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MCALLEN, Texas -- A tour company has been charged with conspiracy and other crimes in the deaths of 23 nursing home residents whose bus caught fire and exploded as they were trying to flee Hurricane Rita. In an indictment unsealed Wednesday, Global Limo, Inc., and owner James H. Maples are accused of conspiring to falsify driver time records and failing to inspect the company's bus fleet to make sure the buses were safe. Maples, 65, was arrested Wednesday at his McAllen home. He was scheduled to appear before a U.S. magistrate Wednesday afternoon. The bus caught fire Sept. 23 on...

New Orleans waits. While some heroic efforts at rebuilding are taking place, hundreds of thousands of residents have put their lives on hold until they know what the government's next steps will be, leaving the shells of their houses as placeholders. But the Bush administration has now rejected the most broadly supported plan for rebuilding communities while offering nothing to take its place. It has been five months since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and for many the norm is still the claustrophobic new reality of tiny trailers and multiple families crammed into single apartments. Louisiana is trying. You...

Don't leave us to foreclosure Sunday, January 29, 2006 Here in a community full of ruined homes, it takes no imagination to predict an epidemic of foreclosures that could devastate families, cripple the recovery of greater New Orleans and strain the nation's economy. If your flood insurance payout isn't nearly enough to cover your mortgage, you wonder if you'll have to abandon your unlivable home. If you look down the block at a dozen other damaged houses and know that your neighbors are in the same bind, you understand the fear of losing your neighborhood to blight. If you travel...

Political Horizons for Jan. 29 Baker’s relief bill deserves try By JOHN LAPLANTE Published: Jan 29, 2006 Ford to City: Drop Dead,” a legendary headline screamed in 1975, when a president refused to bail out New York City from financial disaster. Change the president and the locale, and Louisiana hurricane victims might be forgiven for thinking the same thing. After hemming and hawing for months about U.S. Rep. Richard Baker’s home-buyout bill, and never really saying what he had against it, Bush brushed it aside last week. Only after aides revealed his opposition did Bush grant a one-paragraph explanation. It...

Out of touch with our reality Our Views By OPINION PAGE STAFF Published: Jan 29, 2006 Mr. President, we’re grateful for every dollar of aid we get, from private or public sources. But your statement of Thursday is simply out of touch with reality in Louisiana today. “I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot.” In the abstract, sure. It’s a lot of money. But as a senatorial inspection group found the other day, there has not been anywhere near $85 billion worth of progress. For one thing, that money isn’t...

The mystery rash and illness that has plagued thousands of people exposed to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina may have several names, and one of them is Parvovirus B-19. The disease is nicknamed “Katrina Rash” and the “New Orleans Crud,” and has affected at least three Ruston-area first-responders who went to New Orleans to help in rescue and recovery efforts. A Lincoln Parish Sheriff’s Deputy, an Emergency Medical Technician and a Louisiana State Trooper all came down with variations of the ailment. Missy Staples, a licensed vocational nurse from Glasgow, Ky., became ill after caring for a patient with similar...

LAKE CHARLES, La. — A steady procession of congressmen and U.S. senators have visited the Gulf Coast this month, inspecting Hurricane Katrina damage. But they didn't show up here, one of the places devastated by Hurricane Rita, Louisiana's "other" storm. Four months after Rita caused $4.7 billion in damage, people in southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas say they're concerned the storm has been erased from the country's memory, overshadowed by Katrina's assault on New Orleans. While New Orleanians fret about "Katrina fatigue," people here say they've been victims of "Rita amnesia." "We don't want anyone to lose sight of the...

MANY IN LA., TEXAS LAMENT RITA 'AMNESIA' By DOUG SIMPSON Associated Press Writer LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) -- A steady procession of congressmen and U.S. senators have visited the Gulf Coast this month, inspecting Hurricane Katrina damage. But they didn't show up here, one of the places devastated by Hurricane Rita, Louisiana's "other" storm. Four months after Rita caused $4.7 billion in damage, people in southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas say they're concerned the storm has been erased from the country's memory, overshadowed by Katrina's assault on New Orleans. While New Orleanians fret about "Katrina fatigue," people here say they've...

It's at least the 26th time so far this year, that Lake Charles Police respond to a call at Lakeview Motel where FEMA pays to house people displaced from the hurricanes; people like Stacy Arceneaux and her mother Charlotte Broussard. The frightened women who live here have this notice on the door: "Identify yourself, do not disturb, gun in room." Arceneaux says, "I will shoot you if I do not know who you are, period. If you look at my family wrong, I will shoot you." "I'm expecting a bullet to come right through the walls. There's a bullet right...

