Many Louisiana Hurricane Gustav evacuees who ventured north this week to escape the wrath of whatever was coming were out of luck and in harm’s way, thanks to practices of hotel chains that, for whatever reasons, are putting them out on the street. They are finding their cash money is no good.

Whether for lack of preparation or lack of planning, many evacuees seeking shelter from the storm are running into a familiar echo among hoteliers in north Louisiana, particularly the Alexandria area, where stores were closing and gas was in short supply. Those who were smart enough to anticipate where the safest part of the state would be may have made hotel reservations when the storm was still around Haiti or Cuba.

Now that it’s here, those who evacuated as late as Friday or Saturday and tried to get a room ran into the old “no room at the inn” - “no vacancy” - signs.

Then, to add to the hurt, Alexandria’s convention center, used as a Red Cross shelter after Hurricane Katrina, was set up only for special needs evacuees. And the Rapides Coliseum, a blighted, old, circa 1960’s drafty, leaky, stadium dump of a Red Cross shelter, had “no new registrations” signs posted as early as the Saturday before Gustav made landfall in Louisiana.

It was only housing evacuees bussed in from several places around the state. Also, local shelters (schools, etc.) were only accepting local residents, said one evacuee who was turned down.

That left Monroe and Shreveport as the only two closest other cities with Red Cross shelters for evacuees, according to the state’s emergency info operators.

At hotels like Super 8, Ramada Inn, and others in Alexandria, those who got rooms were being told they had to leave “due to reservations”.

Now, who would get on highways and evacuate AFTER a hurricane heads their way? And the hotels wouldn’t accept money from guests already in rooms, so guests could not pay in advance for one day or one week and were forced to checkout. Most, if not all evacuees, had no relatives or friends in the area.

A call to FEMA got the response of “Louisiana hasn’t been declared a disaster yet”, so FEMA wouldn’t help. Also, FEMA was giving the city of New Orleans’ 311 info number or the state’s 211 or the Red Cross as the only further assistance, even for those outside the city of New Orleans.

Take the bus, go by car, but boating is not advised, as Katrina survivors on the Gulf Coast start leaving home for parts unknown. Here we go again. Paying the cost to live in America’s most unique city or the beautiful Gulf Coast.

Whatever the case, most of us love where we live, and don’t really want to live anywhere else. And we pay the price, in losses from hurricanes - utterly destructive forces of nature that threaten all coasts of this country, that are called cyclones when on the west coast.

Other kinds disasters, like wildfires, tidal waves, or landslides, can strike anywhere, and you can’t always predict them, as with hurricanes, so at least we have warning systems in place, to give us time to think.

And thinking ahead is a key to avoiding a disaster. We’ve got to think of what we’ll do in case of a hurricane BEFORE it hits. So - don’t even THINK about hunkering down and going without power or water for at least a few days. The one thing you don’t need to think about is whether or not to evacuate when advised to do so.

With law enforcement in place to prevent looting in New Orleans and surrounding areas, the shameful stuff we saw after Hurricane Katrina won’t be seen this time. Besides, anyone found outside in these areas will be arrested, reportedly to be taken straight to the infamous Angola State Prison for booking. And Hurricane Gustav looks like it’s gonna be such a threat that it’s not worth taking a chance for anybody except first responders to stay behind…don’t even THINK about it!

As the City of New Orleans, State of Louisiana, State of Mississippi, and the rest of the Gulf Coast - still already ravaged by Hurricane Katrina three years ago - prepares to defy yet another tempest of the sea called Gustav, FEMA has issued no public media statements regarding the impending threat.

Is this just a repeat performance or a deliberate, calculated step in introducing the Gulf Coast to the new “FEMA of 2008?”

I checked out the old Craiglist Katrina board, and I am pissed off. It seems some peeps still think ALL of us Katrina people got these big checks for $5000 or 2000 or whatever. Not true! And that’s jus ONE of the stupid things people think about us. Seems like we are outkasts in some places. Not ALL Katrina survivers are moochers and thugs!

The folks at CNN who uncovered $85 million in unused Hurricane Katrina goods a few weeks ago have found yet another bone for Hurricane Katrina survivors to pick at.

The CNN investigation found that Mississippi, the state hardest-hit by Katrina’s wind and storm surge, was one of 16 states that had reportedly received surplus supplies meant for Katrina victims, but not followed through in distributing the goods to the intended recipients.

