0
0
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, inflation in 1947: News Journal archives, week of Sept. 3
“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.
Sept. 3, 2005, The News Journal
A walk through hell in aftermath of Hurricane KatrinaNEW ORLEANS – With a cigar-chomping general in front, a camouflaged-green canopy of at least three dozen troop vehicles and supply trucks rolled through floodwaters Friday into a desperate city where some Hurricane Katrina survivors had died waiting for food, water and medicine….
Some people threw their arms toward heaven and others nearly fainted with joy as the trucks and hundreds of soldiers arrived in the punishing midday heat in a scene that looked like a relief mission to a Third World country.
Front page of The News Journal from Sept. 3, 2005.
But there was also anger and profane jeers from many in the crowd of nearly 20,000 who questioned why they had to wait four days and threaten to riot before they could get anything to eat or drink….
In the world-renowned French Quarter, armed residents hide behind ornate iron gates like prisoners in a frilly jail. Historic markers on Napoleonic-era houses share billing with signs that warn: “You loot, we shoot!”
At the convention center, where thousands have camped in the streets since Monday awaiting buses out of the city, the despair feeds on itself like a voracious beast.
When National Guard helicopters attempt to land with supplies in the parking lot, waiter Bob Vineyard joins a self-appointed crew to set up a safe perimeter. The crowd surges past them with an almost feral intensity, and the chopper can’t land. The soldiers drop cases of water and meals from 10 feet in the air. Many of the bottles burst on impact, the precious water left to evaporate in the hot sun.
“We would have had a whole helicopter full of food if you had stayed back!” Vineyard shouts….
Houston Mayor Bill White estimated more than 100,000 evacuees have fled to his city, more that the Astrodome and other makeshift shelters could accommodate….
Sept. 5, 1957, Wilmington Morning News
Arkansas governor fears arrest after blocking school integrationLITTLE ROCK, ARK. – Gov. Orval Faubus sent a telegram last night to President Eisenhower saying, “I am reliably informed that federal authorities in Little Rock have this day been discussing plans to take into custody by force the head of a sovereign state.”
At Newport, R.I., where the President is vacationing, White House press secretary James C. Hagerty said he has not been informed about Gov. Faubus’ telegram, or knows if such a message was received by Eisenhower….
Front page of the Wilmington Morning News from Sept. 5, 1957.
The governor’s announcement came on the heels of other developments in the explosive situation, which threatened to burgeon into a clash of federal versus state powers of historic proportions.
At Washington, Attorney General Brownell announced that the “investigative facilities of the FBI” have been assigned to gather facts on the Faubus’ blocking of Black pupils admittance to Central High School here by the use of National Guardsmen. The FBI agents will report to Federal Judge Ronald N. Davies, who ordered compliance with a school board plan for admitting some blacks to the previously all-white school.
Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Mann issued a statement blasting the governor for using the troops to enforce school segregation. Mann accused Faubus, whose Guardsmen barred nine Black students from enrolling at Central High, of creating tensions where none existed before….
Catch up on history: Virginia Tech shootings; Apollo 13 lands safely: News Journal archives, week of April 16
Sept. 6, 1947, Wilmington Morning News
$1 per pound butter looms as commodity prices soarButter at a dollar a pound in retail stores loomed today as food commodities again surged upward in the nation’s primary markets….
Advancing along with butter were such essential food items as eggs, lard, hogs and grains. Several commodities soared to prices never before attained.
Aside from heavy consumer demand, chief responsibility for the current upturn was placed mainly on the mid-summer drought in the Midwest and its damaging of the corn crop, used to feed livestock and poultry.
Butter, selling at 83 cents a pound wholesale for best grades, has advanced 25 cents since the low on April 22. Dealers said the hot summer has diverted milk away from butter and into ice cream….
Another outcome of the heat wave was ruined pastures, which took away one source of food supplies for cows.
Eggs, which brought 44 cents a dozen wholesale June 17, sold here today at 59 cents. Consumers, shying away from high meat prices, are creating a terrific demand for eggs….
Recent inflation news: Wondering why egg prices are high in Delaware? Here’s everything you need to know.
Sept. 9, 1957, Wilmington Morning News
Gibson, Anderson win national tennis titlesAlthea Gibson, the pride of Harlem, made good a seven-year quest for the U.S. Women’s tennis title, and a jut-jawed Queenslander named Malcolm Anderson emerged as the newest of Australia’s court killers.
Miss Gibson, recently crowned Wimbledon queen, became the first Black player to win a major American tennis championship when she routed Louise Brough of Beverly Hills, Calif., before a crowd of 12,000 at West Side Stadium, 6-3, 6-2.
Anderson – unseeded, unnoticed and unawed – stunned the gallery with a demonstration of rocket-like shot making in crushing Ashley Cooper, Australian champion and top-seeded favorite, 10-8, 7-5, 6-4….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Katrina aftermath, inflation in 1947: News Journal archives, Sept. 3
Two years after Hurricane Ida, a slow trickle of insurance and federal money for repairs
Two years after Hurricane Ida made landfall, just before noon on Aug. 29, 2021, the Category 4 storm’s lingering impact is still being felt across the 25 Louisiana parishes in its path.
Though Ida didn’t result in the kind of cataclysmic levee failures and flooding that made Hurricane Katrina such an historic disaster, its timing, a year after hurricanes Laura, Delta and Zeta, meant the combined effect on the insurance market was almost as great. Ida by itself was one of the most expensive storms in Louisiana history, with an overall economic impact estimated at $75 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
New Orleans firefighters assess the damage to the old Karnofsky tailor shop, which was affiliated with Louis Armstrong, after it collapsed on South Rampart Street during Hurricane Ida, on Aug. 30, 2021.
