Rita Watch: Advisory 19

I learned this afternoon that my agency will be open each night this week until 7:00pm. We will also be open on Saturday 8:00am to 5:00pm and Sunday 1:00pm to 5:00pm. That's a lot of overtime when we've already had lots of overtime from Katrina.

This time we'll be taking Texas claims for Hurricane Rita. Other states are still handling Katrina claims, and the Louisiana Department of Labor opened a call center today to handle claims from Rita, I believe. There's so many different phone numbers now for different callers that the fraud vulnerability is going to be tremendous.

Lots of things have gone wrong with the Rita effort, but Texas evacuated twice the number of people as Louisiana. We also evacuated our nursing homes and hospitals. Yes, we had a terrible tragedy in Wilmer when that bus exploded, but all in all I believe we did a much better job than Louisiana. Michael Brown blamed it all on Louisiana government officials, and some of what he said is no doubt true. However, FEMA made plenty of its own mistakes and failed miserably.

Louisiana has long been more like a Third World country than like the rest of the US. I have said that ever since I traveled there the first time as an adult. I've been to and through Louisiana about 10 times as an adult. So, to see something resembling Haiti is not surprising. But, that should never happen in America, period.