According to the news network, coffee makers, cleaning supplies, dishes, linens, clothes, and shoes all ended up with Mississippi state agencies, prisons, and schools.

Also, CNN reports, a spokesperson for a state agency that handled the surplus said, “There may be a need, but we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property.” (GASP!)

Other media reports state that non-profit organizations must qualify through Mississippi’s Department of Finance to be allowed to buy the surplus supplies and for more info, to contact that department at (601) 939-2050.

I am a Katrina survivor and I have been diplaced here in Cleveland,Oh.I here very little about the efforts about the road home program to get back to New Orleans and I feel as though I am being left out of all that is intitled to me. I have been here in Cleveland, Ohio for 2 and a half years now and the job situation absolutley sucks to the core. The best that I can do here as far as a job here is to work through a temp service and more times than usual I do good to get sent out 2 days a week if that often. At least in the Big Easy there is plenty of work even if I have stay in a boarding house until I could find a place there, but I would still have to maintain what I have here at the same time here. Im at my breaking point and we all got ripped off big time by our government in more ways than one. Something has to give becuse something sure aint right

Not only is FEMA getting out of the ice-supply business after a disaster, but seems to be trying to distance itself from the notion of the agency as a temporary housing solution.

FEMA banned further use of its poison-laced travel trailers as an option for temporary housing in October 2007, because of the formaldehyde.

But last week the agency released its 2008 disaster plan, with revised guidelines for use of its trailers in “unusual and extraordinary disaster conditions”, and furthermore placing the burden of choosing the temporary housing squarely upon the shoulders of the state in which a disaster happens.

In releasing its disaster plan the agency stated that, as of May 29, 2008, there were 7,500 unused temporary housing units in its inventory, with only 889 units ready for use in response to disasters.

Suppose a major, destructive hurricane was headed for your home and you and your family had to evacuate NOW?

As the price of a gallon of regular gas has soared close to the dreaded $4.00 per gallon national average, do you have the money and could you afford to fill up your gas tank TODAY?
Please take a quick survey! Look for the results to be published here soon!

FOUND! In New Orleans, a group of volunteers from actor-turned-activist Sean Pitt’s personal crusade to save the Earth - the “Dirty Hands Caravan” - descended on the city during the last weekend of Jazz Fest. Several members who had traveled all the way from a California desert alternative music festival to K-Ville stayed in K-Ville.

KatrinaConnection.com has received thousands of visits, page views, and many thousands of hits from folks all over the world looking for updates (thanks). And (whew!) I tried hard to find out where the Caravan had landed.

With no major local media focused on them this group of twelve quietly decided to stay and help rebuild in the Central City area of New Orleans, a particularly damaged, neglected, high-crime section of this flood-ravaged town.

Through some miracle of divine intervention, the group appears to be based at my church where I had not been inside since LAST Sunday (the day the group was originally scheduled to get to New Orleans). And I have the pleasure of personally meeting the Dirty Hands I’ve been trying to find since last week!

So, anyone loooking for “in yo’ face” Dirty Hands this week can get an update right here on the KC blog, and I know they’re doing some good things here in K-Ville! Can’t wait to tell you about ‘em. Check back soon!

WOW! God is SO cool!

Anything sound familiar in our nation’s horrifying response to the horrifying disaster in Myanmar? Given the eerily ironic, deja vu feeling as our hearts go out to all those affected, KC won’t get involved in partisan politics, so you are invited to THINK PROGRESS for some outstanding reminders of where that feeling comes from. Thank God it’s not happening here and now.

An African-American family in the New Orleans area are victims of a hate crime so hideous, it’s not been seen or done in years. But it sends a loud message to the new homeowners…and America (Full story and video)

In post-Katrina America, it’s sad that the incendiary injustice done to New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina somehow prevails today in the form of racism or prejudice toward some of the city’s survivors, who, by all rights, should have overcome in 2005.

From nationally-recognized nooses in Jefferson Parish to the behavior in this story, the New Orleans area, that proverbial melting pot of American culture, must overcome all biases, welcome and strive to bring any and all of its area Katrina-surviving residents back, and work together to ensure a better quality of life, uncluttered by racism or prejudice, in order to return in glory and assume a rightful spot in America.

Whoever it is on the legal team at State Farm headquarters in Bloomington, Illinois that does not want to add insult to injury suggested this olive branch:

State Farm Insurance Company has reached a settlement with a Mississippi couple.

