Two years later

Image borrowed from a New Orleans blogger.

The cover story for the August 13 issue of Time magazine was about New Orleans. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.”

Well put. Then the August 27 issue revealed readers' responses: over 60% of people who sent mail/email re: the August 13 coverage essentially said New Orleans will never be a safe place to live; therefore the federal government shouldn’t invest money in rebuilding the city. One guy even wrote that the government should relocate New Orleans residents, but not spend a penny more on the levees. Not great news, considering the demographics of Time's readership.

Everyone's entitled to his/her own opinions, though I don't follow the logic of these arguments. If an earthquake were to occur in San Francisco this week and badly damage that city, would America say, "Don't bother rebuilding; San Francisco can never truly be safe because it sits on a fault line"? Highly doubtful. It's so upsetting to me that a large part of America doesn't seem agree with helping New Orleans (and/or doesn’t mind ignoring what’s happening down there).

It's pretty easy for me to do a little blog post today and jump on the Katrina anniversary bandwagon along with all the presidential candidates, Anderson Cooper and Oprah. But the real issue is what happens in the coming months. And in the next few years for that matter. I've wished many times for a magic wand I could wave to fix New Orleans. But realistically, the city needs a lot of $ and a lot of leadership for the long haul. May it get both.