It has been two and a half years since the levees broke. With all the recent natural disasters as well as campus hoopla, Hurricane Katrina is no longer a sexy topic. In fact, it’s no longer a topic at all. We’d like to forget about it for good. But we can’t. The city is still in a state of disarray, plagued by poor health care, educational infrastructure, and housing. And that’s just the beginning.
Poor progress is apparent in numbers. As of last month, only 70 percent of residents had returned to the city. The November 2007 New Orleans Index Report, which tracks the recovery in the region, reveals that although New Orleans has yet to flatline, and there are signs of improvement, the progress made falls short of the entire city’s needs. Of the nearly 186,000 families that have applied for Road Home assistance, only 36 percent have received funding, leaving 118,000 homeowners without the necessary aid they need to rebuild. Over 46,600 families continue to live in cramped and inadequate FEMA trailers across Louisiana.
Public busing and health care are in even worse condition. Only 19 percent of buses are running proper routes in New Orleans. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if only 19 percent of New York City busses were running their proper routes. Health care services remain the hardest hit, as one hospital in Jefferson Parish closed last month. Thus, only 10 of the 23 pre-Katrina hospitals remain. In one bright spot, the government has opened a number of schools across the area—21 schools reopened in November alone. However, that still translates into only roughly 62 percent of the original number of schools.
But even if the city was back to 100 percent capacity with all the necessary public and social services, there would still be the paramount problem of the critically deficient levees. Bob Bea, professor of engineering at UC Berkeley describes the current state of the levees as “icing on the top of angel food cake.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, performing according to tradition, have built sub-par, inadequate, and cheap levees that cannot withstand another Katrina. Their progress is minimal, and their contributions are grossly unsatisfying, as the residents of New Orleans remain utterly unprotected. “The corps’s motto is Let Us Try,” Bea says. “We’ve been trying long enough. Now it’s time to actually do something.” Fortunately, New Orleans remained unscathed this past hurricane season, but all future signs point to another Katrina.
As desolation takes its toll on the area and apathy and forgetfulness plague the country, New Orleans is mired in lackluster progress. This exhaustive list of wrongs forces us to ask: just what has succeeded? The answer lies in the residents who have remained and the indefatigable efforts of volunteers. Enter the capable and willing students of Columbia University. There are several trips planned for spring break devoted to helping in the rebuilding efforts, including our joint program between the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Hillel. What can we accomplish in a week? Last spring, on this same program, we traveled to New Orleans together as part of a service-learning and intercultural-learning endeavor. We strove to translate the discourse of social justice into tangible benefits for the citizens of New Orleans. We partnered our intense labor of gutting neglected homes with our nightly interactions and discussions. We spent six days clad in Tyvek suits that protected our bodies, but could not shield our emotions from the sheer devastation surrounding us. Our efforts provided at least four families with the hope of one day returning home. This year, we strive to assist even more.
Unfortunately, Brad Pitt’s good looks and recent $5 million initiative to build 150 homes in the utterly devastated lower ninth ward are not enough to rebuild New Orleans. As the government continues to neglect New Orleans, we as college students must
Source: ColumbiaSpectator.com