A few weeks ago a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in New Orleans ordered a new trial and threw out a lawsuitthe couple filed against the insurance giant for denying their claim of hurricane Katrina damages.

In 2007 a Gulfport jury had awarded the couple $2.5 million in punitive damages, reduced later to $1 million by the judge. The panel said the judge shouldn’t have allowed jurors to consider punitive damages in the first place.

I always wonder how all those people find time to be on the streets of New Orleans - or anywhere in any city for that matter. But for some reason or another it seems that Canal Street is always crowded, the malls are always busy, and things like the Jazz Fest draw crowds on a Friday afternoon, makin it look like something bigger than I saw even before Katrina.

WOW! Don’t you people have jobs..don’t you work? Then I wish somebody would give me the secret and tell me–but only if u r not a banker, how the f— do you have the time to spend a whole afternoon listening to music?!?

I think i need some time-management classes or somethin’.

Oh…must be the tourists, visitors, and peeps just wantin to come back home…thank you all.

Tammy Gillespie, a married mother of three from St. Bernard parish who is a hurricane Katrina survivor living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, won $20,000 in the Tennessee Lottery second-chance drawing.

“You’re serious? You have no idea what this means!” Ms. Gillespie told Rebecca Hargrove, President and CEO of the Lottery, during the surprise phone call Ms. Hargrove made to share the good news. “We’re Katrina survivors and we’re trying to go back home. I just can’t even believe this is happening to me …Tennessee has been so good to us!”

Congratulations, Tammy!

Let me tell you a little story about a EMT who worked in New Orleans long before katrina. He lived over on the Ms. gulf coast and did the responsible thing and evacuated his family out of harms way. He was far from rich and he was barely able to keep his families head above water (pardon the pun).

He left town with 100 bucks for gas and food and no idea what would happen to him. Luckily he worked for a good co. and they found a safe place for his family to go. The only downside was, as soon as they were safe he went to the superdome to help with all the poor, unfortunate, and downright ignorant people who refused to leave.

Upon arrival he was cussed at constantly and berated by the citizens he was there to help. He went without sleep for days, taking care of the sick and dying. There was no air conditioning and the temp soon rose to over 100 degrees. You couldnt even wipe the sweat from your forehead because of the possibility of cross contamination into your eyes. All the while the doctors and nurses that were sent from all over the country to help were being yelled at and treated like shit by the residants of N.O.

You had tourists there from germany and england that could not believe the peoples behavior. You fought and yelled and screamed like little babies. Everyone was scared, alot of people had lost everything, so what gives you all the damn right to make it personal. The only person responsible for your plight at that time was yourself.

Allow me to fast forward a couple of days. After being shot at and working on a MP that was shot, my company decided it probably was not safe anymore. On my way to a helicopter I was punched in the face and had feces thrown at me. “How Civilized”  I was evacuated to I-10 and causeway, many of you remember the place, TV crews kept calling it the cloverleaf.

My company handed me a hot breakfast when I arrived. I noticed a young boy standing nearby looking at me as I opened the plate. Considering my last 72 hrs. I really had no appetite so I gave the plate to him. His mom took the plate from him!!!!! That pissed me off to the point of violence almost.

Here we were 1000’s of volunteers helping 10s of thousands of people get out of a city, and I personally wanted to give that little boy a plate of food and his Fn mother took the plate from him. Then I looked around and noticed all these people in line bitching and crying that they had no food or water. I had been there for 5 minutes and I noticed, just across the interstate mind you 10 tons of mre’s and another 10 tons of water. People were to lazy to go get it. Another lady came up to me and asked me for a coke. I handed her my bottle of water, she threw it back at me because it was not cold.

Photographers were trying to take pictures of patients on stretchers. I was removed from the situation and placed on another helicopter to be re-united with my family 5 hrs. later. Upon seeing my wife behind the wheel of the only car we owned now, my stepdaughters 92 acura hatchback, I got in the car and she informed me that we had lost everything. I broke down, finally, not because of my loss or because I was in a strange city with no friends and only my family to rely on.

I broke down because of you stupid, incencitive, ignorant citizens of New Orleans that didnt have enough sense to evacuate a bowl, even though you had a cat. 5 hurricane coming towards you and were told to leave. I hope you leave next time, I doubt anyone will come to your rescue again.