New Orleans Still Struggling

In my previous Cranky George Blog and a year after Katrina hit New Orleans, I wrote the following:

Then to complicate things even further, there is no master plan. Mayor Nagin says he has a 100-day plan; but, nowhere on paper. Besides, he has "had" more than 3 times those 100 days since Katrina hit to have a recovery plan in effect. And, I would think he should have more than one 100-day plan to solve the "years" of problems that now face New Orleans. 100-days is either ridiculously short-sighted or irrationally optimistic. Either way, it shows Nagin's innate inability to tackle the "real world" problems at hand. While the media is always quick to attack FEMA or Bush, there seems to be no focus on this, the most critical of issues....

Lastly, the news media seems to be fascinated by the fact that nearly half of the residents have not returned. Returned to what? Even if they had a trailer or a house to come back to, they don't have jobs. The place is toxic and there are no guarantees that another hurricane won't do the same thing. The businesses, too, are in the same situation. And, with only half the people available as customers, is there really a business to come back to? This is truly a "chicken and the egg" quandary. No people...no business. No business...no jobs. No jobs...no people; and, so on, in an endless circle.

In summary, like the old adage says: "Rome wasn't built in day", New Orleans has years of work ahead of it. It took 300 years to build this city and just hours and one storm to destroy it. It seems to me that the focus should be on making sure that can't happen again before any people haphazardly rebuild. That takes a lot planning; of which, there seems to be very little! Sadly, that's the "real story" of New Orleans that's the story that the press "should" be focused on, on this one-year anniversary of Katrina!

Now, some three years later, two Associated Press writers seem to question the quick recovery of New Orleans in this piece: "Hope, reality collide in post-Katrina New Orleans".

The reality of New Orleans is that people have moved on with new lives somewhere else. It is too "romantic" to think that people are somehow completely bound to a place where they once lived or where they once grew up; and, as a consequence, would be willing to return without any hope of a job or an inhabitable home. For too many people, especially those trapped in public housing in the lower 9th ward, that life, before Katrina, was a nightmare without any true hope. Hopefully, they are now doing much better, somewhere else.

As I said 3 years ago, it will take years for New Orleans to regain its original size and strength. That's the reality. The hope that New Orleans will become what it was before Katrina is completely irrational. I think that a lot of those who "might" return to New Orleans wouldn't even consider doing so until the levy system is fixed for good. To my knowledge, a permanent fix is still up in the air.

In my opinion, Mayor Ray Nagin has always been a problem -- both before Katrina and afterwords -- and he continues to be a problem to this day. There needs to be a leader with vision and a "plan"; not a vision and just "words". For that reason, New Orleans will never rally recover until the residents of that city replace their current Mayor.