Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

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I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together.

Together.

Together.

We power life.

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With support from viewers like you.

And it is a failed city from a public administration standpoint.

New Orleans sinks deeper and deeper under a web of crime.

We think we have the atmosphere under control, and we use long range forecasting.

A strong hurricane in the Gulf next week.

But where?

This is something that should be in every mom and pop restaurant.

Beacon of hope.

In the aftermath of a storm.

For everyday consumers in Louisiana, things are going to continue to be expensive.

Relief from inflation.

Not so fast.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Andre Mauro.

More on those top stories in a moment.

And we are celebrating our 46th year of why Louisiana, the state we're in.

As always, we bring the stories important to every part of the state.

And tonight, we dove into hurricane season crime and inflation, curiosity, fear.

We'll report later in the broadcast.

But first, let's look at some of the other headlines from around our state.

Midterm elections are just weeks away and TV ads are now running ahead of this year's U.S. Senate race.

Louisiana's likely frontrunners, a Republican Senator John Kennedy, the overwhelming favorite, and former Navy fighter pilot Luke Nixon, a moderate Democrat.

Kennedy's ad touts securing the border and fighting China, while Nixon, who graduated from Top Gun, says he spent 20 years fighting extremism around the world.

Now he's fighting it at home, running against Kennedy.

The election in November.

A new report on the Middleborough Terrier settlement diversion moves it a step closer to becoming reality.

The trustees who released the money for the $2.2 billion project say they are likely to approve it.

Mid Barataria is the biggest of the projects to help rebuild Louisiana's disappearing coast.

Families and businesses in tangible parish are a step closer to getting paid for flood damages caused by the construction of Interstate 12.

Way back in 1983, the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget approved a $95 million payment.

It would eventually go to more than 1200 victims, 400 families and 96 businesses harmed in the killing of Ali Rice, the LSU senior, as she sat in her car waiting for a train to pass is one of those tragedies that has caught the attention of the nation.

Every publication, every network has covered this and are staying on top of it.

Certainly in our area, the same thing at Shuhada is an American criminologist and sociologist.

And you've researched race and crime.

White and black in America, and also ethnicity, commonly Latino in crime in America, also doing work for the Department of Corrections.

You had the department at LSU.

It's a pleasure to have you.

Let's discuss this murder.

Why is this happening like this?

And it seems to be things maybe not the exact same thing, but things are happening that are different than they were before, it seems.

First, let me say this is so incredibly tragic and actually terrifying.

I teach these kids, they're sitting in my front row and beyond.

I see them every single day.

And I have a daughter who's Ali's age.

And so, yeah, when I read it, I was shaking and it's terrifying.

Her whole life ahead of her, she was so proud about an.

Internship and graduating and.

It was I mean, she was just such an amazing girl with so much ahead of her.

It's just devastating.

My staff, they're crying.

She was a part of our family.

We've had a lot of murders in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Shreveport and it is clear it's happening all over the world.

Murder has gone up, not the other crimes so much, but mainly murder.

And it's pandemic related as the pandemic went up and we all retreated from the streets and got locked into our homes.

Murder went up.

And then as the pandemic crested, murder crested.

And now there is signs that it's coming down.

In Ali's case, I don't know the specific details of it, but it appears to be a random killing.

And it is it is absolutely horrific.

And I and I trust the police will find the perpetrator.

Yeah, I certainly hope so.

There are people stepping forward with rewards and the community's aware of it.

Let me ask you, how is our state?

We can look at Shreveport, Baton Rouge, New Orleans as the major cities.

How are those cities handling crime?

Are they doing good or good enough jobs of doing that?

If you take the top ten most dangerous cities in America and those are going to include sometimes includes Chicago, it's always Saint Louis and Detroit and Baltimore and D.C. and so on.

Common suspects are always there.

Exactly.

We are three of those cities are in Louisiana, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport.

We have a crime problem.

Our state has the highest murder rate in the country.

And and the answer to that is not just incarceration, because if incarceration solves crime, we have the highest incarceration rate in the country, we'd have the lowest crime rate.

