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Two years later, we are crying over New Orleans again. Yes, the government dropped the ball at the beginning. Yes, people suffered. Now, two years later, we still have people marching in the streets saying, “Where is my money?”
Why aren’t these people out there cleaning up the piles of rubble still there after two years? Why don’t they have jobs and are rebuilding their lives and homes? Why are they still waiting for someone to “give” them money, houses, “their” city back?
Why are all the volunteers working to make things better from somewhere else — and mostly white? Why did they re-elect a mayor who did nothing but ask for more and more from others, but asked nothing from himself or his “chocolate city”?
Why are there still Katrina refugees here in Colorado and many other states, and why are they getting government funds for support after two years? Why don’t these people try to help themselves?

Carol Ann Brown, Denver

READER COMMENTS

Carol,

The mentality of that city has never changed and it isn't color it's mere laziness. The elected representatives there seem to think that the federal government exists to pay for whatever they desire. They have never been held accountable and never will be since a large portion of the population has demonstrated that they also hold to that same belief in the federal sugar daddy.

Those who relocated include those with that attitude and others who have taken advantage of the opportunity to move to a state where the people have the ability to take the state government to account and have done so. When the subsidy runs out those people will find a far friendlier state than Colorado to mooch from. We actually expect able bodied people to work for a living.

Perhaps in two more years we can have another anniversary of Katrina and see how much has changed or not. So long as the current administrations and attitudes are unchanged the rubbish piles will still be waiting. Right next to the politicians and others waiting for that next government check.

Lets be totally honest. If for two years or longer you can sit on your backside and collect a check. Live off the generosity of others. Would you really be trying hard to go back to that crime ridden, corrupt city.

In Loisianna you have a traditionally crime infested elected system. It goes back to the creation of the city. The Mayor is negligent, the Governor is negligent, and the police force is riddled with thieves.

Personally I would never live there under those circumstances, but again I ask. If you can sit on your backside and collect money for nothing, wouldn't you?

I saw show on PBS recently about Katrina 2 years later.They showed a family that had over 100 family members getting together and eating and even having spices and certain foods shipped from New Orleans so they could have a taste of home.

Alot were complaining about the government not rebuilding their houses.One man who was young and able bodied was asking," What am I gonna do when my check runs out soon? "

As one of the woman was driving around St. Bernards Parish she was saying Hi, to people and as I look in the background I saw people rebuilding and cleaning up. All the people I saw in the background were white.

Alot of people were interviewed in their FEMA trailers and they just kept saying when is the government going to rebuild my house?

Instead of complaining what the government is supposed to be doing for you? Why don't these people get up and do something for themselves?

The family with over 100 people in it,If they can get together and eat ,why can't they get together and rebuild one house at a time?

It's time to stop calling these people Katrina victims.The storm has been long gone over 2 years now.

The state government of Louisianna failed these people and now the state should be the one dealing with the problems not the federal government.

Maybe if the city had just sunk, excluding the people, it would have been better for all. If anyone thinks anything can be done to prevent another hurricane from wrecking the city again they are delusional. New Orleans is a artifically created city in a swamp and a continual accident visited by periodic catastrophe. It is doomed unless the taxpayers are willing to fork over tens of billions, maybe trillions of dollars, to raise the whole area above sea level. That is the only way the city will ever last through the next class 4 or 5 storm that hits it , which is inevitible. Personally and somewhat sadly, I think that would be a waste of money greater than that which has already occured.

Carol Ann,They are products of the democrap party.See what the democraps hve already done to Denver.

Perhaps if BushCorp, Inc. had required that money for reconstruction went to local companies that employed local people, rather than to well-connected no-bid contracts to his cronies, some of that largess could have helped people find jobs and get to work, instead of funneling taxpayer dollars to rich CEOs and off-shore companies (think that wonderful democracy of Dubai). But that wouldn't help the ultra-rich get ultra-richer now would it? Poor Trent Lott lost his mansion...

Everyone says Bush "dropped the ball" concerning the Katrina issue. I have a question here...me and my spouse lived on an Army base for two years in the late 90s(we are civilians) we were informed by the Army that" In the event of a catastrophe, national or otherwise" we would be "on our own" for survival for at least 3 to 5 days. I read somewhere that this is the usual time of reaction for government in an event such as Katrina. I am neither Rub nor Dem...just wondering! Anyone out there know what the typical response time of the government should be??

I lived in New Orleans for a short time.

Agree wholeheartedly with Momma Y, Amen, A. Campbell and anonymous 4:28 A.M.

Oliver,

The federal Government will allocate disaster relief funds to the STATE OF LOUISIANA, and then it is up to the State to hire contractors with those federal dollars to rebuild.

Here is my question. Many people believe in anthropogenic global warming. Alarmist view is that sea level will rise, according to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson, as much as 20 feet! Since New Orleans already sits below sea level, why should we rebuild a city that will, according to the extremists, be sitting 22 feet UNDER WATER???

I am being a bit extreme. Most "experts" (read IPCC) believe that the sea may rise 8 inches due to AGW. Still, the mean elevation is 1.5 feet BELOW sea level, with some areas as "high" as 16 feet above sea level and others as low as 10 feet below sea level currently.

