I am not in the destruction zone but close. Mississippi is overrun with carbetbaggers and scalawags once again. The scalawags are the local con artists who set about collecting multiple checks while real victims did without until the relief agencies stopped offering them.

The carpetbaggers are out-of-state corporations selling $30,000 trailers to FEMA for $80,000 and setting them up at a snails pace. Bechtel (headquartered in San Diego) has a huge sweetheart contract to send in trailers for people to live in. I see them come down the interstate every day, one at a time, from as far as oregon, driven by some guy in a very big shiny new pickup. They are dropped off in staging areas where they stay for weeks. Supposedly every day a few dozen more get sent to a site. Only after some other out-of-state folks have researched whether the home site is good enough and level enough. Some time later after repeated applications from people living in tents, the trailer may be delivered. Often it will sit there for weeks while arrangements are made for inspectors and electricians and plumbers to hook it up properly. FEMA will not allow people to just grab the units and set them up the best they can. They have to be set up like yer uncle luke's planned retirement community with the gravel beds and geraniums. They may require grading, etc. And yes, often it is finally set up and cleared for occupancy but the keys are missing.   

Meanwhile, less than 1% of the reconstruction work has gone to Mississippi companies, many of whom are struggling to survive. Our our trailer sales companies are selling to individuals but have lots full of trailers and mobile homes standing empty while people wait for FEMA to finally get its electricians around to hooking everybody up to their unit from Oregon. FEMA promised to rebid the big sweetheart contracts a month ago but hasn't lifted a finger. It also has rejected efforts by local house & apt landlords to help people get settled in outlying areas in real homes. It hurts to see all the empty trailers and homes knowing what people are going through.

On the coast, meetings have been held to try to do sweeping urban planning before anything substantial gets rebuilt, and zoning & building codes (such as "you have to raise your building 20' higher than x") are not done yet. New FEMA flood maps have been done and all rebuilding and mortgageing and insuring will have to work around them. So much rebuilding is just gonna be "on hold" for a long time. Many stores and restaurants on the margins have opened up, but find few can live and work in the area for $6 an hour with nowhere to stay. Debris clearing is done by some highly paid outsiders with the grunt work being contracted out to crews of illegal aliens who can hack $6 an hour while living in a tent.

Housing is in desperately short supply near ground zero, and 'investors' are snapping up both livable homes and destroyed coastal property. Locals are afraid as the months and years wear on more folks will have to sell out to big REITS who will build shiny new resort 'towns'.

In short, it ain't going real well. This area had few financial resources before KT and it will wind up even poorer than before. In a decade it will have a nicely rebuilt coast area, but the proceeds will have been funneled to California (home of Bechtel) or Florida or Connecticut.