So it is very bad right now.

So there's work that the cities can do much better.

Look at New Orleans for a second.

Carjackings and some of them so grotesque, you can't even imagine a woman's arm being ripped off because it was stuck in the seatbelt as they stole her car and she dies in the street.

Yeah, that crime was just unimaginable violence.

Right now, the indications are that Baton Rouge I don't know about Shreveport, but Baton Rouge, the homicide rate is coming down.

It's now nowhere near where it should be.

But New Orleans is still on the way up.

It's still rising.

Why?

Look, I love New Orleans and I think we are very fortunate to have New Orleans and the state of Louisiana.

And it's a great tourism place and the people are wonderful, but it is a failed city from a public administration standpoint.

All the predictors of crime, poverty, unemployment, despair, lack of resources, disorganized public administration.

This is the petri dish.

It's a petri dish of the predictors of crime.

And it's the most and I believe that by the end of this year, it's quite possible that New Orleans will emerge as the most violent and dangerous city in America and one of the most violent cities in the world.

And one that rests on tourism to.

So at some point, if that is the overriding impression of the city, well, people are not going to be attracted to that, I would think.

How does Baton Rouge stack up?

How does Shreveport stack up?

Well, Baton Rouge is probably the eighth most violent city in America.

And so, I mean, that's that's nothing to be proud of.

I do understand.

But it is coming down at the moment.

We are probably 16 homicides down from where we were last year.

So I am confident that we will wrestle this to the ground in the next couple of years.

It's going to take some time.

One of the big drops that has occurred.

Well, I'll back up.

One of the big increases in the types of murder we had in Baton Rouge was domestic violence murders.

It's happened all over the country during the pandemic when aggressors and victims cannot easily separate and they're chafing on each other during that isolation.

You had an increase in domestic violence murders.

To give you an idea, in Baton Rouge in 2019, we had four domestic violence murders.

By 2021, we had 35.

Okay.

And now it's coming back down.

We're probably cutting that number in half this year.

So it was coming back down.

Baton Rouge is better organized to facilitate correcting issues that are problems.

Baton Rouge is better organized, period.

Okay, then New Orleans.

Then New Orleans, you know, and I grieve with the people of New Orleans because I know the people there are trying very, very hard.

Baton Rouge is a better organized city.

I'll give you an example.

In 2012, when we had a high murder problem and it was gang related, the city organized with almost 120 different community organizations and a very active district attorney, Hillary Moore and the sheriff and so on.

And we organized and went after gangs.

And I was part of that task force and we brought murder down 32% in four years.

It can be done.

It can be done.

Shreveport, for example, also able to handle what comes out of that, even if it's in a bad way.

Yes, I believe they can.

I believe they can.

They do not have a long, long history of disorganization and violence.

So I believe they can they can wrestle this thing to the ground.

Much more we can talk about on this topic.

Our time's up right now, but thank you so much for coming in.

And your.

It's been my pleasure.

Thank you.

Baton Rouge police have announced that they are staking out certain areas of the capital city.

They're expecting a spike in gang violence in the next several days.

And this hurricane season was forecast to be a rough one, especially for those of us who watch storms come in and out of the Gulf and change our lives.

It's been unusually quiet.

Has it been rough yet?

State climatologist Barry Keim is here also of coastal meteorologist Paul Miller to discuss why.

And we'll get to that in a moment.

First, I want to ask you about Fiona.

Fiona, a hurricane cat one that just hit Puerto Rico devastated in Puerto Rico being compared to the monster storm Maria of a few years ago.

Why is a Cat one being compared to a much more powerful storm?

I mean, in a nutshell, it's the rainfall.

This every every hurricane has its signature, you know, whether it's surge or high winds, this one's rain and you're the 30 plus inches of rain is really what the big problem is.

And they're still recovering from the last call from Maria.

And this is just set them that much further back.

I mean, they have made some progress, not so much, apparently, with their parallel power grid, which seemed to be knocked out before the storm even came ashore.

But 33 inches of rain in Ponce, a large city.

