My Storm: Managing the Recovery of in the Wake of Katrina, 2012, by Edward J. Blakely, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Carla Prater Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center A&M University

Email: [email protected]

Reading this book was like watching a horror movie; you know the rough outlines of the ending, and you know it won’t be pretty getting there. Ed Blakely is the experienced and well-qualified planner that Mayor was able to add to his team in January 2007, 16 months after the storm. The first sign of trouble was exactly this—almost a year and a half after the storm, its devastation was still the most prominent feature of New Orleans, and the city still had not developed a coherent plan of action for recovery. Blakely was brought in to change that. This book is the record of his experiences during the two years he worked in New Orleans. Although he describes it as taking up where Olshansky and Johnson’s Clear as Mud left off, it really covers some of the same time period, but at a higher level of magnification. The book opens with an overview of New Orleans’ problems as Blakely saw them from his new home in , where he had moved to teach at the University of and open a consulting practice. His experience and qualifications led many of his friends and acquaintances to assume he would be immediately called upon to help out in the most serious urban catastrophe in American history, but he was not. He knew enough about New Orleans to be aware of some of the city’s problems, and does not shy away from talking about them. As he puts it, the citizens “both black and white, prefer its fable, myths and fading glory to grappling with the real issues and problems that afflict the city” (p. 3). He also refers to the city’s historical record of reaction to economic and planning challenges as “playing the victim” (p. 4) rather than adapting to reality and developing the physical and administrative structures they needed. This city was a basket case before the storm tore it to pieces. Blakely was asked to attend the workshop on Katrina recovery cosponsored by the American Planning Association and FEMA, in October of 2005, held in Shreveport, Lousiana. He was surprised to see no representatives from the New Orleans Planning Department at this workshop. His next visit to Louisiana was in November of 2006, when he was asked by an old friend and community organizer based in New Orleans to come for a visit. The main impression he gained on this trip was of a city still broken, both physically and emotionally. On his third visit a few weeks later, he began to learn the details of dysfunction that the storm exposed. It was on this visit that Mayor Nagin

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broached the idea of Blakely jumping in and working for the city on its recovery plan. He returned in December 2006 to discuss what his job would be and how he would fit into the city’s administrative structure. He found a number of independent agencies quarrelling among themselves and with City Hall over power, influence and resources— unanswerable to anyone but their powerful patrons. Another sign of trouble was the difficulty Blakely had in finding out what his title and the precise contours of his assignment would be. The city staff was still too overwhelmed or unorganized to provide some of the basic help he expected when he arrived in January 2007. He commandeered an office, since nobody showed him what space he had been assigned, and in the absence of advice from the human resources department or anyone else, proceeded to hire staff, hoping contracts and funding would eventually be worked out. By this time, there were three competing plans for the city’s recovery, one from Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB), one from Lambert and Associates (actually a set of neighborhood plans), and the Greater New Orleans Foundation’s effort to synthesize them. The political landmines exploded by the BNOB’s “green dots” plan had exacerbated always simmering racial tensions, yet the idea of not pouring resources into the most physically vulnerable areas was a good one. It was eventually accepted, in much modified form, as the “Target Areas” plan that emerged from Blakely’s efforts to make something useful out of the competing documents. His team developed three broad categories—Rebuild, Redevelop, and Renew—and came up with 17 areas to focus on, using one or another of these three strategies. In order to develop support for this plan and to improve his understanding of the city, he began his famous bike tours, concentrating on Saturday rides to increase participation and meet as many people as possible. The politics of city administration in NO were (are?) byzantine, and created numerous staffing and productivity problems, not only for Blakely but for all of city government. The conflicting and sometimes counterproductive rules various funders such as FEMA and major foundations imposed were another obstacle to creating a smoothly functioning Office of Recovery Management. It took four months of work to just get preliminary approval from the state (through the Louisiana Recovery Agency) for the federal government’s recovery block grant funds to be released. Not surprisingly given New Orleans’ history of corruption, the state kept a tight leash on the funds, slowing the recovery even more. It was obvious that New Orleans needed a broader economic base than tourism, and Blakely is proud of his efforts to get a new VA hospital, linked with the remaining medical education infrastructure, in a bid to become a center for the study and treatment of tropical diseases. As another piece of the economic development puzzle, he promoted the Mahalia Jackson Performance Center to serve as the centerpiece of a revived local music industry and worked to upgrade the city’s science and technology infrastructure through the Michaud Mars Lander project.

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Every step of the way, Blakely, as a black professional, had to deal with a city divided by race and class that could not seem to overcome its history and try to work for the common good. The ownership of the Times-Picayune drove a media agenda that seemed to him to willfully ignore real progress and local TV media did not do much better. In an effort to get the word out about the Office of Recovery Management’s work, he turned to the city’s public access channel, and successfully presented information on a variety of ongoing projects as well as practical segments on how to apply for permits, the importance of removing harmful items from property, etc. As Blakely puts it: “if you want to get your message out, use your own media outlets” (p. 126), and he found public access TV more useful than blogging or other internet media for the audience he was addressing. Chapter 14, “Levees and FEMA: The Real Hazards for New Orleans” is the saddest of all. Blakely recognizes the ultimate futility of attempting to fend off the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River, while the entire world is facing sea level rise induced by global climate change. He recommends a variety of tactics, including moving the port facilities to the Atchafalaya River, using a land swap to get residents of the most low- lying neighborhoods to higher ground, and using new building techniques for infrastructure that is adapted to a more watery environment. In congressional testimony Blakely has recommended leaving FEMA in DHS, while creating a new disaster- recovery agency with its own regional offices, but does not address how this duplication of FEMA’s regional offices would improve conditions in the already crowded federal disaster policy space. Other recommendations, such as a National Recovery Fund, and a requirement that state and local governments set up their own disaster recovery funds, make more sense. His final recommendation for national policy is to change FEMA requirements that constrain efforts to avoid recreating past mistakes while rebuilding after disasters. This highly personal and very readable account provides a valuable window on an insider’s view of the recovery process. The fact that this person was centrally placed and well equipped to understand what was going on make his observations educational for all readers, and of great interest to those who care about New Orleans.

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