Why New Orleans Was Not Helped

The economy of New Orleans before Katrina was one of the greatest in the South, mainly because of the city’s location being so close to the Mississippi River Delta and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (known as “MR GO” by the locals, it is the rarely-used intercostal waterway that connects the Mississippi to Lake Borgne, which is part of the Gulf of Mexico). Coffee, bananas and sugar are some of its imports; exports consist of oil, petrochemicals, rice, cotton, and corn. There are also many factories producing a wide variety of goods such as wood, paper, metal products, food, beverages, building stone, medical and building equipment, communication systems, apparel, and airplane parts(from infoplease.com). The damage from Katrina’s flooding resulted in an astounding $150 billion worth of damage to the Gulf Coast, the most costly natural disaster in the history of the United States (from USA Today).

The only money-making idea left to New Orleans now is tourism, which is usually considered the last thing on the list of ideas to boost a city’s economy. Without this once fastidious economy, New Orleans is having a very difficult time getting important jobs associated with the recovery of the city, including protection from future hurricanes.

The tall skinny black man who told me his story of surviving the floods of Katrina also was positive of one thing: the levees were blown up by people working for the government. This idea is not uncommon in New Orleans, as it had actually happened in 1927. Whether the levees were blown up or not, one thing that is believed by everyone is that the levees were too weak and were made with poor engineering. On a good note, the Army Corps of Engineers has received $7 billion that is going towards rebuilding broken levees and installing new flood gates at Lake Pontchartrain. This work should be done by 2011, and it should protect New Orleans from future large storms (USA Today).

Of the $116 billion the federal government endowed upon the Gulf Coast for recovery, less than half has reached municipal projects after going through federal checks and balances, and $34 billion is being held over for long-term rebuilding (USA Today). Despite this lack of money, New Orleans is still being cleaned up, thanks to the millions of volunteers from all over the world since the flood occurred two years ago.

About 111 million cubic yards of debris has been cleared from the Gulf Coast communities, which is enough to fill the New Orleans Superdome twenty times. Running water and electricity have returned to practically every Gulf Coast city, and the population of New Orleans (approximately 300,000) is back to sixty-seven percent of what it was pre-Katrina (USA Today). New Orleans is recovering thanks to the many people who decided to stop watching about it on television and decided to go down there and work for change.

Upon coming home from New Orleans, people asked me if there is still a lot of work to be done down there. None of them would believe me if I told them, if I showed them my pictures and told them my many stories, because none of these people know what it is like to work for something that good. New Orleans is the one of the distinguished cities in the United States and the world. It deserves to be rebuilt, for the sake of the many people who live there and are unwilling to change for anything, even a Class 5 hurricane named Katrina. Though the government does not care about New Orleans due to the cities protection costs, poor people, and terrible economy, the rest of the world who have sent volunteers do care. It is up to the volunteers to bring New Orleans back, whether that be by hard physical labor or donations.