiana says the Army Corps of Engineers has spent only about $1.3 billion of the $5.8 billion it received to repair the levees in and around New Orleans. Only about $1.7 billion of the $17 billion received by the Department of Housing and Urban Development has made its way to the streets, the agency says.

In New Orleans, officials say they have received only about 14% of the estimated $900 million in reconstruction money they estimate is needed to fix the ruined city. "We have lots of meetings," says Cynthia Sylvain-Lear, the city's liaison with FEMA.

The article notes a particularly stark example of the difference in effectiveness between government adminstration and private enterprise:

In August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina flattened two bridges, one for cars, one for trains, that span the two miles of water separating this city of 8,000 from the town of Pass Christian. Sixteen months later, the automobile bridge remains little more than pilings. The railroad bridge is busy with trains.

The difference: The still-wrecked bridge is owned by the U.S. government. The other is owned by railroad giant CSX Corp. of Jacksonville, Fla. Within weeks of Katrina's landfall, CSX dispatched construction crews to fix the freight line; six months later, the bridge reopened. Even a partial reopening of the road bridge, part of U.S. Highway 90, is at least five months away.

So, the government cannot invest the funds appropriated to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region in a prompt manner. But at least fraud in the administration of those funds is under control. My sense is that the residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast would be willing to risk a good dose of fraud to achieve some results at this point. Harry Siegel, who has been studying the recovery of New Orleans over at the Manhattan Institute, has more.

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January 26, 2007

Does New Orleans really need this?

A week or so ago, this post noted that the local and state governments of Louisiana have to date failed to do what is necessary to jump-start the revitalization of New Orleans.

So, faced with such a record of failure, what does the local government of New Orleans do?

Hire former Houston mayor Lee P. Brown as a consultant.

As with Anne Linehan, this development left me speechless. But thankfully, Richard Connelly over at the Houston Press was able to pull himself together to place the hiring of Brown in perspective:

If you've ever asked yourself, as you've watched the post-Katrina morass of incompetence and violence that has engulfed New Orleans, whether that city has suffered enough, you have your answer. And that answer is "no."

N'awlins, get ready for...the magical world of Lee P. Brown!

Brown, who was Atlanta's public-safety commissioner during a famously inept serial-murder investigation, who was New York's police commissioner during the ineptly handled Crown Heights riots, who was Houston mayor while the HPD crime lab was run...eptly? Guess again!...has been hired to solve New Orleans' massive violent-crime problem.

If his time here is any indication, Brown will implement a two-pronged attack. He will a) bore everyone to death, using content-less, cliché-filled, charisma-free speeches to put criminals into a stupor; and b) take a lot of taxpayer-funded out-of-town trips. We're sure Rome and London need to be studied closely for tips on how to stop Ninth Ward gangbangers.

Brown told the Louisiana Weekly that "there is no silver bullet that is going to say that this is going to be done tomorrow...Working together, you can get the job done."

We're kind of surprised Brown didn't mention making New Orleans "a world-class city," but it's still early.

Connelly goes on to report that even residents of New Orleans are scratching their heads over what Brown is supposed to do.

Meanwhile, the prescription for government to revive New Orleans remains simple -- ensure law and order, provide basic services, create an environment where entreprenuers will take the risk of starting businesses that will create jobs that will attract residents to the area, and then get out of the way. If Brown passes that advice along to Mayor Nagin, then he actually might be worth whatever New Orleans is paying him.

But don't count on it.

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January 17, 2007

The struggle of recovery made worse

Although the Bush Administration's troubles in devising and implementing a workable strategy for bringing civil order to Baghdad receives most of the mainstream's media attention, the failure of government to facilitate order in New Orleans and rebuilding throughout the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast region is a more appalling failure (earlier post here).

It's not as if my expectations for government in the New Orleans region are all that high -- I'd be satisfied with ensuring law and order, making sure that basic services are provided and creating an environment where entreprenuers will take the risk of starting businesses that will create badly-needed jobs for the residents of the area. In this NY Times article, Adam Nossiter continues his series of excellent series of articles over the past year regarding the failure of the local and state governments in New Orleans to ensure law and order and the devastating effect that failure is having on the region.

