| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Mark K. Bilbo" |
| Date: |
12 Sep 2005 12:46:49 PM |
| Object: |
OT: Red Cross praised, FEMA still AWOL... |
"'Now, FEMA, that's a different story,' Burkhamer said. 'They haven't done
jack squat. I contacted them by phone, and they said they would be back to
me in two weeks. There is no one around here to see from FEMA. To get the
Red Cross hotel coverage, I didn't have to do anything.'"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9274186/
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
"We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long
after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have
been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing.
Many who could have been were not. That's to the
government's shame."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F2D511CBB
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| User: "Mike Painter" |
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| Title: Re: Red Cross praised, FEMA still AWOL... |
12 Sep 2005 05:24:48 PM |
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Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
"'Now, FEMA, that's a different story,' Burkhamer said. 'They haven't
done jack squat. I contacted them by phone, and they said they would
be back to me in two weeks. There is no one around here to see from
FEMA. To get the Red Cross hotel coverage, I didn't have to do
anything.'"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9274186/
When this town evacuates we go 10 miles West for shelter. By that time there
is no access to that town from any direction but ours so the big Red Cross
trucks can't get in.
There is no office there so local trained ARC people come in and run the
shelter with assistance from others in the community.
While taking their Shelter Operations classes help, any reasonable person
who has access to their book can run a shelter, take care of the people,
know who is there, and protect them from outsiders. (All to often there are
women in the shelters who don't want their ex to find out where they are)
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Red Cross praised, FEMA still AWOL... |
17 Sep 2005 04:39:53 AM |
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On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 07:46:49 -0500, "Mark K. Bilbo"
<alt-atheism@org.webmaster> wrote:
"'Now, FEMA, that's a different story,' Burkhamer said. 'They haven't done
jack squat. I contacted them by phone, and they said they would be back to
me in two weeks. There is no one around here to see from FEMA. To get the
Red Cross hotel coverage, I didn't have to do anything.'"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9274186/
http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0509/10/natio-309786.htm
Red Cross gains praise for paying hotel bills
By Blaine Harden / The Washington Post
LAFAYETTE, La. -- Harold Mitchell is hard pressed to think of anything
good that has happened since Hurricane Katrina chased him out of New
Orleans -- except that the Red Cross is picking up the $100-a-night
tab for his hotel here and he didn't have to do a lick of paperwork.
"It's about the best thing I can think of," said Mitchell, 65, a
teacher's aide in New Orleans who is sharing a double room at the
Lafayette Holiday Inn with three other members of his family.
In a massive, costly and little-noticed effort to calm a housing
catastrophe that reaches from Florida to Texas, the Red Cross has
quietly created an open-ended program that it says is now picking up
hotel bills for at least 57,000 people. Room charges are being paid
out of the $503 million that the Red Cross has collected so far for
hurricane relief.
The program began early this week, when several thousand hotels and
motels in and around the Gulf Coast area were notified by the Red
Cross that registered guests who can show that they lived in 256
storm-affected Zip codes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would
be eligible to have their unpaid room charges covered by the Red
Cross.
The program does not require guests to prove financial need, although
it does ask hotel managers to "please be judicious as you participate
with us in this program."
Though it is open to anyone who had fled Katrina, including the more
than 180,000 people who the federal government says are in shelters,
most of those who have taken advantage of the program are "those who
had the resources and transportation to evacuate themselves," said
Stacy Grissom, a spokeswoman in Washington for the Red Cross.
The fax that went to the hotels said 14 days would be covered, but the
Red Cross said Friday that the two-week limit will probably not be
enforced because tens of thousands of people in hotels and motels are
unlikely to have other housing options for weeks or perhaps months.
"It is not going to be 14 days and they are not going to be kicked out
of the hotels," said Grissom. "Our priority is to make sure these
people have a shelter over their heads."
She said the "analytical details" about how long it will last and how
much it will cost would be worked out in coming weeks as the Red Cross
gets a better handle on managing the largest single disaster in the
organization's 125-year history.
The hotel program appears to guarantee that Gulf Coast hotels, which
are jammed with evacuees from Pensacola, Fla., to Jackson, Miss., to
Lake Charles, La., will remain full for the foreseeable future.
"For our area, it is very good hotel business," said James Thackston,
general manager of the Hilton Lafayette, the largest hotel in this
city. With a pre-hurricane population of 110,000 people, Lafayette has
absorbed about 40,000 evacuees. Most of them are in private homes with
relatives and in hotels.
Covering hotel costs is something that the Red Cross routinely does
after house fires, according to Grissom. But the scale of Hurricane
Katrina, which Gulf State officials have said may have displaced as
many as 1.3 million people, has expanded the size and cost of the
hotel program to an unprecedented level, she said.
In contrast to this week's confusing and sometimes chaotic effort by
the Federal Emergency Management Agency to issues $2,000 debit cards
to evacuees, the Red Cross hotel program seems to be working smoothly,
with virtually no paper work for evacuees and a simplified billing
process for hotel managers.
"I have never seen anything with the government that is this simple,"
said Thackston at the Hilton here.
Guests who have documents showing they are residents of the affected
area codes merely have to request that the hotel send their unpaid
room bills to the Red Cross. They fill out no paperwork. The hotel
then sends a request for payment to a company that has been hired by
the Red Cross to manage the program.
At the Jackson Marriott, the largest hotel in Jackson, Miss., general
manager Tom Schweitzer said that only six of the guests in his
303-room hotel have so far asked for help.
At the Holiday Inn Select in Baton Rouge, a city that has doubled in
size with evacuees, a manager said that many guests already have their
hotel costs covered by insurance and have not applied for Red Cross
help.
"We are finding that if people have insurance or their own resources,
they are not using the Red Cross," said the manager, who declined to
be identified by name.
For evacuees who have been struggling in the past week to get any kind
of help from the federal government, the relative ease of getting the
Red Cross to pay for hotel room charges is striking.
"I called the Red Cross and told them I may not be able to vacate my
room before the 14 days run out and they told me it would probably be
extended," said Julie Burkhamer, 42, whose home in Mandeville, on the
north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, was damaged in the storm.
She and her husband and their two cats and a dog are staying in a $100
a night room at the La Quinta hotel in Lafayette. Their two weeks run
out on Monday.
"Now FEMA, that's a different story," said Burkhamer. "They haven't
done jack squat. I contacted them by phone and they said they would be
back to me in two weeks. There is no one around here to see from FEMA.
To get the Red Cross hotel coverage, I didn't have to do anything."
© 2005 The Washington Post
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Red Cross praised, FEMA still AWOL... |
12 Sep 2005 10:21:08 PM |
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On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 07:46:49 -0500, "Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster>
wrote:
"'Now, FEMA, that's a different story,' Burkhamer said. 'They haven't done
jack squat. I contacted them by phone, and they said they would be back to
me in two weeks. There is no one around here to see from FEMA. To get the
Red Cross hotel coverage, I didn't have to do anything.'"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9274186/
So are the atheist organizations that refused to help.
duke
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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