President Bush’s State of the Union address did not include a single mention of Katrina or the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast region. (A year ago, Bush promised the federal government would “stay…at it until they’re back on their feet.”)
Last night, CBS News reporter Armen Keteyian traveled to Mount Olive Gardens, a trailer park near Baton Rouge where 200 Katrina victims live, to gauge the reaction to Bush’s speech. “I almost broke my TV, knocked it off the stand,” one resident said. “In places like Mount Olive Gardens,” Keteyian concluded, “words like relief and recovery now seem as empty to them as last night’s presidential address.”
Watch it:
While the residents of Mount Olive Gardens were outraged over the snub, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was “more forgiving,” saying he was “mildly disappointed.” “I didn’t necessarily expect [a mention],” Vitter said.
Transcript:
COURIC: In his State of the Union address, President Bush took note of the unrest in Lebanon as well as the suffering in Darfur but there was not one mention of Katrina — though the suffering and hardship continue. The federal government has spent $80 billion on recovery efforts in the Gulf region, but there are still 13,000 people living in FEMA trailers. As chief investigative reporter Armen Keteyian reports, some who lost everything are asking, “What about us?”
DAVIS: I don’t like the way I’m living.
KETEYIAN: It sits on a flat gravel mud-soaked lot. The irony of the name not lost on its residents. Seventeen months after Katrina nearly 200 people uprooted by a hurricane still live in Mount Olive Gardens. Whole families packed into 200 square foot FEMA trailers they now call home.
DAVIS: God can’t let this happen.
KETEYIAN: Chris Davis is one of the displaced from New Orleans now leaving near Baton Rouge. Like many here he watched the president’s speech. His rage rising with every word.
DAVIS: At this time I almost broke my TV, knocked it off the stand, you know.
KETEYIAN: A Vietnam vet, Davis lost a job at a ship builder to Katrina now in a place where crime is a constant worry and children rarely venture outside. He’s long since lost hope.
DAVIS: It gets hopeless and more hopeless everyday.
KETEYIAN: Toni Bankston, a mental health case worker, couldn’t believe what the president wasn’t saying.
BANKSTON: People were already feeling forgotten. And I think this may potentially reinforce that.
KETEYIAN: There are 5,596 words in the president’s speech last night in reaction to the fact that not a single one was either Katrina or Louisiana which felt not here in tiny mount olive gardens but all across the gulf.
BLANCO: The pains of the hurricane are yesterday’s news in Washington.
JETSON: There’s been a lot said, very little done and now we have evolved to the point where there’s very little if nothing being said.
KETEYIAN: To a point where in places like Mount Olive Gardens words like relief and recovery now seem as empty to them as last night’s presidential address. Armen Keteyian, CBS news, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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