Meanwhile, in another not as well-reported failure of government, this NY Times article reports on the Oreck Corporation's decision to move its maufacturing facility and 500 jobs from the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi to Tennessee, in large part because of the company's difficulties in arranging insurance for its operations in Mississippi. As Ted Frank observes, the lack of insurance coverage is the direct result of Mississippi courts expansion of the coverage of insurance contracts beyond their plain terms and the state legislature's response to those court decisions, which "has [made] things worse: criticize the businesses who have left, and seek to further regulate the price of insurance, despite thousands of years of evidence that limiting the price will reduce the amount supplied and lead to shortages."

But at least the region has (for this season anyway) a good professional football team, which continues to exist in New Orleans only because local and state governments in Louisiana found the time and resources to arrange several hundred million in emergency funding for the team and its facilities. And even that subsidy might not work in the long run. As usual, the government has its priorities in order.

By the way, while on the subject of interesting Ted Frank blog posts, don't miss this one.

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August 27, 2006

Taking stock in New Orleans

The NY Times continues today with another installment in its excellent The Katrina Year series focusing on the status of the rebuilding of New Orleans. To the surprise of no one who has ever been involved in the interplay of business development nad government bureaucracy, the re-development of areas of the city that are most attractive for investment has actually gone reasonably well, while the areas in which government subsidies are necessary to induce private capital to invest have lagged. Also not surprising is the fact that local governmental entities still have not been able to put together a plan for providing basic governmental services for redevelopment. So it goes.

As noted in posts here and here last year in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of the biggest problems confronting redevelopment of the New Orleans area was the storm's destruction of small businesses, which on an aggregate basis was the largest provider of jobs in the New Orleans area. This NY Times article reports on the struggles that small businesses in New Orleans have confronted in attempting to stay afloat in the year after Katrina and how many of the pre-Katrina small businesses have little hope of coming back.

Update: In this Opinion Journal editorial, the Wall Street Journal editorial board eviscerates the federal government's handling of the enormous amount of federal aid thrown at New Orleans in the year since Katrina.

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August 3, 2006

The best local source for hurricane info and analysis

Last August, the Chronicle's fine science writer, Eric Berger, began his popular SciGuy blog shortly before Hurricane Katrina hammered the central Gulf Coast. On the Saturday morning before Katrina hit, Eric and I were two of the earliest bloggers to recommend that people get out of New Orleans immediately and, in so doing, discovered each other. Since that time, Eric has become my go-to source for science information generally and hurricane information, in particular.

In this Chronicle article and related blog post, Eric predicts that there is a good chance that Tropical Storm Chris will become this season's first Gulf hurricane by early next week (but maybe not, too). As a result, if you haven't done so already, be sure to bookmark Eric's blog and check it regularly -- there is no better local source for hurricane information and analysis. His blog is yet another example of how weblogs have revolutionized the way in which specialized information is disseminated in American society.

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July 20, 2006

The doctor at the center of the Hurricane Katrina wrongful death prosecution

Dr. Anna Pou, the New Orleans doctor who heroically served severely-ill patients during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last summer, is at the center of the highly-publicized and controversial decision of Louisiana criminal authorities earlier this week to arrest Dr. Pou and two assisting nurses and charge them with second-degree murder in the deaths of four patients who died during that horrible time. She is also a former Houston-area resident, having served on the faculty of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston from 1997-2004, where she was the Director of the Division of Head and Neck Surgery from 1999 to 2004.

Today, this excellent NY Times article places in perspective the arrest and prosecution of this outstanding physician, who is a diplomate of the American Board of Otolaryngology, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a member of the American Head and Neck Society. Dr. Pou has authored more than forty publications, has also served on multiple committees of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, and has lectured in national and international forums on topics in otolaryngology, head and neck oncology, and microvascular reconstructive surgery.

In short, Dr. Pou is no murderer. This prosecution has all the earmarks of yet another lynch mob that is more interested in myths than reality, so watch it closely.

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June 27, 2006

An unintended consequence of Hurricane Katrina

Of all the consequences of Hurricane Katrina on the state of Louisiana, this NY Times article reports on one that I never expected:

State officials assumed that Louisiana's tax base had been battered by last year's hurricanes, but the latest figures show that the opposite occurred: more tax dollars than ever are pouring into the state's coffers as the budget year draws to an end.

