A year later, victims still being pummeled by hurricane’s wake

A year ago, Gulf Coast residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were reeling from the devastation of deadly Katrina. A year later, they still are.

Tragically, thousands remain displaced. Countless others still don’t have the promised trailers, or at least one with electricity and water. Much debris remains where it was strewn by wind, water or the catastrophic combination of these.

A year later, according to reports, less than half of the population of New Orleans has returned. Only 60 percent of the city has electricity, and half of the hospitals – and three-quarters of the child-care centers – remain closed.

There’s much finger-pointing going on to determine what went wrong in the days before the widely predicted hurricane unleashed a fury hundreds of miles wide, or more obvious, what went wrong in the hours after the storm struck. Each one is trying to lay the blame at the feet of the other: for the delayed response, a total breakdown in communication or for the chaos in the midst of crisis.

Ineptitude at any level, particularly during an emergency when so many lives were threatened – and lost – is hard to forgive.

But what is unconscionable – if not criminal – is the reported waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement that has occurred in the year that followed the disaster.

Day after day we read news stories and night after night we hear interviews: reports of insurance companies denying claims, allegations of contracted work never completed, goods ordered but never received, charges of bilking and padding pockets, of exploitation and opportunism run amok.

“Keeping Them Honest” was CNN’s slogan last year when reporter Anderson Cooper delivered his nightly news broadcasts from headquarters in Baton Rouge, La., a good piece away from Bayou La Batre, Ala., or Waveland, Miss., or Buras, La., the little town downriver from New Orleans that was obliterated when the Category 4 storm made landfall. Yet a year later, when we read about and see the continuing plight of Katrina victims, we can’t help but wonder who’s keeping whom honest.

What about the reported $8.75 billion of contracts, most of which were awarded noncompetitively? What about the purported rebuilding of the levees or the restoration of the wetlands? Why are desperate homeowners forced to fight their insurance companies for needed money? Why are rents so high?

How is it, a writer for The New York Times asked, that so many residents are still waiting for the FEMA flood plans before they rebuild their homes?

A year later, why does the job on the Gulf remain unfinished? When will it be?