Sunday, February 18, 2007

No Mardi Gras for the Ninth Ward

The second post Katrina Mardi Gras is upon us. I guess the measure of how New Orleans has recovered from the storm and the post storm is how large Mardi Gras will be. They are expecting a quarter of million visitors. This is an increase from last year but well below pre-storm levels.

New Orleans was rich in history but was primarily a tourist spot. What seems to be lost on the MSM is the devastation that remains. There is a section of the city that is vacant. Crime is running rampant, far worse than before the storm. Those who survived the storm have rebuilt their lives in different parts of the country. Their return is unlikely. The money did not seem to reach the folks who really needed it. But as with everything else this administration has touched, fraud was a problem.

No one is in a hurry to rebuild the Ninth Ward for a couple of reasons. The first one is this section is below sea level. As a risk manager by training, for those folks to return to area that is just not safe. The other is, the storm did what folks tried for years to do, rid the city of those people in the ninth ward.

Get a bulldozer and call it a wrap.

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