The state predicted that tax collections would plunge by almost $900 million this year, and it slashed spending to match. Instead, a record $9.2 billion is on track to be collected by the time the budget year ends on June 30, and at least some of that tax flow looks as if it is likely to continue.

Part of the tax revenue boost has come from increased gambling at casinos and video poker machines located in the state, and higher energy prices has also helped increase tax and state royalty revenue. However, the biggest surge has come from sales taxes as hurricane victims have used federal aid and insurance proceeds to replace personal property. State officials estimate that the state will end up with almost a half-billion more in sales tax revenue than they expected before Katrina.

Meanwhile, the hulks of thousands of damaged cars remain under the highway overpasses of New Orleans as state and federal officials quibble over who will finance the cost of towing the scrap to landfills and scrapyards. And this NY Times article follows up on this earlier post regarding the "breathtaking fraud" that took place in regard to the federal aid that has flowed into the Gulf Coast after last summer's storms. So it goes in Louisiana.

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June 21, 2006

The city that time forgot

On the heels of articles noted in earlier posts here and here, the New York Times continues its excellent series on the enormous difficulties involved in the rebuilding of New Orleans with this article that reports on the city's strained public health system, which is attempting to cope with such things as a suicide rate that is three times higher than the pre-Hurricane Katrina rate. The article sums up the dreadful situation:

This is a city where thousands of people are living amid ruins that stretch for miles on end, where the vibrancy of life can be found only along the slivers of land next to the Mississippi. Garbage is piled up, the crime rate has soared, and as of Tuesday the National Guard and the state police were back in the city, patrolling streets that the Police Department has admitted it cannot handle on its own. The reminders of death are everywhere, and the emotional toll is now becoming clear.

Speaking of Hurricane Katrina, the Sun-Herald.com has compiled this extraordinary webpage that contains hundreds of "before and after" photographs of structures and landmarks affected by the storm. It's well worth taking a few minutes to peruse the pictures and contemplate the enormity of the destruction facing the Mississippi-Louisiana Gulf Coast region.

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June 20, 2006

The sad state of New Orleans

On the heels of this report that New Orleans has lost over 60% of its population since Hurricane Katrina last summer, this NY Times article reports that, despite billions of dollars in federal aid that is available, local New Orleans governmental officials cannot even agree on whether a government plan to faciliate the rebuilding of New Orleans is even being prepared, much less when such a plan will be issued.

Then yesterday, after a weekend of grisly violence, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin admitted that New Orleans police could not control the city's crime problems and requested that the state send National Guard troops to help patrol the streets of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, amidst such dire problems, enormous resources are being expended on the civic largesse of supporting the city's National League Football team.

What a mess.

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June 16, 2006

Checking in on the MARS platform

One of the enduring images of the catastrophic damage that last summer's hurricanes inflicted on Gulf Coast oil and gas production facilities was the picture to the left of Royal Dutch Shell PLC's MARS floating production platform (previous posts here and here), which was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina. As this Washington Post article reports, Shell has finished repairing the huge platform, just in time for this year's hurricane season. The article goes on to provide a handy overview of the importance of the Gulf Coast oil and gas infrastructure for meeting the nation's energy needs and the efforts to bolster the ability of that infrastructure to weather the severe storms of hurricane season.

Despite the massive repairs, the main improvement in the MARS platform to protect it from another severe storm is decidedly low-tech -- stronger and twice as many clamps to hold the drilling rig to the platform. Those clamps work against vertical and horizontal forces and, during Katrina's category 4-5 winds (the storm hit shore as a strong cat 3 storm), three inch steel bolts holding the previous clamps were sheared straight through. Although the old clamps had survived many storms, Shell engineers believe that the new ones will work even better.

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June 14, 2006

Hey FEMA, can you spare a dime?

So, you thought that the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to the damage from Hurricane Katrina last year left much to be desired? Well, this NY Times article reports that a recent Congressional investigation has determined that the agency's relief effort was stellar in comparison to its fraud management policies:

As much as $1.4 billion in government disaster aid to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — nearly a quarter of the total — went to bogus or undeserving victims, a new Congressional investigation concludes. [. . .]

