Dennis Hastert's comments have triggered a great deal of discussion about rebuilding -- whether, when, where, how. But because of the amount of destruction and the time it will take to even begin to dry things out, rebuilding is not going to be on the menu for many of the people who have left or are finally starting to be evacuated. The Washington Post sums up the size of the challenge relative to anything the US has seen before.

The largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War reverberated across the country from its starting point in New Orleans yesterday, as more than half a million people uprooted by Hurricane Katrina sought shelter, sustenance and the semblance of new lives. [Given that the population of New Orleans alone is more than 400,000, that estimate of numbers affected is clearly conservative.]
[...]
Katrina has scattered more than twice as many people as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and unmoored more people in a few days than fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Estimating from census data, about 150,000 of the displaced lived below the poverty line even before they lost everything. Far more than 50,000 of them are past retirement age.

Emergency housing, which will need to be available for months at least, is the most urgent need. Even temporary housing in the form of camps or barracks will take time to assemble, given the sheer numbers of homeless the storm has produced. Undoubtedly a reflection of many concerned citizens in the surrounding areas already opening their homes to refugees, the Moveon.org housing site has more offers on its bulletin board from people as far away as New York and Washington, DC than from a 350-mile radius of New Orleans. As hurricanehousing.org notes, those who take up offers of housing in far-away regions will also need part-time job opportunities to pick up a bit of spare cash to get by.

UPDATE: Also see the dedicated site katrinahousing.org. As I noted on a related post at Crooked Timber:

Sure, someone has to have access to the internet to be able to take advantage of these offers. But they don’t have to be hooked up directly – e.g. a relative who lives in your area and has internet access could be hunting for a place for them and could link you up. The people looking via the internet are also unlikely to be the ones who are in absolutely dire straits. But if volunteers who open their homes can take some of the pressure off, it will make it easier for the Red Cross or the Houston Astrodome to do their jobs.

The webservices aren’t intermediaries. You’re on your own to work out the details with anyone who responds to your offer. And no guarantees on who you’re dealing with. So use common sense.

Anyway, the internet can help make distributed solutions a good deal more powerful.

All over the country, the Red Cross is receiving a huge influx of new volunteers who need to be trained and, over the coming months, assigned. Though the burden of preparing volunteers is large, the Red Cross needs a full pipeline of people who can be sent for weeks at a time to help during the coming months. (h/t Gary Farber)

The Red Cross plans to mobilize 9,000 volunteers for minimum two-week deployments to states affected by the hurricane in the coming weeks. They'll staff shelters and help get food and water to victims.

While television images of houses submerged in roof-high waters, crowded shelters and hungry children may compel people to volunteer, veteran relief workers are also trying to figure out who is best for the job. Seasoned workers warn that the job takes an emotional toll.

During the Connecticut class, instructor Anouchka Bayard Blanchard told volunteers to think long and hard before signing up. There are other ways to help if volunteers aren't in good health, think they can't do it or have serious concerns, she said.

"Really what we're trying to get through is the reality of the expectation. Everybody wants to help and that's great, but especially in this situation, the hardship is so grand," said Bayard Blanchard, who has been deployed to Third World countries.

Volunteers need to be ready to deploy with 24 hours notice. Those being trained now could leave as early as next week, or as late as next year. Once they're called, they can bring a backpack or duffel bag packed with essentials such as flashlights and a sleeping bag. They will likely sleep on the floor of shelters with victims. There will be limited food and water, heat and humidity, no electricity and often, poor communication systems.

Before leaving, volunteers must go through a background check, be certified by a doctor as being in good health. Tetanus and Hepatitis A shots are recommended.

And volunteers also have to be able to lift 50 pounds.

