For New Orleans business owners, there are
messes, and then there are messes.
FEMA waits for the insurance companies. The
insurance companies can't get here.
Nobody can act until somebody else acts, and we
seem like we're kind of caught in the middle here.
As they struggle to clean up and open up, many
business owners say they aren't getting the
help they need.
You are sitting in a city, in a region, where
we will probably spend a minimum of $10 billion
per year for the next 10 years.
41% of Louisiana businesses were shuttered or
displaced by Katrina and Rita. Many are still closed.
I want Louisiana businesses and Louisiana
workers to be the ones rebuilding Louisiana.
In Washington, Congress is looking closely at
more than a billion dollars in contracts
awarded with little or no competition after
Katrina first hit.
We are going to re-bid those no-bid contracts.
Acting FEMA Director David Paulusen also
fielded questions about FEMA's slow response.
The amount of people we registered in Hurricane
Katrina far exceeds anything that FEMA has ever done.
For small business owners, change may not come
soon enough.
Without some help coming in, I don't know just
quite how we're going to do it.
Getting open was just the first step, and it
may not have been the hardest part.
More than 360,000 people have now lost their
jobs to Katrina and Rita.
Ironically, though, many businesses here are
trying to hire, but just can't find a workforce
with any place to live.
So it is a vicious cycle now, but one that may
not improve any time soon.
In New Orleans, Kristen Dahlgren, NBC News.