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The mayor's Bring New Orleans Back Commission has created buzz in the city by involving thousands of people in public life. But what residents want most is something the mayor pragmatically believes may be impossible for the moment--levees that will protect against Category 5 hurricanes. The Corps of Engineers plans to repair 40 miles of the 300-mile system before the next hurricane season. Nagin won promises from the Corps to rebuild the system to withstand a Category 3 storm "plus some," which means they plan to fix the flaws that reputedly caused the levee breaks that flooded 80% of the city--for as long as four weeks in some areas. The improved levees will be 17 ft. high, vs. 12 ft. to 13 ft. pre-Katrina. With $8 million pending for a two-year Category 5 study, the mayor seems content to bide his time. "There is no science to build a Category 5 levee protection now anyway," says Nagin.
New Orleans has a more immediate problem: its health-care system. "Should we have another hurricane, multiple accidents, a major fire or a flu epidemic, it could overwhelm our system," warns Dr. Breaux. Fewer than 15% of the doctors are back, nurses are in short supply and medical records are missing or destroyed. The Navy hospital ship is gone, replaced by a makeshift treatment center that moved out of tents and into the New Orleans Convention Center last week. Level One trauma care, for the most seriously wounded, is available only in the next parish. "If you're in a major car accident, have been stabbed or shot or hit over the head with a pipe, the soonest you could go into the operating room now is about an hour--and that's if you 'schedule' your trauma between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.," says Dr. Peter DeBlieux, an internist at the temporary convention center site.
Eighteen months before Katrina, business leaders in New Orleans created an economic development vehicle, GNO Inc., with a five-year goal of creating 30,000 jobs. They may make their goal quicker than that, but the jobs will be in Baton Rouge, or perhaps Houston and Atlanta, thanks to the hurricane. At a downtown job fair last week, Leo G. Doyle, a sales-training manager for UPS, said his company lost 30% of its work force after Katrina and was looking for drivers and package handlers. "We have a lot of good workers who have been displaced, a lot of good workers with loss-of-family issues, loss-of-spirit issues," says Doyle. "If we had housing, they would return." Burger King is offering a $6,000 signing bonus to anyone who will work in New Orleans for at least a year.
New Orleans will never again be the New Orleans of Aug. 28, 2005, the day before Katrina hit. But that New Orleans was not the city of 30 years ago either. There is no reason to think New Orleans will not once again be a vibrant place, but it will take time, and more time than one might have thought just a month ago. As Jim Richardson, director of the Public Administration Institute at Louisiana State University, puts it, New Orleans is not a traditional hurricane-recovery model. "It's more like a war zone. You're looking at a 10-year recovery, not two years."