A Region Still in Crisis

A Region Still in Crisis

April 27, 2006

President Bush’s trip to the Gulf Coast today comes as a new report from the Senate blasts the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and makes the harsh claim that the country is still not prepared for another catastrophic event. President Bush will also find an American public that is not happy with his performance. Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handing the recovery, and not enough is being done to provide for the storm's victims. President Bush made a lot of promises to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in its immediate aftermath — he needs to make good on his promises, not just for the victims, but for the American people.

• Years after 9/11 and months after Katrina, America is still unprepared to respond to a major catastrophe. After numerous hearings and interviews, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has completed their 800-page report entitled "Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared." The bipartisan report found the U.S. was — and still is — unprepared to handle a catastrophic event the magnitude of Katrina. And with a new hurricane season only a month away, this lack of preparation is especially ominous. The report also blasted FEMA, saying it is "in shambles and beyond repair," showed "weak and ineffective leadership" during the storm, and has problems that are "too substantial to mend."
  
  
• The levees are still broken, leaving New Orleans still vulnerable to flooding. Among the conclusions found in the Senate report is that there were major design flaws in New Orleans levees. And news from the Army Corps of Engineers reveals that even when the holes in the levees are fixed, "the entire 350-mile protection system [will remain] flawed," "flood walls are too weak in some places," and "earthen levees are too short in others." Bush, who previously promised to rebuild the levees "higher and better" than before, said last month there "may not be enough money to fully protect the entire region."
  
  
• Hurricane victims are still struggling to find housing. The report also found that the effort to provide housing for displaced Katrina victims has been "a failure with many causes, including institutional neglect, lack of funding, and poor planning, decision making and execution." There are tens of thousands of people who will stop receiving housing benefits, some even as soon as April 30, despite the promise from FEMA that they would get them for a year. FEMA isn’t giving people proper guidance or instructions on rebuilding their homes, and the plan to provide evacuees with trailers "has ground to a halt around New Orleans this week, in part because of widespread racial and class tensions."