KTBS 3 News | Shreveport, LA: ArkLaTex News - New Orleans: Still rebuilding two years after Katrina

Posted: Aug 29, 2007 7:00 AM
Updated: Aug 29, 2007 12:00 AM

On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, anger over the stalled rebuilding is palpable today throughout New Orleans -- where the mourning for the dead and feeling of loss doesn't seem to subside.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall south of New Orleans at 6:10 a.m. on Aug. 29, 2005, as a strong Category 3 hurricane. It flooded 80 percent of the city and killed more than 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi in what was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

New Orleans churches are staging memorial services, including one at historic St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square. People throughout the city will hold their own private ceremonies to remember where they were when Katrina hit, and what they lost.

Protesters plan to march from the obliterated Lower 9th Ward to Congo Square, where slaves were once allowed to celebrate their culture. Accompanied by brass bands, they will again try to spread their message that the government has failed to help people return.

President Bush and his wife, Laura, are spending today in New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, Miss., determined to celebrate those he says have "dedicated their lives to the renewal of New Orleans."

The front page of The New Orleans Times-Picayune advertised a scathing editorial above the masthead: "Treat us fairly, Mr. President." It chided the Bush administration for giving Republican-dominated Mississippi a share of federal money that the newspaper said was disproportionate to the lesser impact the storm had there than in largely Democratic Louisiana.

Like his last three visits to New Orleans, including last year's anniversary trip, the president chose a charter school as his main backdrop. This time, it was the Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Math and Science, where President Bush could combine hurricane comfort with a favorite and controversial subject: the need for competition and choice in public schooling.

Bush's Gulf Coast rebuilding chief, Don Powell, noted the federal government has committed a total of $114 billion to the region, $96 billion of which is already disbursed or available to local governments.

Two years after the storm, there has been progress -- but it has been slow.

New Orleans' population continues to grow and sales tax revenues are approaching normal. But huge areas of the city remain in shambles. Bureaucracy is choking federal and state assistance, which hasn't helped redeem the federal government from it's widely criticized performance in the storm's immediate aftermath.

There is good news and bad news.

New Orleans' population is slowly rebounding. A few neighborhoods thrive; the city has recovered much of its economic base; sales tax revenues are approaching normal; and the French Quarter survived Katrina.

The bad news is that much of New Orleans still looks like a wasteland, with businesses shuttered and houses abandoned. Basic services like schools, libraries, public transportation and childcare are at half original levels; only two-thirds of the region's licensed hospitals are open; rental properties are in severely short supply, driving rents way up; crime is considered rampant and police operate out of trailers

Work on the levees has been non-stop but they are not yet considered ready for the next massive storm. All the work is not scheduled to be strengthened until 2015.

Engineers found more than 50 breaks in the levees.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti has filed a class action lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers. He said as many as 350,000 Louisiana residents could eventually be plaintiffs in the suit.

(From The Associated Press)