The improper or fraudulent payments went to a dizzying array of con artists or other undeserving recipients, according to the analysis by the Government Accountability Office, which is set to announce its findings at a hearing Wednesday.

In one case, a man stayed more than two months on the government tab at a hotel in Hawaii that cost more than $100 a night. At the same time, he was getting $2,358 in government rent assistance, even though he had not been living in the property he claimed was damaged in the storm.

Emergency aid was used to pay for football tickets, the bill at a Hooters in San Antonio, a $200 bottle of Dom Perignon, "Girls Gone Wild" videos, even an all-inclusive weeklong Caribbean vacation, the report says. More than $5 million went to people who had provided cemeteries or post office boxes as the addresses of their damaged property.

FEMA also provided cash or housing assistance to more than 1,000 prison inmates, totaling millions of dollars; one inmate used a post office box to collect $20,000. . .

In another case, 24 payments, totaling $109,708, were sent to a single apartment, where eight people each submitted requests for aid eight times, each time using their own Social Security numbers.

Another person collected 26 payments using 13 different Social Security numbers — a total of $139,000 — even though public records show the individual did not live at any of the addresses reported as damaged. [. . .]

Investigators concluded that fraudulent or improper payments probably ranged from $400 million to $1.4 billion, leading them to settle on $1 billion as their most likely estimate, representing about 16 percent of the distributed aid. [. . .]

Representative Michael McCaul (Rep. Tex.), who is chairman of the House subcommittee that led the inquiry, is not pleased:

"When you have federal and state prisoners applying for the taxpayers' money — while they are in prison — and then the disaster aid, that is a real assault on the American taxpayer," he said. "I don't have any tolerance for that."

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June 7, 2006

More on the ripples of the 2005 hurricane season

This NY Times article reports on two recently-published Census Bureau reports that constitute the findings of the bureau's first study on the social, financial and demographic impact of the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last summer on the Gulf Coast region:

After the twin barrages of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, the City of New Orleans emerged nearly 64 percent smaller, having lost an estimated 278,833 residents, . . . Those who remained in the city were significantly more likely to be white, slightly older and a bit more well-off, . . . The bureau found that while New Orleans lost about two-thirds of its population, adjacent St. Bernard Parish dropped a full 95 percent, falling to just 3,361 residents by Jan. 1. [. . .] The black population of the New Orleans metropolitan area fell to 21 percent from 36 percent, the bureau found.

While the New Orleans area lost population, the Houston metropolitan area emerged with more than 130,000 new residents, many of them hurricane evacuees. Whites made up a slightly smaller percentage of Houston's population — 62.8 percent of the city in January compared with 64.8 percent last July, a month before Hurricane Katrina hit.

In Harris County, which includes Houston, median household income fell to $43,044 from $44,517, while New Orleans area's actually rose, to $43,447 from $39,793.

Interestingly, the reports debunk widespread speculation that the New Orleans evacuees who went to nearby Baton Rouge, where the population grew by nearly 15,000, were disproportionately poor. The evacuees who landed in Baton Rouge ended up being more middle-class, while the poorer evacuees ended up going to more distant cities, such as Houston.

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May 31, 2006

The storms of Katrina

With hurricane season officially starting tomorrow, this NY Times article about the research that has been done over the past year into Hurricane Katrina provides some interesting information, including the stages of the storm on the New Orleans metro area:

The first stage of Hurricane Katrina touched Louisiana as it passed south of the city in the Plaquemines Parish town of Buras with winds of more than 125 miles per hour pushing a storm surge. The wind and water overwhelmed the local hurricane defenses: levees built to withstand 13 feet of water were overwhelmed by more than 17 feet of surge, damaging levees and scattering homes and boats across the thinly populated parish like toys.

As the hurricane moved across Lake Borgne to the east, the effect was quite different: the second storm sent strong waves and a surge estimated at 18 feet or more back across the lake to the levees bordering St. Bernard Parish. The long levees there had been designed to handle 13 feet of water. The assault washed over Chalmette and other communities with floodwaters exceeding 14 feet in some areas. A similar pounding took out the southeastern levee of the development known as New Orleans East.

In its third incarnation, the storm sent the water up a funnel formed at the northwest corner of Lake Borgne and into the city's Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, where the water rose and churned with exceptional force, said Hassan Mashriqui, a researcher with the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. Those waters shattered flood walls in several places and destroyed the city's Lower Ninth Ward.

