[StBernard] Declare the parish uninhabitable

[Westley Annis]

Westley,
 
It appears that the site is turning into a psuedo nola.com.  Here is the 
fact of the matter on the parish being declared uninhabitable.
 
There is extensive damage throughout the parish- The vast majority of 
homes are uninhabitable and this has been made known and pushed to FEMA 
since they arrived, evidenced by FEMA's new decision not to continue to 
inspect homes for livability. As far as a declaration that the parish is 
unihabitable is redundant to what has already been done.  If insurance 
companies are fighting residents over insurance benefits, this has 
nothing to do with our declaration.  We declared to the insurance 
commissioner over four weeks ago that our homes were vastly 
uninhabitable so that he could inform the insurance industry of the 
same; this is partly why the insurance companies started totalling out 
flood policies in many large areas of the parish, even without a visit 
to the home.
 
This may be a semantical issue, but it must be known that the condition 
of the parish has never been minimized to any federal, state, or 
contracted agency.  The misinformation about uninhabitable is confusing 
people and some of the insurance adjusters are using this to hide 
behind.  The building assessment of each property is ongoing and should 
be completed by mid November.  The parish council will begin making 
decisions on the properties in the next week or so and the building 
inspections will be one aspect of the decision- also factors of 
environmental damage and econoomic feasability will also be considered.
 
There are some people who are already cleaning out their home and 
starting the repair process.  These people would certainly disagree with 
the entire parish being uninhabitable verses the approach that many 
homes in the parish are uninhabitable.
 
Assistance in the clean up process is also being worked on.  We are 
currently finding a way to get into the private properties for 
assistance for those people who request and approve it.
 
Hopefully this will help the misunderstanding and the whole sand thing 
concept.
 
Craig Taffaro