Slow Government Response to Hurricane Katrina Continues

As the people of New Orleans kick off their first Mardi Gras celebration since Hurricane Katrina, politicians 1,000 miles away in Washington lay blame for inadequate federal response to the disaster. At the same time, a continuing lack of response is leaving tens of thousands in New Orleans still homeless six months later.

In Washington last week, a special Republicans-led House committee released a 600-page report detailing the failures of the response to Hurricane Katrina, which struck on August 29, 2005.

"Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure," the report said. "At every level—individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental—we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina."

The report, entitled "Failure of Initiative," recommends 90 changes in the wake of Katrina, and harshly criticizes the Department of Homeland Security, chiding its director Michael Chertoff for executing his critical responsibilities "late, ineffectively or not at all."

Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, it seems the federal response is still "late, ineffective or not at all."

Throngs of low-income New Orleans citizens are still without housing, yet a bureaucratic nightmare is bogging down FEMA's ability to meet their needs, just as bureaucracy slowed the federal response in the days immediately following Katrina.

Although FEMA put in a $4 billion request to install trailers for those who lost their homes throughout the region, in Louisiana only 60 percent of the 90,000 requests for manufactured housing have been fulfilled. In Orleans Parish, the country in which New Orleans sits, a mere 3,000 of 21,000 requests have been met, according to a Feb. 9 report by the New York Times.

Over ten thousand trailers are ready to be installed...but are instead collecting dust at holding sites because poor planning and politics are inhibiting their distribution.

But jumbled paperwork is not the only culprit. Local authorities and landowners in many areas have attempted to block the installation of trailers, many of which would be given to former renters whose apartments were destroyed and have not been rebuilt.

"There is a very strong message: not in my backyard," said Mark Misczak, director of FEMA's housing effort in Louisiana, according the New York Times report.

Utility companies, slow to install new service, have also contributed to the slowdown.

New Orleans itself is far from rebuilt. Despite hopes that this week's Mardi Gras celebration will revitalize downtown business, many shops remain boarded up or abandoned, and many of its 450,000 former residents have not, and may never, return.