With an enormous relief and evacuation effort now well underway, the beleaguered city of New Orleans is shifting the main focus of its attention to the gruesome task of collecting and counting what is expected to be thousands of dead left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in the history of United States.
The efforts, which include the largest-ever airlift on US soil, have come in for severe criticism, as a case of being too little too late.
As the human toll now begins to be counted, the economic repercussions will take much longer to determine. The administration of US president George W. Bush faces an onslaught of questions from outraged citizens who, with the rest of the world, looked on in shock at images of looting, abandoned corpses and angry, confused and desperate storm victims pleading for food and water after days of being exposed to the elements.
Now the Bush administration faces difficult questions over why the city’s levées were not strengthened appropriately for such an eventuality, why the streets of one of the country’s largest and most historic cities were surrendered to looters marauding for supplies, and, more importantly, why thousands suffered and died for lack of water and food and from exposure to the elements.
Most pressing of all, however, is the question of why relief convoys began entering the city centre and reaching the vast majority of victims five whole days after the hurricane lashed the city and other parts of the Gulf States of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Other questions, with heavy class and racial undertones, have been asked about whether rescue operations were as sluggish as they were simply because most of the victims hailed from the city’s underclass.
Despite images from other storm-ravaged areas, those from New Orleans will undoubtedly be the most permanent. After years of budget cuts the city, situated below sea level at the mouth of the Mississippi River, was left with levées too weak to protect it, while surrounding wetlands and barrier islands were progressively destroyed for commercial interests.
It is an open secret that levées built to protect New Orleans from flooding were insufficient to withstand a major hurricane, but government leaders consistently failed to provide the funds to strengthen the network of earthen, steel and concrete barriers.
Last year the US Army Corps of Engineers sought $105 million for hurricane and flood programmes in New Orleans, but the White House slashed the request to about $40 million. Congress finally approved funding of just $42.2 million, less than half of the Army’s request.
Bush has insisted that no one had anticipated that the levées would be breached in a serious storm. But experts had predicted for years that a major hurricane would eventually hit New Orleans, swamping the levées and filling the bowl-shaped city with polluted water.
Politicians appear to be shifting the blame onto each other. Bush administration officials are blaming state and local officials for the delays in bringing in relief, as the US President struggles to fend off what has been described by some as the most serious domestic political crisis of his presidency.
Given this state of affairs, Americans are now doing what people do when their leaders abandon them in times of crisis – they are turning to each other. Donations in their millions are pouring into charities through telethons and innumerable fund-raising activities across the country, internet sites are helping people trace their relatives and people from across the country are opening their homes to displaced victims.
Even Malta is to begin collecting funds, with the Civil Protection Department now accepting donations and items for Katrina’s victims.