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 23, 2006 – New Orleans faced an uphill battle against mountains of debris after storm surge and levee flooding from hurricanes Katrina and Rita brought city services to a halt in 2005. With the city and its municipal solid waste collection contractor unable to resume operations, the garbage, stench and health risk increased with each sultry day. "Our contractors were having problems regrouping their people and equipment," said New Orleans Director of Sanitation Veronica T. White, a specialist in public and environmental health. "The No. 1 urgency here was health." On Sept. 21, New Orleans asked the...

Wanda Goldson is home. The former Cameron resident last week moved into her School Street home in Lake Charles that replaces her Cameron home, which was destroyed by Hurricane Rita. Goldson's new home was furnished at no charge to her after real estate agent Rose Holland started a donation drive to assist Goldson, who is unable to work because of a physical disability. Since the storm, Goldson has made about 20 trips to Shreveport — where she lived before moving to Cameron — mostly for doctor's visits and meetings with FEMA and insurance agents. "It was really hard on me,"...

The pastor from Pineville calls it "Rita-wood," stacks of two-by-fours hewn from oak and pine trees that were downed by Hurricane Rita when it tore through southwest Louisiana and east Texas in September. Garry Jones, an Illinois native who brought his missionary zeal to central Louisiana four years ago, is processing those fallen trees in Texas, then trucking them into Plaquemines Parish to rebuild homes. Jones, founder of ReaLife Ministries, sees the lumber as the Providence-given raw material needed to lift the community from its hurricane woes.

In a further clarification of yesterday’s remarks that a rebuilt New Orleans would be a “chocolate” city, Mayor Ray Nagin today said he’s planning to recruit Hershey Foods to establish a candy manufacturing plant in the hurricane-ravaged region. The Democrat mayor’s latest clarification builds on yesterday’s explanation that his remarks are not racist because chocolate is made with dark chocolate and white milk forming “a delicious drink.” “We’re in the very, very early stages of discussions with Hershey,” Mr. Nagin said, “It’s still in the pre-meeting, pre-phone call stage. But that’s what this chocolate city concept is all about. It’s...

NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting. "Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day. "Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're...

Gov. Kathleen Blanco left for Holland on Monday to learn how the Dutch created the huge flood-control system that protects a land much farther below sea level than Louisiana. The trip means the Democratic governor will miss President Bush's visit to New Orleans, scheduled for Thursday... The governor was among more than 40 government, business and education leaders - including Sens. David Vitter and Mary Landrieu ... Landrieu said the ambassador told her about that country's flood of 1953, when 1,800 people died. "He said, `Why don't you all come over and see what we've done since then?'" Landrieu recounted....

Some members of the governor's staff will return from the three-day holiday on Tuesday to newly renovated offices at the State Capitol. Shortly after the two hurricanes, Gov. Kathleen Blanco decided to renovate some of her staff's offices. At the time of her decision, Blanco also was hinting at deep budget cuts to state programs and the possibility of laying off 20 percent of the state workforce. The project cost $564,838. The newly refurbished office space on the sixth floor of the State Capitol includes hookups and mounts for two flat screen televisions, Swedish granite countertops, walnut paneling and frosted...

Disasters: Searching for Lessons From a Bad Year John Bohannon No doubt about it, the 12 months since the last Breakthrough of the Year issue have been an annus horribilis. Three major natural disasters--the 2004 "Christmas tsunami" in the Indian Ocean, Hurricane Katrina on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the Pakistan earthquake--left nearly 300,000 dead and millions homeless. In Pakistan, the disaster is still unfolding as winter engulfs the devastated communities. Insurance companies classify such events as "acts of God": misfortunes for which no one is at fault. But in their aftermath, many scientists are pointing out that natural disasters...

DELCAMBRE -- U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner, worked a little outside of his regular congressional district lines Monday, walking, talking and touring a town half depopulated by Hurricane Rita. Delcambre Mayor Carol Broussard took Jindal and state Sen. Craig Romero, R-New Iberia, on the tour and gave a general assessment of what the town's government and the people who still want to live there are contending with. Jindal said part of the reason for the morning trip was following up on having helped get a load of tarps donated by private businesses shipped to Delcambre several weeks ago. He said...

The blue-tarp roof, a symbol of hurricane damage in south Louisiana and Mississippi as recognizable as curbside debris, may wind up as a post-Katrina emblem of government waste reminiscent of the Pentagon's fabled $435 hammers and $640 toilet seats. Depending on the extent of damage and the size of the roof, the federal government is paying anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $5,000 to install a typical tarp. The cost to taxpayers to tack up a covering of blue vinyl is roughly the same, on a per-square-foot basis, as what a homeowner would pay to install a basic asphalt-shingle...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Damage to offshore oil and gas platforms from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has tripled the number of requests to convert rigs into artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries usually gets 10 to 12 requests each year to use abandoned rigs to create fish habitat. But that number has soared to 40 requests this year, Rick Kasprzak, program manager of the Louisiana Artificial Reef Program, told The Advocate of Baton Rouge for a story in Monday's editions. Oil and gas platforms in the program are located in federal...