Katrina Strains New Orleans Services, Patience
Date: 10-Feb-06
Country: USA
Author: Stuart Grudgings
This is the good part of town.
New Orleans residents had learned to put up with unreliable services long before Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the city and killed 1,300 people in August, often shrugging them off as part of a laid-back character that was inseparable from great jazz music and Creole cuisine.
But the daily struggle and long waits many now face to commute, receive medical treatment or cut through layers of bureaucracy for insurance payments or housing aid has even hardened natives questioning their loyalties.
"It's hard to get dreamy-eyed about sweet Magnolia trees and amber sunsets over the Mississippi when basic services are hard to come by, when most neighborhoods look like they were bombed several years ago, and when people en masse are still suffering," resident Dan Moriarty wrote in a Web diary agonizing over whether to stay.
The recovery in basic services is crucial in the decisions of the estimated 330,000 people displaced by Katrina whether to return permanently to the city.
Crime has fallen sharply and thousands of college students are back. But with the current population of about 150,000 already straining the city's resources, it becomes more likely by the day that New Orleans will emerge from the disaster much smaller in size and more subdued in character.
The city was forced to lay off 3,000 workers after the storm due to the dramatic fall in its tax base.
"The city is certainly broke and it doesn't have the citizens today or the businesses to afford to rebuild on its own schools and services like transportation," said Matt Fellowes of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Even with the reduced population, rush-hour traffic is jammed, as out-of-towners stream into the city to work.
Hopes for an extra infusion of federal dollars have faded after the White House came out against a proposed bill that would have bailed out uninsured mortgage holders.
OVERLOAD
Five months after the disaster, only two of the city's seven hospitals are open, resulting in long waits for patients and straining hospitals in surrounding areas.
About 3,000 doctors from New Orleans and surrounding areas who left have yet to return, raising worries that an influx of visitors for this month's Mardi Gras festivities will overwhelm emergency services.
"Quite a few of my co-workers left and aren't planning to return because of the conditions," said Jacqueline Winding, a worker in the radiology department of Touro Infirmary, the city's only open hospital for adults.
Firefighters have struggled to put out blazes due to low water pressure, and most of the police force is still living in cramped conditions on a cruise ship.
According to the mayor's office, three of 117 public schools have reopened; electricity is only partially available in eight postal zones; and streets are littered with enough debris to fill 25 professional football stadiums.
The local Times-Picayune newspaper reported this week that a letter sent from one part of New Orleans to another took an average of eight days to arrive.
"The mail is horrible," Winding said. For her, though, the city still has enough charm to make up for the daily trials.
"I'm glad to be home," she said. "We have a lot of things that other cities don't have."
