By Karen Turni Bazile
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
The state has stepped in with the money needed to keep two Federal Emergency Management Agency helicopters in New Orleans, where they have become a key tool in battling large fires since Hurricane Katrina.
The helicopters carry buckets that can drop as much as 800 gallons of water at a time on fires, a major assist to the beleaguered New Orleans Fire Department, which lost several fire stations to the storm and must deal with low water pressure in much of the city.
New Orleans Fire District Chief Norman Woodridge said Friday that FEMA had e-mailed word that the Voodoo I and Voodoo II helicopters would be pulling out by midnight Friday because FEMA’s agreement to cover 100 percent of the cost of their operation was expiring.
FEMA spokesman Wali Armstead said FEMA, which already had extended the deadline for the helicopters’ departure a couple of times, had offered to continue paying 90 percent of the cost of providing the helicopters through September. But Woodridge said the financially strained local department couldn’t come up with the needed 10 percent match of about $386,000 through Sept. 3.
But Friday night, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, state Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc and Col. Thomas Kirkpatrick, state coordinating officer for the Katrina and Rita hurricane disasters, decided the state would provide the needed match.
“With the ongoing drought and the holiday . . . they felt it was critical for the safety of Louisiana residents for those crews and equipment to remain in the state,” said Mark Smith, spokesman for the governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. “They are available for emergencies outside of New Orleans if needed.”
“Traditionally, the city would be the matching agency,” Smith said, “but with New Orleans’ finances as devastated as they are by the storm, New Orleans was unable or unwilling to come up with the match.”
Smith said Kirkpatrick’s office had been talking with local officials and works closely with FEMA and tracks what federal assets are available.
Besides the helicopters, Armstead said, FEMA has loaned the city 10 water tender trucks that carry from 1,800 to 2,200 gallons of water each.
Woodridge said the Voodoo helicopters have been used several times a month. According to a Fire Department press release, one of the helicopters was sent to a compost site fire Friday evening at Almonaster Avenue and Interstate 510 and made several water drops.