NOLA Left Off of Emergency List

Taking another look at the emergency declarations put forth by Governor Blanco of Louisiana and President Bush on August 27, 2005, we've uncovered a bit of a discrepancy between the locales for which assistance was requested by the state and the locales for which assistance was promised by the feds.

As you'll see, Governor Blanco requested assistance for, "...all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor..." It seems pretty straightforward that New Orleans is included in the area requiring help.

However, in the declaration of federal assistance put forth by the President, not one of the parishes in and around the New Orleans area is mentioned. There are plenty of other parishes included, but the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines and others nearby are nowhere to be found in the declaration.

Hmmm. Was this just an oversight on the part of the White House? Or was there something else at work to deny emergency assistance for New Orleans? We'll have to wait and see what comes of this discrepancy, if anything.

(Thanks to www.bobharris.com for putting words into geographical context in the map above.)