And this is an area that doesn't get the typical rainfall that they would get for we think of Puerto Rico tropical.

Yeah.

You think Puerto Rico tropical island.

But actually the southern side of the island is really in what we call a rain shadow, where it's kind of on the downwind side of the mountain and it tends to be a bit drier due to the wind directions we've seen based on the track of Hurricane Fiona, that side of the island has actually seen a lot of onshore flow that's been forced upwards by these mountains, and that's really enhanced these rainfall rates that we've seen.

So that storm has become a Cat four and moved on but not threatening the US mainland.

But what is the take away from this, Fiona?

For example, 30 inches and not lingering 30 inches of rain?

Not lingering.

Is that something for us to be aware of?

Eventually a storm will come into the Gulf and it could be at any time.

But is that just one of those things that the data is showing in the big picture of climate changing?

Rain is falling at a greater intensity per minute.

Yeah, I believe that's correct.

So this is a good example of that, I think, right?

Possible, yes.

I mean, we've had some of these amazing storms like Harvey.

We had our August 2016 flood here, which is also a tropical event, depending on how you want to look at it.

And the atmosphere, since it is warming, is carrying more moisture.

And as a result, when these big rainstorms fall, there's just there's a greater reservoir of moisture there to tap into and we're getting higher rainfall amounts.

You mentioned the atmosphere, so we've not had really much in the Gulf at all this hurricane season.

So far.

Still plenty of time left.

But why?

What's changed?

Yeah, well, you know, during the month of July, we had a lot of this Saharan dust.

And so that really kind of shut off the valve for hurricane season early on.

And how is that?

Why does it do that?

It's drier.

It fed, infiltrates into the atmosphere and it can do that.

It will.

Does.

It comes from a desert.

Like that, like this, like a sedative.

It just calms it, right?

Yes.

Basically, it puts a lot of hot, dry air aloft in the atmosphere.

Thunderstorms don't like that one.

They love the humidity, the kind of stuff we have here in Louisiana.

I thought that.

Was gone, though.

I thought the dust was gone.

Yeah.

Well, so essentially what that has done is created an atmospheric profile that is very stable.

And even though the dust has moved on, this this temperature profile in the atmosphere, it's just not allowing the uplift to take place that's required for a hurricane to form going forward.

Is there any way for us to like bottle that and make sure we have that every year?

That would be nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, these are some of large scale powers.

You know, Mother Nature will send us and of course, this is a little wrinkle.

Just when you think we had or we think we have the atmosphere under control, we can use long range forecasting.

Mother Nature will throw this wrinkle in there and square everything up.

And we're just past peak, but still in a dangerous part of a busy, typically hurricane season.

When things can happen and things can still happen.

And we need to be aware of that.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, this is really kind of early in the third quarter of hurricanes.

And so we still have about maybe a third of the peak season ahead of us.

And so the Gulf is needs to still be on alert.

So we have been thinking about six storms in the Gulf.

It's maybe going to be a long shot to get to that number.

But, you know, even average is 3.7.

And so I still think that there might be a temptation to kind of say, oh, this season's a bust, but we still have several weeks.

It only takes one.

Right.

And then you don't remember that there weren't others?

That's correct.

Paul Barry, thank you so much for being here and interested in the Gulf.

Are watching a tropical depression now.

It's in the Caribbean, north of Colombia.

It's expected to become Hurricane Hermine and make its way into the Gulf early next week.

The National Hurricane Center says the storm should cross Cuba, then threaten Florida as a Cat three major hurricane.

And the loss of power and comfort as we know it just goes with the territory.

When a hurricane strikes for many thousands, it can be days, weeks, it can be longer.

And the uncomfortable and dangerous aftermath.

People can be overcome with heat.

They may lack food and medical care, but there is a way around that, apparently.

And Kyra, states hear reports that the founder of the the second line, a New Orleans nonprofit, has a plan for hurricane hubs that will bring relief.

A hurricane's devastation goes beyond the flood surges and the wind gusts.

Its impact can last days or even weeks after the initial event.

