Katrina — you remember her, right? She’s the storm that nearly sent one of the most recognized and celebrated cities in our nation back to the stone age.
I remember being at the airport to greet the first group of evacuees to Salt Lake City. One of those people was Phillip Johnson, who had no idea what his wife’s fate would be after he put her on a boat with only enough room for one. I wished I could have sympathized with him, but I knew there was no way I could relate to the pain of his uncertianty and the destruction of his hometown.
As time passed, Johnson found his wife alive and people were allowed back into their city only to find it in ruins. It was in the midst of the storm that we failed to help the residents of New Orleans, but surely in the immediate wake we would do everything in our power to rebuild what was lost and restore old life to a newer city, right?
Two years have passed, but bureaucratic red tape has blocked the passage of necessary funding to the city and New Orleans is still not what it can be — what it once was.
Enter: presidential candidates. True, proposals and advocacy don’t necessarily mean action when the people speaking out are soliciting campaign loyalty, but I’ve got to hand it to Barack Obama, who is stepping forward with an actual plan for a city in dire need of help.
Obama, if elected, plans to appoint a chief financial officer and a chief coordinating officer to deal with the problems that have been keeping an estimated 60 percent of Federal Emergency Management Agency funding from reaching the city for the rebuilding of schools, hospitals and communities.
My initial reaction to the money being kept from the city was disgust. Hurricane Katrina had an unimaginable effect on New Orleans. Most of us were glued to televisions and the pictures on the front page of people waiting for help on their rooftops. Terrible stories of crime, death and filth were relayed from those who were sheltered in the corridors and stands of the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center.
Where was their help?
To this day, no one can answer that question sufficiently, though it is commonly acknowleged that FEMA failed the residents of New Orleans during Katrina.
Now, through the absence of necessary funding, the city has been failed once again.
I am disappointed, but not surprised, that President Bush has yet to make a move like the one Obama proposed. Realistically, Obama has laid out a good plan that Bush could use right now, but probably won’t because the never-ending war in Iraq is quite possibly occupying every ounce of thought he has to spare. I believe, though, that if there were to be one saving grace of his occupation of the presidential office, it would be to set things straight with New Orleans.
I fear that I am hoping for too much from our current president and will have to wait for a fresh mind in office before the glory of New Orleans can hope to be restored.