Chicago Sun Times Editorial Government rebuilding mess getting bigger than Katrina's

Government rebuilding mess getting bigger than Katrina's

February 16, 2006. Copyright by the Chicago Sun Times

The season of dangerous tropical storms begins in June, less than four months away, and so New Orleans -- swept into perdition by the hellish fury of Hurricane Katrina -- could be damned again, and there is little preparation for it, let alone a coherent plan to deal with the brackish mess left by Katrina. Six months after the hurricane plowed through the levees and swamped much of the city, there is still no reasonable agreement about how to rebuild the Big Easy.

There is just talk. And talk. And reports about incompetence. And it leads to this thought: If our governments on all levels -- local, state, federal -- can't take care of us during the terror of a hurricane, how can they save us from terrorists with weapons of mass destruction?

Does anyone even know who has been appointed by President Bush to oversee rebuilding of the Gulf Coast? Donald Powell certainly is not a household name but he was named by Bush last November to help the Gulf Coast recover. Progress has been meager. By the end of January only 16 percent of the repairs to New Orleans' flood protection system were completed by the Army Corps of Engineers, according to the New York Times. The federal government has slated $18 billion more, adding to the $67 billion it already budgeted, to put New Orleans back together again, but it seems like a near impossible task for all the king's horses and all the king's men.

Thousands of former Gulf Coast residents remain without housing and are being booted out of the hotel rooms where they spent the last six months. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has received 135,000 requests for trailers and has only been able to fill just over half. At least 10,000 mobile homes, paid for by FEMA, are moldering on a muddy field in Arkansas because no one can figure out where to set them up. The mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana and federal officials still can't agree on the best way to rebuild the city.

Meanwhile, frauds wasting millions in taxpayers' money have been committed. Government investigators charged 212 people with fraud and theft for allegedly scamming FEMA and other agencies out of millions of dollars of disaster aid, some of it going to pay for diamond rings and tattoos.

That New Orleans could have been saved from much of the horror was made apparent in a report by House Republicans that blamed all levels of government. It was a cautionary tale, the report said, that "all the little pigs built houses of straw." The federal government was particularly feckless, flailing and showing "organizational paralysis." Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff -- who has taken the brunt of the criticism -- told a Senate committee investigating the storm that it was "one of the most difficult and traumatic experiences of my life." At least he was on dry land. And still has his job, though you could be forgiven for wondering why.