Hurricane Iris impact was felt for weeks after she made landfall.

Lisa Nelson was one of the many left to pick up the pieces the storm left behind.

I decided to evacuate with my kids and the grid was down for an hour here for ten days.

So we were out in Houston, Texas, about almost 18 hours to get there.

And then, you know, we had to find hotels.

It was stressful there.

But if we had stayed here, it would have been more stressful being as you couldn't find gasoline.

There was there was no power.

It was like people were just struggling just to find basic necessities.

So it was a good choice that I decided to take evacuated.

Nelson is the owner of Queen Trini Lisa, a Caribbean restaurant nestled in the heart of a mid-city neighborhood in New Orleans.

She watched her neighbor struggle after losing power for days.

When you came back, you were faced with still I mean, people in some areas still didn't have power and just getting food was really hard.

Nelson's story is a familiar one.

More than a million homes lost power in Louisiana during Hurricane Rita.

In some places, residents didn't see power restored for days.

Others didn't see it for weeks.

Devon to Wolf noticed that the problem seemed to affect the same people each time a storm hit.

The wolf came up with an idea for a safe haven of electricity when neighborhood power lines go down.

His solution microgrids set up at local hubs.

A microgrid is basically solar panels and batteries.

And so the solar panels charge the battery and if you have a mine, your house or a restaurant.

Then when the entire city's power goes out, you're your own grid because you have the batteries and the panels.

The battery is the key.

Because without the battery, solar panels are just decoration.

When the power goes out.

And so the immediate needs of the neighborhood is going to be cell phone charging, water, ice, cooling and food.

And we can actually do that all here by here.

Devin means Queen Lisa.

You see, Nelson's restaurant is the perfect place for a hub.

She's dead center of her neighborhood and people around could easily access her.

That's why she's the very first person to get a solar panel installed in her restaurant, courtesy of Devon's nonprofit organization.

See the second line.

For the people that live within four blocks of us of this restaurant.

They could easily walk here, and that's going to be enough support for them for the week after a hurricane.

And what I saw with Ida is, you know, elderly people sitting in the shade in 100 degree heat, not getting anything.

No support, no services.

So this is a way that instead of trying to build these big giant centers for people to go to, it's a it's a block by block approach.

And that, I think, is really important because so often you have outsiders that will come into a community to save them.

And what happens is you don't know who's really medically vulnerable.

You don't know that that guy is just grumpy, but he's really nice, but he's grumpy.

And all of that knowledge, that local knowledge, I think is really important to actually take care of the people that need more support.

But how does one go about this type of project?

What do you need to get this done?

Well, it's a great opportunity to create jobs.

And with being the second one, you know, we're trying to create that safety net for our culture buried in the water.

So with that being said, it's taken the whole situation with the solar panels and giving them the opportunity to get that job training, to actually learn to install those solar panels.

So not only are we helping the environment, but helping the culture as well.

Feed The second line raised about $93,000 from donors to get this project off the ground.

But the wolf's hope is to turn at least 300 restaurants into hurricane hubs like Nelson's.

And the reason we're so focused on that number is, you know, now this restaurant is saving money every month on their energy bill.

So we can tell the restaurant, hey, we just gave you all this solar and battery stuff.

It's really expensive, but we paid for it.

The nonprofit and now you're saving money every month, so pay it forward.

And the restaurant will put $200 a month back into the program.

So if we get 300 restaurants paying $200 a month, that is 60,000 a month.

And what that does is that allows us to just keep going, because if you think about south Louisiana, this is something that should be in every mom and pop restaurant, not just in New Orleans, but throughout the state.

Nelson's place is just the start of what could be a self-sustaining city.

She says she's proud to take on the role.

Nobody wants the next hurricane.

I want to be in a situation, but in case we do need someone that they can come somewhere, that they know they can come to.

The hurricane hubs or early in the planning stages.

But the wolf believes they're the future of hurricane relief.

There's a link on our website lpx dot org for feed.

The second line.

And gas prices are dropping, but the cost of everything else remains high.