As the storm pushed into Mississippi, it sent a final surge toward New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain, north of the city. As the water stacked up against the south shore of the lake, it rose against the walls of the three main drainage canals that run from the center of the city. Though the surge was weaker than the others and the water did not reach the tops of the flood walls, the 17th Street Canal and the London Avenue Canal suffered breaches that caused the lake's waters to spill into the center of the city.

The NY Times article coincides with my reading over this past weekend of Douglas Brinkley's new book on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, The Great Deluge : Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (William Morrow 2006). Brinkley's book provides mounds of information, but is not particularly well-written, as reviewer Wilfred M. McClay notes in this blistering review:

Let me confess that I haven't read all of the writings of Douglas Brinkley. I doubt that anyone -- perhaps not even Mr. Brinkley himself -- has ever done that. He is a veritable ... deluge of literary productivity, with books to his credit on a dizzying array of subjects, ranging from Beat poetry to Jimmy Carter, and from Henry Ford to, most recently, the failed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Indeed, the range of his literary productions is so wide as to seem indiscriminate. But his bestknown writings seem to have three things in common.

First and foremost is their relentless mediocrity. I cannot think of a historian or public intellectual who has managed to make himself so prominent in American public life without having put forward a single memorable idea, a single original analysis, or a single lapidary phrase -- let alone without publishing a book that has had any discernable impact. Mr. Brinkley is, to use Daniel Boorstin's famous words, a historian famous for being well-known.

By the way, on pp. 14-25 of the book, Brinkley notes the Houston Chronicle's fine science writer Eric Berger and his landmark December 2001 Chronicle story in which Eric predicted the dire impact of a storm such as Katrina on the New Orleans metro area. Eric began blogging at the beginning of the hurricane season last year, and he and I crossed paths as we encouraged New Orleans residents to evacuate on that fateful Saturday before Katrina hammered the upper Gulf Coast even as New Orleans Mayor Nagin continued to delay calling for a mandatory evacuation. Eric's blog became one of the "go-to" sources of information during last year's historic hurricane season, and that experience made me a regular reader of his blog and writings. I have not come across a better blog on science matters for laypersons than Eric's.

As with the Chronicle's recent innovative coverage of the Enron-related trials, Eric's blog is another example of the Chronicle's trendsetting initiative -- inspired by the Chronicle's fine technology writer, Dwight Silverman -- in blending traditional news reports with blogging to change the way in which major news events are covered. Houstonians tend to take the local daily for granted from time to time, but we should all appreciate the Chronicle's willingness to embrace this innovation that has dramatically improved the delivery of important information to citizens.

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November 19, 2005

Fifth Circuit schedules return to New Orleans

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which relocated temporarily to Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (earlier posts here and here), issued this press release yesterday in which it made public its plans for returning to New Orleans next month. The court will begin moving back Dec. 16 and will be closed until Jan. 8, during which time only emergency matters will be handled. The court originally had planned to move to Baton Rouge as an intermediate step before returning to its longtime home in New Orleans' John Minor Wisdom Court of Appeals Building. However, conditions in New Orleans are stable enough to allow the 135 employees of the Court to return home. The Court has been using makeshift work spaces in the Bob Casey U.S. Courthouse in downtown Houston over the past couple of months.

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November 11, 2005

Need a job? Try New Orleans

Two and a half months after Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flood hammered New Orleans, this NY Times article notes that the rebuilding of the city is being hampered by a scarcity of labor, a condition that was noted in this earlier post.

Given the massive exodus of people from New Orleans and the relunctance of many former residents to return, my sense is that we are experiencing uncharted waters with regard to the rebuilding of New Orleans. The tremendous loss of jobs almost overnight -- particularly from small businesses that were destroyed by the damage from the flood -- is unprecedented in the modern United States for an area this large. Inasmuch as most of the jobs that are arising as a result of the reconstruction effort are of a different nature from the ones that were lost, many of the people who left New Orleans are not attracted to return by those new jobs. Consequently, my sense is that the key to real rebirth in the area is the re-creation of small businesses, which is a tricky and slow task.

