Last week, Paul Rainwater, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority fired off a letter to FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison after attempting for weeks to get the federal agency to send temporary housing to residents of coastal parishes. FEMA has responded to the state, precisely laying out what the agency can and cannot do, and has detailed what has been provided to those whose homes were damaged or lost in Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
In Cameron Parish, the eye of the state’s complaint, FEMA has, to date, provided $6,237,460 in grants for home repair, given 749 households rental assistance and placed 144 families in hotels. The sticking point is sending “park model travel trailers” (not the travel trailers which had formaldehyde contamination) to provide temporary housing on private property in low lying Cameron Parish. The LRA wants homeowners who live and work in coastal Cameron to be able to put FEMA mobile homes at their homesites. Whether FEMA wants to satisfy the state or not is not the issue. By law, they cannot.
According to FEMA public affairs lead Manuel Broussard, “Executive Order 11988 (Floodplain Management), as implemented at 44 Code of Federal Regulation Part 9, FEMA is not permitted to place federal assets in a V Zone or Coastal High Hazard Areas (V, V1-V30, or VE zones). Placing units in these high risk areas will jeopardize the health and safety of families residing in these temporary homes and send a false sense of safety.” Broussard, who is from Vermilion Parish and well acquainted with the people and terrain of coastal Louisiana says the agency is working hard trying to find housing solutions for people impacted by the storms. “We will maximize the placement of temporary housing units in non – V zones within Cameron Parish. We also plan to place families in temporary housing units in commercials sites outside of the V zone.”
However, Rainwater argues that FEMA is making decisions on flood zones using brand new Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps, which have not yet been published, nor has the parish had time to appeal them. Instead he requests that FEMA use the parish’s already adopted Advisory Base Flood Elevation requirements, which are currently in use in Cameron Parish.
The impasse, according to Rainwater, is that FEMA is being unreasonable in expecting the parish to adopt a new code that has not been analyzed. He says forcing vital oil and gas and seafood industry workers to commute long distances is not conducive to helping Louisiana recover from the storms.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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