Katrina Live Thread, Part XIII

28,000 National Guard troops are deployed to the disaster areas in Mississippi, Alabama, and to Louisiana, where SWAT teams are working to combat the looters and shooters in New Orleans. Additional 1400 National Guard troops are being deployed daily.

Shootings reported at a New Orleans hospital, rescue boats, and a military helicopter, while conditions continue to deteriorate at the SuperDome amid refugee deaths and chaos. Evacuation of New Orleans continues.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert has voiced serious doubts about rebuilding New Orleans with federal funds, while assuring the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida that the United States Congress stands ready to help them in their time of need. New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin issued a "desperate SOS."

Doctors at two desperately crippled hospitals in New Orleans called The Associated Press Thursday morning pleading for rescue, "We have been trying to call the mayor's office, we have been trying to call the governor's office ... we have tried to use any inside pressure we can. We are turning to you. Please help us," said Dr. Norman McSwain, chief of trauma surgery at Charity Hospital, the largest of two public hospitals.

The Port of New Orleans is now open to shallow draft vessels. Congress is reconvening in an emergency session. International offers to assist the U.S. have been received from Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, Jamaica, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, NATO and the Organization of American States.

Due to the number of requests to assist, the following list of some charities is provided.
This is not intended as an endorsement for any of the charities.

www.redcross.org or 1-800 HELP NOW - note: website is slow, and lines are busy
Salvation Army - 1-800-SAL-ARMY or Salvation Army currently looking for in-state volunteers - (888)363-2769
Operation Blessing: (800) 436-6348.
America's Second Harvest: (800) 344-8070.
Catholic Charities USA: (800) 919-9338, or www.catholiccharitiesusa.org.
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee: (800) 848-5818.
Church World Service: (800) 297-1516 or online at www.churchworldservice. org.
Lutheran Disaster Response: (800) 638-3522.
Nazarene Disaster Response: (888) 256-5886.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance: (800) 872-3283.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is accepting donations at its 3,800 stores and Web site, www.walmart.com.
National Black Home Educators Resource Association http://www.nbhera.org/

Baton Rouge real estate activity surges

By Keith Darce
Business writer

Baton Rouge has seen a flurry of real estate activity this week with thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees descending on the city.

Local realtors said Thursday that many families are buying homes in the Baton Rouge metropolitan area because they realize that a return to the Big Easy is a big time away. And businesses displaced by the storm are snapping up office and warehouse space in the state’s capital city because they realize it may be years before they return home.

Some consumers with solid credit scores and large down payments are getting virtually non-paper mortgages within days instead of the weeks the process usually takes.

Lynda Schlif of Realty Executives Integrity First Real Estate said that her office has been "swamped, swamped swamped.”

Schiff said her small firm posted sales volume of about $15 million last year and she expects that volume to rise 50 percent this year because of Hurricane Katrina.

"Hollywood couldn't write a worst script,'' said Arthur Sterbcow, president of Latter & Blum Inc. Realtors in New Orleans. Latter & Blum also owns C.J. Brown Realtors, Baton Rouge's largest real estate company. The Baton Rouge market -- just a fraction of New Orleans – will be hard pressed to accommodate the surge of evacuees.

"Baton Rouge is about to become the fastest growing city in America in about an hour,'' Sterbcow said from his temporary headquarters on Perkins Avenue in Baton Rouge. "This is the largest (relocation) operation in our company's history.”

Baton Rouge's population was 450,000 a week ago. “I bet you it is 650,000 today,'' he said.
Jim and Donna Vance, Algiers residents, are among the evacuees coming to the city. On Thursday they headed out to look at a house and Catholic High Schools in Baton Rouge. They even made an offer on a home, but by the time they did, the property had been sold.

“People are just going to have to act quick,” said CJ Brown agent Dave Caraccioli.

Latter & Blum manages between 7,000 and 8,000 apartments in the metro Baton Rouge area, and Sterbcow, who watched on CNN Wednesday night as a bare-chested "thug'' with a crowbar broke into Latter & Blum's main headquarters in downtown New Orleans, said that all of his rental units are leased.

Sterbcow has set up a relocation phone bank to handle the demand. His brokers and agents are helping New Orleans residents move to Houston, Atlanta and everywhere in-between.

He is convinced that New Orleans will return to its glory days, but that it may take residents and the nation 20 years to erase the psychological and economical impact Hurricane Katrina has created.

He also predicts, with other local Realtors agreeing, that Baton Rouge will become the fastest-growing city in the United States over the next year or two, surpassing the explosion of population and single-family home construction seen in Las Vegas

But Sterbcow is determined to return to New Orleans. "When the power is back on, I'll be sitting in my office at 800 Common St.,'' he said, downplaying any thought that the city will not be rebuilt, as some television talking heads have suggested.

One thing Baton Rouge has that New Orleans has always lacked is land, and Sterbcow expects a surge in single-family home construction and a real estate boom unimaginable to the area just five days ago.

Latter Blum/C.J. Brown is not alone in being flooded with requests for space.
David McKey of Coldwell Banker Phelps & McKey Realtors Inc. of Baton Rouge are buying both commercial buildings and homes.

"They don't have a choice, that's really the only alternative,” McKey said.

McKey’s staff fielded over 300 to 350 calls in two days from New Orleanians seeking commercial and residential space.

“We’ve just had two in a row looking to buy and they have no intention of ever returning to New Orleans,” McKey said.

McKey said that he expects the Baton Rouge real estate market to bounce dramatically. "I think this is going to go on not for months but for years,'' he said.

I copied this from "A Penitent Blogger".
It was also featured on "Good Morning America" today. ABC News is searching for this man, so far no luck.

On Monday of this week, WKRG-TV weekend anchor Jennifer Mayerle was reporting from the wreckage of Biloxi, Mississipi, when she asked a passer-by how he was doing.

Seconds later, she too was reporting through her tears, for heartbreak, despair, horror, and woe flowed from this man.

MAN: I'm not doing good.

REPORTER: What happened?

MAN: The house just split in half.

REPORTER: Your house split in half?

MAN: We got up in the roof, all the way to the roof, and water came and the house just opened up, divided…

REPORTER: Who was at your house with you?

MAN: My wife.

REPORTER: Where is she now?

MAN: Can't find her body. She's gone.

REPORTER: You can't find your wife?

MAN: No, she... I hold her hand as tightly as I could and she told me, you can't hold me. She said take care of the kids, and the grandkids...

The man identified himself as Harvey Jackson and his wife as Tonette.

The heartwrenching video is available in full on the WKRG website (RealPlayer format only)
rtsp://mgs.mgbg.com/wkrg/video/083105_jennifer_mayerle_man_on_street.rm
and an excerpt through a link from this CNN story
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/31/k

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