Welcome to New Orleans--it is nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina, and your federal tax dollars are asleep on the job. You won’t disturb the slumber of dumb money should you come to Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, two essential sources of local revenue, where you will register few traces of Katrina's destructive power. Only by venturing beyond the warm embrace of the restored French Quarter, with its familiar old-world charms, can one experience the vast stretches of physical devastation and ruined lives that federal and state monies have yet to address.

Today the City Council and local government paint a prosperous, resilient image of New Orleans. It is, after all, cheaper to spin a hopeful message than to rebuild residential areas, schools, commercial centers and the levees to protect the city against future replays of the tragic storm. In the face of FEMA’s failure, and the less-documented, glacial slowness of the ‘Road Home’ program, the New Orleans power elite are cheerleading the city’s boot-strapped recovery efforts, while playing down remaining needs. This serves both to allure tourists frightened by the lawlessness of the Katrina aftermath and to minimize their own failures in leadership and management of the crisis response.

Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area early morning August 29, 2005. The storm surge breached the city's levees at multiple points, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country. Three weeks later, Hurricane Rita re-flooded much of the area.

The storm is estimated to have been responsible for $81.2 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. Katrina redistributed New Orleans' population across the southern United States: Houston, Texas had an increase of 35,000 people; Mobile, Alabama gained over 24,000; Baton Rouge, Louisiana over 15,000; and Hammond, Louisiana received over 10,000, nearly doubling its size.

Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/08/29.html