Editorial: Third-world week

Four years ago, this was the week of disbelief.

Americans' most vivid memories of Hurricane Katrina are not of the winds blasting through Gulf Coast towns on Aug. 29, 2005. Say Katrina, and what comes to mind are images of the tragic scenes that occurred days later.

Katrina barely hit New Orleans. The storm center was 35 miles away. But say Katrina, and what people remember most are pictures of the Crescent City after its levees broke and waters from Lake Pontchartrain came storming through its streets.

Eighty percent of the city was flooded. Hundreds drowned. Thousands were stranded, without food, without drinkable water, without medicine, many without hope. The sick were abandoned. Bodies piled up, or floated away.

People watching on TV or reading about it in the newspapers couldn't believe this wasn't a scene from some destitute foreign country that lacked the will and know-how to get things done.

Were the situation not so horrific, it would have been amusing to see the man President Bush lauded as "doing a heck of a job" resign in disgrace only 10 days later. Wilting criticism had made FEMA director Michael Brown a "distraction," as he put it.

So poorly did federal officials handle Katrina's aftermath that improving the nation's response to disasters became one of Barack Obama's promises when he ran for president. In the past eight months, Obama has tried to fulfill that promise.

While Bush picked Brown, a lawyer, to be his FEMA director, Obama chose a career emergency management professional from Florida, Craig Fugate. Even Louisiana's Republican governor says the Federal Emergency Management Agency has improved. "There is a sense of momentum and a desire to get things done," said Gov. Bobby Jindall.

FEMA, under Bush, seemed bogged down in arguments with state and local officials over repairs and construction. Fugate's team, though, says it has cleared a backlog of 75 projects, including libraries, schools, and university buildings. Still, there is much to be done four years after Katrina.

For example, the Army Corps of Engineers is way behind schedule in restoring the wetlands and marshes that provide a natural barrier to surging waters from a hurricane. Congress authorized a number of major coastal restoration projects in 2007. But they cannot begin until the corps completes design and engineering work that was due in May 2008.

New Orleans has regained 75 percent of its pre-Katrina population of 455,000, but 36 percent of the city's housing is still empty. And four years later, about 2,100 families in Louisiana and Mississippi are still living in emergency housing, including trailers. Those vestiges of the week when America looked like a third-world disaster zone must be eradicated.