Dr. Einstein once wrote that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again, expecting different results. How many more times are we going to sink money into a hole and expect that it will "all be fine" the next time around?

Wow, an ignorant, bigoted letter to the RMN editor draws a lot of ignorant, bigoted (for the most part) responses - how shocking....

Xenophobic, no that would be giving Carol-Ann Brown to much credit; how about a bigot or racist, or just simply unsophistigated. "Those people," have no money Carol-Ann; and after paying property taxes for the entire 20th century they were still unable to collect on insurance money because the governement didn't use their taxes to fix the levies that caused the massive flooding. Consequently, no flood insurance. Way to go RMN for giving this bigot a forum.

I might be as dumb as Carol-Ann Brown, I spelled unsophisticated "unsophistigated," and government "governement." Your I.Q. becomes considerably lower when you read opinions like Carol-Ann Brown's.

When hurricanes hit Florida a lot of rental property and apartment houses were destroyed. Those renters were instantly homeless.

In New Orleans, I got the impression we are talking about private homes destroyed. The people could camp out on their property I suppose, but they also lost their jobs as the employers lost their property.

It does seem that the feds could do something to at least clear off the damaged houses.

I see in the paper that notices have gone up that the property will be condemned and taken by, what the state or city?

Nice way to just steal land.

Some people can`t read the notices because they are out of the area.

Reminds me of the book "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" where Earth was destroyed to make a galactic off ramp. See the notice was posted for years, but no one saw it and fought to save the Earth.

Forget the lazy ones who don`t rebuild and concentrate on those that want to. What do they need to get started?

Probably jobs first, so hire them to rebuild if they can. or do support jobs for the builders, there has to be a solution to this.

Sharon B., I'd love for someone to quantify "the lazy ones who don`t rebuild." You can be certain it's a far smaller number than the Carol Ann Browns of the world want to believe.

There are any number of reasons neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward haven't been rebuilt. Primary among them is the fact that the owners (homeownership in the Ninth runs about 60%) simply aren't there to do the work, or have the work done by someone else, assuming they could afford that. The "lucky" ones who escaped the flood by evacuation were scattered literally to the four winds; most have not returned. Ray Nagin recently announced that the population of the city had made it back up to 300,000, which means upwards of 150,000 still have not come home after two years.

How can they come back when they have nothing to come back to? Most of the Lower Ninth to this day has no electricity, no running water. 90% of the homes are gone - not damaged, GONE. Put yourself in their place, with no income, no shelter, and no hope of getting either in the foreseeable future. If you had relocated and established some kind of life elsewhere, how would you manage a return under those circumstances?

"Those people" who might have enough saved to live on while rebuilding, if that were even feasible, are hamstrung by the requirement to begin rebuilding on their own and then file for reimbursement of their expenses. And many of the ones who did have some form of insurance are STILL waiting for the insurance companies to pay.

In the more upscale areas, like Lakeview and Gentilly, replacement values in a great many cases far exceed the limits of flood insurance. Again we're not talking about people of unlimited means, and the expense of rebuilding would be a huge burden.

Regarding Carol Ann's "people marching in the streets saying where is my money," there are indeed people marching in the streets, but they are asking what has happened to the billions allocated by the Federal government, ostensibly for rebuilding. They are wondering whatever became of the promise George Bush made two years ago this Saturday in Jackson Square: "we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives." The Federal government has allocated some $115 billion for recovery from Katrina and Rita, yet most of that money either has not been spent or was used for clean-up contracts in the immediate aftermath of the storms. (Yes, it is true that many of those contracts were given to companies like Halliburton on a no-bid basis, even while those same companies were freed of the constraints of the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law by Bush's executive order on 9/8/2005.)

People are demanding to know why the levees still haven't been reinforced past category 3 protection levels, especially given Bush's statement on that same night that "protecting a city that sits lower than the water around it is not easy, but it can, and has been done."

Nicholas, Carol Ann Brown lives in Denver and probably watches the same news and reads the same papers every day.

I doubt if she can imagine the problems with having your home and your community wiped out.

Where does she think these people will work?

I rather doubt Carol thinks about much of anything outside her own parochial domain, given the series of inane questions she asks.

There is work to be had in New Orleans - not as much as there used to be, of course, and not much that's particularly desirable, but some. It is in tourism for the most part. The French Quarter and downtown were not nearly as hard-hit as some of the outlying residential areas, and many of the businesses that were able to reopen had difficulty finding workers, at least in the first few months.

The problems facing those who want to return are (1) their homes are destroyed or damaged beyond repair (or simply closed indefinitely, in the case of public housing); (2) the funds to rebuild aren't there for the most part; (3) the cost of rental housing has skyrocketed because of price gouging.

I reckon a great many people have given up on the idea of ever returning to New Orleans, and that is incredibly sad, an outcome that should never have happened. I cannot imagine the depth of the pain and anger that must come from having all your worldly possessions and even your entire neighborhood washed away by a flood that was entirely preventable, and then from seeing your government squander billions every month on the so-called "war on terror" while the levees remain inadequate and the neighborhoods remain deserted.

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