KNOXVILLE – Governor Phil Bredesen today applauded the “Volunteer” spirit of Tennessee communities in eagerly responding to the needs of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, pledging he will do everything possible to ensure they are reimbursed for their generosity.
“Tennessee communities have received planeload after planeload of evacuees, opening the doors of shelters, churches and schools in the single largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War,” Bredesen said. “We will be clear and persistent with the federal government in our insistence that the cities and counties of Tennessee should receive the federal reimbursement they deserve for their efforts.”
In a lunch meeting with Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, Bredesen said each department and agency of state government has begun itemizing all direct and indirect costs of providing services to evacuees, and encouraged local governments to do the same.
“We will have hard numbers and data to present to the federal government when it comes time for them to pay the bill,” Bredesen said. “This is especially important when it comes to education and the services we’re providing to students – both K-12 and higher education. We must have a mechanism in place to ensure our communities are reimbursed for these costs.”
On September 5, President Bush granted Bredesen’s request for an emergency declaration for the entire state as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The declaration means that state government and its local counterparts are eligible for 100 percent federal reimbursement for immediate relief efforts and expanded services for evacuees.
Bredesen also announced today that the Department of Human Services (DHS) will begin offering a child care assistance program to help evacuees get back on their feet, a service federal officials have already approved for reimbursement.

New information on the state’s disaster assistance effort
Family Assistance has been provided to 1,709 families, with 4,169 electronic benefit cards distributed through DHS. More than 100 people have requested federal Medicaid assistance. Medicaid costs will be billed to the home states of evacuees who seek federal Medicaid assistance in Tennessee.
2,880 evacuee students are registered in grades K-12 in public schools – 307 in Davidson County, 104 in Hamilton County, 84 in Knox County and 1,215 in Memphis/Shelby County. In addition, 390 evacuees have enrolled in the state’s private schools. The Department of Education has also issued 15 emergency teaching certificates.
A total of 547 students from closed Gulf Coast institutions have registered for classes at Tennessee colleges and universities. The University of Tennessee system has admitted 108 – 21 at UT Chattanooga, 85 at UT Knoxville, and two at UT Memphis. All nine state universities have admitted at least two students. Tennessee residents represent about four of every 10 new admissions.
The Department of Labor has processed 1,553 unemployment insurance claims with Louisiana and another 183 with Mississippi. The department has taken 285 job services applications and is conducting six job fairs.
Officials also continue to steer evacuees to register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which can be done by calling 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) or visiting www.fema.gov. More than 9,000 people or families have registered as evacuees with FEMA, while the total number of evacuees in Tennessee is estimated at 20,000. Most of the evacuees came to the state on their own, but should still take advantage of the services offered through FEMA registration.
As of Thursday, there are 589 evacuees in TEMA shelters, with an estimated 2,500 in shelters across Tennessee. FEMA has established a toll-free Hurricane Katrina hotline to accept public contributions of goods and services to assist victims, at 1-800-440-6728.
FEMA also has activated the National Emergency Resource Registry to coordinate donations from businesses willing to assist with major needs such as housing, transportation and supplies. It is able to match donors to specific needs in the affected area.

On September 11, 2001 nearly 3,000 people died when terrorists attacked the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Now the survivors are being attacked by people carrying the banner of political correctness.
Where you would expect to find a memorial filled with artifacts of the tragedy designed to bring to life the memories of 9/11 you will instead find a shrine to political correctness and an expiation of liberal guilt. When it opens in 2010, most of the so-called International Freedom Center will be devoted to a series of cringing mea culpas for America’s alleged mistreatment of slaves and Native Americans and prisoners in Abu Ghraib, along with the tragedy of Soviet gulags and the Third Reich’s Holocaust.
Debra Burlingame sits on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. She is also the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She wrote in The Wall Street Journal in June that visitors to Ground Zero will “want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.
“Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.
“While the International Freedom Center is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach visitors how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground.” Debra added that there is simply no room for most of the cherished artifacts salvaged from Ground Zero. “But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees.”
This outrage is the work of a collection of far-left crazies, including the anti-American ACLU, who are dishonoring the memory of those who died and their survivors in order to promote their corrupt agendas. They want us to acknowledge our alleged guilt for what happened to Native Americans and slaves even though not a single one of us ever killed a Native American or mistreated a slave, much less ever owned one.
I don’t go to Pearl Harbor to read how Native Americans or slaves or victims of the Holocaust suffered, or silly reasons why the Japanese were justified in attacking us. I go there to honor fallen Americans who died while serving our country.
If we allow these whacked-out liberals to get away with this we will deserve the scorn of every American who loves this country and honors those who gave their lives in its service.
This is an outrage, but you don’t hear about it in the mainstream media. CBS, NBC and ABC are too busy trying to pin the results of a national disaster in New Orleans on the president to tell the American people what is going on at Ground Zero. The protests of the survivors of those who perished on 9/11 go unheard.
I’ll give the final words to Debra Burlingame: “The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hangar at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center’s multi-million-dollar insult.

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