And getting supplies to stores continues to have problems.

Kyra talked with LSU energy expert David Dismukes, who says the latest problems in Ukraine could drive inflation even higher.

I don't know about you, but showing up my gas tank has been a lot easier these last couple of weeks.

Gas has dropped tremendously.

And at the beginning of the war, people were very concerned about how long gas prices would stay up.

Is it possible that we could see the prices increase again because the war is intensifying?

You know, you look at the markets this morning, they're they're down.

And I think the reason why they're down, because they're you're right, there's just kind of push and pull effect here.

Is is this going to take is the uncertainty created with this going to create more economic uncertainty and contraction that pulls demand off the market, then the supply that may come off the market relative to Russian supplies?

I think on the supply side of this equation was been curtailed, has been curtailed.

We're not looking at any new curtailments.

So the market is kind of already baked in kind of where supply is.

It's really the demand side now that's really driving the market.

And what the market seems to be suggesting this morning is that the way I would interpret it is that the economic slowdown throughout most of the world is going to continue and may even strengthen.

So the reason why you're seeing those prices is because traders are feeling that the demand for crude oil in all the refined products that come from that are going to be lower as we head into a recession.

You know, moving through the end of this year and into the beginning of next year, we're already seeing contractions, obviously pretty significantly in Europe.

Asian markets are pretty, pretty tough right now, particularly in China.

The U.S. is wobbling right now, depending on how you look at those numbers with a recession right now.

So the outlook doesn't look good.

And the reason why you've gotten some of this pricing release is because the markets just don't think that the demand is going to be there as we move forward.

You keep saying economic slowdown, there's going to be an economic slowdown.

We're seeing an economic slowdown.

But what exactly does that mean?

Well, that usually tends to mean that you get a decrease in gross domestic product growth.

We've seen, you know, a recent contraction in the U.S. growth over the last quarter.

You're going to see that happen.

I think, in other developing developed economies as well.

As we move through the rest of this year and into next year, particularly in Europe, who are facing much higher energy prices than anything that we're seeing right now, in at some point, that usually ripples its way into labor markets and you start to see unemployment go up.

One of the things that when I say cooling and easing on this is that we've yet to see, you know, a significant impact on the economic slowdown in those labor markets and labor markets continue to be pretty strong in the sense that unemployment rates have not gone up.

They've held relatively constant and people are still employed.

The problem that we have now is inflation's very high and it's right and it's increasing at rates that are outpacing real wage growth, which means for most people, they are worse off today than they were, say, several months ago.

Yeah, inflation, I know, is definitely hitting people hard, particularly at the grocery store and retail.

Those things are just it's been really difficult for people to just buy everyday things.

And I know that I've asked you this question several times in the past, but is there any glimmer of hope in the future that we could see prices dip back down to things we recognize?

Well, you know, that's the goal.

The Federal Reserve Bank right now and that's one of the things they're trying to do is increase interest rates to cool down some of this demand, such that things, price levels go down and things become more affordable.

You know, whether the real challenge is whether we'll have what some economists would refer to as a soft landing or whether we're going to go into a relatively hard recession.

And that's yet to be seen.

I will say this, if you kind of look at economic history, it's very hard to orchestrate a soft landing.

And it's rarely the case that the Federal Reserve Bank is able to do something like that is much more difficult than one might imagine.

So we'll just have to see where things progress as we move forward.

I don't I don't personally see a lot of these inflationary pressures getting alleviated any time soon.

Ultimately, they will.

We hope they will.

And they will probably by definition, if the Fed continues to increase interest rates.

But you've got so much backlog in terms of how manufactured goods and the high input prices that they've paid in inventory that are going to have to work their way out.

You see the ripple effect in food prices throughout that whole value chain, starting with fertilizers, moving through transportation, labor costs, etc..

It just it's going to take time for that to work its way out of the system and everyone.

That's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything Lvb anytime, wherever you are with our live KPBS app, you can catch LP News and Public Affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs that you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

For everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre Moreau.

Until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Zeigler Foundation and the Zeigler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.