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October 2005                                                                                Volume 9 - Number 1

Hurricane Katrina Related Activities...

       Hurricane Katrina Statistics
By Russel Kelson

Amount of Assistance Provided:  $62.3 Billion
Amount of Assistance Needed (Projected):  $200 Billion

Persian Gulf War (1991) Cost:  $83 Billion (2005 Dollars)

Private Hurricane Donations
Total Cash Donation         $1,423,895,223     
Total In-Kind             $     70,050,000         
Total from Reserves          $     13,617,000         
Total Pledges Outstanding      $     13,195,000
                $1,520,757,223

Red Cross Spending
The American Red Cross estimates that Hurricane Katrina relief efforts will exceed
$2 billion, meeting the urgent needs of nearly one million families in three key areas:
Food and Shelter — $744 million
Emergency Financial Assistance to Disaster Survivors — $1.4 billion
Physical and Mental Health Services — $78 million

More than 176,000 Red Cross workers from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have responded to Katrina.

Estimated Fatalities:                  1,163 (Not Finalized)
Peak Wind Speed:                 175 m/h    265 km/h
Peak level:                    Category 5
Level at Gulf landfall:                Category 4
Area designated a disaster area:        90,000 square miles
Corps of Engineers members involved:    2,400


Peak of BellSouth telephone lines out of service:  1.7 Million
Peak of Louisiana and Mississippi residents without power:  2.7 million

121 babies, many premature, were evacuated from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, La

2.1 million people in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi lived below the poverty level:

State or area     Labor force     Employment     Unemployment level     Unemployment rate
Alabama       380,047        363,888           16,159         4.3
Louisiana    1,528,710     1,439,330           89,380         5.8
Mississippi       913,876        854,554           59,322         6.5
TOTAL    2,822,633     2,657,772         164,861         5.8

National                                    4.9

 July 2005 labor force, employment, and unemployment, not seasonally adjusted, in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi (levels in thousands and rate in percent), entire State and most affected areas in State

Alabama:
• More than 16 percent of Alabamians live in poverty (706,070).
• Additionally, almost 88,200 residents of the Mobile metro area live in poverty (16 percent).

Louisiana:
• One-in-five Louisiana residents (19.36 percent) live in poverty.
• Nearly 200,000 people (194,800) in the New Orleans metro area live in poverty.
• One-in-four residents of the city of New Orleans (23.2 percent) live in poverty.

Mississippi:
• More than one-in-five Mississippi residents (21.61 percent) live in poverty, or about 603,954.
• More than 16 percent of residents in the Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula metro area live in poverty.



Sources
Bureau of Labor Statistics         http://www.bls.gov/katrina/data.htm
Census Bureau            http://www.census.gov/
Center on Philanthropy         http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/Hurricane_Katrina.html
Red Cross                http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/hurricanes/katrina_facts.html
Wikipedia                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers    http://www.usace.army.mil/