The limits of the kindness of strangers

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Monday, July 09, 2007

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By COKIE ROBERTS AND STEVEN V. ROBERTS

NEW ORLEANS -- It looks better. It really does. No longer do you see cars on top of houses, boats marooned in the middle of the street and piles and piles of personal possessions. The vast devastated area of New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard looks tidy now, almost pretty.

It's eerily quiet still. Where music blared out of bars or traffic whizzed past shopping malls, now bird calls mix with the occasional hammer as the only sounds for miles. On some streets, one or two intrepid homeowners have rebuilt, their houses standing as islands in the boarded up, broken down sea around them. Driving past shuttered schools, padlocked post offices and sealed-up stores, it seems impossible that it's been almost two years since the winds of Katrina followed by the waters of the levee breaks wrecked whole sections of this wonderful old city.

Remarkable for their resilience, the residents of New Orleans remain incongruously upbeat. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found more than half of the people in the area affected by the hurricane saying they were worse off financially than before the storm, but almost 70 percent expressing optimism about the future. Restaurant and hotel owners have put their money where their hearts are and valiantly re-created the world-class eateries for which the city is famous. A good time can certainly still be had by all.

So there's a mixed message coming from New Orleans boosters: Everything's OK, please come with your conventions and your cash. Versus: Here we are after almost two years, desolate and feeling deserted by government at every level. Both messages are true.

Despite federal government appropriations of close to $150 billion for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita relief, the money isn't getting to the people who need it. More and more people are turning to the private sector.

Before the storm, for almost all of the city's poor, the "doctor" was Charity Hospital, an enormous establishment overburdened by its patient load. The huge hulk of hurricane-damaged building will never re-open. Instead, doctors and health care workers have established or beefed up neighborhood clinics open to all.

At St. Thomas Community Health Center, in the city's "Irish Channel," Dr. Don Erwin describes how businesses, foundations, faith-based organizations and individual donors have helped turn what was a small clinic originally established for and by residents of the country's largest public housing project into the primary care facility for thousands of the city's poor.

But even in New Orleans, citizens shouldn't have to depend on the kindness of strangers. And no matter how efficient and how worthy they may be, charitable organizations can't build levees. For all their hopefulness about the future, residents tell Kaiser pollsters that their biggest concern -- more than housing, health care, schools or even crime -- is the state of the levees. As the hurricane season moves into its most dangerous phase, the federal government must make sure those essential protectors of America's most intriguing city and vital port are up to the task.

Then, with another hurricane season safely survived, and the continued kindness of strangers, the rebuilding will be reality.

(Steve and Cokie Roberts are syndicated columnists.)

1 comment(s)

JimClark wrote on Jul 9, 2007 1:04 PM:

" Napa has had its share of flooding and has learned to prepare for it. With all due respect to the media elite, New Orleans, a very beautiful city, suffered from negligence and absolutely no planning. Other disasters have occured in other parts of the United States. The Northeast dug itself out. The western states also pulled themselves out of the ashes while the state and federal government decided these disasters were considered worthy of emergency assistance. In reality, New Orleans was not prepared for what happened. Why? It was presumed that the feds would take care of everything. An upside down process. Surprise, surprise. I find it interesting that the media has created this characteristic sham. Cities are supposed to have a general plan. I believe allowing buses to be parked in a flood plain is something less than forward seeking intellegence. It seems the media was telling us that the feds should have been there instantaneously when the protocol is city, state federal. The city of New Orleans was an abject failure. The State Of Louisiana was an abject failure. Apparently there weren't even contingency plans. Napakins should be thankful that we have learned from our mistakes. On our own. We didn't need a larger bureaucracy to dictate its costly terms. They merely helped us when the burden became overwhelming. "

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