Hurricane Katrina: One Year Later
August 30, 2006 
Its been exactly one year since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and set in motion an equally disastrous government response.
And have things since improved? Certainly some businesses and residences have been rebuilt in the past year. Some percentage of tourists are back spending money in the French Quarter.
But mostly, its a slow rebuilding process, with thousands of small businesses’ fates, as well as the future of New Orleans itself, hanging in the balance. Not to mention areas that haven’t been touched since the hurricane hit:
There are many places in New Orleans where it looks like the flooding happened yesterday: whole neighbourhoods are deserted, flooded buildings still show the high watermarks, the mangled wreckage of smashed homes still present a health hazard.
And, despite nearly a year of reconstruction by the Army Corps of Engineers, those levees that crumbled under the immense flood waters still may not be able to withstand the power of a Category 5 hurricane:
Despite aggressive efforts to repair the New Orleans levee system following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, it isn’t clear yet whether it could withstand a hurricane with heavy storm surge this year, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers conceded Saturday.
Hopefully, New Orleans will be spared a direct hit during this year’s hurricane season.
The New York Times has an interesting infographic, which I’ve broken down into blog-sized chunks, that shows how close New Orleans is to pre-Katrina levels, in a number of measurable fields:
Will New Orleans ever be the same? Hopefully, in time. But, certainly not in just a year.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:11 AM
I don’t believe it’s the reactionary response that is the problem but rather the prepatory. Katrina did the damage it did because of Louisana’s pathetic building code standards. Florida gets hit by many hurricanes yearly, but what has kept such a disaster from occuring is strict standards in hurricane preparedness. Those that don’t prepare (e.g. mobile home) are taking the chance of “losing everything”.
All the publicity that Katrina has received is due to the public’s yearning to blame the feds. How about circumventing some of that War-on-Concepts money to your locale, you misnomeric excuse for Republicans?
Linkage: http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/hurricanes/index_categories.html