It's not just the major issues of food, shelter and essential health care. People from every region of the country are starting to think how to absorb some of the refugees so they can get on with something approaching their lives again. Take the relatively small problem of all the universities in the area being forced to close, almost certainly for at least the coming semester. Brad DeLong today reported that UC Berkeley is trying to figure out whether they can absorb some 10% of Tulane for the fall semester. Tim Burke was speculating earlier on universities opening their doors to students just about ready to start school. And Glenn Reynolds has already noted that Univ of of Tennessee will be taking in 50 law students from Tulane and Loyola. UPDATE: Chronicle of Higher Education has a forum dealing with all sorts of Katrina's university and college issues. There are already offers from insitutions in other regions pouring in to help displaced students and faculty. Also the Chronicle has a Katrina Update blog.

And then there are the mundane but critical problems that need some creative solutions, such as linking hundreds of thousands of people with their mail -- and their pension checks, as Dave Schuler has figured out.

This is simply not "disaster as usual." We'll need lots more creativity coming from every sector of American society -- not just government or the traditional charities -- to help people find their ways back to normalcy.

Jesse Walker, Hit and Run:

"When We Act, We Create Our Own Reality" (Baghdad Bob Redux)

CNN contrasts FEMA chief Michael Brown's account of conditions in New Orleans with the reports emerging from the trenches.

Actually, the CNN piece is a lot more shrill than Jesse suggests.

Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday. The sanitized view came from federal officials at news conferences and television appearances. But the official line was contradicted by grittier, more desperate views from the shelters and the streets.

These conflicting views came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:

And then the CNN article proceeds to recite, chapter and verse, an utter disconnect between statements by federal officials and what Americans were seeing -- simultaneously -- with their own eyes and hearing with their own ears on the air, regarding conditions at the Convention Center, uncollected corpses, evacuations of hospitals, and security.

Amazing. It really is like Baghdad Bob -- "there are no trapped, desperate, dying people regardless of the fact that you think you see them on your TV screens."

Do they think the public are total fools? Or has their command, control and communication system come to a complete halt but they're still behaving as if it were completely operational? If their emergency communication network is totally out of order, somebody at FEMA should just assign a couple of folks to watch cable TV and read the NOLA blog and simply relay the information to the folks who are titularly in charge.

Brian Ulrich makes a very good point in a post at Liberals Against Terrorism about the urban myths (to cast the spreading of false information in its kindest light) that the rest of the world has given the US the cold shoulder. People who should know better are simply making stuff up! The rest of the world is in fact horrified, and offers of official assistance are coming from all over -- as well as charitable contributions.

Radley Balko has been collecting claims from the ususal suspects that no offers of foreign assistance have been forthcoming. From Radley, some outrageous claims and evidence to refute them: Neil Cavuto just telling out-and-out falsehoods, James Lileks (French-bashing, which is particularly absurd given the French emotional attachment to NO, which they tend to think of as partially "theirs" -- at least Lileks had the good grace to post a retraction and admit he hadn't bothered to even check Google because he was feeling grumpy). Also, what the State Department is now saying about welcoming offers of assistance.

And then there's everybody's favorite whipping-boy, the UN, which has of course offered help -- and they actually know a lot about how to deliver humanitarian assistance in the wake of disasters. Jan Egeland, the UN relief official the wingnuts love to hate:

"The United Nations stands ready to help with any kind of disaster expertise that might be required ... in full recognition that the United States is the country in the world that possesses the greatest civilian and military search and rescue and recovery assets themselves," Egeland told Reuters in an interview.

He said U.S. officials had thanked the U.N. for its offer, but had not requested any assistance so far.

Egeland called Katrina one of "the largest, most destructive natural disasters ever."

majikthise has been following the story of the expert Vancouver's Urban Search and Rescue Team, whose help was initially rejected. When it was finally allowed to go to NO, unfortunately, by the time they got to NO the security situation was too far gone for them to be able to jump directly in to help. But undoubtedly their assistance will be extremely useful in the days to come.

Brain's right -- it's time to stop these lies from continuing to spread. Hopefully, Bush will speak on this fairly soon to stop them in their tracks.