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October 26, 2005

"Uh, remember that hurricane damage? Never mind"

Given what I endured last night, I'm in the mood for some disaster news.

As noted in this earlier post, BP Global had been going through a difficult stretch earlier this year when Hurricane Dennis (remember that one?) apparently caused the near total collapse of its huge $1 billion Thunder Horse Drilling Platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, never mind about that hurricane excuse.

BP has announced that the collapse was the result of "human error" rather than damage from the hurricane:

"After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that it was not storm-related, but was caused by a design weakness in the ballast system," Lord Browne of Madingley, BP's chief executive, said.

Translation: "Attention insurers! Grab your wallets!"

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October 25, 2005

Wilma devastates Cancun

If you were thinking about a holiday vacation in the popular Mexican resorts of Cancun or Cozumel, then you better start considering other alternatives.

As predicted earlier here, reports are now confirming that Hurricane Wilma devastated the Cancun and Cozumel hotels and shopping areas that are at the heart of Mexico's tourism industry. Hotels in the area will not open for the Christmas season because of the extensive damage, and early indications are that the area will not be in a position to take on large numbers of tourists until at least Easter weekend in 2006. Marriott International Inc. closed its three resorts in Cancun until at least the end of December and the Ritz-Carlton Cancun said it was closing and not taking reservations until the New Year. The two Hyatt Regency hotels will also be closed for at least a month. Hotel damage in Quintana Roo state -- where both Cancun and Cozumel are located -- is currently estimated at $1.5 billion.

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October 24, 2005

Hurricane Katrina's real economic impact becoming clearer

The damage from Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas production facilities has had a huge impact on national and international oil and gas markets over the past two months. However, from a regional standpoint, the biggest economic impact from Katrina has been the loss of thousands of jobs, particularly in small businesses. A couple of recent articles reporting on the latest governmental statistics and reports from lending institutions provide a clearer picture of the extent of the economic carnage.

Two NY Times articles (here and here) from last week report on the extraordinary job losses in the Gulf Coast region resulting from the hurricane and the effect that such job loss is having on cities and financial institutions in the region. Louisiana and Mississippi lost a combined total of 310,000 jobs in September, which raised their unemployment rates to a United States high of 11.5% and 9.6% respectively. These are staggering job losses for the region, and since most the losses are attributable to small businesses that were either uninsured or underinsured in regard to damage from the hurricane, the restoration of those jobs will be a painfully slow process.

Meanwhile, the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are expected to result in at least $1.3 billion in bad loans for major financial institutions in the Gulf Coast region battered by the storms. While most of the damage came from probably uncollectible loans to now-defunct businesses and consumers who lost their jobs as a result of the storms, the banks also lost substantial revenue from fees and interest that were waived to ease the financial pressure on storm victims.

Hibernia Corp. was the hardest hit as it reported a third-quarter loss of $58.1 million (37 cents a share) compared with year-earlier profit of $76.5 million. Hibernia reported that the two storms cost it almost $200 million in the latest quarter, including a charge of $175 million to boost loan loss reserve. Hibernia also suffered another $35 million in property damage, a quarter of which was uninsured. Similarly, Citigroup Inc., which is the largest U.S. bank by stock-market capitalization, had $3.6 billion in loans in the Gulf Coast region and the bank announced last week that it expects $375 million of those loans -- mostly consumer credit -- not to be repaid.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region will slowly regain a portion of its lost jobs over the next 6-12 months as the region's tourist business rebounds with the repair of convention and casino facilities. However, my sense is that a substantial portion of the jobs lost in the New Orleans area are gone forever. As a result, New Orleans business officials need to be concerned much more with promoting policies that will encourage job growth in their city than worrying about costly and unproductive (at least from a jobs standpoint) frivolities.

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October 22, 2005

Wilma devastates Cancun and Cozumel

Hurricane Wilma came ashore yesterday afternoon directly on the popular Mexican resort communities of Cozumel and Cancun as a devastating category 4 storm. Although damage reports are still skimpy because of poor communications to the area, there is high probability that both of these communities and the surrounding area will suffer catastrophic damage that in some cases will take years to rebuild. Suffice it to say that this area will not likely be in a position to accomodate tourists for an extended period of time. Jeff Masters puts the situation in perspective:

Wilma's landfall will bring enormous devastation to the 40 to 70 mile wide section of coast exposed to the intense winds of the hurricane's eyewall. A long period of calm lasting up to seven hours will accompany the passage of the slow-moving eye. During the next two days, Wilma will move very slowly over or just offshore the Yucatan. This will expose structures in the hurricane zone to very long duration hurricane force winds, likely making Wilma Mexico's most expensive hurricane disaster ever. Wilma's rains will add to the misery, reaching 20 inches or more over not just the Yucatan, but the western tip of Cuba as well.