STAFF PHOTO BY MAX BECHERERThe hardest hit areas were in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, where the combined population of about 200,000, or about 77,000 households, suffered insured damages of almost $3 billion, an outsized portion of the $14 billion that Ida cost insurers across the state.
“I don’t think there was a home in Terrebonne that didn’t have some kind of damage,” said Chris Pulaski, head of planning and zoning for that parish.
The Louisiana Department of Insurance’s final estimates put insured losses elsewhere at:
- Orleans and Jefferson parishes combined — $4.7 billion
- St. Charles and St. John the Baptist — $2.3 billion
- St. Tammany and Tangipahoa — $1 billion
- 17 other parishes — $3 billion.
When Ida’s costs are added to the $10.5 billion cost to insurers from Laura, Delta and Zeta, the 2020 and 2021 hurricane losses almost equal Katrina’s $25.3 billion insured losses.
A wave of claimsAs the wave of Ida claims came flooding in, 11 insurance companies declared insolvency. A dozen more pulled out of the Louisiana market altogether, and at least 50 stopped writing new business in hurricane-prone parishes, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a nonprofit industry watchdog.
As a result, insurance premiums soared where home and business owners could even find coverage. Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-run insurer of last resort, has grown from 35,000 policyholders to 128,000 over the past two years, according to the Insurance Department.
Hurricane Ida storm surge flooding is seen in Kraemer.
PHOTO FROM NORTH LAFOURCHE LEVEE DISTRICTMichel Leonard, the Insurance Information Institute’s chief economist, said that whereas Florida’s insurance market turmoil in recent years had much to do with fraudulent practices, Louisiana’s trouble was mostly down to insurers being under-capitalized and not having enough reinsurance to withstand claims.
In an effort to shore up the market and bring down premiums, Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon secured $45 million earlier this year to offer insurance companies incentives to return to the state. It’s been slow going so far.
“Donelon acknowledged that the approved grants are only the first step toward potentially bringing down homeowners’ insurance rates,” said Leonard, adding that more structural changes will be needed. Among them: letting insurers derive premiums from what they expect in a climate change-driven world, rather than only from past events.
“To the best of our knowledge, we have not yet heard of any state that has moved from backward-looking to forward-looking rate setting,” Leonard said.
Bailout fund swampedMeanwhile, for people trying to get their homes and businesses repaired, the insurance turmoil has meant delay and uncertainty.
Hurricane Ian, which thrashed Florida and the Carolinas last year, has claimed the No. 3 spot.
Pulaski, the Terrebonne planning chief, said that while many thousands of his fellow residents have suffered much worse damage, his own struggle to claim insurance for repairs to his house in Houma reflects the common issues.
Hurricane Ida landed two trees on his house, which meant the roof had to be replaced at a cost of $115,000. Six months after the storm, his insurance company, Southern Fidelity, finally agreed to pay. But before contractors could be lined up, Southern went bust.
“So, now I have Citizens. But that’s a new policy and they won’t pay out on an old claim, so I had to go to LIGA,” Pulaski said, referring to the Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association, the state bailout fund that is financed by a levy on insurance companies.
The bailout fund, which normally has a staff of just a dozen employees, was overwhelmed by the insurance crisis and struggled to keep up. They have also been pushing back on claims such as Pulaski’s, arguing that they won’t necessarily approve higher payouts just because labor and materials costs have risen 30% since a claim was approved.
The hardest hitThen there were property owners with insufficient insurance or none at all. They now largely rely on government programs to help them recover.
Louisiana was allocated more than $3.1 billion in federal community development block grant disaster recovery funds to cover all the storms of 2020 and 2021.
That money is divided among 14 programs that target homeowners, small businesses, local governments and others. Claiming that money is a notoriously lengthy and laborious process, and only a fraction of it has been spent so far.
This aerial photo shows flooding of North American Shipbuilding and neighboring homes in Larose are seen flooded along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway after Hurricane Ida.
PHOTO FROM NORTH LAFOURCHE LEVEE DISRICTPat Forbes, executive director of Louisiana’s Office of Community Development, said about 4,000 grants have been processed for $300 million under the main home-building program, Restore Louisiana. That’s less than half the $680 million in the fund.
There is also about $900 million in grants available in programs to build affordable housing, none of which has been spent.
“We try not to make it slow,” Forbes said, but he added that there is an unavoidable process that can mean years before grant money translates into new housing, particularly affordable rental housing where the need is most acute.
A long wait”It has to go through a competitive procurement process. Then there’s all the environmental reviews” for the federal government, Forbes said. “Then, developers have to go and pay architects and engineers to design the things and then build them. That can take 18 months, two years, more.”
There is a similarly lengthy process for economic development grants for parish governments to spend on things such as repairing schools and replacing community centers lost to the storm.
Kristi Lumpkin, Lafourche’s director of economic development, said the parish has been allocated barely $9 million under the Hometown Revitalization program to spend in low- and moderate-income areas to restore public facilities. She said Lafourche is still waiting on a cooperative endeavor agreement from the state before it can proceed. Then there are “very strict” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines about what projects qualify for the money.
She said Lafourche expects it won’t see money from that program until May 2025.
This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Terrebonne throughout.
