NOW that round-the-clock media coverage of Hurricane Katrina has ended and much of the rest of the nation has moved on, it appears that the plight of the citizens of New Orleans is on the verge of being virtually forgotten.
The lack of preparedness by all levels of government was shocking when flood waters whipped by the hurricane breached the levies and inundated a large part of the city. Though the waters have long since receded, one suspects that nobody in Washington has a clue how to rebuild a city hit this hard.
Reconstruction has been promised, but its inhabitants are scattered all over the United States. Nobody knows how many would return, and Congress is balking at writing more relief checks without cuts elsewhere to offset them.
Even the Bush White House may be learning the lesson that fiscal profligacy can't last forever, and that the federal government cannot continue to be short-changed by relying on the federal mantra chanted by GOP tax-cutters that it is the "people's money."
There is a role for the federal government, after all, and past neglect of New Orleans' levee system, in part because of indifference, proves that.
Ironically the disastrous floods on the lower Mississippi in 1927 caused low-lying areas of New Orleans to be flooded when levees were destroyed to relieve flood water pressure in other areas along the river. That flood led to strengthening of river levees along the entire lower Mississippi, with the result that siltation was cut down and delta lands which once help shield the vulnerable city began to erode.Government studies of the New Orleans levee system in the wake of Katrina show that the system was deteriorating and that even if the major breaks had not occurred, smaller leaks would have led to flooding of parts of the city where many of its poorer residents lived.
The fact that New Orleans had a very high percentage of poor people was generally overlooked by the throngs of visitors who came to the city every year to get a taste of its vibrant culture, as well as by local officials who redirected levee district funds for other development favored by local and other officials. The city's view seemed to be one of "neglect now, pay later."
The Bush Administration ignored the fact that flood-control policy was a responsibility of the federal government, and the seeds of the Katrina disaster were sown. State and local government also were guilty of neglect, and it would be foolhardy to say that any level of government has learned the needed lesson from the latest inundation of New Orleans.
What's worse, disaster preparedness continues to be a stepchild of the misnamed Department of Homeland Security, which has downgraded the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the point where it will be some other bureaucracy that will bear the brunt of the next disaster that befalls some part of the United States.
Not surprisingly, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, pointing out the role the city has played in the nation's cultural life and the neglect of the levees that protected the city, commented: "Some people in Washington … act as if we are a burden. They act as if we wore our skirts too short and invited trouble."
The truth is that Washington was caught with its pants down when Katrina struck.
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