Although the current track of the storm into Florida on Monday is still unclear, the current predictions are that it will not be a major hurricane (cat 3 or above) by the time that it makes landfall in Florida. That's good news for Florida and the U.S., but not much consolation for our friends in Mexico.

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October 20, 2005

Wilma!

This is getting very monotonous.

Hurricane Wilma moved toward Mexico's popular Cancun resort Wednesday as an extremely dangerous category 4 storm that has already become the most intense hurricane to form in the Americas since such storms began being recorded over a century ago. The National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that Wilma would be a significant threat to Florida by the weekend and could hit the western coast of Florida as at least a category 3 storm. About the only good thing about the storm's projected path is that it is far enough south at this point that it would probably not cause much additional damage to the Katrina and Rita-ravaged Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production facilities.

Wilma is on on a curving course that will likely go through through the narrow channel between Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Friday, then on a northeast track toward Florida. Wilma's confirmed pressure readings early Wednesday dropped to 882 millibars, which is the lowest minimum pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Atlantic/Gulf region (lower pressure = stronger storm). The strongest Atlantic storm on record had been 1988's Hurricane Gilbert, which registered 888 millibars.

For you hurricane junkies, that means that Wilma is stronger than Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina ever were, and is comparable to Hurricanes Rita and Allen at their peak intensities. Including Katrina and Rita earlier this hurricane season, we have now experienced the 1st, 4th, and 6th strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic/Gulf region. Wilma is the record-tying 12th hurricane of the season -- equaling the same number from the 1969 season -- and it is the Atlantic hurricane season's 21st named storm, which ties the record from 1933 and exhausts the list of hurricane names for this year. If there is another one, then it would be named after letters from the Greek alphabet, starting with Alpha.

As noted while covering Katrina and Rita earlier this year, my favorite sites for keeping up with hurricanes are the following:

Jeff Masters Wunderblog;

Eric Berger's SciGuy;

StormTrack; and

The National Hurricane Center.

Although there is a good chance that Wilma will weaken as it experiences wind shear and cooler Gulf waters during its approach to Florida, stay tuned. There remains a good chance that it will hit Florida as at least a cat 3 storm, which could make it the worst storm ever to hit the U.S. mainland during the month of October.

Posted by Tom at 5:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 10, 2005

Addressing the real problem in New Orleans

Edmund Phelps is the McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University. In this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed, Professor Phelps makes the remarkably simple but adroit insight that much of the political debate over the rebuilding of New Orleans from the damage of Hurricane Katrina is missing the true problem that bedeviled New Orleans:

The nation is still reflecting on the sight of New Orleans unprotected from Katrina and too feeble from poverty to run from it. Yet some basic issues have scarcely been debated.

So far, the focus has been on what to do about lost and damaged infrastructure. For our legislators and the public, that has raised fascinating questions of political philosophy. The federal government does not pay to defend New York state against Lyme disease or New York City against terrorist attack. So it is a question why it is a federal duty to pay for measures to protect or repair New Orleans from local storms.

The economist's answer is that a disrupted New Orleans has external costs on the farmers upriver and the producers everywhere who depend heavily on the city's great port to ship grain. At likely levels, New York's Lyme disease does not threaten the rest of the nation. Protecting Wall Street ranks high on that external cost test, but not high enough in the estimation of Congress. It is a matter of degree.

And then, Professor Phelps bores in on the real issue:

The talk about rebuilding, however, misses the meaning that most viewers found in the scenes from New Orleans. The impact lay in the helplessness of a large segment of the population -- helpless not because of infirmities for the most part, but because their earning power or their very employability was so meager that they lacked a car with which to get out of the city, or did not have the cash for weeks away from home. The scenes thus made vivid the failure of the Ameri